Late Review: Client Zerox Machine EP

(note: the following review was written ages ago)



Zerox Machine
Loose Talking
Zerox Machine (IDC Mix)
Zerox Machine (Jonny Slut/Atomizermix)
Zerox Machine (Robert Görl Strange Pistol Mix)
Zerox Machine (Club Mix By Covenant)

In a conspicuous break from the purely electronic pallet that colored their previous material Client have gone rock with their spunky version of Adam & The Ant's "Zerox Machine". Sarah Blackwood's vocal delivery reflects a consciousness that one does not expect to find in a run through a genre chestnut as she breaks up the phrasing of the word "copyright" so it becomes "copy, right?" turning the song into a response to the band's detractors that claim they simply imitate. The lyrics also touch upon ideas that Client have explored before such as identity, masking and control which further suggest the band's personal investment and ownership of the song. Despite the familiar lyrical touches the track's producer Youth plots a new course for the band musically as he brings a focus on "live" elements highlighting the work of Client's new bassist Emily Strange, the sharp rhythms of Blur associate Simon Tong's guitar and the machine-free drums laid down for the track. Even with the shift in style it is the theremin synth lead of Client's sonic architect Kate Holmes that brings the track to life during the chorus providing the link between old and new directions for the band.

"Loose Talking" finds the band using a lot more synths as they rework a number of familiar elements into a song that toys with sweet sadness. There are some promising bits but the song fails to follow through making for an unsatisfying listen.

Remixes of covers are always a dicey proposition because the distance from the original source material makes it difficult to find an unique angle but that problem is danced around here as parties from different scenes are given mixing duties. IDC play things straight incorporating much of the original while the confusingly named Jonny Slut/Atomizermix (thus named because they couldn't settle for just listing one alias that he records under) brings stutter edits and an electro flavor to the table. Recruiting D.A.F. member Robert Görl for a mix must have been quite a moment for Client as they list them as a major influence but Görl turns in an oddly unmusical mix that adds a bit of occasional 16th note trance synths to an uninspired beat leaving the affair a lost opportunity. Ultimately it is Covenant that bring the goods with their EBM flavored mix that takes the liberty to ignore much of the original as they form an effective dark dance track.

Late Review: Client Lights Go Out EP

(note: the following review was written some time ago)



Lights Go Out (Single Edit)
Northern Soul
Lights Go Out (Oliver Koletzki & Sebastian Meindl Mix)
Lights Go Out (Basteroid Mix)
Lights Go Out (Spetsnaz Mix)
Lights Go Out (Boosta Mix)

Client use "Lights Go Out" to tell the story of a woman who goes to extreme lengths to win the affection of an undeserving partner she finds herself "guilty of loving". Over the course of the song the narrator offers, in a pop friendly turn, to be the "guilty pleasure" of what we learn in the final verse is a promise breaking lover that forced her to "learn the hard way" that there are "no guarantees". Given the band's recent split with Toast Hawaii/Mute this redefinition of the band's mission statement, first laid out in Client's self-titled song that was their public debut, of "satisfaction guaranteed" suggests meaning for the band outside the song's narration. However as interesting as it is lyrically the song is musically a mishmash of ideas they have explored before. The swinging beat of "Pornography" and the ominous string sound of "Radio" are clearly echoed here but "Lights Go Out" lacks the clarity and melodic vision that was so vivid in Client's earlier material.

"Northern Soul" is better than average b-side fair flair despite noticeably recycling the riff from "Rock And Roll Machine". Really any song that had the audacity to declare "you need a bit of Northern soul" and that they "know the girls to give it" would be worth a listen and fortunately this tune has even more than that to offer.

If the original "Lights Go Out" lacks greatness then the single goes on to prove that a song cannot be saved with a little magic remix dust. Oliver Koletzki & Sebastian Meindl's deconstruction is full of stutter edits and vocals cut from the single version of the song which makes for some interesting moments but it is ultimately less than satisfying. Basteroid and Boosta flavor the song with their own respected arty electro seasonings but achieve uninspired filler at best. Spetsnaz begins his mix with enough promise that there is hope that a François Kevorkian-inspired spin on the song could develop but unfortunately the mix crashes and burns about a minute in quickly devolving into an amateurish mess. All in all it's the least appealing package that Client has assembled to date.

