The Saturday Shuffle

At last -- a free hour in my day!  Let's turn on the old shuffle machine and see what it yields...

1. Do You Want It All? / Two Door Cinema Club
From Tourist History (2010)
Tasty little morsel of British indie pop, sort like Death Cab for Cutie meets the Kooks. (And no, that's not a reference to the sadly kaput marriage of Ben Gibbard and Zoe Deschanel). The production values are quirky, almost lapidary, with fragments of phrases repeated urgently, like mantras, over a peppy rhythm track spiced with space-age sound effects. But absolutely radio friendly!

2. When in Rome / Nickel Creek
From When Will the Fire Die? (2005)
Sitting sweetly at the intersection of bluegrass and indie pop, this wonderful trio (also, sadly kaput) composed of fiddler Sara Watkins, her guitarist brother Sean, and mandolinist Chris Thiele (now of Punch Brothers) was a real find for me. Snarky lyrics and modernist rhythms, textured with Americana  instrumentation -- trust me, it's a winning combination.

3. The Rat's Prayer / The Soft Boys
From A Can of Bees (1980)
And now for something completely different -- at least on the surface -- Sir Robyn Hitchcock's first band, psych-folk-punk renegades the Soft Boys. Garage-y guitars and drums, herky-jerky tempos, folky harmonies, and best of all, wickedly absurdist lyrics.: My. Cup. Of. Tea.

4. Better Days / Roseanne Cash
From This One's For Him (2012)
No, not the Kinks' "Better Things," but a wise and rueful Guy Clark song, covered here by real Nashville royalty, Twitter queen Roseanne Cash. This new tribute album is one of the finest country albums of many a year -- with Clark's warm and witty songs as the foundation, it should be brilliant, and it is.

5. Martha My Dear / The Beatles
From The White Album (1968)
Paul McCartney in full music-hall mode -- scrumpdillyumptious.  I say music-hall, but alongside the oom-pah/ragtime beat Sir Paul can't help tossing in a bossa nova groove here and there.  And yes, we all know he really wrote this about his Old English sheepdog ("hold your head up, you silly girl / Look what you've done" -- poop on the carpet!), but it's still a crazy mad wonderful song.

6. (I Wanna) Call It Love / Sondre Lerche
From Duper Sessions (2006)
Remember the Steve Carell movie Dan in Real Life? Probably not; it was highly missable.  But I loved the soundtrack tunes by this sweet Norwegian singer-songwriter, and immediately plucked several other tunes out of his slim catalog. There's a little soft-shoe jazziness here too, a smooth strain of Cole Porter romanticism, but with a touch of Scandi angst, too.  Well, why not?

7. Groovy Movies / The Kinks
From The Great Lost Kinks Album (1973)
Sorry, no link -- it's a bootleg. (Got to solve this mp3 posting conundrum...) This album only hit the market for a nanosecond before the horrified Kinks demanded it be withdrawn; most of it was discarded demos, scraps of songs that Ray Davies had written for other projects, padded out with some Dave Davies solo work.  This is one of the Dave tracks, sloppy rather than whimsical, but kinda endearing all the same.

8.  Cry Like a Baby / The Box Tops
From The Best of the Box Tops (1968)
Hard to believe this came out the same year as "Martha My Dear"; it's soul-saturated Memphis pop, with horns instead of oom-pah, Farfisa organ instead of plinky piano, and a raft of gospel back-up singers.  And the divine vocals of Alex Chilton...

9. I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord / Lyle Lovett
From Smile: Songs from the Movies (2003)
Full-on gospel -- whoever said Lyle Lovett could only do country?  This track appeared in the 1997 Robert Duvall film The Apostle (searing performance, Bobby D!) and it sure enough gives me that old-time religion. Do I love this cat's voice or what?  That supple vibrato with just enough creak and twang -- there's no one else sounds even remotely like him.

