Gram Rabbit - Party in the Desert

Gram Rabbit - They rock. They dance. They glam. They electro. They clash. They country. They sexy. They have a thing for bunnies and cults. They from Joshua Tree in the deserts of California, and there's something weird and beautiful about them. Their sound is luscious and somehow manages to be fun and sinister at the same time.

I would say they remind me most of Madonna, Lady Gaga, and the Ting-Tings, but way more strange than any of those. In that sense, they're more like Electric Six. Their latest album, Miracles and Metaphors, continues their awesomeness. Here's my favorite track on that album, Candy Flip, and below are some other great tracks from their catalog.



The Rest of Us Sleep and In My Book off of RadioAngel & the RobotBeat


Bloody Bunnies off of Cultivation


Cowboy-Up off of Music to Start a Cult To


Her Secret Power off of The Desert Sound EP - Listen to it here.

Restless Blogger

Restless People is a band from Brooklyn (where else) that has a fun, tropical, electronic sound. They sound like a cross between Passion Pit, Vampire Weekend, and Yeasayer. If you like those groups, you'll probably think these guys are the bee's knees also.

Check out the single, Days of Our Lives, and you'll know what I mean.




Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that there's a lot of folks saying Restless People pretty much ripped off this song, Two Months Off, from a much more established British band called Underworld. They are pretty similar, but I would say the Restless People song is more interesting. And the other songs on their new album are strong and (hopefully) not ripped off.

Me Make Pasta

My friend Maureen has an amazing blog on real vegetarian cooking at The Vegetarian Salmon, and she keeps pestering me to cook more, so even though I suck at the cooking, the motivating to cook, and the blogging about the cooking, I'm (sort of) really trying to do better.

Last week I bought some awesome olives from the olive bar at Gigante and bought a yellow squash with the intention of doing some sort of pasta thing. There's this pasta that's probably been in my cabinet since I moved in in 2002, but it doesn't go bad, right? Well I never got around to it, and the squash got squishy. So that didn't work, but this week, I again got my intentions up and bought another squash and some fresh garlic.

I'll start backwards. The dish was OK the night I made it, but I had leftovers today and it was really good. All the flavors had soaked together in the pasta and it was pretty darn tasty. I guess that's a semi-success. Here's what it looked like.

Here's what I did.

I cut up the squash while heating some olive oil and a pressed garlic clove in a small pan. Then I set the water boiling. As the oil heated, I cut up the squash. Then I threw it in and started pitting and cutting the olives. I sauteed the squash for a while. I just tasted it until it seemed good and cooked. I think there may be some more cook-ish way of telling, but this seemed to work. I heated up some leftover TJ's Arrabiata sauce as the pasta went in the boiling water. Eventually I added everything together in a plastic bowl (Maureen says this is bad, but I'm not sure why), added some fresh Parmesan and my signature garlic bread

(Take a pre-sliced, frozen multi-grain baguette and throw some butter, oregano, basil, garlic, and garlic salt on it and bake until it looks good.)

I know I used the wrong pasta, and apparently the wrong bowl, but this wasn't bad. I put together food I liked, it was pretty easy, quick, and it sort of worked.

Madcon - Soul Hop

Madcon is a hip-hop group with a huge dose of soul production. If the Roots went all out with the funk soul music, you'd pretty much have Madcon. There are keys, horns, and soulful choruses. Beggin' is an immediate hit that you may have already heard. The question is will these guys be the next Black Eyed Peas, the next Outkast, or more tragically, the next Pharcyde?

I also like Wholehearted, Liar, and Shine.



Admittedly, this video is not so great with the respecting of the women, but what can I say, I like the song.

Sia - We Are Born

Sia is my favorite. She's adorable. She can sing like an angel. She's quirky. She has great visual style (check out that album cover). She writes fun, pop music with an undertone of earnest emotion. You will love her.

I pretty much like all of the tracks on her new album, but here are my favorites:

Clap Your Hands is a pure pop gem without being saccharine sweet.



You've Changed is a hot dance track. Remixes already abound. The ones with Detroit DJ Lauren Flax are particularly good. (I like the original remix, but I couldn't find a link for it.)

The Fight is an anthem, perfect for singing along, pumping your fist, and jumping around.

Stop Trying is a throwback to 80s pop, a la Katrina and the Waves or Tears for Fears.

Enjoy. Enjoy. Enjoy.

