Nneka - “Heartbeat”A wonderful song, but Nneka also sings it wonderfully - makes the chorus's stumbling drums second to her own voice, makes her own verse second to that h-h-h-h-heartbeat. It's a little bit Robyn, a little but Lauryn Hill, but has the full ambitious believing bloom of a singer, a real singer, a pop-star-who-oughta. Fingers crossed that there's more to come (and that this'll be all over my radio).

[MySpace / buy / & the video is great; mostly candid footage from Lagos, where Nneka lived until recently]

Andrew Bird - “Tenuousness”What I like about Andrew Bird is two things, and they are pretty simple. I like the melodies he uses, or chooses, or finds. (I imagine him like a taxidermist at a zoo; catching sight of a melody and thinking - oh, i ought to make that into a song.) And I like the way he sings the words. At this point I scarcely pay attention to what he's saying; mostly I care about the way he says it. I mean look at this: From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to Porto-centric Lisboans, Greek-Cypriots and harbor sots who "hang around", in quotes, a lot. Here on the page it seems like the worst kind of "literary" pop, like smartypants-lookitme. But hear it sung, well, and it feels like music, it feels like rhyme, words chosen for the way they skip off Bird's tongue, just right. As a lyrical approach it has more in common with Lil Wayne than with Colin Meloy, and that suits me just fine.

[buy]

Frank YangGuilt and courteousness can be powerful motivators. Even moreso than self-preservation, which is why it was that rather than stay home Saturday night, safe and warm, I set out into the frigid, frigid cold to the Velvet Underground to catch a couple of bands who’d been politely and persistently inviting me out to their gigs for a while now - Receivers, visiting from Montreal, and locals Beth In Battle Mode. Of course it helped that I’d liked what I’d heard of both acts and had intended to catch either or both at some point - so why not both at once?

What I’d heard of BIBM past had made me associate them with New Wave power pop, thanks in no small part to their big keyboard sounds and devotion to the art of the hook, but live there was an extra oomph to the delivery that you couldn’t hide behind a skinny tie. And Receivers aspire to a noble end - to blend the noir-ish atmosphere of ’60s film soundtracks with concise and evocative pop song structures. It’s harder to do well than one might think, but I think Receivers are just about getting it.

Photos: Receivers, Beth In Battle Mode @ The Velvet Underground - January 24, 2009
MP3: Receivers - “Changing Of The Guard”

And because it’s an appropriate segue, there’s been a new communique from Joe Pernice, dispatched from somewhere in Toronto’s west end. In it (you can read it on the Pernice Brothers site), he mentions that his first novel It Feels So Good When I Stop is complete and will be released in September, and that there’s not one but two Joe Pernice albums in the works. The first is a set of covers intended as a soundtrack of sorts for the book, the second is of originals and entitled Murphy Bed, set to come out sometime this year. Though he refers to it as a Joe Pernice record, many of the players of Pernice Brothers - including Bob, the actual other Pernice Brother - appear on it so maybe it’ll carry the oh-so-slightly more marketable band name on release. Who knows. All I do know is that Joe has been living in Toronto for over four years now, and hasn’t done a show of any sort here since July 2005. Would it kill you to throw your new home a bone, Joe? Geez. Oh, and the segue I mentioned above? This Pernice Brothers cover of the aforementioned Chameleons song which I posted as Cover Of The Week waaaaay back in 2004. But which I still love.

MP3: Pernice Brothers - “Up The Down Escalator”

Paste serves up not one but two features on Neko Case. Her Middle Cyclone is out March 3.

Metro Vancouver talks to AC Newman.

In the New Yorker, Ta-Nehisi Coates reviews the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball.

PopMatters interviews singer-songwriter Jason Isbell.

PopMatters lists its favorite Motown singles.

WXPN is streaming a live performance by DeVotchKa.

New York Magazine interviews Andrew Bird about his musical influences.

What do you like to read?

I like a magazine called Cabinet. It centers around archaic subjects, like nineteenth-century science when they were trying to get answers and they were doing it terribly wrong. I like epics; I’m reading this huge book about the Comanches. I like books about, like, what was happening everywhere on the planet in the year 1310. That stuff really turns me on. I don’t really go for modern fiction.

Singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler has a blog and an Etsy site.

nyctaper (one of my "bloggers to read in 2009") is looking for a sponsor.

Daytrotter's Sunday session featured in-studio mp3s from singer-songwriter James Jackson Toth. The Monday session features Ron Sexsmith.

What are we going to do with so much of the political music about the Bush administration now that it’s officially over? Yes, people are totally justified in their outrage about what happened and the bitter feelings aren’t likely to go away any time soon, but at least in the short term post-Obama afterglow, so much of it already sounds shrill and dated, even when the music and lyrics are quite sharp and clever. “Savion Glover” was originally released a couple years ago, but is just now being issued as part of P.O.S.’ new record, and as nimble and catchy as it is, in light of Barack Obama’s victory and subsequent order to shut down Guantanamo Bay, the song’s rant about Gitmo and the impatience with the Democratic Party seem….well, ironic? Overly Cassandra-ish in retrospect? Totally appropriate and right on, and the root of why Obama got elected in the first place? Music never has to be timeless, but it does feel sorta strange when a newly released song already has a time capsule quality.

Also: I should note that I very much appreciate the fact that P.O.S. quotes Fugazi in this number, and a song from their amazing yet generally underrated End Hits album at that!

Buy it from Amazon.

Mirah – “Gone Are The Days”(A)spera, the first new full-length from Mirah in 5 years, is coming on 3/24 from K Records (check the cool, semi-Logan’s Run-looking cover here). The great Phil Elverum, the Decemberists’ Chris Funk, Lori Goldston and Tara Jane O’Neil all pitch in on (a)spera, but this first MP3, “Gone Are The Days,” is a splendidly stripped-down number.