"Deserter", the first single from Matthew Dear's forthcoming album, Asa Breed, signaled the Detroit tech-house artist would be continuing the song-oriented direction he explored on 2004's Backstroke. "Pom Pom" suggests that track's sighing prettiness wasn't a fluke. A 4x4 kick drum reminds us this is supposed to be dance music, but here Dear's monotone vocal evokes the electronic-pop fusions of Berlin-era David Bowie, as he rattles off lyrics about love. As with Bowie, "Pom Pom" remains more existential than mushy: "I've got to figure out love," Dear intones at the song's refrain. Guileless synths sparkle as if to suggest an answer, and the song ends with a child's voice. Hell, I can't figure it out, either.

MP3: > Matthew Dear: "Pom Pom"

[from the forthcoming Asa Breed; due 06/05/07 on Ghostly International]

Ryan Adams ain't never been shy about standing on the shoulders of greatness. The prickly troubadour's early-career Gram Parsons fixation made for affecting country-rock, but Adams' "Oh My Sweet Carolina" owes nearly as much thematically to Parsons' "Hickory Wind" as "Don't Look Back in Anger" does musically to "Let It Be". On albums such as 2003's Rock N Roll, the singer/songwriter lets his prolificacy and love of pop tropes slide into tossed-off clichés, less homage than quote-book entry.

"Two" is the first single from Adams' new, Stephen King-feted Easy Tiger, due June 26 on Lost Highway. Picking up from the band-driven arrangements that characterized Adams' three 2005 releases, "Two" applies a similar collaborative looseness to the polished roots-rock of his biggest commercial success, 2001's Gold. Except where that record featured backing vocals from Adam Duritz, "Two" brings us Sheryl Crow. Steeped in acoustic and steel guitars and piano, "Two" relies on a refrain-- "It takes two"-- that's already been responsible for at least two massive pop hits. An out-of-character Adams plays the nice guy in what's gotta be one of the most surreptitious let's-hook-up songs in recent memory. On the plus side, neither Adams nor Crow raps. On the down side, Rob Base doesn't rap either.

Stream: > Ryan Adams: "Two" [ft. Sheryl Crow]
[from Easy Tiger due 06/26/07 on Lost Highway]

If the band name and song title didn't tip you off, London's the Flowers of Hell are a proverbial "study in contrasts." Combining ringing electric guitars and swirling psychedelic effects with strings and horns, the group carries on in the swooning psych-rock tradition of Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized. "Sympathy for Vengeance", from their self-titled debut, shows the band's mix of sounds at its most accessible. In nearly eight minutes, the track glides from stately anthemics to lyrical, percussionless ambiance, ending in a cataclysm of dirty groove and shrill distortion. Just try to overlook the part that sounds kinda like Coldplay's "Yellow".

MP3: > The Flowers of Hell: "Sympathy for Vengeance"

[from The Flowers of Hell; out now on Earworm]

With their moderately large international audience and handful of licensing deals, it stood to reason that the next wave of Go! Team material would be tighter, smoother, and slicker, more willing to play by the rules of big-selling pop. But on the evidence here, the band's leader Ian Parton has lost none of his interest in trying to cram about four different songs into one four-minute single. "Grip Like a Vice" sounds like the band is riding a shopping cart with bum wheel as it zooms dangerously down a bumpy hill. Synthetic handclaps rush by so fast they verge on applause, drums are less concerned with keeping time than making noise, the keyboards sound more like a warning than melody, and rapper Ninja, reeling off the late-80s hip-hop party starting clichés, is kept down in the mix, where she sounds more like a human sample than a master of ceremonies.

The single's B-sides will include a cover of Sonic Youth's "Bull With a Heather", a remix by ex-Beta Band leader Steve Mason, and a new Go! Team track.

[single; due 07/02/07 on Memphis Industries; from a forthcoming yet-unnamed LP, also on Memphis Industries]

Was it love at first sight? Did she put up a fight? In the Kinga Burza-directed video for London/Paris dance-poppers the Teenagers' gloriously degenerate "Homecoming", yes and no (and no). With the digital Daft Punk lust of fellow Parisians Justice and the bright melodies of Swedes the Tough Alliance, the song is half travelogue, half LiveJournal entry: the lascivious European commenting on his American conquest, the SUV-driving American girl falling hard for his "skinny jeans...funky hair, and the cutest British accent ever." OMG, meet oh la la.

