Wasting a bit of time today, waiting around for some news. Remember when I used to take drugs for money? I’m about to get back in that game. I passed my screening without incident, including the blood pressure/pulse thing that usually trips me up- I have what is apparently a real condition called white coat hypertension, where I get nervous about having my blood pressure taken when there’svery much money on the line, and so end up out of safe range. As such, I often fail to qualify for studies, but have normal blood pressure when taking it at the machine at the pharmacy or something. Not this time, though- this time I’m healthy as a horse. All I’m waiting for now is for my doctor’s office to fax the clinic my medical history, because in the UK where everyone has a doctor, they feel such things are necessary. When that clears, I’m in. Apparently doctors here hate filling in paperwork, however, and no one on any level is at all confident that they’ll actually have it done in time for me to check in on Friday. Which is frustrating, as there are many many hundreds of pounds sterling on the line. So I’m waiting around in the meantime, hoping to get rich so I can afford to, like, buy my wife a birthday present. I have a good one in mind.

Anyway, since I’m sort of sitting around trying to figure out if I’m spending Friday-Tuesday locked up in a clinical pharmacological research unit in Middlesex or running loose and being pissed at my doctor, I will offer you songs. This is a quick little 30-minute mixtape of stuff that’s come out in 2008 that I like very much. It’s been a good year for music so far, probably better than 2007 was and we’re only two months in.

“blackeyedsusan”, Jose James
The record this comes from, the dreamer, is incredible. There aren’t jazz singers these days, not really, not like this. He’s doing that thing that makes contemporary jazz so exciting about ten percent of the time- it’s stylistically consistent and not overly concerned with being jazz, not desperate to prove how it’s still possible to innovate or slavishly devoted to things that happened fifty years ago. It’s not tacky or jarring in the way it acknowledges the existence of every other interesting development in popular music over the past several decades, but it’s thoroughly modern at the same time. I like the rhythm of his delivery on “blackeyedsusan”, so I’m giving you this one, but it could have been any track from the record.

“Just a Little Lovin’”, Shelby Lynne
The record this comes from, just a little lovin’, kinda blows. It’s Shelby Lynne, who I liked a lot when she had that record that everybody liked in ‘99 or so. She followed that up with a goofy-ass album that seemed like her attempt to keep pace with the musical trends of 2001, which was the heyday of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. It was really a bizarre career move. Anyway, I sort of lost track of her after that, but found this one on some torrent site or something and recognized the title as the name of one of my favorite Dusty Springfield songs. A few clicks later, I had her entire Dusty Springfield tribute record at my disposal. And it was mostly crappy, really- after this one, which is the first track, it steadily grows less and less soulful until it becomes this embarrassing american idol thing.

But why am I dwellling on that? Her version of “Just a Little Lovin’” is great. It’s not so much aping Dusty Springfield as it is taking the song another direction, and it’s one that works- a little bit jazzy, a little bit downtempo. I was listening to it in the kitchen the other day and our flatmate, who idolizes Norah Jones (she almost lost her shit when Kat told her that they went to high school together) came in and said that it was very nice, which is her strongest approval for anything.

“See These Bones”, Nada Surf
I totally still listen to indie rock, dudes, check it out! Does Nada Surf even count anymore? They were definitely hip in, like, 2003 when that let go record came out. Now I’m not so sure- at least not in America. They’ve been consistently adding and selling out London dates lately, so maybe they’re still super-famous everywhere. This song does what let go did best, which is combine thoughtful, if kinda spare, lyrics with a foreboding-but-poppy sound that helps one sell the other. The harmonies here are great, as has been a hallmark of the band even when I was fifteen and “Popular” was my secret favorite song that I was too cool to actually be into. I saw these guys on the tour for let go, when they were in the midst of their completely unprecedented rebirth as an indie rock band (when they had previously been a one-hit wonder- I bet Harvey Danger is still jealous), and they insisted on closing out their set with “Popular”, even though they knew that no one in the room was going to admit to actually liking the song. The singer did, though. He said that he knew it was kind of cheesy to play a hit single from years and years earlier, and he knew we weren’t there to hear it, but he was still proud of it and still liked playing it. I always thought that was cool. I’m not talking about “See These Bones” at all right now, but download it and listen to it and we’ll all be friends.

“The Healer”, Erykah Badu
I’m entirely willing to wait five years between Erykah Badu albums. The record as a whole kind of reminds me of the voodoo album by D’Angelo, in that it’s really loosely structured and most of the songs are long and they both have that J Dilla drum sound and- holy shit, I just Wikipedia’d the two and it turns out J Dilla wasn’t involved in the making of either record. Weird. “The Healer” references him, and I guess I just assumed that it was a track he had produced at some point, given the five years it took for the album to come out.

Anyway. “The Healer” is really minimalist in its production, which is always effective for a singer with a voice as powerful as hers. It’s a really subtle track, with hooks that you don’t even notice until after it’s done, and neat things happening behind her voice. I don’t know why it wasn’t the first single from the record.

“A Prayer for Michael Vick”, Jay Electronica
I really wish I had come up with this title. I think about Michael Vick sometimes, and how many lessons there are to draw from his story. There are a lot.

The song’s not really about Michael Vick, at least not overtly- mostly Electronica’s just showing off his talent for wordplay, which is significant. The Michael Vick aspect is sort of lingering throughout the song- the idea that a black man who does something is a criminal, while an industry that does that same thing is just business. I heard him on Gilles Peterson talking about this song, and how it was about Michael Vick being convicted as an effigy of cruelty to animals, while dog racing is sanctioned and legal. It’s a prayer for equal treatment, and I guess that means Michael Vick, too.

“The Vowels Pt. 2″, Why?
Rumor has it Why? used to be kind of a hip-hop thing once, which is weird, cuz this song just sounds like a spookier version of something that you’d hear on an eels record in 1998. The whole Why? record that’s out right now is vaguely menacing, guitar-driven but distorted. Vocally he’s stepped up his delivery, instead of just sing-songing his way through an album. Mostly I still have no idea what any of his songs are about, but there aren’t many people making music this complex- spooky and a little bit uplifting at the same time, using so many instruments in so many ways.

“Today’s Lesson”, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Awesome, Nick Cave is the Rolling Stones now. And he’s better at it than they’ve been in thirty years. This is one of those records that took me a good amount of time to get into, because it doesn’t sound like anything else in his catalog- it’s all chant-alongs and fuzzy guitar rock, but I love fuzzy guitar rock and chant-alongs; I just had to get used to them coming from Nick Cave. I’m sure the record is actually deep and compelling, like all of his other records are, but all I really take from this song is we’re gonna have a real cool time, which is the sentiment behind at least half of the best rock songs ever.

There you have it- an hour’s been killed by me, and you have some new music. Still no word on whether or not I’ll be testing drugs for money this weekend, but keep your fingers crossed for me, okay?