Through the Sparks

If you’ll excuse the blatantly obvious for a second, one of the awesome things about the Internet is that you don’t have to be in New York, L.A., Chicago, Boston, Austin, or one of a handful of anointed college scenes to get noticed. Although, no matter where you are, you need a MySpace page come hell or high water. Through the Sparks aren’t in one of the Chosen Towns—they’re in Birmingham, Alabama, which by all accounts has a thriving local scene but probably won’t make any “The next” lists nonetheless. Plus, get this, Through the Sparks record in an actual garage. How…quaint. It’s enough to make you regain faith in American music. It also helps that the music itself is easy on the ears: a thinking feller’s mix of guitar and piano rock that’s both down-home and sophisticated. Any inherent Birmingham-ness or Southernness in general you might be looking to place on these polished pop articles will be as elusive as the band’s lyrics are charmingly obtuse. Maybe that’s the other awesome thing about the Internet: you can be from a scene without necessarily being of it—provided you’re on MySpace.

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Charlotte Gainsbourg

If classic French pop singers are my weakness, then Charlotte Gainsbourg is kryptonite. She’s not only the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg, France’s version of Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen combined, but she’s gifted with Gallic melancholy—wispy melody-making that is perpetually running from the spotlight but never making it all the way out—that seems to be instilled in the French, or at least those who sing, from birth. (Although, Charlotte is half-British, so perhaps there’s a bit of Anglo resignation there as well.) “The Songs That We Sing” is one such number, which despite being in her English tongue loses none of its quiet desperation. You can hear AND see for yourself, because Michel Gondry shot the video. Oh, Charlotte’s also an actress of some renown and both her acting and her appearance could be termed, if you will, “magically delicious.” I hadn’t noticed that until just now. Had you?

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Alex Delivery

Alex Delivery is comprised of members from former Eastern Bloc nations and Korea, so the harsh realities of totalitarian communism aren’t just a trendy design concept to them (even if they all met in art school), it’s a way of life. You can tell on Komad, which starts like the cast of Stomp lost one of their own and decided to throw him a New Orleans-style funeral march. Then, it keeps going… It’s borderline infuriating if you’re not in the right mindset for 10 minutes of dissonance, but if you allow yourself to get into Alex Delivery’s dystopian groove, you might just stomp along with them.

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Astrid Swan

At the risk of sounding like one of the tools in an Astrid Swan song, there’s nothing more alluring than a complex female musician. Of course, the Finnish singer/songwriter is all too aware of this, as the title alone of “They Need You If They Think You Love Them” makes clear. So, perhaps I think she loves me, or perhaps I just like the sharp wit of her lyrics and the tender knowing of her vocals. Think Tori Amos in moments of levity or Aimee Mann at the piano. It’s something lovely, if heartbreaking, if totally intoxicating.

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Future Clouds and Radar

The name might lead you to believe you’ve discovered a bedroom-dwelling nocturne with a sampler and a laptop, but in fact it’s an apt choice for Robert Harrison’s (Cotton Mather) lilting latest project. Harrison is a friend of the gee-tar, which makes sense for an album recorded outside of Austin. But he’s also a purveyor of all the little things that make for twinkling psychedelic pop. Floating through these catchy songs about SubUrbia and jumping from Harrison’s Lennon-esque tongue are touches of bouyant pop maestros past and present: the Beatles, Flaming Lips, Beach Boys, Mercury Rev, Wilco, and Austin’s own 13th Floor Elevators. Not that you need such name-dropping to ride Future Clouds and Radar’s wave, but you may as well know ahead of time that you’re in for an aural vacation as well as a trip.

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Tobias Hellkvist

Tobias Hellkvist is a Swedish singer/songwriter/guitarist who came to me by way of Efterklang, whose sweetly melancholy “Step Aside” Hellkvist treats with great charity on his own cover. His winsome yet penetrating vocals might remind you of Iron & Wine, as will his gentle acoustic melodies. Likewise his instrumental tracks hang in the air like autumn leaves. Sorry, MySpace seems to have made it next to impossible (at least to my limited abilities) to directly link to their MP3s anymore, but after downloading “Step Aside,” head to Hellkvist’s MySpace page and give your day an extra dozen minutes of sublime reflection.

