Dear Doctors: please excuse Fine Tune Friday from school/work/jury duty yesterday, as he was riding a train. He realizes that he has made a mockery of his name by being published on Saturday, and is very sorry.

Little Dragon, "Blinking Pigs" (2009)

find it on Machine Dreams

It's common knowledge among my friends that our friend Les (aka The Pin-Striped Rebel) is The Greatest DJ In The World™. She has an appreciation for pop like no one else I've ever known, and she can play songs that you'd swear were world-dominating chart hits, but were actually just featured on a little-known British compilation from 1987 or is actually a hidden gem from a band that you know, but never knew could be so good.

So when I looked on her last.fm profile a little while back and found that it had been dominated by a band called Little Dragon, I had to check them out. Les just doesn't steer you wrong.

"Blinking Pigs" is off of Little Dragon's new album, and besides having a killer chorus, it shows exactly what it is Little Dragon does: creates a more modern, blippy version of late 80's adult pop. The way that Yukimi Nagano's voice cracks on the line "now that you're standing closer" is a killer.

Thanks for everything, Les.

I saw An Education last night. A good watch with some great acting, if maybe a movie that the talk afterwards shifted a little too much with what was wrong with it.

But that's beside the point. This movie is about the sixties. While it's a true story and a story worth telling, it exists to revel in the clothes, styles and hair of a time we choose to remember as steeped in sophistication, no matter how much that true story may say otherwise.

One scene stuck out: glammed up in perfect sixties styles, four characters attend a shady but swank party in the club room of a dog track, dancing to Mel Tormé's brilliant "Comin' Home Baby". It was a perfect mix of sound and style, and it inspired me to rekindle the mix I'd had planned for muxtape: the cool sounds of the sixties.

It was the crisp ride cymbals and the influence of the jazz scene of the 50's, the walking basslines and minor keys giving the perfect soundtrack to a small time in history when it seemed like sophistication would be what everyone aspired to. It was the ultimate in cool.

Enjoy.

Mel Tormé, "Comin' Home Baby" (1962)
The loosened-tie vocals, the intense harmony of the backing, and the dead-on bassline made it the perfect choice to soundtrack the sixties-ness of An Education's club scene.
find it on Comin' Home Baby

France Gall, "Laisse Tomber Les Filles" (1964)
The language, style and jazz-loving of the French just made it that much easier for them to turn any song into a sound of sophistication. One of my favorite songs of all time.
find it on The Best of France Gall

Charles Mingus, "II BS" (1963)
Best. Bassline. Ever.
find it on Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

Nina Simone, "See Line Woman" (1964)
By definition, minimalism sounds cooler. But Nina Simone's sound is more wounded than what the lounge singers could ever give. Where others would give detachment, she gives scarred resignation.
find it on Anthology

The Eyes, "When The Night Falls" (1966)
Rock is often too much of a rowdy shambles to soundtrack the idealized sixties cool, but the sparseness of the drums and the vibratoed guitar give it a fantastic grimy slink.
find it on Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond

Marcos Valle, "Os Grilos (Crickets Sing For Ana Maria)" (1968)
A stunning, slinking samba track. The drum breakdown in the middle never fails to blow me away.
find it on Next Stop Wonderland OST

Gloria Jones, "Tainted Love" (1966)
Sixties soul often has a fire that keeps it from ever cooling down too much, but the arrangement and vocals combine to something that has as much icy intensity as any jazz cool.
find it on Beg, Scream & Shout!: The Big Ol' Box Of 60's Soul

Serge Gainsbourg, "Un Poison Violent, C'est Ca L'amour" (1967)
Gainsbourg ruled the French cool pop exports of the sixties, merging the pop of Francois Hardy with the grime and sex of rock. My favorite part of this song is the spoken middle, where Gainsbourg says "Oui oui", but prounounces it like "weh", the French equivalent of "yeah", a little education lesson of my own.
find it on Comic Strip

Dave Brubeck, "Unsquare Dance" (1961)
Brubeck's sound was the ultimate Playboy sound, a clean sound that told listeners that jazz was more about martinis than heroin.
find it on The Essential Dave Brubeck

Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots Are Made For Walking" (1966)
The song where the walking bassline gets a little more literal. The vamp of the outro is such a tease, building the song up to the boil, only to fade out.
find it on Boots

Miike Snow, "Black & Blue" (2009)

find it on Miike Snow

Listen, I never claimed to be the quickest draw in the music blog world. In fact, I kind of take pride in being a little behind where everyone else is, carefully choosing perfect bites instead of throwing out everything that's even remotely tasty.

I think it's something that's kind of a problem in the world of music blogs. Everyone's that's in it is so far in it that they forget that some people may not have heard of the sound that blew up the blogs four months ago. In this new world of everything all the time, it's really easy to miss something that's seems all around.

ANYWAY...I kept hearing of Miike (sic) Snow, and even got a comment about them about a month ago, but never got around to actually listening to it until I popped open my recommendations radio on last.fm a couple weeks ago. The full album is pretty good, but "Black & Blue"¹ is as good as thoughtful pop² gets. It's full-song catchy in a way that few other songs are; not relying on one hook that's so catchy that it pales the rest of the song right out, but rather keeping an understated, groovy hook going the whole way through.

¹ Sorry to Katie who I led to believe was picking today's song with her dancing this morning. Next week.

² This kind of music needs a better term. It's pop, but not indie pop and not dance music and not marketed chart pop. So "thoughtful pop" is about right, but...we just need something better.

Julian Casablancas, "Out Of The Blue" (2009)

find it on Phrazes For The Young

I'm suspending for a second that I don't like trying to analyze what people are saying in songs for this one, because it seems so obvious that Julian Casblancas is writing a Behind The Music: The Strokes here. Success, pleasure, vengeance, bitterness, madness at critics, and mistakes and apologies made...it's the entire story of the hype and hate directed at The Strokes for 8 years.

But no matter how much JC's rollercoaster ride nauseates him, it's a thrill for us. The driving glory of the chorus could sweeten up any bile. Don't miss the guitar step squeal it's way to an thrilling peak at 3:35.

Been looking forward to this album for qqqquuuuiiiittteeee some time. What up AreSeven?

Wale, 'Triumph (Produced By David Andrew Sitek)' (2009)
download mp3

Monsters of Folk, "Losin' Yo Head" (2009)

find it on Monsters Of Folk

This song reminds me a little of "Hoodoo Voodoo" off of Billy Bragg & Wilco's Mermaid Avenue, both because it's a great, cheerful, head-bopper rocker, but also because the compilation its on has made me reconsider the collaborators. I didn't like Wilco before Mermaid Avenue, and it was only that album that got me into them, and likewise, I never liked My Morning Jacket and was a lukewarm on M. Ward, but I'll have to revisit their stuff now.

As a bonus track (read: because I was having a difficult time trying to decide which track was my weekly favorite), here's "His Master's Voice" off the same record. It's an odd-but-beautiful closer to the record, thanks not only to the peaceful arpeggios and dramatic piano stabs, but the stunning and sudden chorus and assonant lyrics.

Monsters of Folk, "His Master's Voice" (2009)

find it on Monsters Of Folk