three rockin' beats

I'm trying out an update of my Flash music player. You can now slide that thing under those jumping yellow bars to fast-forward or rewind the song, and control the volume. Don't mind those symbols on the left as they only work when there are multiple songs in the file.

have a good time : morning runner

click here or on the image below to listen

Although Morning Runner released their debut album Wilderness Is Paradise Now just a couple of months ago, Amazon UK says their early work inspired the creation of the album X&Y by Coldplay. Never forceful, Morning Runner switches comfortably between the urgent electric guitar of Be What You Want Me To Be and the piano balladry of Broken Benches and Hold Your Breath. What the band suffers from, however, is the comparison with other acts – Elbow, Keane, Coldplay, Athlete – which essentially questions their originality. I think Britons are split in the middle whether they actually like Morning Runner or not. Well, I do, and I don't mind the comparisons, which are accurate, although Morning Runner has a stronger blow and a sharper bite. Have A Good Time is easily my favorite track. I never expected it to take a drastic turn to lacerated guitars and vocals right after the frantic and funky drum into. I was hooked, goosebumps and all. These kids will have a great future if they can get past the pigeonholing and people take them for their versatility. Wilderness certainly covers greater emotional range than Hopes & Fears by Keane. Gone Up In Flames is a vigorous track that can find itselt at home in any bar today or any 80s dancefloor, with smart songwriting to boot: Going to the race track to try and get your money back/You got caught trying to break in, but you just laughed and said 'It couldn’t have been me.' The Great Escape, despite its unnecessary intro (they will probably edit it out if they release it as a single), gives you an expectation of standard-issue schmaltz until it fires up with umbrage at the chorus. In fact, the fast-slow switch seems to be the common denominator of the songs in the album, but it's not too premeditated to sound pretentious (like the word "umbrage," I know).

brilliant sky : saybia

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Saybia are a good reminder that diversifying your sources of rock music to countries outside of the English-speaking world can be rewarding. Coming from Denmark, the band has been around since 1993 as an independent act, going through the familiar struggle of striking a record deal. From their roots in a seaside village 130 kilometers from Copenhagen, the band toured the country until recording their own six-track EP in 2000. Their record-label aspirations were realized the following year, releasing their debut album The Second You Sleep in 2002, and Saybia have been breaking Danish charts since. The bio in the band's website has an interesting confession: "Success extracted a price and the five musicians were drained of energy. They forgot what it was like to be friends and none of them could spell the word communication, or for that matter, even remember what it meant." But instead of tearing apart, the band bought a house outside Copenhagen, renewed their bond, and wrote some songs together about the experience, resulting in lyrics that are either honest or affected. I get visions of the five of them forming a circle with their arms locked together, chanting oms, and then sitting down in the living room to write cringe-worthy words like, Do you remember the exact time we went dry on gasoline/Just the five of us against the rest of the world? (Guardian Angel) and Stayed together through stormy weather/Still divided but soul united (Soul United). Poor lyrics aside, Saybia's second album, These Are The Days, has the sound of seasoned musicians, from the timid yet self-assured vocals of Bend The Rules to the fetching bass line of Flags to the sweet-tempered acoustic guitar of The Haunted House On The Hill. The band managed to make every song in the album catchy and radio-friendly, although the promise of exuberant rock in the opener Brilliant Sky is not sustained. The rest is a mellow affair, as the band has apparently made These Are The Days a personal, emotional undertaking.

wimp soufflé : phantom buffalo

click here or on the image below to listen

Forgive me as I use the word "funnest" to describe this band. Even though the word gets 1.5 million Google results, I can never get myself to use it. But here I go: Phantom Buffalo is the funnest unknown band I've heard in a while. Apparently from Portland and formerly called The Ponys, they released Shishimumu, the album where Wimp Soufflé comes from, in 2002. They have managed to stay undetected since, in spite of sounding like many of the stateside indie bands of late. Although they're starting to break out – check out their busy gig schedule on their myspace page – it's still hard to find any information about the band, or even images of them in Flickr. I guess they're living up to the phantom image. But what the hey. Listening to Wimp Soufflé or Killing's Not OK (a single downloadable from their site – wait for the mad drumming in the middle) is great fun. The band is amateurish; it feels like they just learned to play their instruments from boarding school, decided to form a band after graduation, and somehow struck gold while goofing off. Songs like Domestic Pet Growing Seeds and Ask Your Grandmother are as clever as the titles are witty. Heck, the songs are funny, paying homage to bugs and ghosts. From Wilamena: Wilamena, you're a bug crawling on my knee/It's not a metaphor, I mean it quite literally. I'm happily sharing their record label's description of the album here, because it's quite accurate: "The sounds of the past and present meeting to create a unique and uplifting timelessness. Merging rock instrumentation, acoustic guitar, electric slide, moog, wurlitzer, and gorgeous vocals into a cluster of irresistible, catchy, and haunting songs. Flowing through droning psychedelia, velvety instrumentals, quirky indiepop, country twang, and distortion fueled rock." Sounds like a mouthful of balderdash, but have a listen and you'll agree.

