Today's featured shit

I can’t believe how popular this music is these days. My ship has come in! There’s no gimmicky hot women in miniskirts tap dancing here, but there’s plenty of that chipper, fun and meaningless music to go around here. Have a “Ball” with Spiral Beach!

“Made of Stone” is a fun rock party song. If you and your friends mock hipsters but swear up and down that y’all y’allselves are not hispters, then this is the song for you.

“Rocket Fuel” is… not rockabilly, but it definitely ends in -billy. There’s a bit of Billy Idol, too, though. But no American Idol. It’s too good. It’s a simple and fast song.

“We Saw Ghosts” slows it down a bit and makes you want to dance with the gal next to you, especially if she’s hot. Especially. Normally you would think a song that makes you want to do what you would do anyway is no big deal, but trust me. This song is an exception.

More, please.

All the songs have really long titles, just like the album, although there is no title track. This album is in Japanese, or at least the art is. The songs don’t exactly have any words.

The music is like a sterilized version of Primus or The Flaming Lips. It is also lacking the direction of those acts. The songs are great from a jam band perspective, but Te has not preserved a beginning, middle or end for the songs, and it leaves one with a mint jelly taste in his mouth.

“The Greatest Trust for Others Will Be Born From Self Reliance Within” relies on lots of jamming and noise. At least it’s not guitar wanking. Really, the titles are the best part unless you’re really into jam bands. I wonder whether Te ever has any string cheese incidents. “Dream Is a Colloquial Term for Describing a Lie, as If to Embellish an Ugly and Humdrum Life” is fun. It reminds me of Jawbreaker, only again without singing.

These song titles are kind of like fortune cookies, except for two things: Fortune cookies are not Japanese, and fortune cookies are too small. The fortune would have to fit in a croissant because it would be so long. Where else can you explain that “We Want to Sing You Off to Sleep With a Song, We Want to Sit Next to You and Sing a Song”?

The best song has more melody and is called “Poem Is Just a Lonely Solace Shared by a Master of the Sick-Minded and the Solitary.” If you want something a little more loud rock in nature, give “All Human Beings Have the Strength to Live With Other People’s Misery.” Stick that in your croissant and smoke it.

There is a cat in the liner notes. I want to hear it. I don’t know what to make of this one. There’s a definite early ’70s retro attempt being made here. I have a sudden urge to drive a 1967 Rambler, and on the way to picking up a Mamas and the Papas album, I might as well listen to this while it’s playing on the radio.

The harmonies sound like something the Jesus and Mary Chain would do, like that time when Hope Sandoval showed up on their doorstep, but the music doesn’t fit. I bet they would play this at Empire Records. “Gotta Cheer Up” is what makes me think this, by the way.

“Gone the Bells” is an awesome song. It’s like a down-filled comforter on a rainy day, when you don’t even care where the cat is, because you’re obtaining warmth in a new and improved way. Speaking of Sandoval, this definitely has a Mazzy Star feel.

“By Morning Light” has whistling in it. It’s also more than five minutes long. A lot of these songs are really long. They’re all pretty good, though.

It’s just a single. Standard late-’90s club music mixed a little shrill on the lyrics side. It’s not bad, just uninspired. I normally like extra emphasis on whomever plays the diva role in these forays, but her voice is one octave too high and mixed just a little too loud for the song. It’s fine for what it is, but there’s better stuff out there. A trance remix would work because the synths would overpower her voice.

There’s a human beat box, thanks to Sly Johnson. And we can thank Dianke Termessant for backing vocals. And we can thank Billie Holiday for a song we’re more likely to know. Yes, Traore covers “The Man I Love.” It’s worth a shot if you like the original.

As far as African music goes, this gets the job done. “Zen” makes me think of the 1980s, but by that I mean 1980s American pop music. I am not up to snuff as to what the kids in Mali were into 20 years ago, but if it sounded like this, then they had good taste. It’s weird how when you hear Siouxsie and the Banshees dabble in stuff like this you think “wow that’s a nod to some culture I know nothing about.” Now, well, I guess I know a little.

I like the flow in “Koronoko.” It’s a slightly more complex song than the others, in that there’s a lot going on at once, but it’s still easy to follow along.

Moussa Traore took over Mali in a bloodless coup in 1968. I can’t help but wonder whether there is any relation.

It’s an album of covers ranging from Nirvana to Igor Stravinsky. They’re generally not that good. If you like “Lithium,” you should give it a spin, just so you can hear it, but similar to the Coors Light ads that show the NFL head coaches at press conferences, it is the original content that’s entertaining, not the bastardization of it.

Gyorgi Ligeti is happy to be dead so he can now proceed to roll over in his grave after these guys have covered “Fem (Etude No. 8).” I’d rather they cover “Mambo No. 5” by Lou Bega. Everyone sounds drunk in these songs.

My girlfriend disapproves of their rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” and that’s good enough for me. I’d ask whether it needs to be nearly seven minutes long, but for all I know, the original is that long too.

The cover of the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love” isn’t that great either, but you can’t screw up a disco cover. I mean, no one can–not even these guys.