Blogarhythms

All my taking it easy this week didn’t amount to much more than sitting around, updating my music library, adding a bunch of tracks to the new Zune I’m trying out and watching my best friend crochet a bunch of bikinis. Feeling a bit bored with all this relaxation crap I started thinking it might be time to make a change. So, I began planning to close out my week here with a post about something less moody and more energetic.

Before I could pick out something fresh from the ever-growing piles of new released that surround me I stumbled upon The Blue God, the new Danger Mouse-produced full-length from UK chanteuse Martina Topley-Bird. Being familiar with her work alongside Trip-Hop godfather Tricky, her contribution to the Gorillaz‘ Demon Days, and her outstanding 2003 solo effort Quixotic, I felt safe assuming her new stuff wasn’t gonna jolt me out of my mood or shake things up on the blog as I’d intended.

The Blue God, I thought, was bound to be be more melancholy mood music; something slow, sticky, dark and delicious. The sort of soft, luxuriant pillow you sink into comfortably, letting it envelope, and eventually smother you with it’s delicate beauty. I was expecting film noir set to downtempo beats. And during a week like the one I’ve enjoyed so far I couldn’t possibly resist something like that, could I?

No! Of course not! Resistance is futile! So sink I did. But The Blue God turned out more like a cult-cinema indie-flick with surrealist tendencies, a dark sense of humor and a kitschy style that winkingly references noir cinema (emphasizing it’s psychology in favor of it’s aesthetics) than a hard-boiled noir classic itself. That’s right, it’s like David Lynch for your ears!

Perhaps it’s Danger Mouse’s presence makes all the difference? Because I don’t remember thinking Post-Punk basslines, New-Wave riffs, clap-a-long Girl-Group melodies, Doo-Wop harmonies, electronic belches & bleeps, Synthpop shimmer, proggy psychedelia and the requisite Soul & Jazz vibes were what a good Trip-Hop record were made of before he came into the picture. A Gnarls Barkley record maybe, but not a Trip-Hop record!

Regardless, songs like “Phoenix,” “Something to Say,” “April Grove,” “Poison” and “Shangri La” have a punky edge that makes them sound like something off a Metric record. Whereas joints like “Baby Blue,” the Tod Browning-esque “Carnies” and “Valentine,” which mine the traditions of ’50s and ’60s Pop, call to mind the eclectic-but-classic Pop of Leslie Feist, another member of Canada’s Broken Social Scene collective . And the album as a whole compliments the output of Danger Mouse’s own Gnarls Barkley and Santogold’s recently-released genre-jettisoning self-titled debut quite nicely.

If anything strikes me as evocative of turn-of-the-century Trip-Hop it’s “Razor Tongue,” a rich melange of twangy Country/Folk guitar strums, Prog-Rock synth squiggles, fuzz guitar, jazzy vocals, resonant bass notes and plodding programming with a sneeringly dismissive lyric.

Martina Topley-Bird “Razor Tongue”

Oh, and speaking of that Tricky kid, he’s got a new record coming out too! It’s called Knowle West Boy, and it’s due out July 7the in the UK (September 9th here in the US) on Domino Records. But the first single, the rowdy Punk-Rock-flavored “Council Estate” (which finds the diminutive legend splitting the difference between Saul Williams and Dizzee Rascal), hits stores (presumably in the UK) on June 30th. There’s a video clip out for it already!

Tricky “Council Estate”

I’m loving that shit, yo… And I suppose it’s just the sort of of get-amped anthem that I was looking for to put an end to this week of so-called “ease.”

Word.