know where you're goan

pink india : stephen malkmus

click here or on the image below to listen

Did I tell you I was going to India? I think I did. I just got back today from a one-week work trip that included the weekend. In between meetings in Bombay and Delhi, I thought at first of going to Jaipur, also known as the Pink City, the capital of Rajasthan. However, I chickened out due to the temperature, which continues to be somewhere around 45 degrees C (about 115 degrees F). I didn't want to fry myself, so I decided to go to Goa instead. You might know the reputation of Goa as a former hippie haven in the 70s, now a commercialized strip of sand infested by dreadlocked trustafarians. Well, that only applies to the northern beaches. Going far south of the airport, you can still find tranquility in Palolem Beach, although this itself is lined with shacks now. One needs to cross the small and rocky Colomb Beach to its south to find the ultra-quiet Patnem Beach, which only has two restaurants and a couple of cottage resorts so far. I counted no more than five people swimming on the day I was there. Even beyond Patnem, separated by a hill and massive rocks, is Rajbag Beach which fronts the Intercontinental Hotel. Perhaps because the five-star property encompasses the entire beach, Rajbag boasts an atmosphere of exclusivity although it is open to everyone. The beach ends south to make way to a river, and crossing the narrow mouth of Rajbag River will take you to fishing villages that lead to Talpona and Galgibag beaches. Both are even more isolated, from tourists anyway, due to lack of infrastructure. So yes, peace and quiet can still be had in Goa. Pictures below, and while you're looking at them, listen to Pink India by Stephen Malkmus. No need to care what the song is about – it's filled with clichés and characters associated with the past – bit it's Malkmus of Pavement, and Pavement is über cool.

I stayed at an eco-lodge called Bhakti Kutir, where every material used to build the cottages was made with the hands of local villagers. Luxury is not the selling point of this property: it's back to basics, with mosquito nets, bucket showers and squat toilets (you read that right). Doors? Who needs them when curtains are enough to give you privacy? My Room 13 has a porch with a long lounge chair and a hammock.

This is Palolem Beach, which is not yet the concrete jungle the beaches to the north are, although it is certainly on its way there. How can you tell, apart from the mushrooming of lodges and beach shacks an arm's length from one another? Restaurants actually play Buddha Bar and Cafe del Mar CDs. Nonetheless, it is a good place to have a meal, given its variety of cheap restaurants ($3 will get you a generous meal with a drink) that are not available in the more southern beaches.

Indians easily outnumber foreigners in Palolem during the daytime, at least during this low-season month of May. The best time to visit Goa is during the cool months of November to March. The rest of the year is either hot – it was easily above 30 degrees last weekend – or sees consecutive days of heavy rain. But I can imagine liking to drive the stretch of Goa in the rain. Supposedly, you can drive its entire length in three hours. The two-lane highway crosses rivers and small towns, and overlooks the green tops of coconut trees and the sparkling aquamarine of the sea.

No dramatic sunsets in Palolem, which actually faces southwest. To get a view of the orange sun melting into the sea, you need to go to the northern tip of the beach and follow an uphill trail made unsavory by day-trippers who answer the call of nature in its bushes. The trail leads to angular boulders that fall steeply into the Arabian Sea. Lying on a flattish surface, I saw what looked like an eagle chasing another, swerving from underneath to lock its claws with those of its potential mate. They swirl down fast around three times before letting go. I guess there was no late-afternoon nookie for either of them. But it was about ten seconds of fascination for me, as I had never seen birds do that before.

The trail from Bhakti Kutir to Patnem. I counted four cows, one pig, and about five dogs along the way. Oh and one internet kiosk too. I also saw signs for yoga classes and Ayurvedic treatments. In fact these are also available in Bhakti Kutir, but only during peak season.

Patnem beach from the top of the hill that separates it from Rajbag.

A lonely fishing boat in Patnem.

In front of Sealand Restaurant in Patnem.

Rajbag beach in front of the Intercontinental, from the same hilltop I mentioned above.

I guess these are only for guests of the hotel.

His name is Dilkhush, a 30-year-old fisherman and father of three daughters aged 7, 5 and 2. Because his small boat needs a bit of repair, this is how he catches fish for the family's daily meals. During the monsoon and the latter months of the year, he says the river turns reddish in color and he can catch fish longer than his forearms. He lives on the banks of the Rajbag river outside the Intercontinental. He wants me to come back to Goa so he could take me on a cruise when his small wooden boat is fixed.

in his bright ray : grant mclennan, 48

Okay, so I'm not the most indefatigable blogger around. I said in my last entry that I'd be writing about Grant McLennan "in a couple of hours." That was two days ago. Don't you just hate it when work and stuff get in the way of blogging? Now I'm off to India in a few hours, so forgive me as I yak my way through another post. Let's carry on. Here are three songs by Grant in honor of a great man of music from Down Under. That's the least I can say about one-half of one of my all-time favorite bands, The Go-Betweens. Those of you who have read this post will know that Grant had me hooked from the time I heard the first five notes of his song In Your Bright Ray. McLennan died in his sleep in his home in Australia on May 6th. And so The Go-Betweens – one of the most under-appreciated bands in the history of pop music – is no more.

