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.