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Sex Mob

With all due respect to Wynton Marsalis and his Lincoln Center crew, jazz traditionalists are…well, they’re jackasses. Jazz was the definition of musical adventure until Upper West Side honkies started trading in their philharmonic memberships for that classic jazz sound. Don’t get me wrong, I like to listen to Miles, Coltrane, Satchmo and the Duke as much as the next person. But Miles Davis wasn’t even revisiting Kind of Blue five years after he made it, so why should anyone else be revisiting it 40 years later? Sex Mob isn’t so traditional. Their meandering horns and smooth rhythms fall somewhere between the avant-garde and the smoky club, and the extracurricular touches—samples, megaphone lyrics, deep electro hums—surely are more thoroughly enjoyed with a doobie than a highball. Indeed, like Medeski Martin & Wood, Sex Mob seems to be a hit among jam band enthusiasts, and while they’re jackasses too, at least they’re jackasses who can have some fun without the faux-witty repartee.

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Maher Shalal Hash Baz

Maher Shalal Hash Baz primarily consists of Tori Kudo, a Japanese composer/musician who has been making somber dissonance for nearly two decades now. The name comes from the Book of Isaiah and roughly translates from Hebrew as “To speed to the spoil, he hasteneth the prey.” As lesser preached Bible passages go, it ranks up there for me with “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” But I digress… Kudo doesn’t just make messy music—he appears to these ears to be a true inventor of improvisational balladry. “Different Daylight” sounds at first like an early rehearsal in which the instruments are all being played by Kudo at the same time. But at the center of that clash of horns, strings, guitar and other odd noises is the steady, knowing voice of Kudo himself, like a tour guide through a sandstorm. He has said of his own music, “Error in performance dominates MSHB cassette, which is like our imperfect life.” Yes, but if you listen to “What’s Your Business Here, Elijiah?” (sorry, Domino isn’t down with the free MP3 tip) you’ll find that imperfection can sound pretty close to perfect after all.

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The Linemen

Full disclosure: I know Kevin Butterfield, the lead singer of St. Louis’ The Linemen. I don’t know him well, but I did once make him pancakes. And before you go getting ideas about this happily married man, I’ve made strictly platonic pancakes for plenty of people. You could even say it’s a specialty of mine. Kevin seemed to like them, at least. Anyhow, The Linemen are good old-fashioned country (think Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, George Jones) in both sound and spirit: Butterfield’s crooning tenor favors the kind of heartbreak that’ll get you down without putting you out and Scott Swartz’s pedal steel seems to be singing the melodies rather than twanging them. It’s a toe-tapping affair just right for road trips through the heartland. And if that ain’t your cup of tea, you might consider switching to whiskey.

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MudKids

Perhaps many of you are too young to remember the “Super Bowl Shuffle”, that perpetual answer to a trivia question that took the nation by storm in 1985, the last time Da Bears were in the big game. Sweetness talkin’ about how “runnin’ the ball is like makin’ romance”; Jim McMahon, who is so white and uncool that the Utah high school where he graduated is named “Roy,” wearing his glasses and rappin’ anyway; Mike Singletary trying hard not to look like Urkel before there was even such a thing—in other words, it was to 10-year-old boys and 40-year-old men what “We Are the World” was to 10-year-old girls and 40-year-old women a year earlier. But that was two decades ago. Rex Grossman? Sorry dude, but you’re no Mac. The real QB is down the interstate in Indy, and now he’s got a fight song by Indy homeboys the Mudkids, part of the capital city’s Musical Family Tree. This sorta-crunky version may not feature any of the players, but when you’re droppin’ lines like “We love the Colts ‘cuz the blue’s the hottest part of the flame,” you don’t need no stinkin’ Chi-Town shufflers!

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