streets of your town : the go-betweens

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Grant wrote Streets Of Your Town as an homage to Brisbane, his hometown and also the place where he met his maker. After Cattle and Cane, I think this is the next quintessential McLennan song. He had always been on the pop side of The Go-Betweens, which he formed in 1978 with University of Queensland buddy Robert Forster. Although for the most part they never glazed their rugged sound to befriend the charts, Grant wrote this song, from their sixth album 16 Lovers Lane, with the intention of finally making it in the UK charts. It got close, but not quite, and that is the singular curse of the band. "I think we are a pop group, but we're the most unusual pop group there's ever been," said Grant in an interview before the album was made. Recognizing the lack of immediacy in their sound, Grant added: "Although we work with melody, we sometimes work against it, and that's like one of the cardinal sins of pop music. People often mistake subtlety or reticence for naivete or wimpiness. If people do that, then it's quite pathetic. You just can't have those two qualities if you want to be in the charts, so that's our dilemma."

haunted house : grant mclennan

click here or on the image below to listen

Following record-label woes over the years, and perhaps out of burnout, the band called it quits in 1989, although after reforming in 2000 they said it was a mere hiatus. During the 11 years in between, Grant proved how prolific he was with his sedate acoustic guitar and nostalgic songwriting, releasing four solo albums, starting with the confident Watershed in 1990. To me, Grant was at his writing best when he drew sketches of his past with sharpness and the pathos of a sepia photograph, as he did with Cattle and Cane. Lost love is a theme he often wrote about, and I prefer his imagery to abstract thought and straight-from-the-shoulder storytelling. In Dream About Tomorrow, from Watershed, he sang: Nothing much happens here anymore; They're shutting down the lines; they're boarding up the stores. Their shotguns and their pick-up trucks; the railroad and the rolling stock. During his solo years, Grant also took liberty with melodic experimentation, incorporating the tumbling sound of country music in his double-disc album Horsebreaker Star in 1994 – just when grunge music was crossing over to the mainstream. While anger filled the airwaves, Grant wrote, as he said in an interview, "a bunch of songs about footsteps and change and, kind of, dirt roads, you know, underneath a sky full of stars." Was he being irrelevant, or just timeless?

do you see the lights : grant mclennan

click here or on the image below to listen

Regardless, Grant struck the right notes with my acoustic-guitar-loving ears. And that voice that half-sings and half-recites poetry – a vaguely familiar blend of passion and fury – manages to pull you in without actually calling attention to itself. It's probably best heard in his live acoustic version of the grave ballad Quiet Heart, from a session at KCRW in 1989, while promoting 16 Lovers Lane. You can easily imagine him singing it with his eyes closed, drawing power from his gut. "They're pulling the record back and putting that version in," joked Robert Forster. I think Grant reached his vocal peak in his last solo album from 1997, also called In Your Bright Ray, where Do You See The Lights comes from. By the time he and Robert reunited to make the album The Friends of Rachel Worth in 2000, the strains of a more mature age had become evident, although that was of little consequence to the fact that The Go-Betweens released some of their best songs during this decade. Now that the indie reign of the band is over – I'd hate to see Robert Forster bring a stand-in – Grant is for our memories and this humble post to keep alive.

dear god please don't make them reunite

Today is May 7th. I started to write the post below six days ago, but never got to finish it until today, when Grant McLennan's passing prompted me to sit down and blog again. You'll read about and get to listen to Grant in a couple of hours. 

Anyway, I was reading the May issue of UNCUT magazine with Morrissey on the cover, and in the interview he talks about why he sees no point in reuniting The Smiths. The latest offer was for them to perform together at Coachella this summer for $5 million, which guitarist Johnny Marr says was double a prior offer for them to play in New York and London. Says Moz: "It has been 18 years since it ended. I don't know them; they don't know me. They know nothing about me; I know nothing about them. Anything that I know about them is unpleasant, so why on earth do we want to be onstage together making music?"

Interestingly, in its March issue, UNCUT talked to other former members of The Smiths (for an article on the 20th anniversary of their album The Queen is Dead) and asked them the same question of why wouldn't they reform. Johnny Marr answers: "There's been an awful lot of very dirty water gone under the bridge...I think we'd have to go to some new-age retreat in Arizona, all wear muslin and get up every morning to share the dawn. For several months. Go on some meditation walks and then share. Share! Share! Share! Or we could all go for a walk around Ancoats. And sort it out." Says drummer Mike Joyce, who successfully sued in 1996 for a higher share of royalties (leading Morrissey and Marr to each pay him somewhere around £1 million): "Because of Morrissey's hatred towards me, I suppose. Musically, it'd still be fucking brilliant...but it's too hypothetical." And from bassist Andy Rourke: "That's a tough one; it really is. I'd like to say 'never say never', but I think it's pretty unlikely, for one reason or another."

