“I Need a Life
(Four Tet Remix)”
by Born Ruffians
(Warp)

You know how a couple months ago a lot of people with cotton in
their ears and vague memories in their brains were embarrassing
themselves by saying that Vampire Weekend resembles
Graceland? (Which it does only if you’re completely unfamiliar
with the Congolese music from which VW take their cues.) Well, here’s a
record that really does sound like Paul Simon. Toronto trio Born
Ruffians’ original “I Need a Life” does that well
enough—singer-guitarist Luke Lalonde’s voice has a definite
similarity, though slightly rougher and more excitable. But it’s when
Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, gets his mitts on this track that things
get even more Simonized. He recasts it from indie-busker
guitar-bass-drums to a hard-pinging keyboard riff and layers Lalonde’s
wordless syllables to form a vocal so eerily Simon-like that you’d be
forgiven for thinking it was in fact Paul recasting himself with those
weird laptop kids the way he once did with South African township jive.
And you’d be right to think the result is a great record.

“Entropy Reigns
(Pearson and Usher’s Second Law
Instrumental)”
by Kelley Polar
(Environ)

As a vocalist and songwriter, Kelley Polar is a really good
orchestral arranger. So it stands to reason that “Entropy Reigns,” from
his recent second album, I Need You to Hold on While the Sky Is
Falling, is improved by
taking his voice out of it. But Ewan
Pearson
and Al Usher do a lot more than that here; they transform
a warmly homemade synth-
pop song into a sharp-stepping, vaguely

Latinized disco march, led by strings as sharp as anything Chic
engendered. If you know and love Faze Action’s string-quartet
disco-house classic “In the Trees” as much as you ought to, think of
“Second Law Instrumental” as its lightly robotic makeover.

“Radio Heart”
by the Futureheads
(Nul)

Their 2004 debut sounded like the best XTC album in 25 years, their
second like a lesser retread, and now they’ve settled in and turned
themselves into smart pros with occasional bouts of inspiration. This
single is probably the pro speaking more than the inspiration: It’s
such a perfectly calibrated replica of 1979–81 radio-ready new
wave it makes you step back a little even after it grabs you. But grab
you it does, particularly the audible tape splice at 2:25. Well, not
really—no one uses tape anymore (and running a new DIY label
probably doesn’t permit them the time or budget for it anyway), but
their evoking it tells you just how gratifyingly detail-oriented their
genre exercises can be.