This is what America sounds like to me right now:

“You Don’t Know Me” (feat. Regina Spektor), Ben Folds
Looking at who made the tape this month, you can reach some conclusions (about me, naturally, the most fascinating topic I can think of). For one, everybody I’m listening to right now has had a career that’s lasted at least since 2001, and with the exception of Murs, who I discovered with Murs 3:16, I’ve been listening to all of them for the better part of a decade. The point of the monthly mixtape was to find new music each month, but it kinda doesn’t count if it’s all new stuff from the same people.

Like, I’ve been listening to Ben Folds since I was seventeen. I saw him play with Ben Folds Five at the Metro in Chicago in 1998… Are you really keeping up with things if you’re just listening to the same people’s new records?

Well, kinda, yeah. “You Don’t Know Me” is a pretty new-sounding song from Ben Folds. It doesn’t deviate in a tacky way from the sound he built his career on, but it does sound very much like a song from 2008. Not everybody who’s entering the second decade of his or her career can say that, but it’s not just the presence of Regina Spektor that makes “You Don’t Know Me” sound contemporary- the thing moves in interesting ways, bouncy without being fey, and more relevant than anything Ben Folds has put out in at least five years. Good for him.

“Another Way To Die”, Jack White and Alicia Keys
This one’s neat, too. Jack White and Alicia Keys sound good together, and there’s something really cool about the way this song is put together. It starts out with White sort of dominating the thing, with crunchy guitars and a minimal piano line, while the two trade nonsense lines until a quintessential Jack White-style hook comes in.

But then the bridge comes around, and the middle of the song turns into an Alicia Keys epic, with the piano and horns building in a way that reminds me of “Karma” more than it does anything from the White Stripes. It’s all White’s songwriting and production, but she’s very much a presence on it, transforming what might have been a one-off appearance of Alicia Keys on a rock song into something genuine and interesting.

“Council Estate”, Tricky
In lieu of actually missing England, I’m just listening to Tricky right now. I used to live right behind a council estate- which is the English equivalent of a housing project- and this song conjures up the chavs on Queens Crescent and Hornsey Road.

(Incidentally, chav is a uniquely English sort of epithet, not exactly racist- though it has racist origins- but classist. It comes from the Romani word for boy, which is the racist origin, but only one out of twenty or so English people comfortable with using the word would be able to tell you its origins. It basically means teenager who scares grown-ups, and the stereotypical chav wears a hoodie, has a mean dog, a Yankees cap even though he’s never been to America, and probably a knife or something. He can be white or black or Asian or anything else, but he’s definitely a bad kid.)

Anyway, as a white liberal dude all the way over in Texas now, I like this song because it’s not from the point of view of a kid who lives in a council flat, but it’s to him. A teenage boy in England probably hasn’t got much use for Tricky, fourteen years into his career, but a statement like this is probably all he can offer in support, and that’s not nothing.

“Can It Be (Half a Million Dollars and Eighteen Months Later)”, Murs
Murs signed to Warner Brothers this year, which would be weird, except that he didn’t dumb a thing down for it. In fact, Murs For President, the album that “Can It Be” comes from, is a pretty great example of how to sign to a major label in exactly the right way- his message is more concise, his music’s full of new energy, and he’s in a position to make the very most of an increased platform.

“Can It Be” is built on a Michael Jackson sample, which tends to be a good way to get ears interested in what you’re saying. This is probably the best Murs has sounded in his whole career, and he’s had a hell of a career so far.

“Scream” (feat. Timbaland), Chris Cornell
 Scream, the Timbaland-produced album that “Scream” comes from, is being billed as Chris Cornell’s R&B record, but if this is an indication of what it sounds like, that’s ridiculous. It’s a pop/rock song, full of a lot of interesting elements, but it sure as hell ain’t R&B. And that’s cool. Hiring a hot black producer to turn him into a soul singer would be embarrassing.

Chris Cornell’s made a lot of embarrassing music, but he’s also had a cool tendency to drop in and out of relevancy over the twenty years he’s been a rock star. Soundgarden was great, except when it wasn’t, and his post-Soundgarden solo career had a lot of interesting potential. Audioslave was a weird detour into classic rock-style supergroupiness, and his last solo album was largely useless. It’d have been fair to count him out, but there’s something going on with “Scream” and the other singles from the new album- he’s definitely working style over substance here, but with few exceptions, that’s been a motif for his whole career. A song whose lyrics are pretty much “heeeeeey / why you keep screaming at the top of your head”, when it’s sung by Chris Cornell, can be epic, and the stuttering drums supplied by Timbaland keep things moving.

That’s a theme this month, it looks like- people who might well be old and tired, finding a new way of staying relevant through percussion. That and unlikely duets. October is an interesting month.

“Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It”, Darius Rucker
SO WHAT I LIKE HOOTIE AND THE BLOWFISH AND COUNTRY MUSIC OKAY

This song’s interesting because it’s apparently a country song- in fact, it’s the first song recorded by a black dude to place on the country charts since Charlie Pride- but it sounds more or less like anything else Darius Rucker ever did with Hootie. Which is a pretty pop song with just a little more soul than usual and verses that are mostly just an excuse to get to the chorus, which every listener can place a hand on his chest and sing along with by the second time it comes around.

So what makes “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It” a country song, when all the Hootie and the Blowfish songs were pop/rock? There are some strings, I guess, and a buried steel guitar somewhere floating by… But mostly it’s just the lyrical style.

A lot of people complain that contemporary country hasn’t got anything in common with the music’s roots, and they’re kind of right, but they miss the point: the people who respond to contemporary country are the same sort of people who responded to classic country. George Jones and Johnny Cash and Hank Williams and all your country heroes weren’t singing to hipsters, they were singing to yokels. Darius Rucker, with this one, is speaking in the contemporary country idiom- “the work and the hurt and the whiskey”, images of middle-America, like “a cloud of taillights and dust”, folksy phrasing like, “I heard you found a real good man / and you married him”… It’s not complex, but it’s honest, communicating a break-up with some concrete imagery and some traditional phrasing. It’s got very little to do with the sound of the song, and a lot to do with the way it communicates. If Sarah Palin or John McCain could connect on the same level Darius Rucker does here, they’d be up six points in the polls right now.

“I Don’t Want To Die In A Hospital”, Conor Oberst
Okay, see, this is the flipside to “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It”. This is a stompin’ country tune by an indie rocker, about puttin’ on your boots and drinkin’ and smokin’, but it’s written down to its audience. It’s clearly in-character, and it doesn’t attempt to connect, just tell a story. It’s cool, and it sounds great- in fact, “I Don’t Want To Die In A Hospital” is one of the first songs by Conor Oberst that sounds like it’s a part of a serious musical legacy, instead of a kid growing up in public, but it’s not authentic. It’s not speaking to an experience you’ve had, or one that you really believe Conor Oberst has had. Contrast it with “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It”, and you can maybe understand why music that sounds like what Darius Rucker is making today is speaking to country music fans, who would turn off a Conor Oberst record ten seconds in.

“The Show” (feat. Common and Dice Raw), The Roots
The Roots are scary this year. I keep revisiting Rising Down, and it keeps getting more intense. It’s not just that they’re more explicitly political than they’d been before- it’s the bass and the urgency in every line, and check out the march ?uestlove is pounding out in the rhythm track. “The Show” is a call to arms, and whatever war’s being fought, you want to be on The Roots’ side.