Who Needs Radio?

As Lady Byrd says, apologies that we've been awful at posting of late. I have an excuse though, last Saturday I was driving from Colorado Springs, CO to Stillwater, OK, and the following day I was flying from Oklahoma City, OK to London Gatwick! Now I'm back home though, with a bunch of free time on my hands, so I should be able to do my Saturday posts with more of a regularity.

Right, onto the music. First up, I've been adoring this track from Chromeo.

Chromeo - Bonafied Lovin' (Tough Guys)

However cheesy that title sounds, give it a listen. It's amazing. It's got all the ingredients that I adore in a song, Singalong chrous, check! Videogame synths, check! Ridiculous guitars, check! Chromeo are wonderful, and their new album is at least 95% pure awesome. While researching this post I was on their Wikipedia page, and discovered that one of the duo is Arab, while the other is Jewish. They claim this makes them the only successful Arab/Jewish collaboration since the beginning of time. It's well worth checking out the rest of the new album 'Fancy Footwork'. While I'm at it, in fact, the Guns'n'Bombs remix of the title track from the album is amazing too:

Chromeo - Fancy Footwork (Guns'n'Bombs remix)

Franz Ferdinand - All My Friends (LCD Soundsystem Cover)

Next up, for completeness' sake, here's the Franz Ferdinand 'All My Friends' LCD Soundsystem cover mentioned in the last post. Thanks to an anonymous commenter, I found it on the LCD Myspace page. At the time, I said I thought I preferred it to the John Cale version I put up two ago - but in the cold light of early afternoon I don't actually like it that much. It's near-impossible to top the amazing original. Franz's version just feels incomplete. Like they just churned it out one afternoon in the studio without giving it much time or thought. There's no feeling in the vocals, the guitars totally fail to recreate the glorious piano riff from the original, and there's no urgency whatsoever to the proceedings. Why am I posting it then? Well - you should make up your own mind. Franz Ferdinand make decent guitar pop, but when they try to cover other genres their weaknesses become painfully obvious.

Au Revoir Simone - Stars

This is a song I've been adoring lately. I think it's been out a while, but with all the international travel I've been doing (and CO2 I've been emitting) I've been a little out of the loop. The chorus makes my heart into a melty gooey mess every time I listen to it - "You make me want to measure stars / in the backyard / with a calculator and a ruler, baby". Au Revoir Simone's recent album 'The Bird of Music' is just delightful. If nothing else, and I'm talking to my gentleman readers here, buy it for your girlfriend/wife/lady that you're stalking. They'll love it, I promise you. Unless they're into death metal or something.

The Embassy - Some Indulgence
The Embassy - It Pays To Belong

Here's a couple of tracks from a Swedish band called The Embassy. The former features ladygrunts as a form of percussion - which is ALWAYS a good plan, especially when the music is shoegazey loveliness. It helps defuse a bit of the seriousness of the shoegaze element. The latter track features a more summery vibe, with gentle acoustic guitars washing over a bongos-y rhythm with overlaid synth-strings. In all honesty, and I mean this in nothing but admiration, it sounds a little bit like Scot-poppers Texas.

Finally, for those of you who slogged through that post, here's the Royal Brass Band of the Central British Legion covering the Klaxons. Yes you read that right. Yes it's as wonderful and ridiculous as it sounds. Check it out: