Oh, Manchester, So Much To Answer For

You know what's a good holiday season soundtrack this year? Thom Yorke's still-superb The Eraser (XL 2006), that's what. Fuck the holidays this year. 2008 can't fucking come soon enough.

Where in the world did this little gem come from? Granted, I'm not so familiar with the early EBTG catalog, apart from some of their lounge-poppier offerings, but I was still nearly shocked to hear this horn-soaked jazzy number from them, let alone Tracey Thorn's coo turning almost sultry and throaty here. You could damned near slide this onto Swing Out Sister's It's Better to Travel (a terrific album, sorely overdue for a remastering) without blinking; it's that fine, and that unstereotypical of EBTG's work of the time. Dee-lish.

Pretty much sums it up.

My Launchcast just segued from Robert Plant's "Messin' with the Mekon" (from 1983's The Principle of Moments; for years I mistakenly thought it was where the Mekons got their name) to Rush's "Emotion Detector" (Power Windows, 1985). Perfect, brilliant, genius. Both songs kinda are, too (especially the latter - I will defend '80s Rush to ANYONE, anytime/anyplace).

T-Pain? Snoop Dogg don't need no stinkin' T-Pain - he can do by his own damn self! Snoop singing? Through an auto-tuner?! I'm utterly gobsmacked, as the Brits might say, by this - it's like Chromeo played without the wink. (They may be playing it straight, but there's always a "ha ha" element underlying, whether they intend it or not.) Who better to pull this off than avowed Zapp fan(atic) Snoop, who's also not unfamiliar with icy, '80s-cool synths. And this feels right from him, not a move for more adult-demo airplay, but simply his natural artistic progression/maturity. I salute producer Shawty Redd and Snoop (who wrote this), 'cause this is really lovely - Snoop's best single since "Signs."

And of course the video is BEYOND BRILLIANT. Hopefully that much is obvious.