Schneider TM - "The Light 3000". Oh, I can hear you already. I know I'm just askin' for it by posting this, a cover of The Smiths' "There Is a Light that Never Goes Out" which appeared on, among other things, TM's Binokular EP. In my opinion, it's one of the best Smiths covers ever, if not the best. A good cover should be like a Joan Rivers facelift. Lots of prodding and pulling on the surface, but with the bitch left intact underneath. Schneider TM's version doesn't lose any of the ominous sentiment but gains a turn-of-the-century twinkle.

I'm such a homosexual for using that word!

Limahl - "NeverEnding Story". I am so sorry, but I just had to. It was either this or an unrecorded operatic setting of a piece of wartime literature [although that may come later].

I've been on this disco kick for some time now, and the NeverEnding Story soundtrack fits perfectly between that and my obsession with the ephemeral nature of memory and familiarity. Anyone in his or her twenties who had anything resembling a childhood will be able to sing along to this tune. Pure, ungrated Italo Disco cheese by way of Limahl. OMG, I totally just made you go to that website!!

If you're good boys and girls, you may get another track from the NeverEnding Story soundtrack. Oh, an upturned nose, eh? What if I told you that the entire soundtrack was produced by Italo and synthpop greats Giorgio Moroder and Klaus Doldinger? Oh, now you're begging for my charity! Remember this moment next year when I'm touting gospel music as the next big thing.

Anne Sofie Von Otter & Elvis Costello - "Go Leave". Okay, let's review: world-famous Swedish operatic mezzo-soprano joins up with American rock legend Elvis Costello on the piano and a couple of Scandinavians on a solo cello and classical guitar, in a lieder-like take on the original tune by Rufus Wainwright's mother, French-Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle.

This is only one of the several standout tracks on the Von Otter/Costello album For the Stars, which includes reworkings of a few Costello numbers and ones by Brian Wilson, Lennon and McCartney, and hell… even Tom Waits. Give this song a try. It's probably the most spare of the all the tracks on the album, but whoa. If you're not even a tad misty by the time Von Otter gives a perfect humming mordent, doubling the cello solo at 2:14, then really, you have no heart and deserve to be stewed in a broth of needles.

And since I've left the props-giving to the sidebar links, I really feel I ought to take the opportunity to say: last night an mp3 blog saved my life. Tofu Hut, Gabba.Pod, Fluxblog, Tyrone Shoelaces… y'all my boys.

N.E.R.D. - "She Wants to Move [DFA Remix]". Um, if she wants to move, I hope you've got a least a couple other tunes on the decks for the night 'cos this one is good, but it's not quite cutting it.

Interestingly, though, it has less to do with the remix and more to do with the original. But it's worth a download; it's a good warm-up at a party and let's face it: having anything and everything DFA is instant hipster cred, and that's what everyone's after, right?

Björk - "Where Is the Line". I posted this months ago in the old format of my media section [yes, before mp3 blogs became a thing]. But here it is again, for everyone's benefit. It's a live recording of the premiere of a brand new song that Björk performed on her world tour last summer. At the time, it was the first taste of new material since Vespertine. You can imagine everyone's surprise at the Apollo in Hammersmith. I think I may have lost control of my bladder.

Just now, I mean.

"Bombast. Hip hop. Vocal gymnastics. Middle Eastern scales. Processed sampling. Improvised mixing. Rubber bands. Stadium rock? I'd like you to meet your god… dess."

Patrick Wolf - "To the Lighthouse". This post is partially meant to mark next month's U.S. release of Patrick Wolf's brilliant album Lycanthropy. But part of me just wants to share the song with my fellow outsider—someone displaced by his own foreign ideologies and comportment. I can't call it disaffectation. It's something more emotional and ultimately more hopeful. If you've lived your life on the fringe, feeling cheated by your community, by your nation, by your friends, and by your love, then this song's for you.

Dreamers of unrealized dreams, outlandish thinkers, freaks—stop throwing stones. Let us gather at the lighthouse. Patrick Wolf will greet us there with his violin, his laptop, and his old bicycle. He calls himself a folk singer. Perhaps we are his folk.

