all things goodship

man, have you watched television recently? i’m watching it right now, and no one can freaking enunciate. take those marbles out of your mouth, martha rae! sheesh. listen, if i wanted someone to talk at me with gibberish and so forth, i’d chat with one of the many hoboes who are always rocking the corner on my street. i don’t know if they necessarily talk gibberish as a profession, but i did one time see this dude relieve himself on the side of a building and then just neglect to zip up. or put back. i guess his schedule was jam-packed with other much more pertinent tasks to care. he is now officially my hero. on a vaguely relevant tangent, is “hobo” p.c. in this day and age? fingers crossed - i love that term. hobo. ahhh.

- hot chip, “my piano”

check my last.fm profile - two of my top three most listened to tracks are this one track (which is perfectly confusing). there really is just something about hot chip as a whole, but then this track is on another level all together. ownership issues aside, when this comes on, i just cannot help but bob my head and sing along - that backbeat piano driving the whole thing expects no less. the last show around here, i kept text messaging back from japan and spit n’ polish (smoke signals having now been deemed too gauche for their tastes) to play this thing for me, and did they serve it up? no. look for me protesting the next time either of these dudes spins - i got markers and posterboard and, damn it, straight-up righteous frustration to spare.

- holy ghost!, “hold on”

let me just put my cards out on the table here (five aces!): those dudes from the DFA kill it in my book 9.5 times out of 10 (c’mon, you know that juan maclean full length was a letdown after some hot ass singles). and this recent track by the awesomely named holy ghost! continues on with the tradition - though i have recently started imagining this being played during an after-school special for all the downtrodden youth of today. i guess there are worse things on.

- shackleton, “blood on my hands (ricardo villalobos apocalyps now mix)”

who needs a short song? this isn’t punk rock - i want something that i can take my time sinking into and really dig deep into the loamy goodness that is a piece of music. yeah, loam. ricardo villalobos knows this and thus takes the percussive heavy track by dubstep whatnot shackleton and just really draws it all out, playing up the melodic parts and just super dubbing-up the drums and so forth. the magic, then, is in keeping the attention of the listener for that much time - which, again, is villalobos’ cheese and crackers. on that note, it would be great to have cheese and crackers with that dude - you KNOW he rolls with gouda. believe it.

- burial, “homeless”

burial has been blowing people away as of late, and i really don’t think it is his shiny happy face that is putting ears in the headphones (i am betting said dude is so mysterious because he has an ill-conceived tattoo on his face - like “go south cornwall!” across his forehead or the little mermaid on his cheek). picking a track off his newest record to spotlight is a bit tough, so i am just going with the one that is sticking to my pan as we speak, which is “homeless”. i love love love the cut-up r&b vocals coming in and out on this one (and the whole album, for that matter) - plus the feeling that while this is still perfect music for driving around late at night in the rain (which i guess would be considered unsafe - buckle up as prescribed), it still has an underpinning of hope (which is quite different than joy or happiness - see the aforementioned reference to “shiny happy people” for that one). the only thing keeping this record off my top ten would be my ears falling off, which i hope i did not just will into actually taking place.

- caribou, “melody day”

one cannot live on dance music alone, and thus on the seventh day, thou shalt spinneth some… other shit. like this. this is some other shit of the highest caliber. the lead-off track (and first single, i think) on the newest caribou record reminds me of all the great things about legitimate psychedelic records from the 60’s - only with better drumming (and definitely better recorded drumming). the dude puts on a hell of a show, too. yow.

p.s. i am looking to read non-fiction books about pirates (the “yo ho” kind, not the “hackers” kind - oh, “hack the planet”) - give me suggestions or i will be forced to read another book about the mob or the rolling stones…

p.p.s. that post of the new snoop dogg video is totally not a goof - i feel like my eyes have been given a gift that sets the bar higher for all other eye gifts that shall after.