I'm probably the only fan to agree and say, Let lying dogs sleep. With their acrimony running deep, any Smiths reunion is only going to be half-arsed. Sure, there is a genuine interest among fans to see if Morrissey, Marr, Joyce and Rourke could still make great music together, and The Smiths could very well still blow us away (I doubt it, for reasons I'll say in a bit) but I think curiosity and commercial demand are never good enough reasons to mess with something that's been held sacred for two decades. As far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't want a dispassionate reunion to taint my memory of a band that affected me so much in my youth.

dear god please help me : morrissey

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This is the most talked-about song from Morrisey's latest album, Ringleader of the Tormentors, thanks to one line that's rather uncharacteristic even for a man who once wrote And when we're in your scholarly room/Who will swallow whom? But in this song where his Mozness reveals that there are explosive kegs between his legs, Dear God must be one of the most liberating records he has written since going solo. Long a resident of Los Angeles, Morrissey has found greater freedom since moving to Rome last year. Past its narrow streets, Moz is finally able to look at lust squarely in the eye (Then he motions to me with his hand on my knee) and within the city's cramped quarters, he lets it all out without restraint (Now I'm spreading your legs with mine in between). And no matter how fleeting the encounter may be, he leaves ultimately satisfied. The heart feels free, he sings in the ending, in a rousing voice that strips away the bitterness of age. It's the voice of rebirth, something he actually sings about in At Last I Am Born (which is strategically assigned as the album's last track).

That's pretty much the theme of the album. Although Morrissey continues to use up the lexicon of misery in his song titles, Ringleaders is an exorcism of demons, a declaration of freedom from repression. Almost every song is optimistic in some parts and yielding in others, but it is all a variation of one theme: being at peace with himself by accepting what can and cannot be. From Life is a Pigsty: It's the same old S.O.S./But with brand new broken fortunes/I'm the same underneath. From I Will See You In Far Off Places: It's so easy for us to sit together/But it's so hard for our hearts to combine/And why? And in The Youngest Was The Most Loved, he warbles with a chorus of children's voices: There is no such thing in life as normal. Something tells me that Morrissey's next album will have far less torment. I'm just not sure whether that's good or bad. Although – or probably because – it's his most self-effacing album, Ringleaders doesn't have the lyrical riddles of his previous works, and fails to reach even half the stature of the complex Vauxhall and I.

caught up : johnny marr + the healers

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Now back to my point about the reunion. There's a dollar price for everything, so no one can say it's not going to happen, but my hope is for it not to happen, simply because they have grown so far apart Morrissey has outgrown his bandmates so much it's hard to imagine them even looking at one another on stage. Need proof? Listen to Caught Up, the best track from Marr's 2003 album Boomslang and be amazed with the shallowness of it. Catchy? Check. Good guitar? Check. Grown-up? Like can you even understand what he's saying? Come on, can anyone actually picture The Smiths playing their songs with the same intensity as they did 20 years ago? The Smiths is about Marr's guitar complementing Morrissey's words, and vice versa. Their connection was a prerequisite to their sound. They don't have that connection now, and I doubt if their technical expertise – if it's still up to par at all – can compensate for it. Put them together and they'll amount to a circus act people will see only out of curiosity. Can they cross the wire without falling? Yeah, no thanks, whatever.

an obligatory jesus post

Something for Easter.

jews for jesus blues : clem snide

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Sometimes random purchases can turn into wonderful surprises. I only knew Clem Snide from their 2005 album, End of Love, which I picked up blindly at a bricks-and-mortar record shop late last year. I do that sometimes, without even sampling the CD, just hoping the album would be good enough for me to like. Needless to say, not all of them have been worth the dough, but End of Love made up for some previous disappointments. If you like folk-rock with a maniacal twistedness, you will be happy to know that Clem Snide have been at it for five albums now. Like most of the songs I post here, this one just doesn't encapsulate the band. My favorite track from End of Love, the upbeat Something Beautiful, is funny, sexy, and dangerously perverted all at once. Get this: You make me wanna/Soak it in gasoline, stain my new shirt/Sip lysol from a cup, so clean it hurts. Jews for Jesus Blues, on the other hand, resonates the confusion of a middle-aged fuck-up who thinks God is playing a joke on his or her good intentions. I don't wanna suffer and I don't wanna die/I want the clouds parted in an endless, blue sky/But someone up there has a different plan/Now that I'm saved I wish I was damned. As you will hear, it doesn't come off as tongue-in-cheek as it was probably intended to be.

Anyway, by pure coincidence, I learned about the Jews for Jesus movement not because of this song but after seeing the film Everything is Illuminated on a plane last month. Not that there's any reference about it in the film (or the book, which I've read, and yes, the book is way better). I just found myself searching the web about Judaism after watching the Elijah Wood movie, and as it is with Google, one thing led to another and I found myself here.

rounding out the alphabet part 2

This post was brought to you by the letters V, X, and Z, and by the number 120. That's 120 songs since I started this blog. Go me!

troubled so hard : vera hall

click here or on the image below to listen. 1m 37s

image taken from the vera hall project.

