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.