10. We Should Be Making Love / Huey Lewis & The News
From Hard At Play (1999)
Lazy, loungy, soulful pop, as easy on the ears as Huey himself is easy on the eyes (Huey and Daryl Hall: my two big 80s music crushes.)  And one of my favorite song premises:  Our singer hero is always listening to his woman friend's romantic issues, until now he's finally 'fessing up that he longs to BE her romantic issue.  You could slide into this like a pair of warm moccasins, girl.  Why not?

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Let's get 2011 off to a shufflin' start...

1."I Want to Be an Anglepoise Lamp" / The Soft Boys
From Can of Bees (1978)
This is how Robyn Hitchcock started out -- the frantic beat sounds like punk, but the lyrics and spirit are way too art-school absurdist.  This track always makes me think of that classic Pixar short about the baby lamp, the one they played before Toy Story... 

2. "Surf Medley" / Junior Brown
From Semi-Crazy (1996)
Amazing surf guitar instrumental from country guitar whiz Junior Brown, channeling 60s hits like "Walk Don't Run" and "Secret Agent Man," plingy riffs soaring over a furiously slapping drum track.  Thanks to Napoleon Wakeup for this one!

3. "The Race Is On" / Rockpile
From a BBC radio broadcast August 1979
Dave Edmunds' rockabilly leanings took Rockpile down some dusty roads indeed (we shoulda known Nick would end up a country crooner).  But hey, who could resist covering this George Jones classic?  No Rockpile link, sorry (me and my bootlegs), but check out George's version.

4. "State of Confusion" / The Kinks
From State of Confusion (1983)
"The tumble dryer's broken, the telly's on the blink..." Poor besieged Ray Davies -- just can't cope with the modern world, can he?  Even in the midst of the Kinks' arena rock heyday, he was harping on the neuroses of "20th Century Man" and "Holiday."  And the girlfriend who leaves because the VCR broke -- sounds like "Sunny Afternoon"s girlfriend, fleeing home with "tales of drunkenness and cruelty."  Fickle females!

5. "Plastic Lips" / The Aquabats
From Charge!!  (2005)
Not all that different from the Soft Boys, really, though the Aquabats add a comic-book twist (dig the superhero costumes, despite physiques that the tights don't flatter).  Funny, absurd, hectic.  Love these guys live!

6. "Smokers" / The Old 97s
From Drag It Up (2004)
What?  You've been reading my blog for how long, and you still aren't an Old 97s fan? Shame on you.  It's alt-country for thinking people, with clever lyrics and just enough neurosis to balance out the yearning melodies. I love this atmospheric track, the hazy sound quality, the vocal riffs that curl upwards like a trail of smoke.

7. "Bummer in the Summer" / Love
From Forever Changes (1967)
Heh heh.  Talk about hazy.  Heh heh.  

8. "Secret Heart" / Ron Sexsmith
From Ron Sexsmith (1995)
Was it Elvis or Nick who first covered this sweet tune? Either way, I wouldn't have discovered this wonderful Canadian singer-songwriter without that, so thanks, guys.  Saw him open for Nick in '06, met him after the show -- he's just as much of a sweetheart as you'd think.  Of course Dan knows him, too, like all the rest of the Toronto music mafia.. 

9. "Rocky Road" / Nick Lowe
From Party of One (1989)
Speak of the devil.  Okay, it's a perfectly pleasant track, but -- dare I say it? --a tad generic, sorta like a mash-up of earlier songs like "Raining Raining" and "I Can Be The One You Love."  On the other hand, it's my fault for keeping every single track he's ever recorded on my iTunes; I'm bound to get a little filler occasionally.  Doesn't mean I'm going to delete any of it... 

10. "Seventh Son" / Georgie Fame
From Seventh Son (1969)
And if it hadn't been for Van Morrison and Georgie Fame, I'd never have discovered Mose Allison.  Nobody else gets that intersection of Delta sharecropper blues and beatnik jazz quite like Mose.  Georgie's organ goes crazy staccato on this one -- "Everbody's talkin' 'bout the seventh son / In this whole wide world there is only one / And I'm the one, the one they call the seventh son." Cheeky!