Like nearly everyone else, I knew nothing about the late Vera Hall until I heard Natural Blues by Moby, which samples this grievous acappella. Born near Livingston, Alabama sometime around 1902, Hall was a great folk and blues singer that the recording industry seems to have forgotten. There is not even a word in Wikipedia about her, or any of the other names she was known as in her lifetime. Save for a few songs on iTunes, a couple of compilation CDs on Amazon – this and this – and audio archives with downloadable MP3s from the Library of Congress website, her repertoire seems to be of quite limited availability. Nonetheless, thank people like Gabriel Greenberg, who runs The Vera Hall Project, for keeping awareness of Hall alive. Check out this interesting article from the website about the impact of Natural Blues on her estate, while listening to what is now her most popular song. Troubled So Hard is so raw you can imagine it being sung by someone in the midst of heavy toil, or penitence.

light the shade : xavier rudd

no woman no cry : xavier rudd

click here or on the image below to listen, then click on the left- and right-pointing arrows to switch between songs. 6m 44s total.

Xavier Rudd is an Australian multi-instrumentalist who makes music like an artist with little regard for commercial success. He writes about social issues – from rights of Aboriginies to the environment – and lays music using a host of indigenous instruments, from didgeridoos to djembes to banjos, all played by himself, often simultaneously, to various degrees of expertise. Yet this deviance is what has made him a commercial success, both in his homeland and in festival circuits abroad. Last year, his fourth album Solace, which he had put out independently in 2004, was picked up and released by a major label. Despite a growl and drawl that approximate Dave Matthews, there is nothing rudimentary about Rudd. The intensity of his singing reaches you in strokes, not in blows, and he sings with vocal control as if he's about to perform before an audience for the first time.

time of the season : the zombies

click here or on the band image below to listen. 3m 34s

Can there be a cooler intro than this? And had people been asking "Who's your daddy?" before the band released this song in 1968? Ah, but the Washington Post has an answer to that.

rounding out the alphabet part 1

Out of sheer whim, I'm posting songs by artists starting with letters I don't already have in my list of songs you can listen to. I'm manic that way. Let's start with Q and U, and tomorrow I'll deliver V, X and Z.

burn the witch : queens of the stone age

click here or on the band image below to listen

Not being a big fan of Queens of the Stone Age, I can't tell the difference between their pre- and post-Nick Olivieri sound. Lullabies to Paralyze, the album where Burn the Witch comes from and which marks the end of the relationship between vocalist Josh Homme and his long-time pal and bassist Olivieri, sounds every bit as good as any of the band's three albums prior. Despite their ever-changing line-up (Homme is the only original member left now) the Queens have maintained a consistent sound: hard rock you don't have to get stoned to enjoy. I don't take them seriously; I just love their pounding riffs, and this one's one of the best.

the white spirit : uman

click here or on the image below to listen

Yeah I had a New Age phase, mostly music from the Windham Hill record label. Although I've outgrown them I still enjoy listening to the albums of a couple of their artists, one of them being French siblings Didier and Danielle Jean, together known as Uman, supposedly from the native American word "umane" meaning "Earth forces." This is the song that attracted me to them, and the artwork in the album, done by a painter known as Zad, captures the feeling it evokes quite well. In fact Zad is the unofficial third member of the team, since Didier's idea is to combine music with visuals. In itself, though, Uman's music is transcendental. Not quite world, not quite ambient, not quite electronic. Just French, I guess?

things you told me about : part 3

come with me tonight : bob schneider

click here or on the image below to listen

This is how All Music Guide describes Bob Schneider: "His music is redolent of singer/songwriters of the '70s from Neil Young to Paul Simon, with a slightly more modern musical sensibility reminiscent of Beck." I don't hear any of it, but if I may venture with my own off-the-wall comparison – the more I listen to this Austin-based artist, the more I think he sounds like Jack Johnson or Pat McGee after downing shots of tequila. You're not going to hear it in this song I'm posting, which is more along the lines of Vertical Horizon, but it's all over in songs like Round and Round, Captain Kirk, and Gold In The Sunset. Pleasant pop music that hardly makes an impact, sure, but at least you can hear some capability that he can make great music if he only tried harder. Listening to his albums I'm Good Now and Lonelyland, it seems to me like Schneider is more preoccupied with paying tribute to his influences, which are quite diverse, rather than crafting his own sound. Like McGee, he is...elastic. That said, there's no denying his talent, which could take him anywhere. His coffee-and-cigarettes voice is quite impressive; it can be dark and morose or light and humorous, and that gives him a range that allows him to tackle a wide spectrum of rock genres, and country to boot. He makes interesting, catchy rhythms, and his songwriting is witty. Take this from Gold In The Sunset: She got the gun/She got the gun again/Sipping on a pipe razor backed up and smoking Indochina/If you're thinking what I'm thinking, it's quite funny.

