WHY YOU SO STUPID? YOU HUNGRY FOR HOT POCKETS!

If you throw a light on something magical it disappears.
The Tough Alliance: Koka Kola Veins

Some of the music that has made me lose my shit most this year didn't make it onto the official offnotes RIFFMARKET Status Ain't Hood Quarterly Report (brought to you by Tostitos, Breakfast of Champions); it wasn't in album form. FWIW, I'm holding off on a traxx list until the semi-annual report, so it should be ready in, like, November.

Anyway, as with Tom and his "swirly percussive post-noise", I'm not exactly the NME when it comes to coining unnecessary genre names. The vague ILX descriptor "blog house"-- for the all the Kanye-baiting music that followed Justice's Waters of Nazareth EP-- will have to do, even though what interests me more is the melodic pop side of this stuff, the tracks I listen to the way I'd listen to Belle & Sebastian or, like, the Beatles, even if I did get them off Discobelle just like you. Some of the artists I have in mind, like Toronto's Crystal Castles, are far more rock than house, even if they're also great remixers.

Whatever. The point is, in the wake of bands like the Rapture (and now, in the UK, Klaxons) bringing guitars back to the disco, plenty of bands have been springing up, particularly in the past year, that approach electronic music with the same sense of fun, rather than the type of clinicism that birthed descriptors like "Intelligent" Dance Music (no knock on that genre). Hot Chip were probably one of the leading forces on that front, and they're really as great as Sean Fennessey has been saying for ages.

What makes Hot Chip different from another amazing electronic pop outfit like, say, Junior Boys, is the way they don't seem to need to couch their fun in distance or concepts. They sing about monkeys with miniature cymbals, or boys from school, and repeat phrases like "I'm in no fit state" over and over, etc. etc.-- you could gussy it all up with theories about minimalism, maybe bring in some Stockhausen, but with Hot Chip it's probably better not to. As with LCD Soundsystem, there's plenty to think about, but it ultimately achieves pop's simplest goals: moving bodies, touching hearts. Gag me, right? Except that's why I listen to this stuff.

How about Simian Mobile Disco? I'm unspeakably excited about their forthcoming album, and their production work for Klaxons and Arctic Monkeys has done little to dim my enthusiasm. Even more than Hot Chip, or great but inescapably rich-Eurochic-coke-addict stuff like Justice, Simian's "I Believe" (I thought it was "I Bealive"?) straddles this line between post-Daft Punk club fun and melodies worth humming. Other tracks like "It's the Beat" or more in keeping with the Go! Team craziness of some Justice tracks, and are also worthy, but I prefer my Simian with more feeling. Subjective, yeah, but it's still my blog.


In free verse on the road with Kerouac sheltered in his Bivouac.
The Tough Alliance: Holiday

My latest favorite on the poppier side of this microgenre is Swedish electropop duo The Tough Alliance, about whom I hope to say more shortly. Like Sally Shapiro, they manage to bring electronic music fully into the realm of bright, overwhelming pop-- the kind of unbridled cheerfulness that these days usually gets ghettoized alongside far blander guitar-based twee-pop stuff-- and fuse it with some kind of weird situationist aesthetic. This isn't really house music at all, except you can dance to it. And it makes me eager to hear more.

Elsewhere: Jonathan Chait has the impressive, definitive take on the liberal netroots. I don't read Kos anymore, but boy am I glad he's there. At the same time, I feel like once actual journalists cease to believe in the possibility of an objective truth-- an unattainable goal, yes, but surely one worth striving for-- then democracy is impossible. Especially if you're not Hunter Thompson, but especially if you are.

Zach Baron has the impressive, definitive review of the new Dinosaur Jr. comeback. Ah, memory lane.


I've seen what's left of poor technology and worth.
Neil Postman on Cyberspace, 1995.