As long as the RIAA’s got lawyers, MP3 mixtape site Muxtape can’t
last. But while it does, go to strangeritsahit.muxtape.com to hear the songs covered in this space every week. (All that fit, that
is—the site has a 10MB limit.) My own Mux: matoswk75.muxtape.com.
“Thought It Out”
by Al Green
(MP3)
Al Green has made as many “comebacks” as any pop performer alive,
the most recent being a pair of reunions with Willie Mitchell, who
produced most of his ’70s stuff. They stuck, too—2005’s
Everything’s OK (at long last, Al covers Joe Cocker’s “You Are
So Beautiful”?) more than 2003’s polite I Can’t Stop, even if
the latter got more ink. But the Roots’ ?uestlove is behind this song,
a leak from their forthcoming album together, and it’s a more
convincing evocation of Green’s classic period: Green’s Hi albums were
as memorable for their airy, ruminative vamps as for their tight
songwriting, and for these seven fathomless minutes you’ll swear you’re
hearing a great old outtake. Not to mention that Green can still
convince you that he has the most beautiful voice on earth.
“Big Ideas”
by LCD Soundsystem
(Columbia)
Right, an outtake given to a soundtrack—for 21, a movie
that recasts most of the book’s Asian characters as, what do you know,
white movie stars (way to go again, Hollywood). But “Big Ideas” evokes
Sound of Silver in miniature—live plus programmed
instruments, pile-driving bass, ecstatic yelled chorus, the works. Not
up to most of the album—an outtake is still an outtake—but
in the same ballpark, meaning good enough.
The Raveonettes
“You Want the Candy”
(Vice)
Or, why transcend your influences (in this case the Jesus and Mary
Chain at their bubbliest, or maybe least tedious) when you can wallow
in them? Especially when you can bring the very goodies this song’s
title promises—yum.
“Sexual Seduction Freestyle”
by Capone-N-Noreaga
(MP3)
“You don’t think CNN would be on some shit like this, would you?”
Actually, no, not in a hundred years would I have guessed that one of
rap’s hardest duos would fuck around with Snoop’s backing track and a
vocoder (“I know I can’t sii-ii-iii-i-iiiing“) and come up with
primo slapstick: “Smoke a cigarette to this one—what kind of
cigarette? I think you need a Marlboro Light [cackles]!” Maybe
oddest of all is this line: “How we fuck don’t make no sense.” After
hearing this, nothing else does, either. 