things you told me about : part 2

i'm confessin' : lizz wright

click here or on the image below to listen

Melt your heart with this song from the 26-year-old R&B/jazz artist from Georgia. That makes her only a year or so older than Britney, Christina and Beyoncé, but the maturity she exudes is far beyond her years. Lizz puts my pants on fire better than Norah Jones does. If she got any sexier, I woud probably spontaneously combust. She does it for me in a slow, subtle way. Her music is romantic, not provocative; refined, not vain; elegant; not risqué unlike the chart-topping R&B artists her age. I know I'm not making the right comparisons here, but that's partly the point. If you're a 20-something African-American female artist, you either hard-sell sex to get to the charts, or be a jazz vocalist, or carve a niche in some fusion of gospel and R&B. And if you choose the latter routes, then you're going to have a high benchmark, being measured against legends such as Cassandra Wilson or Dianne Reeves. And that's exactly what I'm doing, wondering whether Lizz will have the longevity and reach the status of the two women just mentioned, or fade into obscurity, or sell out. Vocally, she's neither strong nor original, but she has that X factor. Anyway, this is I'm Confessin' from her 2005 album Dreaming Wide Awake. It's got five stars on iTunes' customer ranking (plus the album is critically acclaimed) so she's doing something right.

things you told me about : part 1

What a month! March was no doubt the busiest I've had in, um, months. I went to Sydney. I went to Manila. I went to Shanghai. I started our corporate blog. I wrote a feature story. I acted as moderator at a conference. I judged a category in an industry awards thingy. My iMac had kernel panics – bad RAM. My iPod died and I had panics – when you see that "Do not disconnect" sign while updating your iPod, trust me, they mean it. But my precious is OK now, just like March is all over now. April looks relatively easy, but I might go somewhere during Easter. Anyway. Here are some songs or artists that have been recommended by some of you guys. I should have done this a long time ago, so you can bet there'll be more like this in the future. Just let me know what you think I should hear by e-mailing me at alternativesounds {at} mac {dot} com. Thanks, you know who you are.

river of gold : eliza gilkyson

click here or on the image below to listen. 3m 20s

This woman has vocals to break your heart. An Austin, Texas-based folk artist, Eliza Gilkyson has been making music since 1979 and her last two albums, Land of Milk and Honey from 2004 and Paradise Hotel last year are quiet, emotional statements to issues she feels strongly about, from the war in Iraq to that freak in Washington to separation to spousal abuse. In spite of the intensity of these subjects, Gilkyson sings with a calmness that can only come from someone who is firm in her beliefs but looks at things with a level head. Nothing is oversung; all you get is an honestly passionate rendition of songs written with wisdom and from experience. River of Gold comes from her 1997 album Redemption Road, and as the album title suggests, it is about moving on after a personal failure, in this case, her marriage. It is a light take – note the sarcastic chuckle at the intro – on a bitter theme, but only just so. When she sings "I just want to get going before I'm too old," you can tell how much hurt and how broken she still feels in spite of keeping up her pride. She marches on with uncertainty, continuing to believe in fate. Just like many of us.

crank : catherine wheel

click here or on the image below to listen

Catherine Wheel vocalist Rob Dickinson had his solo debut album out last year, and you can sample three of the songs in his myspace page. Meanwhile, here's the second most-downloaded song of the now-defunct English band on iTunes. Catherine Wheel was formed in 1990, and it's very clear from the way they sound how stuck they were between the paranoia of the 80s and the anger of the 90s – take Gene Loves Jezebel or Echo and the Bunnymen and mix them with any of the guitar-heavy grunge bands of the 90s. In Crank, Dickinson has a brooding voice, with a depth and reverb of someone trapped in a cave. It's as menacing as an approaching storm, but if you're the type who, like me, finds even a little bit of thrill in dark clouds rolling in, then this is for you. It's just sad that the talented band never shot to fame, and it seems Dickinson is bound to have a similar fate solo in spite of his obvious attempt to sound this side of mainstream.

let's go karaoke!

Been really busy this month so I'm just gonna let the songs speak for themselves...or not. Here are a couple of instrumental versions of popular songs by The Smiths and Chris Isaak, two all-time favorites of mine. See if you can find your way around them. This Charming Man is tricky, but you'll catch up. Lyrics below.

this charming man : new york instrumental : the smiths

click here or on the album art below to listen.

This Charming Man

Punctured bicycle

On a hillside desolate

Will nature make a man of me yet ?

When in this charming car

This charming man

Why pamper life's complexities

When the leather runs smooth

On the passenger seat ?

I would go out tonight

But I haven't got a stitch to wear

This man said "It's gruesome

That someone so handsome should care"

A jumped-up pantry boy

Who never knew his place

He said "return the ring"

He knows so much about these things

He knows so much about these things

I would go out tonight

But I haven't got a stitch to wear

This man said "It's gruesome

That someone so handsome should care"

Na, na-na, na-na, na-na, this charming man

Oh, na-na, na-na, na-na, this charming man

A jumped-up pantry boy

Who never knew his place

He said "return the ring"

He knows so much about these things

He knows so much about these things

He knows so much about these things

wicked game : instrumental : chris isaak

click here or on the album art below to listen.

Wicked Game

The world was on fire

No one could save me but you.