What the video may lack in visual shock value equivalent to the tune's manifold f- and c-bombs-- sorry, creeps-- it makes up in swank 1970s porno style. As the spoken-word narrative unfolds, the daisy dukes-clad girls comb each other's hair and toss pom-poms, while the smug European bastards just grin knowingly (but do they know Nada Surf made records after "Popular"?). Those kids from American Pie never even had a chance.

As any Animal Collective fan could tell you, the band has a habit of previewing new material live before releasing it on record. It's a policy that can frustrate people coming to shows to see a group promote its latest album, but it almost certainly keep things fresh for the band itself. We're guessing then that this song, "Cuckoo"-- here recorded live for TVP Kultura, Poland's national arts and culture network, and a part of the group's live sets for the past two years-- is a teaser of the forthcoming Animal Collective album, the first for Domino.

Good/bad news: Escort just released their "final" 12", according to the press release that accompanies "All Through the Night". Good news is that it'll be the last just while they take time to complete their upcoming full length album.

The "I'm about to pop" warning from vocalists Zena Kitt and Toy is worth noticing, because "All Through the Night" is all control, all precision, all good diction: Check the aspiration on the p's in "pop," the way a single string follows each syllable. Still there's something looser about this track than "Starlight" and "A Bright New Life", and it's not just the simple sentiment of the lyrics. "You don't have to hold my hand" and "you don't have to take me out" the vocalist promises, and it makes sense against the track's perfect synth flares and bubbles-- you need to relax, you need to give it up. She knows what she's doing. When the song flowers into shallow, blissful sighs, she's still in control-- even her orgasm stays on beat.

"Kid on My Shoulders" has the momentum of a freight train with bad brakes. The chugging steam engine is the constantly moving piano part that underpins the song, sweeping everything in its path along as the bolts begin to fly off and things get increasingly out of control. The drums start in with just a thump on every beat and grow progressively wilder. The only respite is a short breakdown preceding the closing swell that runs it right off the tracks with loud percussion and repeated vocal phrases. These guys have a pronounced flair for the dramatic-- just listen to those crashing surf guitar lines that descend like air-to-surface missiles in the song's opening moments. The song's dark sway is tough to get out of your head, but it's hard to imagine wanting to get it out of there anyway.

[from Fort Nightly; due 05/22/07 on Say Hey]

What we have here is a mystery: some long-forgotten old-school rap 12" gets unearthed from somebody's record vault, attempts to deduce the identities of the MCs only get as far as their point of origin (in this case, the Bronx) and a tentative name ("Nick Barnes"), and what we're left with is a circa-1981 piece of frothy double-dutch detritus from hip-hop's formative years. The website of Numero Group (the label responsible for the Eccentric Soul series of ramshackle rare-groove r&b compilations) describes the re-discovered track as "catching mildew," which isn't just a storage issue: The rhymes are fairly lightweight, filled with familiar catchphrases a couple weeks from becoming clichés ("In stereo! In stereo! In stereo!"; "He's rockin' on to the break of dawn"; "Rock from the bottom to the t-o-p").

The early hook that gives the track its title ("There were 10 MCs standing in a tub/ Singin' a song called a-rub-a-dub-dub") is also a bit too corny to resonate with anyone who's heard the fiercest moments of the Treacherous Three or the Cold Crush Brothers. Most interesting, though, is the MCs' insistence on flogging the word "disco" at every opportunity -- not entirely uncommon in hip-hop's early years, but here it almost seems like they weren't entirely sure this "rap" thing would work out for 'em and they needed another genre to fall back on, just in case.

The real draw of this track, then, is the beat-- and hey, why not call it disco. One of those live-band outfits that studio rap often turned to in the early 80s, the anonymous session players lay out a thick-bottomed jazz-funk groove with a growling bass line, a smooth electric piano dueling with some chirpy synths, and plenty of roller-rink-friendly flourishes: handclaps, whistles, that classic disco "bew-bew" sound. And Numero Group's selling this 12" with the instrumental on the B-side-- good move.

[from the Rub A Dub Dub 12"; out now on Numero Group]

New York electro-punk duo Shy Child opened their 2004 sophomore album, One With the Sun, with "The Noise Won't Stop", an aggressively rhythmic single that replaced the Rapture's skinny guitars with squishy synths. Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy caught the group last year at CMJ, and they're releasing a new mix of the track as 7" single "Noise Won't Stop" May 21 on the UK's Wall of Sound, as they play out a supporting gig on Klaxons latest tour. The new version and accompanying video are, unsurprisingly, more nu-rave than 2004 dance-punk, full of bright colors and laser-beam synths but not the original's frenetic handclaps. Still, the heavy Timbaland-like beat fits better here than on several of that megaproducer's new album tracks. In the clip, behoodied singing keytarist Pete Cafarella and drummer Nate Smith perform within a pyramid suffused by swirling, multihued clouds, like Battles' "Atlas" video mirror-cube for the NME-reading retro-pacifier set. No cowbell, sadly, but no glowsticks, either.

