Santogold — “I’m a Lady” (from Santogold)
This is not the best track off Santogold’s excellent self-titled debut (that honor would go to “Creator,” nor is it the most representative (”L.E.S. Artistes,” probably). It is, however, the most unexpectedly wonderful, its unabashedly catchy melody nearly impossible to not start humming along with, if not already singing at full volume. (MySpace)

 
The Roots — “I Can’t Help It” (from Rising Down)
Dark and pulsating, “I Can’t Help It” features some pretty badass drums and gutter bass, along with strong rhymes from Black Thought and Malik B. What makes this song so great, however, is the verse from Porn, which totally steals the show. His voice is nasally and his delivery is punctuated, which makes the lines “I never said I’m ready to die but I accept it/Never said I’m ready for war but I’m protected/I don’t even know when it’s coming but I expect it…Now I’m left with nervous conditions, addictions…One more reason to change identity” all the more powerful. (MySpace)
 
Portishead — “Machine Gun” (from Third)
If you’ve heard this song, then you already know why it made this list. If you haven’t heard this song, you need to. Now. (MySpace)
 
 
 
 
Jet Black Crayon — “8 Bad Years” (from In the Interim)
One of Tommy Guerrero’s many projects, Jet Black Crayon play ambient instrumental music that never sinks into lethargy, and “8 Bad Years” in particular is able to capture that space between reflection and unease. It’s a song that spreads out but still retains a tension that keeps you from settling down too far into it, the kind of thing you want to play again and again. (MySpace)

Claro Intelecto, “Operation” (from Metanarrative). Between Robert Hood’s Fabric 39, Wighnomy Brothers’ Metawuffmischfelge, and Jennifer Cardini’s Feeling Strange, there was plenty of excellent mixed techno to absorb during the past month, and there was Mark Stewart’s second production-oriented Claro Intelecto album as well. Metanarrative is on the slight side, at least compared to 2004’s Neurofibro and his five-volume (thus far) series of Warehouse Sessions singles, but a couple tracks — “Operation” in particular — are as sorcerous and as mood affecting as anything else he has created.

Other favorites from the month’s new releases and reissues:

Aural Exciters - “Marathon Runner” (from Going Places: The August Darnell Years)
David Axelrod - “Ken Russell” (from Seriously Deep)
Roy Ayers Ubiquity - “Searching” (from Vibrations)
Christopher Bissonnette - “Provenance” (from In Between Words)
Terry Callier - “Trance on Sedgwick Street” (from Occasional Rain)
Mariah Carey - “Migrate” (from E=MC2)
Dave Douglas & Keystone - “Flood Plane” (from Moonshine)
George Duke - “North Beach” (from Faces in Reflection)
Estelle - “Wait a Minute (Just a Touch)” (from Shine)
The Jazz Crusaders - “Rainy Night in Georgia” (from Old Socks, New Shoes)
The Bennie Maupin Quartet - “Inner Sky” (from Early Reflections)
Marilyn Mazur/Jan Garbarek - “The Siren in the Well” (from Elixir)
Portishead - “Machine Gun” (from Third)
Prodigy - “Real Power Is People” (from H.N.I.C., Pt. 2)
The Roots - “Rising Up” (from Rising Down)
Santogold - “Shove It” (from Santogold)
Strategy - “Bike Click” (from Music for Lamping)

And a few favorites from March’s new releases and reissues:

Autechre - “Tankakem” (from Quaristice)
Guy Cuevas - “Obsession” (from Funky Nassau: The Compass Point Story)
Sascha Funke - “Mango” (from Mango)
Kelley Polar - “Sea of Sine Waves” (from I Need You to Hold on While the Sky Is Falling)
Jackie Stoudemire - “Invisible Wind” (from Don’t Stop: Recording Tap)

Ford paid the price for his behavior, dropping out of sight and alienating friends (the testimonials by Bobby Womack and PJ Proby here are heartbreaking, although they leave little question that they had to not see Ford in order to preserve their own sanity). His demons drove him underground but like many tortured artists, the art that Jim Ford produced was the opposite of his chaotic life: his songs flowed easily and naturally, simple in their structure yet clever in their words and melodies. That is as true to this collection of 16 songs — all but the 1968 single “Look Again” previously unreleased, but that’s so rare it virtually counts as unreleased — as it was on the music on The Sounds of Our Times. The songs here ever so slightly emphasize his country side, surfacing primarily as the thick country-funk that distinguished Harlan Country but also the slick ’70s shine of “If You Can Get Away (She Don’t Need Me Like I Need You),” where Ford falls for a Rodeo Drive cowgirl and cuts a single that could have been a soft-rock hit if he had only gotten his act together. Songs like this bolster his boast that he could have delivered a hit record if the price was right, but that price was never met, so he left behind gem after gem… at least it seems that way based on the unreleased tapes Bear Family has dug up, as Point of No Return is every bit as excellent as Sounds.