Strange what desire will make foolish people do

I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you

And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you

No, I don't want to fall in love

(This love is only gonna break your heart)

No, I don't want to fall in love

(This love is only gonna break your heart)

With you

With you

What a wicked game you play

To make me feel this way

What a wicked thing to do

To let me dream of you

What a wicked thing to say

You never felt this way

What a wicked thing to do

To make me dream of you

And I don't wanna fall in love

(This love is only gonna break your heart)

And I don't want to fall in love

(This love is only gonna break your heart)

Nobody loves no one

i hope this doesn't become a habit

I'm posting a couple of songs again sans commentary. I'm flying tonight to read at a wedding on Sunday, and then on Monday for business. See you all when I recover from this torture. Have a great weekend.

when finally set free : copeland

click here or on the band image below to listen. 3m 55s

A near perfect ambient/alternative rock song. I don't like the effete Death Cab For Cutie-sounding vocals. Other than that, it's a great one. Brave, kick-ass, start-up-the-engine intro.

a single wish : this mortal coil

click here or on the album art below to listen. 2m 27s

A song from 1984. Speaking of weddings, with its title and the way it sounds, this song could be a good background music for a wedding toast. Except that the lyrics toward the end says "It will all end in tears." Ha!

my soundtrack to sydney

ibi dreams of pavement : broken social scene

click on the image below to listen

I'm posting this song as my soundtrack to my visit to this great Australian city because I saw these guys live at The Metro on March 4th, right after the famous Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. I didn't know they were playing; I was just walking down George St earlier that day when I saw their gig poster. I don't particularly like the band, which is actually an ever-changing collective of Toronto musicians led by vocalist Kevin Drew. I thought their only album that I have, the eponymous Broken Social Scene, is so technically contrived that it rendered the vocals – which are weak to begin with – nearly incomprehensible. It seems to me that each instrumentalist was playing so self-consciously that they completely lost coherence – and you can sense this immediately in Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day). Whether or not all that is deliberate, the album makes for a cacophonous listening experience, which is a shame because each song is rhythmically promising.

The concert – check out someone's flickr pictures of it here – did not change my mind; it was just as I described the album above. That didn't stop me from enjoying the live performance, though. There must have been 12 or 13 musicians that night, 10 of them on stage at any given time – two drummers, three guitarists who also play the trumpet, one bassist, one violinist, Kevin who also does guitar and keyboards, a saxophonist and a trumpeteer, plus two or three females doing the occasional lead and harmony vocals. For a group that has a very short discography, they basked in the warm welcome of the mostly teen-aged Sydneysiders and played for two-and-a-half hours, with Kevin jokingly telling the crowd not to leave yet because they had more songs in store. It was the last of their Australia tour and they were intent on having a good time, which they and everyone in the audience sure did. A few songs stretched beyond 10 minutes, including the rousing finale It's All Gonna Break. That to me was the highlight, as well as the Joplinesque Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl and the crusty Superconnected. I played the album on my iPod for practically all of the next day.

a visual impression of sydney

Click here to listen to my Sydney soundtrack and here to read my post about it.

That was fun! It was my first visit to Sydney, in fact to Australia. It was only when a work-related trip was confirmed that I realized I had no idea what the city was like. Unlike other major world cities, I had absolutely no mental picture of it other than the famous harbor with its Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. In many ways, it was a good thing because I had no expectations, and when you have no expectations, you can be easily pleased. But I was more than pleased with Sydney, in fact I was blown away. Beyond the harbor, it has a mixture of 1) understated charm in its tree-lined streets with al fresco dining, hidden gardens with lazy sunbathers, and characterful suburbs with interesting subcultures; and 2) a big-city vibe with its outrageous gay and red-light districts and dizzying shopping streets, populated by an ethnically diverse population that rivals anywhere in the world. Not to mention the beaches – take a short bus ride from the city center and you can spend an entire afternoon people-watching at Bondi Beach, or catching the waves at any of the breathtaking Northern Beaches. For these reasons, Sydney struck me as being homey – the city has a very high livability factor for me. I was there for five days, two of them on business, and this is my impression of it in three plus plus days.

sinfully red in goulburn st

No, I didn't go inside, but I saw an old tourist couple, each about 75 years old, step out of this shop and it turned out that they were staying in the same hotel in Darling Harbour as I was.

feeling the love in hyde park

I got to Sydney on the day of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. (It was actually a Saturday, but Samedi Gras doesn't sound right, does it?) To void having to crane my neck amid the 700,000 other tourists who went to see the event, I got a reserved seat (a A$103 damage to my wallet) at the southern end of Hyde Park. We had our own mini concert before the event, when this picture was taken. The paraders and the floats were unsurprisingly fabulous, but my favorite was the mostly middle-aged Federal Police who paraded in their pale blue uniform, holding hands with their equally butch-looking partners.

bondi dude

Bondi is not the place to go if you want to read a book by the beach – it can be crowded and the vibe of surfers and sunbathers is too infectious. It's a place to see and be seen.

i wanna be jack johnson

Taken from the northern end of Bondi Beach. To the south is the short but wide Tamarama Beach, and further down, the more family-friendly Bronte Beach. It's a good four-kilometer walk from end to end – very rewarding especially if you do it late in the afternoon when you can enjoy moments of solitude with an arresting view of the Pacific Ocean.