Video: Shinichi Osawa "Star Guitar"

I originally dismissed Shinichi Osawa's cover of "Star Guitar" without hearing it. If an artist covers a hit song as their lead single and they work in the same genre chances are they are hiding their lack of artistic merit and making a blatant cash grab in one swoop. Fortunately Crap For Genius recently reminded me of the cover and while I don't rate it as highly as he does the subtle update of the Chemical Brothers tune works really well taking the song out of the trance genre and shining a spotlight on the nearly hidden vocals of the original:



: The Chemical Brothers based the original song around a short guitar sample from David Bowie's "Starman" and have often performed the song live mashed up with the Brothers cover of New Order's "Temptation" so this really is just adding another layer. Shinichi Osawa's "Star Guitar" is out on CD single this week in the UK on Norman Cook's Southern Fried Records so stop by his myspace to get all the info.

Pop! Chart

Erasure are shortly due to finally update their classic singles collection Hits: The Very Best Of Erasure Pop! with the eagerly anticipated Total Pop!: The First 40 Hits. Naturally the two disc collection contains 41 tracks, 39 songs and omits the Union Street single "Boy". It's not all bad because the title suggests an alternate universal where the top 40 charts would be dominated by Erasure tunes. It might look something like this:

1. Oh L'Amour
2. Chains Of Love
3. A Little Respect
4. Blue Savannah
5. Chorus
6. Who Needs Love (Like That)
7. Victim Of Love
8. Drama!
9. Ship Of Fools
10. Breath Of Life
11. Star
12. Love To Hate You
13. Take A Chance On Me
14. Always
15. Am I Right?
16. Sometimes
17. You Surround Me
18. It Doesn't Have To Be
19. Solsbury Hill
20. Rock Me Gently
21. Stop!
22. Breathe
23. Fingers And Thumbs (Cold Summer's Day)
24. The Circus
25. Stay With Me
26. Sunday Girl
27. Freedom
28. Heavenly Action
29. Don't Say Your Love Is Killing Me
30. In My Arms
31. Here I Go Impossible Again
32. Rain
33. Run To The Sun
34. I Could Fall In Love With You
35. Don't Say You Love Me
36. Moon And The Sky
37. I Love Saturday
38. Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)
39. Storm In A Teacup

: If we were to group those singles by the albums they were taken from and assigned a value of 39 to the highest ranked single and 1 to the lowest ranked then we would end up with a chart like this:



: Overall this indicates a slight drop off in amazingess in the I Say I Say I Say era which was Erasure's first album following the original Pop!. It is also worth noting that 85% of my top 20 appear on that first compillation despite my continuing to follow the duo after the general public lost their scent making this new greatest hits useless to all but the most dedicated fans. Still stop by Erasure's myspace to hear some flawless tunes.

Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro

Electronic legend Florian Schneider recent announced his departure from Kraftwerk. When I saw the band play in San Francisco a few years ago it was almost a religious passage for the fans of techno, hip hop, synthpop and all things electronic who witnessed the show. Fortunately it was captured on film:

On The Radio

Freezepop just chatted with NPR's "All Things Considered" about being unapologetic in their pop, the paradigm shift in video game music and revealed that the lyrics to "Pop Music Is Not A Crime" were written while Liz was on jury duty. Listen the next time you've got a spare few minutes to get an insight to the band's personality.

2008: Top Songs

1. Goldfrapp- A & E
Those familiar with Goldfrapp's past knew they were capable of switching gears as they said they would after the disco-tastic Supernature but know one could know they would come up something so completely different from everything else they have done before while conjuring up their most emotional single to date. A year after I first heard the song it still gives me chills. Every time.

2. The Killers- Human
Bonding over their mutual Pet Shop Boys admiration Stuart Price takes The Killers down the disco in a collaboration that brings out the best in both parties. Brandon Flowers searching vocals take on questions that no one else dared ask as the music gives us the divine answer.

3. Moby- Disco Lies
First appearing on the Cloverfield soundtrack this second single from Last Night is the finest pop moments of the year you've never heard. Unfashionably technopop rather than electropop the song takes at what first appear to be pedestrian disco diva vocals wailing about how "you lied" and turn it into something transcendent. Shame a poorly planned initial release and a terrible video kept this grower from everyone but fans.

4. Cut Copy- Lights & Music
While I continue to bill this as the hipsters "Where The Streets Have No Name" the lush economy of the song is so breathtaking that even my repeat listens have only faintly dulled the impact of the song.