The music here is a continuation of the unreleased cuts there, right down to how this offers a slow version of “Go Through Sunday,” a rewrite of “She Turns My Radio On” (here spun to be a gospel tune), and a different version of “I Wonder What They’ll Do with Today” called “Whicha Way,” but also in how Ford’s country blends with his soul obsessions, most wickedly so in “If I Go Country,” a plea to get back to the land that’s dressed up in blaxploitation funk. That’s the only big, brassy funk tune here; when Ford gets soulful, it’s a bit quieter, as on the soulful “Harry Hippie” and slow-burning “Sweet Baby Mine (You Just A…),” which has a counterpoint in the dirtier, fuzz-toned funk of “Don’t Hold Back What You Feel.” There are also a couple of polished roots-pop tracks here that very much sound like the end of the ’60s — “Point of No Return,” “Look Again” — but the heart of the new stuff is in the country, in the rocking ramble “Mill Valley,” the slow-rolling tear-in-my-beer “Just Cause I Can,” a cover of Eddy Arnold’s “Bouquet of Roses” and, best of all, “Stoppin’ to Start,” a clever ode to the bottle. Of course, that addiction is what sunk Ford personally and professionally, but somehow through that haze he left behind a wealth of remarkable music, music that only gets better the longer that you live with it, music that makes a significant argument that he’s one of the great unsung country-rock songwriters of the ’60s and ’70s. Those talents are as easy to appreciate here, on a full-blown collection of rarities, as they were on Harlan County and The Sounds of Our Time… and with any luck, the promise of yet another volume of Jim Ford tapes in the liner notes to Point of No Return will indeed come true somewhere down the road.

The connection to Charlie Rich is inescapable on Frazier’s 1966 debut Elvira, as it contains Dallas’ own versions of “Mohair Sam” and “She’s a Yum Yum,” songs that Rich cut the same year that Elvira was released. There’s not much separating Rich’s and Frazier’s versions; they have the same polished, funky Southern groove, equal parts R&B and country, played by pros who are too good not to give this soul. As similar as the two artists sound, there are differences, many of which can be inferred by Frazier’s songs themselves. As the author of “Alley Oop” and “She’s a Yum Yum,” it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that Frazier has the flair of a comedian, something that Rich lacks, and it’s a delight to listen him deliver his own jokes on these, or to hear him dip into gibberish on “Just a Little Bit of You,” which otherwise is a stomping two-step worthy of the Sir Douglas Quintet. Sometimes this easy frivolity can overshadow his facility with deeper soul, but his knack for gorgeous, bluesy ballads shines on “Especially for You” and “Done Made Up My Mind.” Of course, these two cuts — each arriving as the second track on their respective sides — are the only times that the tempo slows on Elvira, as the rest of this consists of rollicking good times. Sure, Frazier can get a little silly — he has a weakness for jokes and nonsense, evidenced by the very title of “Whoop It On ‘Um” and the giddy-up chorus of the title song — but this never turns into novelty, as the music has grit and Frazier has style, never pushing his jokes too hard. In fact, it’s so much fun that it’s not until a second listen that it becomes clear how thoroughly Frazier blurred the lines between R&B, rock & roll, soul, and country here, creating a roots music that was pretty progressive for 1966 and still sounds absolutely addictive all these years later.