Fatboy Slim, David Byrne, and a Thousand Great Female Vocalists

I'll grant you the concept of a musical album about the biography of Imelda Marcos, wife of 80s Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, sounds odd. I'll grant you that the pairing of Talking Heads front man and musical carnivore David Byrne with DJ and dance impressario Fatboy Slim might also seem icongruous. However, throw in a cast of a dozen of the most talented female vocalists around and the darn thing really works. I don't like every track, but it's interesting, funky, fun, music. Each song clearly melds at least three great musical minds. In each one, you can hear the influence of the singer: the Sharon Jones track is classic funk; the Santigold track sounds like nouveau dance-pop; the Kate Pierson track is quirky rock; the Nellie McKay track weaves a laid-back folky beat; and on and on.

My favorites are:

Dancing Together featuring Sharon Jones of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
Men Will Do Anything featuring the great British soul singer, Alice Russell
The Whole Man featuring Kate Pierson of the B-52s
Never So Big featuring Sia
Please Don't featuring Santigold
American Troglodyte (one of the only songs on which Byrne sings)
How Are You? featuring Nellie McKay
Eleven Days featuring Cyndi Lauper
Don't You Agree featuring Róisín Murphy

The album also features Florence (of the Machine), Tori Amos, St. Vincent, Martha Wainwright, Camille, and Natalie Merchant.

Fresh Figs

I was at Trader Joe's over the weekend and bought a bunch of fresh figs. I love fresh figs, but I rarely get to eat them. When I was growing up in Florida, we had a fig tree in the front lawn, and we would just pick 'em and eat 'em whenever we could. Plus they are so pretty. The problem is that I have to eat them before they all go bad. So I was eating them just by themselves when I thought of mixing them up with some fried cubes of cheese (I used a cheese TJ's helpfully calls Frying Cheese), walnuts, and crackers. It was all things good in this world.

Foxy Shazam-wow!

Sometimes you just have to give a band props for sheer awesomeness. The name of this band (Foxy Shazam for fuck's sake!!) their glam-rock over the top arena anthems, and that Semi-Pro, 70s blaxploitation inspired album cover combine to make Foxy Shazam the awesomest band from Cincinnati right now. I would call them a cross between Queen, Faith No More, and Like a Prayer-era Madonna. Connect, Count Me Out, and Unstoppable are my favorites. I promise that you will hit the Like button.

Halloumi - Saltiest Cheese Ever

Although my motivation for cooking has waned since I started the blog, I've had some complaints from folks that I have not been blogging about food for a while. I wanted to set the record straight. I have cooked a few things, but I just haven't been blogging.

I tried making some halloumi the other day. The recipe was fairly easy to follow, and I would say worked fairly well. It took longer than I thought in part because the recipe does not really specify how long it should take. It tasted fine, but I think that no matter what one does with halloumi, it's going to come out a bit like (what I imagine) salted pork tastes like, a bit dry, tough, and overwhelmingly salty. Maybe for vegetarians, this is just what you're looking for once in a while, but I wish maybe there was a slightly less salty, less tough version of this food.

I threw mine into some heated up frozen veggies, and it did make a decent combo.

Happy, Maureen??

Walk Right and Hit 'Em Up Style

So there was this band, Maata Haari, and they made this song, Walk Right, and then they broke up. It's a grinding, blues riff that makes my lip snarl like I'm doing an Elvis impersonation. She Goes Til' She's Gone is pretty solid, too.

Walk Right by Maata Haari






Carolina Chocolate Drops are the rare modern-day bluegrass band that's composed entirely of black folks. Aside from the novelty, they got chops. I particularly like their cover of Blu Cantrell's Hit 'Em Up Style. The other song I like from their latest album is Snowden's Jig.

• Hit 'Em Up Style by Carolina Chocolate Drops

More Carolina Chocolate Drops music on iLike

Galactic, Ozomatli, and Daniel Merriweather

I always believed that New Orleans funk outfit, Galactic, is at their best when they have vocals and a full horn section. Witness this amazing song, You Don't Know, from their latest, Ya-Ka-May. I dare you not to move, in particular when the horns start really hitting it hard. I also recommend Boe Money, Cineramascope, Double It, Heart of Steel, and Bacchus.




Ozomatli's new album, Fire Away, is strong through and through with radio-friendly gems like 45, It's Only Paper, Elysian Persuasion, Malagasy Shock, and All Around the World. It's sort of surprising and expected at the same time to hear such a mature, strong album from a group that's been around for so long, but if anything, they're getting better. My favorite track, though, is Love Comes Down; it bends one's expectations of Ozo, showcasing a slower, more melodic, emotionally weighty side of their music. The only place I found online where you can hear the whole track is on myspace.