5. Kanye West- Love Lockdown
Forget Kanye the media personality for a moment. Can you think of a single song with an arrangement that flies completely in the face of convention that comes across as absolutely accessible as "Love Lockdown"? Kanye's futuristic performances are a jaw dropping but at the core the song deals with love that has spun out of control in an honest way and that is something pretty amazing too.

6. Hot Chip- Ready For The Floor
This rumored Kylie reject (sadly debunked) is ready for the floor as it asks "I can’t hear your voice, do I have a choice?" before creating even more confusion by quoting Tim Burton's Batman. Amazing.

7. The Black Ghosts- Anyway You Choose To Give It
Bringing together the talents of the guy behind The Wiseguys (my favorite big beat two hit wonder of 1999) with the vocalist from Simian (naturally not a part of the amazing Simian Mobile Disco) "Anyway You Choose To Give It" is a proper song that begs for you to hit repeat despite the Justice-sized overdriven bass that dresses the track. With an album that finally just dropped in full on itunes this is most definitely an act to keep an eye on.

8. Chemical Brothers- Keep My Composure
Better by a hair than the other new Chemical Brother track included on the unnecessary singles collection Brotherhood this collaboration with Spank Rock finds the Brothers reconnecting with a raw jump up hip hop sound they haven't explored since the Loops Of Fury EP. Plays up more of their strengths than 95% of their material this decade.

9. Nine Inch Nails- Discipline
Trent Reznor stops trying to be scary all the time on this disco number from the second Nine Inch Nails album of the year (the free one) and releases his most openly commercial singles in years.

10. Ladytron- Deep Blue
Who doesn't love a song about the most famous chess playing computer in the world?

Things I Learned In 2008

Over the past year I have learned a few new things:

• Spiralfrog is amazing! I read about the site, which offers free legit downloads from most of the major labels and big indies, last January in a year end recap that predicted it would die a quick death. The site runs on a model similar to the subscription based versions of napster, rhapsody and zune offering drm-protected wma files that play back with windows media player and on wma compatible mp3 players. While it won't help ipod sheep the site offers a quality way to preview music in a way that the public has been looking for since original version of napster went mainstream.
• Publicly calling your label out on being stupid works. At least sometimes: Moby posted a missive about the merits of beatport and how he couldn't understand why his label wouldn't allow his music to be sold on the site when everything in the music business had fallen to pieces. After what he said was years of privately arguing with his label his material was posted on beatport within a month.
• Neon Neon's "Dream Cars" borrows at least half of it's melody from The Drifter's "Under The Boardwalk".
• Major labels still don't know how to handle import releases. This year saw late, often internet only, releases from Robyn, Kylie, Groove Armada, The Egg (put out in 2004 everywhere else) as we still wait for Roisin Murphy, Girls Aloud and who-knows-what-I-forgot to come out stateside. While not all of these are out on multinational labels one would think that it would be a fairly easy to avoid losing US sales on acts like this. Simply release everything you have the rights for digitally at the same time across the world so you catch the early adopters. Then if the label decides they can actually push an album do a CD release when the artist is available to promote it in the US. Problem solved. Get to it guys.
• When revisiting Pet Shop Boys albums I haven't listened to in some time I find myself reaching new insights that I later realize I actually read at GeoWayne's site at some point since my last listen. Here I was thinking that I had become older and wiser.
  
• Matinee Club are once again The Modern. Honest.
  
• No clear favorite album this year but it seems like there are too many albums I have yet to give a proper listen to. I found myself most often playing the offerings from Ladytron, Robyn, Midnight Juggernauts, Cut Copy, Neon Neon, Blank + Jones and Goldfrapp.
  

All Rights Reversed

The Chemical Brothers re-released We Are The Night this past week and unfortunately this was not the attempt to revitalize the album with the new Brotherhood singles that I would lobby the band for but an update to the artwork inspired by "legal reasons". While it is difficult to find details it appears that the screen prints done by Kate Gibb for the packaging incorporate the work of artist Herbert Bayer without his estate's consent. There is a great comparison of the source material and the original Chemical Brothers cover and the booklet's interior artwork here which makes it pretty clear that something was up. Here is the illegal art from the original release:



: and the new version:

Video: Freezepop "Frontload"

