In Loving Memory of… EP
by Let’s Wrestle
(Stolen)

Skinny, high-on-the-neck bass lines; drumming that alternates
between supertense and bash-happy loose; gnat-in-a-metal-canister
guitar; cheapo organ; broad
British-accented vocals that wouldn’t
know flat from sharp if you slashed their bike tires with a broken Red
Stripe bottle; and an opening track that begins, “No matter how many
records I buy/I can’t fill this void”: These six songs from ultrasloppy
London indie trio Let’s Wrestle are for anyone who’s a sucker for UK
postpunk DIY. When a simple guitar line steps forward to provide the
bridge for “I’m OK, You’re OK,” a tear of joy rolls down the ghost of
John Peel’s cheek. And when teenaged vocalist/guitarist Wesley Patrick
Gonzalez solemnly declares, “It’s not cool to like Leo Sayer/So I won’t
listen to Leo Sayer/Music is my girlfriend,” it’s hard to know whether
to offer him a hug or simply keep your distance. The correct response,
naturally, is both.

“I’m That Chick”
by Mariah Carey
(Interscope)

The theme song from the new Sex and the City movie… okay,
not really—if it were, I might be tempted to actually see the
damn thing—just Mimi’s best coy disco move yet (it even quotes
Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall”), and proof she has a pulse, even if
little else about her much resembles recognizable humanity.

“Get Silly”
by V.I.C.
(Collipark)

Just the thing you weren’t aware you’d been waiting all this time
for: Soulja Boy Tell’em’s protégé. Inspirational verse:
“I’m calm like the sea/I blow like the wind/And now that I’m straight,
I’m about to act the fool again.” Wish I could get that damn toy-piano
motif out of my head, but that’s novelty hits for you. (Wish I could
get about half the orchestral hits on the chorus out of the damn song,
too, but etc.)

“Time Traveller”
by Plantlife
(Decon)

L.A. funkmeister Jack Splash has a scratchy voice—I hear Sly
Stone; my sister Brittany hears Left Eye—but when he speeds it up
on this title track to his band’s second album, it becomes a snide
cartoon twitter that perfectly matches the lyric, which is basically
LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge” as rewritten by someone with a
lifetime subscription to the beat-head zine Wax Poetics: “I told
Sylvia who ran Sugarhill/That she owed Cold Crush at least about a
mill/’Cause I was right there when they stole their rhymes/And told the
in-house band to replay ‘Good Times.'”