Shooby Taylor - "Stout-Hearted Man". There's not much to say. It has to be heard to be believed. Shooby Taylor took up scat singing in the 1950's as an homage to his own hero, Babs Gonzales. His inimitable style of brutal syllabic spitting and blowing, the incongruity between his vocal line and the accompaniment—they make Taylor's voice unmistakable and unlike any other recording artist in the genre. His recordings, though completely serious to him, only caught the ears of a few fans who traded cassette transfers of his Angel Sound sessions.

It's difficult to say how many of them enjoy Shooby strictly for laughs. But the New York Times article on him is right: ''It may seem to be incompetent and it may be laughable, but it has an identity and a palpable sense of joy. Shooby is so absurd it's impossible to be depressed and listen to his music."

Perhaps almost as interesting as Shooby Taylor's singing is the story of his rediscovery in a Newark rest home by a fan in 2002. The story [from his discovery to his death] is told here.

And for the true fan, a mostly-accurate syllabic transcription of "Stout-Hearted Man."

Rah Saw Plaw!!!!

White Knight - "Never Give Up". A release on the seminal Chicago House label DJ International Records, which was founded by Rocky Jones in 1985 to release mainly vocal house. There's not much info on White Knight. "Never Give Up" was produced by Rocky Jones and Nick H., vocals and arrangement come from Keith Nunnally, scratching from Afrika Islam, and mixing from Farley Jackmaster Funk.

Nevermind the slightly off-key vocals [soulful though they may be]. Get into the seedy, ominous string line and ghostly backup chorus; the insistent cowbell; the kicked-out drums; and that one sound. Yeah, you'll hear it at :16 and again at 4:04. It's that synthetic approximation of the word "don't" in the hyper-sycopated rhythm, followed by a ripping synth glissando. The first time I heard it, I got straight up from my seat and started swinging my arms and dancing about my bedroom. Beware.

Can you even believe that when this was released in 1986, it was cutting edge?

Caetano Veloso - "Cucurrucucú Paloma". Taken directly from the audio track of Pedro Almodóvar's Hable con Ella, so enjoy the occasional clinking of glasses. The song is about a man whose lover has somehow injured him or possibly left him for reasons beyond her control. His subsequent mourning drives him to drink and later, to his own death ["They say that at night he didn't do anything but cry. They that he didn't eat and didn't do anything but drink. They swear that heaven shuddered when it heard his cry. How he suffered for her, calling out to her even as he died!"]. Over the exhales of a cello and the hushed vigil of the guitar, his voice sighs "Ay, ay, ay, ay!" as he dies of una pasión mortal.

The singer recounts the legend: every morning a dove comes to sing at the woman's lonely little house with its little doors wide open ["They swear that the dove is actually his soul that is still waiting for her to come back—her, the unfortunate."]. With the most gorgeous and haunting falsetto, Veloso coos the dove's weary cry for his love.

I heard this for the first time the other night while watching the movie. I was talking to my friend as the scene came on, and my sentence just trailed off and I was completely arrested by the sound and the story. If you're even slightly weepy, I'd be careful. You'll be hanging over your knees and throwing the windows open after hearing this one.

CUCURRUCUCÚ PALOMA
by Tomás Méndez -

Dicen que por las noches no más se le iba en puro llorar.
Dicen que no comía, no más se le iba en puro tomar.
Juran que el mismo cielo se estremecía al oír su llanto.
Cómo sufría por ella, que hasta en su muerte la fue llamando!

"Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay", cantaba.
"Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay", gemía.
"Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay", cantaba.
De pasión mortal moría.

Que una paloma triste muy de mañana le va a cantar
a la casita sola con sus puertitas de par en par.
Juran que esa paloma no es otra cosa más que su alma,
que él todavía la espera a que regrese, la desdichada.

Cucurrucucú, paloma,
cucurrucucú, no llores.
Las piedras jamás, paloma,
qué van a saber de amores?

Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, paloma,
ya no le llores.