songs that bring me cheer

New Mate by Figurine
I love this band and I can’t stop listening to them… until someone else walks in the room, then I quickly hit the mute button and hope they didn’t notice. Lots of synthesizers, casio keyboard sounding blips and drum programming and male & female vocals. Their whole sound is very early 80s synth-pop sounding. They could have easily done the soundtrack to any Molly Ringwald movie. It’s got the electronic love song sound of Postal Service, but the take themselves much, much less seriously. And they use xylophones! The [male] lead singer affects his voice and annunciation to force rhymes in that sullen british pop star way: “I light a candle in your mem-mor-ray/My mascara’s running down my chaaay-k/it won’t be long before they miss may/where I work, down at the fact-tor-raaay”

Heaven’s gonna burn your eyes by Thievery Corporation
Thievery Corporation produce “Afro-Cuban Lebanese folk jazzy reggae dub-inspired electronica.” Whew! How’s that for a genre? It’s quite possibly the only thing with flavor in DC right now. In this brief, funky love song, guest vocalist Emiliana Torrini melts over the music. I listen to Thievery Corporation when I can’t decide what I want to listen to, because there’s a little bit of everything in there.


New York by Miss Kittin
This isn’t a song you listen to for inspirational lyrics. It’s a song you listen to when you’re pretending to drive your space ship through New York City. Miss Kittin is a DJ and sometimes lends her charming, deadpan English-as-a-second-language vocals to electronic dance music tracks, usually reenacting vapid conversations or sharing soliloquies about clubbin, having sex with her famous friends in limos, the VIP area, and talking about Frank Sinatra. This is music you can dance in a cage to.


Sex Jam: Insect Incest by Milemarker
Sometimes I think I need to list to more aggressive music. “Man music,” if you will. I think the kids are calling this kind of music “electroclash.” It’s a punk/electronic song about bug sex. Incest, I suppose, but I don’t think there’s a taboo about incest in the bug families. I think it’s actually about lusting for someone so much, you wish you could peel away their human skin and fuck them like a bug. “You ought to kick it to me then bite off my head!” Sometimes sense of humor and very rocking music are more important that actual vocal ability. This is one of those times.