Arriving just a year after his 1966 debut Elvira, Frazier’s second album Tell It Like It Is! offers more of the same, but that’s hardly a complaint. Frazier had such a light, easy touch that it’s a pure joy to hear him turn out another 12 tracks of funky country-soul, and he’s in fine form here from the moment “Don’t Come Knocking on My Door” kicks off the album. For as similar as this is to Elvira, Tell It Like It Is! does have some notable difference, chief among them how Frazier turned to outside writers for his slow ones this time around, cutting George Davis & Lee Diamond’s “Tell It Like It Is” (popularized, of course, by Aaron Neville) and Curly Putnam’s “Green Green Grass of Home.” He also cut a song from former rockabilly rebel Ronnie Self in “Home in My Hand,” a relentless celebration of the rock & roll lifestyle later cut by Brinsley Schwarz and Dave Edmunds. With its references to one-night stands and smoking weed, “Home in My Hand” is far wilder than anything on either Frazier record, a reflection of the loosening times in 1967, but it’s an isolated incident here. Most of the record reflects its time with a production that’s ever so slightly splashier than Elvira, feeling a bit more showbiz than its predecessor, an impression that’s made somehow stronger by Frazier’s slight emphasis on novelties, including “Clawhammer Clyde” and “Honk’N Tonk,” a tale of two fleas. These silly songs and the glitzy production suggest that Frazier and Capitol were gunning for a hit, but they weren’t gunning too hard, as the basic sound of Frazier’s music hadn’t changed: it was still funky country, rock & roll, and R&B that didn’t sound like anyone else outside of Charlie Rich in 1967. Again, Frazier was just slightly ahead of his time, predating such root-rocking mavericks as Tony Joe White, and while that didn’t result in a big hit, it did make for music that has aged better than a lot of country or rock & roll records from that year.

His connection with Slum Village (he’s been producing tracks for them since 2002) and his Motor City roots make him an easy comparison to the late James Yancey, and while there are certainly similarities in their styles, Black Milk is much more than just a Dilla protégé. He’s a smart artist with an ear for melody, as likely to invoke Just Blaze as he is the left coast, which makes him well-suited to work with a number of MCs, the variety in his beats able to match the variety in the others’ flows. His preference is Detroit rappers, and his records are full of collaborations with Phat Kat, SV members, and Guilty Simpson (with whom he’s planning a full-length, alongside Sean Price), but as his recent — and very excellent — mixtape with Bishop Lamont, Caltroit, showed, he’s got the skills to produce for (and spit with) MCs around the country.

His latest project, The Set Up, which came out in March, pairs him with fellow Detroiter Fat Ray (with whom he worked in the group B.R. Gunna) and shows how far he’s developed even since Popular Demand, one of 2007’s best releases. Black Milk easily holds his own on the mic, but it’s what he does on the boards that’s most impressive. “Lookout,” with its emphasis on percussion, bounces against Fat Ray’s fluid delivery, making melody out of rhythm, while “Nothing to Hide” mixes what could easily be disparate elements (soul samples, spacey Madlib-esque keys, and triumphant horns) into something completely seamless. The beats can be complex and strange at times, but Black’s insistence on well-constructed, interesting, tuneful production makes them both approachable and memorable, and makes the album an early contender for year-end best-of lists.

• “Lookout” (From The Set Up)
• “Take Control” (From The Set Up)
• “Sound the Alarm” (From Popular Demand)
• “Run” (From Guilty Simpson’s Ode to the Ghetto)
• “Survival Kit” (From Phat Kat’s Carte Blanche)

Like Vancouver’s Young and Sexy doing a simply lovely cover of Big Star’s “Thirteen”.

Elsewhere you can hear the ultra-twee Bicycles ripping through a ramshackle “B-B-Bicycles”, thrill to the wild sound of the Golden Dogs in concert or discover the power pop glory of the Pointed Sticks from a 1979 (!) session.

And as if that wasn’t enough, they also have sessions by bands and artists from other lesser areas of the world like the U.S. and U.K. Stephen Malkmus, Sufjan Stevens and Andrew W.K. are some of the big names but a careful trawl will find all kinds of pleasant surprises. Like an epic length version of “Impossible” by the Shout Out Louds recorded at this year’s SXSW.

For your protection, here are a couple safety measures:

1. If you’re e-mailed a URL and you’re unsure about its authenticity, test it at rickblock.com.

2. Stay away from YouTube’s featured videos on their homepage. All of them have been converted to rickrolls for April Fool’s Day. Also, beware of lyricwiki and isohunt today.

3. Protect your phone from rickrolls by adding yourself to the “Do Not Call List” here:

4. Don’t open your mail if the return address is from noisebot.com. It could be one of these.

5. Just because you’ve been roll’d once or twice, don’t think you’re off the hook. There are hundreds of variations, and your nemesis may be giving you a super rickroll or a rickroll Indian style.

If you’re wondering how Rick himself feels about the new craze, he actually seems to be a very good sport in this interview. Oh, and if you want to see the new Radiohead video, you can totally trust this link.