love to love you baby

A couple, probably still in dating phase, enjoying the sunset over Tamarama Beach. I finished my Bondi-to-Bronte coastal walk with a beautiful dinner at Brio, a seafood-and-vegetarian Mod Oz restaurant along Bronte. I had a red-beet salad, green-peas-and-mushroom risotto, and a very generous glass of Pinot. The salad was huge and the risotto this close to perfect. The staff was fun too – the waitress was a chatty Eastern European (I can't remember which country, but "not Russia," she said) hopping from table to table, constantly interrupted by a broken Billie Holiday CD. At the table across from me was a young googly-eyed Italian couple who each ate with one hand because they were holding hands the whole time. I bet the rest of their evening was more exciting than mine – I went back to the hotel with a throbbing head, thanks to the strong wine.

a diva of a building

I saw my first opera at the Sydney Opera House. It was Madama Butterfly by Puccini, presented by Opera Australia. I was a bit underwhelmed by the performance of the singer who played Pinkerton, and I was thinking maybe I just didn't know how to appreciate the art yet. During curtain call, however, the old man right behind me, and a few others at the back, booed the male lead. I felt sorry for him because the rest of the cast was very well received. I got in out of luck – the opera was almost completely booked for its entire run, and mine was the last seat available for that day. It cost me A$177, but I can't complain.

a looming presence

Taken from the observation deck above the row of quayside restaurants at The Rocks. I promised myself to do the three-hour Bridge Climb or the shorter Pylon Lookout climb, but I just didn't have the time. I caught the Saturday market at The Rocks, and it didn't give me a very good impression of the oldest, colonial-era part of the city. It's all tourist fare – the shops, the pubs, and the market itself. I guess had I walked beyond I would've seen the more authentic parts of this cobbled neighborhood where the Europeans first settled.

dream of the humping turtles

Taken from the same observation deck. It's above a fancy Mod Oz restaurant in The Rocks called Quay, where I had the priciest vegetarian dinner ever: A$102 for a fig salad, a polenta with zucchini, and a glass of Riesling. I was having a quiet dinner by myself with a view of the Opera House right in front of me and the bridge to my left, until a group of five young MBA types sat at the table next to mine. Dominating the conversation with his loud voice was an American who I guess studied in the UK because he kept referring to university as "uni." A Bostonian, he was recently married to a New Yorker from Ellis Island named Ellen, and has a brother Scott who works at PwC, apparently in Sydney because Scott flew all the way from Sydney to attend his wedding. At one point, our hero asks the sheila, "Do you use the word lettuce in Australia?" To which she replies, "Yeah, although when I hear lettuce I don't normally think of, you know, rocket, just the normal one," with her palm up and slightly curled, as if holding a cabbage. Moving on...

whoosh

Skateboarders breeze past a relaxing tourist in front of St. Mary's Cathedral next to Hyde Park. There is an overrated Chinese vegetarian restaurant at the Cook and Phillip Park across the church, called Bodhi. I had spring rolls and a mock Peking duck for dinner, and it was nothing more special than the mom-and-pop lunchbox corner shops selling similar fare in Chinatown. Maybe I just didn't order the right food. The cool decor and outdoor seating, however, were really nice.

smooth sailing

A perfect day for a quiet sail in the Northern Beaches. A drive around this part of Sydney was the highlight of my trip, thanks in large part to an Internet friend whom I hadn't met before, but who had the kindness to spend a good part of his day to take me to its best parts. Sydneysiders are so blessed to have such natural beauty at their doorstep – and there are 14 of them!

palm calm

This is Palm Beach, the northernmost of the beaches, and I think one of the longest too. One great thing about Sydney's beaches is that they're not just long, but most of them seem to slope very gradually too. Also, the beaches usually have a pool with seawater where families can introduce kids to swimming, and where the elderly can still enjoy the beach atmosphere without losing their dentures getting overwhelmed by the waves. Very thoughtful.

birds beach buddies

You got your friends, you got the beach, you got fish, you got all you need. This one's from Whale Beach. With its prime views, owning property in the Northern Beaches is apparently a very expensive proposition.

room with a view

A couple enjoying the view of the city skyline from Sydney Harbour National Park, north of the Harbour Bridge. Apart from its huge parks like Hyde and the Botanical Gardens, the city has lots of green spaces and plazas you could just stumble into to find sunbathing locals sharing the space with map-reading low-class backpacking loooooosers.

work those abs

Crunch time at Hyde Park.

hop on hop off

Like every major city, Sydney has tourist buses that take you to the top attractions in about a couple of hours.

just two final beach shots

The tucked-away Turimetta Beach, a short downhill walk off the main road. The most popular of the Northern Beaches is no doubt Manly, the southernmost, and having a drink at the wharf is probably the best way to end a trip in this part of Sydney, just before catching the half-hour ferry ride back to Circular Quay which gives you an unbeatable view of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.

can't wait to go back

With proper swimming attire.