Things had been relatively quiet on the Freezepop front lately leaving me with the impression that they had given up on their major label debut Future Future Future Perfect when the new Form Activity Motion EP dropped out of nowhere on to itunes a few weeks ago. Oddly enough the core of the release are remixes of the two extremes in quality found on Future.... The understated electro ballad "Thought Balloon" encapsulates much of what Freezepop does best with tender lyrics that find the narrator stumbling to let get the words that could start a romance over innocent music. On the other end of the spectrum is "Frontload" the most openly ambitious songs the band has recorded which has an arrangement on the album that simply does not work. While even the first notes signal that it is intended to be epic the song ultimately turns into a mess. So imagine my surprise when the band's new version featured in the video and found on the EP is much, much better turning "Frontload" from a song I despise to one that I just can't get enough of. What's the difference between the two? You can't ignore the new rhythm track but more important to the song's success is the change structurally turning a song with a couple of peaks into one with a single linear build. The video is nice too breathing new life into the played-out back of a taxi concept without resorting to gimmicks (no offense to Jarvis who pulled that route off marvelously):



: The rest of the "Frontload" remixes on the EP fare well and are worth checking out over the "Thought Balloon" mixes but they got that one right the first time. Sometimes you just can't mess with perfection. Stop by their myspace for more Freezepop fun.

Video: Anya Marina "Move You"

File this under "now for something completely different" but when checking Spinner today I was shocked to see that their video of the day was by an artist I know. Back when I djed at KSCU, aka my college radio days, I tuned into the station pretty much constantly. One of the station's clear stars was Anya who used her quick wit and warm personality to create an on air presence that put the rest of us college radio slobs to shame. I wasn't too surprised to learn that she soon found her way into a paying job in radio which she has kept up to this day as she currently broadcasts out of San Diego. What I didn't realize at the time is that she is also a musician. Much of her music falls into the "singer/songwriter" category so it's not something you would expect me to post here but Anya is a cool person and she even has a song on one of the Grey's Anatomy soundtracks so here is "Move You":

Every Little Counts

When the news came down some months ago that the always meticulous Rhino Records would be remastering New Order's 80's albums I imagined it could only mean good things. Unfortunately the reissues tracklisting leaves plenty of potential bonus material out of the picture and worse yet they mastered some of the tracks by picking up some old commercially available vinyl. Stop by siart for a great synopsis of what went wrong as we wait for Rhino to rectify the problem by reissuing the reissues.

Rock It Don't Stop It

Maybe you have seen this ad:


: I can't be the only one who keeps waiting for Ralf Hütter or Florian Schneider to pop up and say "no that's my song" which would prompt Afrika Bambaataa to say "well actually it was influenced by your songs "Trans Europe Express" and "Numbers"...perhaps you remember the settlement".
Common's song is rather good so check out the Hype Williams low budget video for "Universal Mind Control" here.

Video: The Killers featuring Elton John & Neil Tennant "Joseph"

You would think that a track with so much talent involved might be a little better than this:



: I've been waiting for Stuart Price to produce the Pet Shop Boys for a decade now and this doesn't quite cut it. The vibe was apparently good in the studio so we can hope this leads to something better.

Disappointed Once More

While I don't blog with enough frequency to complain about the albums that leave me disillusioned that's not going to stop me:

Shiny Toy Guns Season Of Poison
Endless live support of their debut album, which first came to my attention back in 2005, had reached Cher farewell tour proportions which makes one wonder just how long they spent in the studio recording this lackluster followup. While changing up styles can be a good thing the release suffers from the band purging the synthpop vibe that made them unique making the so-so songs just sink. Of course any album that suggests a whole season of poison isn't going to be much fun so at least band put a warning right out on the front cover.

Moby Last Night Remixed
While I have yet to get my thoughts on the source album out of draft this disjointed remix album is a mess. I rate Moby's two-disc Everything Is Wrong: Mixed & Remixed as one of my favorite remix albums ever but this is clearly on the other side of the spectrum with not enough interesting material to justify the release. While available to download as individual tracks the star here should be Moby's own dj mix of the tracks but it suffers as most tracks are played in their entirety making the whole thing drag on and on for 74 minutes.

Keane Perfect Symmetry
While far from the most fervent Keane supporter I had high hopes for the album after Tim Rice-Oxley's recent work with Gwen Stefani resulted in a highlight and Stuart Price's (peripheral) involvement raised the stakes. Lead single "Spiraling" has grown on me but the album as a whole feels like a chore to listen to with poor pacing and pandering lyrics, listen to "Better Than This" if you want an ego boost, that make the first quarter of the album feel like the whole thing should be over already. The album's real crime is failing the "Early Winter" test. Not a thing here even touches that song.