 
Yelle - “Je Veux Te Voir”
Busting out of France with a sound that mixes hip-hop, techno jams (think Technotronic), and a jolt of reliably snarky Gallic wit, Yelle has sass and style to spare. This song is one of the best on her debut album Pop-Up, but you could pick any one at random and hit instant Technicolor disco-dolly Nirvana. And this video makes me want to hit the gym as soon as possible…
 

 
 
Ja Confetti - “Hold Nu Kay”
Ja Confetti are a duo (Yvonne Coco and Ella Mau) from Denmark but they sound like they are from the moon. Produced by Eddie Confetti, the beats and music are a weird mix of urban pop, dub, hip-hop and, uh, just plain weirdness. Add the two vocalists and it sounds like an unholy mix of Ace of Base, Jade, and Coco Rosie with a big twee cherry on top. Their visual style is pretty nutso, too.
 

 
 
Sally Shapiro - “Hold Me So Tight (The Cansecos Remix)” (MySpace)
If you need something a little less giddy and brash, turn to Sweden’s Sally Shapiro. She’s a blog favorite so we might as well join the party, too. Her album Disco Romance has glittery tunes but a deeply melancholy soul that would only bum out the dancers while they got down. Cue Remix Romance, a set of tunes from the album reworked (for the most part) for the dancefloor. A little extra glitter here, a little less sad Sally there, and we’ve got nothing but good times. Check the Cansecos‘ pretty brilliant bongo-fied tarting up of “Hold Me So Tight” for a taste of the light-hearted, light-footed fun to be found on the record.

Some of the month’s best tracks:
Goldfrapp, “Little Bird” (from Seventh Tree).
Hot Chip, “Bendable Poseable” (from Made in the Dark).
Cryptacize, “Cosmic Sing-A-Long” (from Dig That Treasure).
No Kids, “I Love the Weekend” (from Come Into My House).
School of Language, “Rockist, Pt. 1″ (from Sea from Shore).
Rumble Strips, “Motorcycle” (from Girls and Weather).
Bob Mould, “Return to Dust” (from District Line).
Antietam, “The Moor” (from Opus Mixtum).
Indian Jewelry, “Walk Through Fire” (from We Are the Wild Beast).
Earth, “The Bee Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull” (from The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull).
Beach House, “Heart of Chambers” (from Devotion).

Bonus video for “Heart of Chambers”:

Ashford & Simpson, “Over and Over” (from The Warner Bros. Years: Hits, Remixes & Rarities). At the risk of being somewhat heretical, Sylvester’s version of this song — a certified classic disco single — is nowhere near as stunning as the version by Ashford & Simpson (who wrote it). Sylvester’s “Over and Over” is overstuffed, too busy. The blasting horns get in the way, and why is everyone in such a hurry? Ashford & Simpson’s version, despite being remarkably slower and roomier, feels so much more alive than its better-known counterpart, throbbing, swooning, and dazzling. It’s the two at their absolute best (which means it is up there with “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”).

Michael Jackson, “Baby Be Mine” (from Thriller: 25th Anniversary Edition). It’s kind of painful to imagine how many times record needles shot past the grooves of this song to go back to “Thriller” or (shudder) “The Girl Is Mine.” Out of the nine songs on Thriller, it probably got the least amount of attention, but when placed in the context of the still-fresh sythesizer-heavy club records that were big in 1982 — “D” Train’s “You’re the One for Me,” Evelyn King’s “Love Come Down,” Atlantic Starr’s “Circles,” Gwen Guthrie’s “It Should Have Been You,” Howard Johnson’s “So Fine” — it holds its own and then some. It’s one of several reasons why songwriter/arranger/producer Rod Temperton was borderline genius.

Other favorites from the month’s new releases and reissues:

Akrobatik - A to the K (from Absolute Value)
Algebra - No Idea (from Purpose)
Patti Austin - Body Language (from The Very Best of Patti Austin: The Singles)
Erykah Badu - Soldier (from New Amerykah, Pt 1.: 4th World War)
Deux - Game and Peformance (from Bippp: French Synth Wave 1979-85)
Ronnie Foster - Mystic Brew (from Droppin’ Science)
Goldfrapp - Some People (from Seventh Tree)
Janet - Rock with U (from Discipline)
KC - Say Cheese (from Step Up 2: The Streets)
Kleeer - Taste the Music (from The Very Best of Kleeer)
Justus Köhncke - Yacht (from Safe and Sound)
Prosumer & Murat Tepeli - Latenight (from Serenity)
Psyche - From Beyond (from Carl Craig - Sessions)
Pete Rock - Comprehend (from NY’s Finest)
Lizz Wright - I Idolize You (from The Orchard)