} TBE Digest 4 • 12/30/09 [Hot Chip, Ted Leo, Crookers, Wiley, R Kelly, Smashing Pumpkins, & more]

Because sometimes good songs have no place in a post of their own. But mostly, just because I am not down with a jam doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear it too.

Get caught up with the last tidbits of 2009 after the jump.

♫ Hot Chip – One Life Stand / You’ve heard “Take It In” and you may have seen the video for the title track to Hot Chip’s forthcoming One Life Stand. Now here is the jam itself and it is signature Hot Chip. This is the New Years Eve dance song for hip lovers. Get on it.

♫ Broken Bells – The High Road / Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley, Gorillaz, etc) and James Mercer (The Shins’ main Shin) teamed up to become Broken Bells. Their debut single is certainly not bad, I quite enjoy it, but it certainly doesn’t leave me reaching for the repeat button. If this is the album’s best then my hopes aren’t too high. Although I could very well be eating my words come March 9th.

♫ Late Of The Pier – Blueberry / Late Of The Pier!? What happened to my boys? We all know you guys are know for your weirdo-rock but this is a bit much. Where is the killer hook or stomping drum line? This just sounds like a bad trip that only gets worse. Super frowny-face.

♫ Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Even Heroes Have To Die / Ted Leo has always been hit or miss with me. I love Shake The Sheets but that’s the album most fans poop on for being too accessible or whatever. I couldn’t get into Ted’s last and his upcoming The Brutalist Bricks looks not be for me either.

♫ Crookers – We Love Animals (feat. Soulwax & Mixhell) / No one is debating that Crookers have some rock solid remixes under their belts (Busy P, Kid Cudi, Miike Snow, etc) but I’m not sure we are sold on their solo work yet. Their ability to take a mediocre to good pop song and turn it into a dancefloor ripper somehow doesn’t translate to their own work. I mean why you guys gotta use such annoying sounds?

♫ 30 Seconds To Mars – Hurricane ft Kanye West / 30 Seconds To Mars have a new album out and guess who guests on the lead single? No fair, you read the song title, but seriously Kanye? You called up Jared and demanded a collabo or your record label made you do it to save these guys asses? I will definitely admit that I am down with some TSTM jams, this one, however, is not one of them. Two grown men whining waaaay too much for their, your, or my, own good.

♫ The Smashing Pumpkins – A Song For A Son / Oh jesus, where do I even start. For the full ridiculousness that has become Billy Corgan you need to go over to Buddyhead and get it from Travis. I’ll just tell you that this is the lead track from Billy’s forthcoming project where he, being the only one of the original Pumpkins involved, retains the name and releases a Melancholy and The Infinite Sadness-dwarfing 44 song album. Can you imagine listening to 43 more songs like this? Me neither.

♫ Wiley – Never Be Your Woman Ft. Emeli Sande / I mentioned recently that Wiley had sampled White Town’s “Your Woman” but that I hadn’t heard it. The sad truth is that I had actually heard it and even had the mp3. It was just soo forgettable that I had completely blanked out the experience. Tough times. Looks like their are at least some worthwhile remixes coming down the pipeline.

♫ R. Kelly – Pregnant (feat. Tyrese, Robin Thicke & The Dream) / Everybody’s favorite super-freak shows no signs of putting his unstoppable genius in check. Just listen. And if you have a girlfriend then make her listen too. You will either get lucky or get slapped, but at least it wont be boring.

♫ Friska Viljor – Wohlwill / The “sophomore slump” is a term I haven’t really thought about in a while – and certainly not when it relates to such relative unknowns a Friska Viljor – but dropping this after their stellar debut leaves me with no other way to describe it. Neither the album, For New Beginnings, nor the first single, “Wohlwill”, are terrible, they just aren’t fantastic. And fantastic is kinda what I was hoping for.

♫ Liars – Scissor / Speaking of “not for me,” here is a new one from Liars. I have found exactly one song in their catalog to be listenable and it is not this one. It’s like they take a good idea for a riff or a song and then make it really rough an annoying before recording it. Or in this case, make it rough, annoying, and boring.

♫ Title Tracks – Every Little Bit Hurts / Fans of Q And Not U who folowed John Davis to his follow-up project Georgie James may have heard that they called it quits after just one excellent album. Well, Davis is back with Title Tracks and the voice is definitely still his but the song isn’t grabbing me. Perhaps the context of an album will help. Perhaps.