Sam Sparro Sam Sparro
While Sam has gotten the blog love from the blogs I love the album is actually two tracks deep. The US exclusive "S.A.M.S.P.A.R.R.O." and the undeniable "Black And Gold". I must be missing something because the rest of the album does nothing for me.

Hercules And Love Affair Hercules And Love Affair
I get that their ability to create interesting old school disco vibes and the DFA connection helped win them plenty of buzz but their crushing inability to write songs sinks the album quickly. Now a few short months after the hype has died down I imagine few of the album's most ardent supporter can recall a single track that has stuck with them.

Lady Gaga The Fame
Possibly the worst album on this list it's hard to believe this is in the US top 10. Fans seem to think she is offering something but album is full of bland filler that is only occasionally saved the rare clever line. Among the offenses the brag about a sick beat on "Just Dance" that just isn't delivered in the song.

Techno From Unexpected Faces: Eric Clapton

My college radio days coincided with the American Electronica Revolution (aka 1997) which gave me access to new music in a way that today can only be parallelled by anyone who knows how to log on to the internet (congratulations). Having a front seat to a musical movement allowed me to hear some albums that slipped by the larger public such as T.D.F.'s Retail Therapy. In an effort to guide dj's to better tracks and ferret out language that is less than FCC friendly all the station's music had short reviews and I recall that one staff member wrote something along the lines of "this is really good chill out music but it has these really annoying Poison guitar solos all over it". In a day and age when Daft Punk hid behind dog masks T.D.F. were ahead of the curve wearing helmets in all of their publicity photos even going further in creating a mystique by listing the group's members Simon Climie and someone named x-sample in the liner notes. As one of the first major label "electronica" acts out of the gate what they weren't saying was that Climie was an established industry sideman and that x-sample was a bizarre alias for Eric Clapton. The album has gone out of print but I can assure you that the album was decidedly more smooth jazz than anything else with only a few tracks that were even remotely on par with electronica of the time. The album's highlight is "Rip Stop" an admirable attempt at drum 'n' bass that came only a year after the sub-genre's first credible artist album was released:



: The album garnered some rough reviews including All Music Guide's that calls Retail Therapy "a bland, colorless dead alley into electronic music from two musicians who don't comprehend its essence" which may explain why there has never been a followup. However it's worth noting that in the late 80s Simon Climie's duo Climie Fisher had a not bad non-hit "Love Changes (Everything)" underscore an important montage of Savage Steve Holland's How I Got Into College and that movie has a young Lara Flynn Boyle attempting to play a character with warmth. That's almost as strange as a 60s guitar icon attempting drum 'n' bass.

Late Review: Duran Duran Red Carpet Massacre

Today marks one year since Duran Duran launched their latest comeback album and to celebrate I bring you a late review that has been sitting in draft since February. Maybe I should have finished it:

Duran Duran's Red Carpet Massacre recently caught my attention again prompting me to finally gave it a proper listen. Their patchy self-titled wedding album was one of the first discs I bought back when I really started getting into music leaving me with doubt over their ability to fully bring the goods and it's reputation as one of their stronger efforts has put me off buying Duran Duran albums for ages. Sure there have been some strong moments over the years with "Electric Barbarella" and "Nice" coming to mind as relatively recent favorites, but I never seem to find much I want to revisit outside of the singles. When Red Carpet Massacre came out it simply slipped past me despite it being covered by many of my favorite blogs, talked up by some online friends and hearing some of it on the Bay Area's kinda top 40 radio station.