Daniel Merriweather is the latest English soul singer to benefit from Mark Ronson's slick and solid soul production. They collaborated on both of Ronson's solo albums. Their cover of The Smiths' Stop Me was about a million times better than the original. On Merriweather's solo debut, his duet with DC MC Wale, Change, is of note, as well as Not Giving Up, Water and a Flame (another duet, this time with fellow Ronson collaborator Adele), and Chainsaw. I'm not a lyric fans, but I do love when Merriweather sings, "Giving myself to you is like giving myself to a chainsaw. You keep cutting me open wide. Is that the only thing that you're good for?" It seems like a heavy metal lyric, but it fits perfectly in this sweet little number.

Javelin - Musical Omnivores

Javelin is a breath of fresh air in the music landscape. They are a pair of cousins from Providence (now based in Brooklyn, of course) well steeped in the mashed up musical styles of the best of modern music. On one track, they'll sound like Thievery Corporation, on another Daft Punk or The Go! Team, and then they'll just sound like a couple of guys with some Casios, a drum machine, and a Coke bottle. It's pretty damn awesome.

My favorites are On It On It, Intervales Theme, and Off My Mind.

The best thing about Javelin is that you can listen to the whole album here.

Bonobo - Not just a horny primate

Ninja Tune DJ Bonobo's latest album is a solid trip-hop effort. Two of the tracks are absolutely fantastic: All In Forms and Animals. Even if you don't think this is your type of music, give the songs a listen at least once all the way through. Bonobo builds a mood and uses dynamic beat changes and instrumentation to pack an emotional punch. In particular, these songs remind me of Cinematic Orchestra.

Check 'em out. If you like these two, his best all-time track is Between the Lines (featuring Bajka). Freakin' jazz flute man. Always a plus.

As always, if you like the songs, pay the man, Shirley.

More Fabulous Ladies - Quadron, tUnE-yArDs and V.V. Brown

Quadron is a Danish dance-pop duo that reminds me of Erykah Badu's first album. The songs are slinky, sly, and smooth. The beats are neo-soul/jazz lo-fi affairs. Average Fruit and
Horse are both lovely. Slippin is a catchy doo-wop affair. Jeans is a little funky masterpiece.



tUnE-yArDs is a one-woman sound machine from Northampton, MA named Merrill Garbus. She takes a Beck inspired any sound is a good sound ethic and creates undefinable music that's melodic and unique. I can hear tinges of world-music, twee, and folk influences as well. Although Garbus plays with sounds, by far her greatest instrument is her amazing, unbridled, and unpredictable voice which she often loops over itself even when performing live. There are several tracks I'd recommend: Hatari, Sunlight, News, Jumping Jack, Safety, Want Me To, and Hap-B.



Finally, V.V. Brown is a soul-pop singer from Britain. She's well (perhaps overly) produced and writes songs that are irresistibly easy to sing and dance along to. If you need something sweet and low-cal, then she's for you. Check out Shark in the Water, L.O.V.E, and Everybody.
Here's the official video for Shark in the Water

Feeling blue? Girl pop will make you feel better.

For the next few days, I'm going to post about my favorite female artists from the recent months. Today I'll start with Annie and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Annie's music is pure pop. If she were in the States, she'd be Britney Spears, but since she's Norwegian, I can listen to her and still be moderately cool. I'd recommend My Love Is Better, The Breakfast Song and Loco.



Charlotte Gainsbourg has more of an indie sound. Her vocal style would be at home among the late 90s power pop of Liz Phair or Juliana Hatfield, but the songs are sparely arranged, with current folk rock elements (as might be expected from an album produced and largely written by Beck). I'd recommend Me and Jane Doe and Voyage.

Hudson Mohawke - Spacey DJ Guy

These two tracks by DJ Hudson Mohawke are happy, bouncy, high pitched anthems of electronic mayhem.

Enjoy if you like RJD2, Prefuse 73, Emerson Lake and Palmer, or Yes.

Fuse


Rising 5

Lala's Dead - but my blog lives on

Just a quick note to say that most of the links on this blog bring you to Lala which Apple bought and then killed. So as far as I know of, there's no other site where you can legally listen to an entire track. I guess from now on, I'll have to use links to YouTube because there's just no other choice. I would continue to encourage you to buy music you like or buy merchandise from the artist or something so that they get money from their art.

