Quarterly Chaff

No, not every quarter, just this one because I happen to be procrastinating!

Songs of Joy, 1st Quarter Edition:

1. Cassie - Is It You*
2. Ashlee Simpson - Outta My Head
3. Jordin Sparks f. Chris Brown - No Air
4. Flo Rida - Low
5. Van Hunt - Turn My TV On*
6. Cupid - 369*
7. Danity Kane - Pretty Boy*
8. The Knux - Cappuccino
9. Wynter Gordon - Surveillance
10. The Feeling - I Thought It Was Over

* = questionable eligibility status

Others: Snoop f. Robyn - Sexual Eruption, Soulja Boy - YAHHH TRICK YAHHH, Taio Cruz - Come On Girl, Lyyke Li - I'm Good I'm Gone, Maria Daniela - Dame Mas*, Kanye West - Flashing Lights, Duffy - Mercy

Also, heard today: Wiley - Wearing My Rolex!

Songs in my 1st Quarter iTunes playlist not on the list:

Dolly Parton - Jesus and Gravity, September - Cry for You (Top 10 potential but an old single outside the US; will probably include it tho), Danity Kane - Lights Out, Britta Persson - At 7, Andrew WK - McLaughlin Groove, Efdemin - Stately Yes

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DEEP ANALYSIS.

Uhhhh, most of these songs are pretty good! A couple are glaring intently at the Feeling -- all of them, actually. I think September will count (knocking off der Feeling), and Wiley has a good chance of knocking out sumpin else. May not count Ashlee because I knew it pretty well by the end of last year, but it didn't have its impact till this year. (Will see how the album pans out.)

Wondering whether or not I'll get sick of Flo Rida ("Low" wanes while "369" waxes -- three of these are from the Step-Up 2 OST!). Wondering whether or not I'll vote for Soulja Boy ON PRINCIPLE.

*Listened to The-Dream's album and was...whelmed. About what I expected, but nothing much better than the tracks I already knew.

*Listnened to the new R.E.M. album and was bored, not to tears, but not enough to think it's worth putting effort into right now. I've had this experience revisiting R.E.M. lately, though, so maybe I'm just out of sync.

*Listened to the new M83, which was like a muted Before the Morning Heals Us. Why on earth would you stay in that style (I think I called it Andrew Lloyd Weber doing a My Bloody Valentine opera back when it came out) and do LESS with it?? I was expecting crescendoing neon orgasms and a terrible ramshackle "cinematic" narrative throughline! Very disappointing.

*Listened to a bunch of other stuff and WHAT A WASTE OF TIME. Who needs this much background music?? I need thinkin' music. Or at least walkin' music.

I think I figured out that the new Danity Kane album splits the difference between the Rihanna/Amerie melody/harmony split chronicled by Mike and Kat last year -- clearly using whatever trendy production style they can get their hands on (4/4 house'n'b on "Damaged," which is the only song on here that sounds flat-out tired, batshit Britney/Danja on a few tracks) while refusing to pick a frontwoman and letting everyone fight for the mic, play around, undercut one another -- the kind of thing where someone does a diva wiggle move and you just kind of chuckle at the futility of it (and it melds into the other harmonies). And yet the one I keep playing is "Lights Out," a pretty straightforward 6/8 lilting strut-track that, aside from some AutoBritney octave-straddling, could have probably been done by just about anyone any year in the past couple years. Can't tell what distinguishes it, except maybe that it's really easy to walk to and I happened to hear it at the right time on more than one occasion?

"Turn My TV On" -- part Datarock (are they still around?) and part Rockwell, he's paranoid and won't leave his house, but he's still dancing in his underwear. The only song on his (unreleased) new album that I can really follow or remember in its entirety -- he's got some weird combo of swagger and arty, imprecise little asides that makes listening all the way through kind of a chore. (At least he's more confident about his songs falling apart than most people, but his songs still tend to fall apart.)

"Jesus and Gravity" -- Jesus lifts Dolly up and gravity keeps her feet on the ground. Could have been a straight(er) gospel number, and it eventually goes gospel all the way in the finale, but there's something really interesting in her metaphor here; Jesus kind of gives her a big head and gravity pulls her back down to earth! This is interesting -- pretty sure she's saying "He is my flight" (gives her wings, see) but it sounds like she's saying "He is my pride," which could be good or bad depending on yer feelings about pride. But what I like is that there's a sort of ecstasy escape hatch that doesn't really let your feet take off. And it's not like Cali waiting for that day she'll just float on upwards, I get the sense that Dolly is thankful that she can't really fly, so somewhere buried in this thing is the slightest glimmer of critique, even if (as I said) it's too straight-gospel to consider it anything more than an inkling or conspiracy theory. Still, it's a really interesting negotiation of unreserved "vertical" (singer-to-God) music and that little bit of skepticism and internal conflict that can find its way into Christian rock occasionally, usually to its benefit. And it still manages to be totally uplifting, not all angsty about the logical end of that Jesus/gravity split.

New album by Maria Daniela y su Sonido Lasser is better overall than the CSS album even though they don't have a "Let's Make Love and Listen Death from Above." Thought I'd heard 'em before and sure enough we covered them in the Jukebox in the pre-blog days.

PS - favorite movies of 2008:

1. Hannah Montana Best of Both Worlds 3-D EXPERIENCE
2. Hannah Montana Best of Both Worlds DVD NON-3-D EXPERIENCE (TBA)
3. ___________

(The stuff I saw at the Whitney Biennial probably doesn't count, but I doubt any of it can touch Miley Ray anyway. I mean, I like 5-minute static reaction shots of Todd Haynes humoring an old colleague as she endlessly describes a dream she had as much as the next guy, but seriously....3-D EXPERIENCE, PEOPLE!!!!)