Without a doubt the defining buzz around the album was super producer Timbaland's involvement suggesting this is Duran Duran's hip hop album. The group have shown an interest in the genre before covering "White Lines" and bringing Missy Elliot on board for a track on their last album but Timbaland co-produces three tracks and his apprentice Danja, who the Wall Street Journal note "typically charges $50,000 to $100,000 per track", has his hands over the all but one of the remaining tracks demonstrating the group's willingness to jump into the deep end of a foreign genre. Well almost. After listening to the album I can now safely say that they didn't jettison all their new wave roots but rather polished them with a different production style. Opener "The Valley" is a great example coming on as strong as any of their recent material but far enough away from their usual mode of operation that my first listen had me checking my car stereo's EQ to see what happened to the missing mid-range. The title track pushes the band further into unexplored territory as the album's biggest lyrical statement, some sort of take down of vapid celebrity culture which must disgust the yachting members of Duran Duran, finds the common ground between punk and the sounds of top 40 hip hop. Timbaland makes his first appearance on "Nite-Runner", the album's biggest hip hop moment and the most obvious choice for a single, lending his signature beats to a song that sounds so little like anything Duran Duran have touched before that that Simon Le Bon's vocals are easily mistaken for those of the track's co-producer Justin Timberlake. The remaining Timbaland tracks allow more of the band to shine through but both don't hit the mark of radio friendly pop with the same force.
Elsewhere in the album the band primarily focus on their strength at crafting mid-tempo ballads. The first single "Falling Down" finds Timberlake alone in the producer's chair steering the band towards "Ordinary World" territory with enough to success to that it got the band back on US radio. Well at least for a few weeks. They strip down the production to simple strummed guitar on "Box Full O Honey" which is an earnest attempt to portray heartbreak that is a highlight despite sounding a bit overworked. "She's Too Much" also hits some sweets spots as LeBon demonstrates why he has such a way with the ladies as he bares his sensitive soul.
Those looking for some old school new wave jams won't be disappointed. "Zoom In" has it going on musically but lines like "I'm zooming in and out on you" seem like an odd pickup line for the new millennium. A bit of research reveals the song was premiered in the game Second Life which give the lyrics a quite literal twist but it's still odd to hear the band wooing a sexy lady by praising her "avatar". You really have to be at a certain stage in your career to have that the confidence to so boldly go where your lyrical muse takes you.
Over all the band really have it together on this out as even the instrumental "Tricked Out", which has a touch of a rocked out Halloween magic, seem essential to the album. It may have taken some time, but Duran Duran have finally found the right mix of new ideas and consistent songwriting to draw me into an album that I want to revisit. Hopefully their label will wake up realizing that they gave up way too early on this strong album and finally release a second single soon.

Television

It is thrilling to hear that the Pet Shop Boys are receiving the Outstanding Contribution to Music Award at the upcoming Brit Awards because it gives me hope that actual pop artists can be honored by institutions. While I hope that something like Popjustice's vision of the event takes place I already dread the way the award ceremony will be butchered on American tv never giving me a chance to see it outside of youtube. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way US television programmers treat Brit musical events. Maybe I'm just paranoid but New Order's lifetime achievement award was cut out of an awards show when it showed on VH1 a few years back and BBC America chopped PSB out of the An Audience with Elton John bar one shot of them in the crowd confirming that they were there. Why show Brit tv when you are just going to not show what makes it different from American music shows? Really BBC America, isn't the whole premise of your network that you cater to Anglophiles? Regardless here is the last time the Boys played the Brit Awards (notice that whoever dresses West End Girls might have seen this):

Flashback: Cranes "Shining Road" (1994)

Taking their name from the machines that transport cargo on the docks of their native Portsmouth the often experimental, occasionally pop but always unique Cranes got their start in the mid 80s. They opened for The Cure (who have a new album out this week) on the "Wish" tour and first came to my attention when the Robert Smith remix of "Jewel" got a modest amount of airplay on Live 105. That song didn't really grab me and I assumed that I had heard the band's best material since Live 105 even played The Cure's b-sides in heavy rotation at the time. A year later the first single from Cranes next album Loved got a couple of spins and proved just how wrong I was. "Shining Road" is an amazing song. Unexpected and effortless it harnesses the groove of the UK's second wave of rave revolution to the best parts of showgaze alt-rock. All discussions of Cranes inevitably lead to the merits of Alison Shaw's singular voice, which is often described as "childlike" even though otherworldly is perhaps more accurate, but there is no denying her voice is the perfect conduit for the wordless emotion conveyed here:



: After some time off in the late 90s Cranes have kept active releasing music on their own label with an album out earlier this year. If you watch American tv you almost certainly are familiar with some of their recent work that was featured in an oft-aired commercial. Keep up with the band at their label's website.

Video: The Killers "Human"

Brandon Flowers pitched "Human" to producer Stuart Price as "Johnny Cash meets the Pet Shop Boys". My endorsement will almost certainly be the death blow to The Killers domestic success but the perfect marriage of the band's (occasionally) brilliant songwriting to Stuart Price's precision tuned disco machine makes the song one of my musical highlights of the year. Love the unique take on the man/machine dynamic with the whole "human/dancer" lyric that has everyone in such a fuss although I can't help but think that Flowers could have avoided turning up on worst lyric lists by picking a less obscure quote to build a song around:




: Those who still doubt the song's brilliance should give this youtuber's piano version a listen.