Met an old Seattle friend. She dragged me home to do kitchen counter-top karaoke with her housemates. (Hi Sunde! (pictured above))

One of them, Thomas had my same birthday (May 9th) and in our drunken YouTube-ings, he brought up this awesome video from the early 70's of French pop star Adriano Celentano hamming it up to total nonsense in this video. I've watched it like a dozen times already.  Turns out this guy has been huge in Italy for 40 years, and he's been in movies from La Dolce Vita to playing satan in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.

Witness the 70's goodness:

These aren't even hits, technically.

I listen to a whole metric crapload of new music, and I'm really diligent about marking songs with a star-rating when something really pops out for me.  Later, I go back and see that plenty of times only one song stood out to me.  These songs are often spectacular in some way, but the rest of the album just doesn't even register as something I want to write about.

These are some songs I've totally fallen in love with but ultimately can't recommend the rest of the album.

First up is indie darling Bear in Heaven, from their album Beast Rest Forth Mouth.  They were indie darlings last year, but they just sounded generic to me.  However, this song You Do You just sounds like some amazing modern Genesis song (minus Phil Collins):

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Next is from Blackroc, a vanity project by otherwise awesome The Black Keys working with a bunch of otherwise awesome rappers like Mos Def, RZA, and Q-Tip.  Sounded great but nothing really quite moved me except for the back-from-the-grave collaboration with some old recording from Ol' Dirty Bastard and a nice verse by Ludacris.  It's a crass rap called Coochie as in "That Coochie got me so confused I don't know what to do."  Note the reverb-dripping Black Keys licks.

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When this song, Fortune Teller by Forest Fire came on, I was so convinced this album was going to blow me away.   It didn't.  But I still love this song about "melting faces with gatlin' gun social skills," that asks the musical question, "why not kill someone you hate?"  I've been feeling like this socially a lot lately.

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Really this whole album by Citay is not bad at all, but nothing else on the album quite carries the spirit of an Angelic Choir led by a leaderless Van Halen.  Check the lovely instramental Careful With That Hat:

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Okay, this song is a tour de force.  I can't even believe someone good enough to do a song like this would do the rest of the songs on his album On Blue Fog as kind of a regular folk album.  The guy is Andew Ethier, and the one hit wonder is a song called On Lies.  I am not shitting you, this song is amazing top to bottom.  Amazing guitar work, amazing Dylanesque singing that runs from growl to howl like necessary, and a spectacular sax solo near the end.  This is a 6:15 journey that I wouldn't mind being on the soundtrack to my autobiography:

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Anyone else have any indie one hit wonders to recommend?   Disagree and think one of these artists has other awesome stuff?  Like or hate one of these songs?

Let me know.

Today I woke up to find out the whole new Fleet Foxes album, Helplessness Blues had leaked.  I had to have it.  Say what you want about the Fleet Foxes.  Maybe you're never in the mood for this kind of music, and consider it too precious or pastoral, but to me the far worse sins in music are being offhand or unenduring.  Fleet Foxes and their new album Helplessness Blues are none of these things.

A few people out there have been playing Bedouin Dress or Battery Kinzie, but I'd like to feature the epic, and probably most experimental (and one of two songs with a slash dividing the title of the song in two.  See also: The Plains / Bitter Dancer).

This is sing is called The Shrine / An Argument, and clocks in at a humble 8:07.  It's got everything that makes the Fleet Foxes the Fleet Foxes, you know, lovely vocal harmonies, and Robin singing his heart out about nature or some shit.  A cover that makes to look like LSD is a required ingredient for enjoying the album.  Plus some squalling, discordant horns and some other weird noises.  But… would I present this to you if it wasn't a badass, manly hunk of song?  No, I wouldn't.  Be among the first to enjoy this fine song:

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I noticed recently that both The Morning Benders and Janelle Monae released songs called Cold War on their new albums.

Both are great:

Janelle Monae's:

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The Morning Benders:

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So, I started wondering what other songs were out there called Cold War, since it seemed like a potent theme.

Not surprisingly, there were quite a few in the 1980's, so I listened to all I could find, and thought Snobby readers might find them interesting.

First of all, the venerable Devo, who actually just released a new album, from their album Freedom of Choice:

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Then, The Vapors (of Turning Japanese fame), with a pretty damn likable Cold War song:

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And, a kind of lukewarm Styx (of Mr. Roboto fame) version:

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And an intense 2000 dark techno version by Funker Vogt:

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Also wouldn't want to leave out a remix of The Morning Benders version (Called the Winter Remix) that I really like:

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Last, and kinda least, but worth a mention, a rareish 11 minute The Antlers song recently called Cold War (a minor work, but still interesting for completeness):

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What a sweet little song, and weird little video. If you like this, the rest of the "White Magic" album will probably work for you too.