Long live Lala.com. Boo Apple.

http://www.lala.com/

Wolfmother - Rock Like It's the 80s

In the heyday of the 80s, bands wore tight leather pants, had bushy manes of manly hair, band names that sounded vaguely tough, ridiculous album covers, and the music was HEAVY METAL. Welcome, Wolfmother, to the 80s. Wolfmother just plain rocks. They play muscular metal that doesn't wander off into speed, stoner, satanic, prog, thrash, punk, or any other adjective you can put in front of metal. It's just plain heavy metal. And it rocks.

Wolfmother hit it slightly large on their eponymous first album with the descriptively titled single, Woman. The cover is a dark painting of a pale half-naked woman with wings and a tail standing on the shore of a raging ocean. Wolfmother are not subtle and are unapologetically simple. Other songs on Wolfmother, the album, that rock are Tales, Love Train, and Vagabond. Vagabond was used to great effect as the soundtrack to the great montage sequence in (500) Days of Summer when our romantic hero returns from a broken heart by rededicating his life to the manly pursuit of architecture.

Wolfmother - Wolfmother

On Wolfmother's latest release, Cosmic Egg, they continue to perfect their heavy rocking, high-pitched singing style. My favorite tracks are: New Moon Rising (the get tough song), White Feather (the radio sing-a-long), In The Morning (the power ballad), 10,000 Feet (the scary song), Cosmonaut (the sci-fi song), Caroline (more power balladry), and Phoenix (the rock epic).

Cosmic Egg [Deluxe] - Wolfmoth...

Bibi Tanga & The Selenites

Bibi Tanga & The Selenites have a signature sound, combining afro-pop, funk and trip-hop dance grooves. Tanga's vocals moan and pump over the polyrhythmic beats and the chorus of female singers.

They only have an EP out now, but I'll definitely be looking out for the full length coming out soon.

Recommended if you like: Michael Franti and Spearhead, Fela/Femi Kuti, Anjelique Kidjo, Les Nubians, etc.

It's The Earth That Moves - Bi...

Groove Armada - I Hear You Baby

Over the last year or so, I've been sifting through Groove Armada's discography and unearthed some great dance tracks. So rather than recommend a particular album or track, I'm creating my own track list of GA's greatest hits for you.

Needless to say , I haven't even listened to everything they have yet, but if you like Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Bassment Jaxx or any big beat, dance DJs, at the very least, you'll probably like GA's best songs.

From The Best Of (2004):
If Everybody Looked the Same
I See You Baby
My Friend
Purple Haze
Easy
Think Twice

The Best Of - Groove Armada

From Soundboy Rock (2007):
Get Down
What's Your Version
Song 4 Mutya (Out of Control)

Soundboy Rock - Groove Armada

From the Groove Armada EP (2009):
Drop The Tough
Go

EP - Groove Armada

Amanda Blank - Baltimore's answer to M.I.A.

Amanda Blank is on a bandwagon, but she's on a pretty good bandwagon. Blank follows in the steps of M.I.A. and Santigold as a female singer/rapper with an eclectic, electronic sound. In light of some of the explicit nature of her lyrics and her riot grrrrrl delivery, she also owes a huge debt to Peaches. That being said, she reminds me most of the great female hip-hop trio from the late 90s, Luscious Jackson (whom you should of course check out if you're unfamiliar with them).

My three favorite tracks are Make It Take It, Something Bigger, Something Better, and Shame On Me.

I Love You - Amanda Blank

Alexi Murdoch - Away We Go

Alexi Murdoch is one of these Nick Drake guys. If you like Nick Drake, you'll like Mr. Murdoch's pretty voice, just slightly tinged with regret and longing, and his lovely acoustic guitar work. He worked on the Away We Go soundtrack and released some new material for the movie. I'd recommend Breathe and All My Days. Orange Sky is old, but is one of his best songs. While I'm on the subject of his old songs, Dream About Flying is also worth a listen, but isn't available on this album.

Away We Go Original Motion Pic...

Lentils With Curried Tarka

My sister, Rachel, sent me this recipe by the same guy who's book I've been mostly following. It was pretty quick and easy and also didn't require a ton of shopping.


I made it with some modifications and it was pretty tasty. I mixed it with brown rice cooked with a little cumin and turmeric, and I used heated up whole wheat tortilla in place of Naan. It works for me.

