Fresh Produce

This month is tunes from CDs that I've purchased and downloaded over the last few months. It's another eclectic selection, and not much holds it all together except that most of it is in English. Some great stuff... although I have to say I am still listening to both these and the last batch of similar material that I posted.

—DB

Brasil, Again

This is the second Brazil playlist this year. They've been busy. The first, in January, was the result of me visiting over the holidays and picking up some CDs and recommendations from folks there. This one is stuff that's come out since then — some of it very much a mixture of Brazilian grooves created with electronic soundz and beats, and some that represents a parallel trend of musicians there, rediscovering semi-under-appreciated local genres and giving them their own new spin. Sometimes, the two trends seem to be embodied in the same record — electronics mixed in with regional and traditional musical styles. Anyway, lots of great stuff, and more on the way.

—DB
NYC

I've Fallen and I Can't Keep Up

I am in Ghent, a charming Belgian town that was once the largest town in Europe. We have a little over one week to go on what has been pretty much a year-long tour. I've been on the road here in Europe all month and just haven't had time to put a new playlist together. I've picked up some nice records in Greece and Italy, and some alt pop in Poland, but haven't had a chance to go through them all yet. I will have a new playlist for September.

—DB

Merged

Some years ago Tricia Mesigian was doing merch on one of my tours and we discovered we had some musical tastes and acquaintances in common — Lambchop was one group I remember. Quite a few of these groups were distributed by a small record company in Chapel Hill, NC called Merge. Tricia convinced us to play a club in nearby Carboro, NC called Cat’s Cradle that was a few doors away from a bar/hang she had just opened called Orange County Social Club. She introduced me to Mac and some other folks from Superchunk/Merge and we all kept in contact. When Merge act Arcade Fire blew up a couple of years ago the label got some extra attention, and probably some extra stress as well. But they, and the band, handled it really well.

The label approached me about a year ago as they were asking various folks to curate compilations from their 20-year history. How they’ve survived 20 years of the music biz wars is a miracle and somewhat amazing. Some might think that having acts like Arcade Fire and She and Him keep the label afloat — and maybe they do — but I know that big success can also overwhelm a small efficient staff. Success can bloat a small company, and then they have to deal with their expanded bulk after the big hit is over.

Somehow Merge has managed to do it.

Anyway. They approached a wide variety of folks — a chef (David Chang), artists (Andrea Zittel and Marcel Dzama), a writer (Jonathan Lethem) and of course musicians (Georgia Hubley and me). We were given iPods loaded with every song ever released on Merge — a clever way to both ingratiate themselves with us and provide us with the tools to do the selecting. It took me a long and pleasant time to rummage through the thousands of tunes. Like everyone, I have favorite bands, but I didn’t want to overrepresent, so I made an effort to discover gems I had never known about.

So, Merge will release a CD of my selections plus a cover version I did of an East River Pipe song. In the meantime, here are pretty much all my selections, plus the backup choices (in case other curators HAD to have a certain song) and a bunch of Merge instrumentals. I almost suggested that my compilation be all instrumentals — to make it cohesive — but I changed my mind.

Congratulations, guys…

—DB
NYC

Watching Music

These are all songs that I've recently added to my iPod and computer for additional listening. Some are fairly recent, and others have been around for a while. Oddly enough, videos seem to be making a comeback — not on MTV, but the quasi-indie stuff posted on YouTube yields some amazing work. "Chocolate Rain" — which is more or less a single shot of a nerdy guy singing a great song through some weird plug-in — is a viral smash, and St. Vincent's video for "Actor" is deeply disturbing, as is Grizzly Bear's for "Two Weeks"... and so is Fever Ray's for "If I Had a Heart." Maybe next time I'll post a bunch of videos instead, but then you can't wander around the house or office while listening. Hmm...

—DB

Collaborations

My recent record-length collaboration with Brian Eno and my in-progress collaboration with Fatboy Slim aren't represented here, but I've done a lot of others over the years. Some songs haven't found a home yet, but most have. Some of these were written for various Red Hot projects — AIDS benefit records produced over the last couple of decades that have always encouraged collaboration — and a few of them will be performed at Radio City on May 3 in connection with Red Hot's most recent collection, "Dark Was The Night."

Though Pitchfork claims I will collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos, I think I sometimes need a little more incentive than that — a beer to go with the Doritos, perhaps. Anyway, certain songs obviously work better than others, but since most are one-offs, both sides are usually willing to give the thing a try, as the risk is minimal — and sometimes the musical challenge opens up a door, establishes a friendship and inaugurates a new musical direction that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

—DB

Soundtrack for a European Tour

We're touring Europe for the month of April, and as we make our way from town to town, sometimes we're given CDs — by artists, labels or friends. There are some tunes in this month's playlist that won't be out for a couple of months! Sometimes we actually have time to stop into an indie shop and see what the staff recommends. Sometimes I read an online review of someone's new CD and might download all or part of it. Without my home & office CDs to pull from, I forgo a theme for a bit of a what's up hodgepodge.

—DB
Manchester, UK

The Ides of March — Old School Gospel

With the economy and people's finances in free fall, this is a time when many of us pause to reassess our values — what is important to us, what really matters and how we might restructure our lives to reflect those values. Musically, many will turn to songs that convey a feeling of nostalgia — pop and rock and R&B tunes that meant a lot to people when they were younger, and the future looked brighter. I would like to propose that a future with a radically restructured GM (or possibly without GM) might be OK — it might be even better than OK, as those kinds of corporations have not had American citizens' best interests at heart, ever. So, we turn to the values expressed in old school — and I mean really old school — gospel. Whether you believe in the geezer upstairs or not, you might enjoy these tunes. They're also the structural foundation upon which a lot of popular music was built — a strong foundation, I might add.

—DB

Japan!

Here are tracks from some of the CDs I was given and picked up on our just-finished tour of Japan. It's by no means representative of anything. Soul Flower Mononoke Summit is a contemporary band that has a lot of Japanese and Okinawan folk influences. Jun Miyake is actually based in Paris and the UA CD accompanies a storybook. One of the Cornelius tracks (Toner) sounds like it's made with sounds of a copy machine. (A vintage copy machine?) Anyway, there's great stuff there — and this playlist doesn't even touch the deep well of Japanese noise bands.

—DB
Perth, Australia

Back from Brasil

Just got back from Brasil last week and of course I picked up a pile of CDs while I was there. It took days to listen to all of them. Some contemporary stuff like Lenine, but mostly Afro-Samba bands, Northeastern stuff and some other beautifully recorded folkloric artists. Some straight-ahead sambas, from both Salvador and Rio, and a couple of tunes from an elderly lady in Santo Amaro who plays a plate with a spoon. So it’s light on the baile funk, CSS and mangue beat, but those can come later.

The guy in the CD store was great — you could listen to the CDs if you weren’t sure and he would recommend other artists I might like...and he was often right.

—DB