Oh Jens, this is divine!

Jens Lekman, normally writes and sings his own lovely songs (and tells insanely cute stories about how they were written while he sings them).

But he also remixes other people's songs like Au Revoir Simone's song "Shadows".

While he was remixing it, he decided to convert the song from straight 4/4 time, into a more waltz-like 3/4 time.

While he was playing around, he started thinking of all these other songs in 3/4 and 6/8 time, and decided to make one big 28-minute Girl Talk-y-mashup-in-slo-mo of them all as a waltzy summer jam just for us.  Thanks, Jens, it is just lovely.  I love that he adds a significant part of The Morning Benders' Excuses, because I just love that song.

Feel free to listen to it right here:

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And it's also worth listening to the Au Revoir Simone remix itself.

(This post is rated R at least.  Good rap can be kind of nasty.)

Little known, but greatly loved by The Sweet Snob: Yoni Wolf of WHY? in By Torpedo or Crohn's beats Lil' Wayne in slow, easy rap by a mile.  Sure, anyone can rap about being so badass they have it all figured out, but Yoni IS a badass rapper and he's willing to admit he doesn't have it figured out.  He'll be proudly mouthing watermelon every song.

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The one man who finally made it possible for a white guy to actually be respected as a rapper, he had to do it by being the harshest smartest fucker in a while.   It's unbelievable to think he could be so coked up and be so unbelievably cogent

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And if you're a little less sensitive, then it's worth listening to the profound statement of paranoia that is Marshall Mathers.   All the faggot talk gets old for sure, but he's obviously cooled it with that since this album.  But, this is some amazing lyricism.   It's mostly just a razor sharp slice to anyone who steps into his eyesight.  Amazing, bitchy storytelling that's tops but you're like, fuck man, seek help.  Luckily it looks like he did.

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The Beastie Boys are a huge part of white rap history.  As bratty little fuckers in High Plains Drifters:

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and as bratty bodhisattvas in Do It:

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Atmosphere goes on any white boy rap list although I guess he's not exactly a white boy, but pretty close   Every rapper has to brag some, and even a self-hating dude like Sluggo can talk big.  He's gonna be bigger than anything that's ever hit these little kids.  Bigger than guns, bigger than cigarettes.  Good luck with that, Sluggo.

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I'd be amiss if I didn't mention local rapper Macklemore showing us how hard he has to think about it before he hits that:

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I'm ready to call Janelle Monae the Andre 3000 replacement for the new decade, and these two albums the new Speakerboxxx.   Big Boi appears on Janelle's new album, and Janelle of course appears on Big Boi's new album, and the production is so mind-blowing and consistent you could put these two albums together on shuffle and call it a new wonder album.

Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (which you can listen to in its entirety on his myspace page) is a wonder, and an easy sequel to his half of Outkast's Speakerboxxx album.  He finally realized Andre was not going to get his shit together and just went ahead and released a beautiful, smart, sexy, dirty album the continues along the same frame as some of the best of Outkast.

Janelle Monae's album has been out for about a month, and I still get frustrated with how unbelievably talented she is.  She can sing, rap, write, and just generally kick ass with her own weird, robotic style.  I think Tightrope is the most amazing hip-hop/pop song since Hey Ya.  I have been wearing this song OUT and just finally saw the video, which only enraged me more because I was like, "Oh, she's an amazing and unique dancer too?!"

And lesser but also cool is the video for the remix:

So get these two albums and bump them, because there's so many enjoyable songs between the two of them that I want to barf.  I've been waiting for Chico dusty for a year, and didn't realize I was going to get a double album of Big Boi style goodness.

Well, first of all, there's this Tallest Man on Earth cover of Paul Simon's Graceland:

Then there's this track off the upcoming Cee-Lo solo album, which sounds very much like a Gnarls Barkeley track for sure (note that Cee-Lo is the singer of GB).

Oh, and every goddamn song on Janelle Monae's unbelievably good new album The ArchAndroid.

Consider the song, Oxford Comma. I don't care if they use outdated African pop as their template, they're cool.

First verse, "Know your boyfriend, unlike other guys."

2nd, "Know your butler, unlike other guys"

and "I met the highest lama, his accent sounded fine to me."

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These guys are okay.  They're erudite and all, but I've met worse demons.