• I used vegetable broth instead of coconut milk. Probably less fattening that way, but also saltier.
  
• FFR, one bunch of scallions is only about half a cup, so I was short on scallions for the recipe.
  
• I used Garam Masala in place of the curry specified in the recipe. Pretty similar, and maybe better.
  
• The lentils took longer than 30 minutes. At the end I took the top off so I could get rid of the water more quickly.
  
• I didn't have a lemon to zest, so I just used lemon juice. Seemed OK.
  
• The recipe didn't specify how much cilantro to use so I chopped up half a bunch. That seemed to work.

Here's the recipe on the NYT website.

Lauren Flax - You've Changed (now dance!)

Lauren Flax, with help from Sia, shows that you can change a man and when you do, you can make a great dance track out of it.

You’ve Changed (feat. Sia) (Or...

Sollilaquists of Sound - No More Heroes

Eclectic hip-hop from Orlando. As innovative and creative as Outkast and Black Eyed Peas (well, at least BEP's early stuff was innovative and creative). Also remind me of Public Enemy at times. You won't hear so many different styles on most hip-hop albums. On top of that, No More Heroes is a concept album. How quaint. SOS feature a female vocalist, grinding guitars, hard beats and acrobatic flow. How many groups would name drop Cab Calloway? Not too many, I tell you.

Standout tracks are:

Marvel, New Sheriff in Town, Gotham City Chase Scene and Dolla Dolla

No More Heroes - Solillaquists...

The Heavy - How You Like Me Now and No Time

How You Like Me Now is a modern-day James Brown jam. If you like the Godfather of Soul, this track is for you. The drums are slammin and the horns are jammin. It's classic soul from some white guys from Britain. Makes sense.

How You Like Me Now (Single Ed...

No Time is a grimey, blues-rock tune. It starts with a scream and drives on through. My man sounds dirty and angry. I wonder how many packs of cigarettes a day he has to smoke to get that growl? The song really tears it up about two and a half minutes in when there's a marching drum breakdown over an urgent horn riff. Unh!

No Time - The Heavy

Mellowdrone - Angry Bear

Drone is a good name for these guys. They have a lo-fi aesthetic that is reminiscent of Morphine, Neil Young, or Lou Barlow (Folk Implosion and Sebadoh). The songs have a slow burn, but don't hesitate to meander into the realm of catchy choruses and ooh-oohs. There's even a rock-a-billy vibe going on some of the tracks.

Standout Tracks: Big Winner, Esmerelda, Wherever You May Go

Angry Bear - Mellowdrone

Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue

Sounds like Prefuse 73 with a strong folk flavor. Hip-hop with melody and soul. Badly Drawn Boy finds Pro Tools. Most of the songs feel like their made up of found sounds, or a guy in his underwear sitting around in his sparsely furnished flat upstairs with a computer and a guitar. My favorite is Lovers' Carvings, which relegates the computer to merely a beat machine in the background, while Bibio's voice and guitar take center stage. Unfortunately, the intro to the song is about 90 seconds long and not as good, so fast forward past it to get to the good part.



Standout tracks: Ambivalence Avenue, Fire Ant, Lovers' Carvings, S'Vive, Dwrcan

Unfortunately, you can't get the full tracks on Lala this time, so listen to it on YouTube or just preview it.

Banana Bread

Once again following Bittman, I was able to make a decent Banana Bread. In the process, I bought a hand mixer, whisk, vanilla and all-purpose flour, thus beefing up my kitchen tools.

Things I learned this time:

• Mashing up butter is nearly impossible, so I don't know if you're supposed to do this, but I melted it in the microwave before mixing it with the eggs and bananas.
• Mashing up bananas works well with a fork in a small bowl before adding them to the eggs and butter.
  
• I'd wonder if I could do this without so much butter. I used a whole stick in the batter and some to grease up the pan and the TJ's Beer Bread trick of drizzling some on the top before baking.
• Hand mixers are quite strong even at the lowest setting and therefore probably require the use of a big bowl in order to not make a mess. Also, need a place to set it down when not using it without making too much of a mess.
  
• When baking and you decide you need another five minutes in the oven, do not just add five minutes to the timer and start it. Thus I ended up setting the timer for 50 minutes instead of 5 and burnt it a bit. Not the worst thing in the world.
  
• Using 50% whole wheat flour and 50% all-purpose flour worked fine.