Video: > Shy Child: "Noise Won't Stop" (QT)
Video: > Shy Child: "Noise Won't Stop" (WMV)
[single; from Noise Won't Stop; out now on Wall of Sound]

For all the laurels heaped upon Arctic Monkeys' Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, the album's stodgy aesthetic belies the UK band's impressive lyrical and melodic achievements. "Do Me a Favour" is the song from follow-up Favourite Worst Nightmare that best illustrates how the Sheffield foursome have grown, especially sonically, since that 2006 debut. The track begins modestly, with busy drum work recalling old Stone Roses as much as contemporaries Klaxons (with whom the Arctics share producer James Ford, of Simian Mobile Disco). A mechanical indie-dance guitar riff intersects with wide-open spaghetti-western strums.

Alex Turner's assured vocals carry a whiff of Damon Albarn's late-90s melancholy, as the young singer and songwriter deftly lays out the scene of a tearful breakup: a damp steering wheel at morning, hours that feel like weeks, forced smiles. "Do me a favour/ And break my nose," the just-ditched dude eventually asks, though it's unclear whether he's begging or sneering. Turner now shifts his sympathies from the dumped to the dumper, who also has a small "favor" in mind. It's here the guitars come alive, soaring into the kind of blistering catharsis we yanks might seek from the Arcade Fire, and a closing line so nice the ex-gf says it twice: "Perhaps 'fuck off' would be too kind/ Perhaps 'fuck off' would be too kind." Ouch.

Each day, we quietly add one or two of our favorite tracks from the day's previous Forkcast postings to our Forkcast Player (aka that thing up there in the sidebar), gradually picking out the week's best songs so you can check all the hottest new jams with a quick click of the mouse. Then, at the end of the week, we carefully resequence those tracks and add a select few others to make it all work as one gigantic, neverending mixtape. Here's a roundup of the tracks we added this week:

>> The Tough Alliance: "Silly Crimes" [download MP3] | [original post]
"On "Silly Crimes", from the forthcoming North American release of last year's New Waves EP (available for pre-order here), the duo might as well be addressing their Swedish critics-- who, according to the uber-reliable Wikipedia, take issue with the band's Human League-like reliance on backing tapes and surprising propensity for swinging baseball bats. Tuneful Magnetic Fields synths, bird-like noises, and a bass-heavy drum loop underpin a canned-strings electro-pop ditty as idyllic as it is regretful."

>> Nick Drake: "Blues Run the Game" [download MP3] | [original post]
"Although many feared a collection of fuzzy B-sides and unremarkable home recordings, Family Tree, the latest scrap-heap of posthumous Nick Drake recordings, is littered with gold. "Blues Run the Game" was written and recorded in 1965 by singer-guitarist Jackson C. Frank for Frank's eponymous, Paul Simon-produced debut."

>> Feist: "Sea Lion Woman (Chromeo remix)" [original post]
"In this remix, Montreal electro-funk duo Chromeo give the slinky dance-floor treatment to the Calgary-born songstress' rendition of "Sea Lion Woman", a song most famously recorded by Nina Simone as "See-Line Woman". Here, Chromeo-ers (er) Dave 1 and P-Thugg swap out Feist's spirited handclaps for a heavy kick drum, squiggly synths, and prominent bass. "She drink coffee, she drink tea," Feist sings mysteriously. Rather than the guitar crescendo that caps Feist's version, Chromeo cut out for an a cappella midsection, then go back to their groove, and Feist's slightly husky vocal about a woman as engagingly enigmatic as herself."

>> ALSO PLAYLISTED THIS WEEK:

>> Dan Deacon: "The Crystal Cat" [download MP3] | [original post] | [Best New Music]
"A supercharged new wave pop song with all the prerequisites of the greatest late-00's indie, its Animal Collective-esque pop experimentation, budget electronics, and vocodered vocals add up to a melody so goddamn manic and infectious, it's basically all we want to hear today." (Previously playlisted)

>> The Clientele: "Bookshop Casanova" [download MP3] | [original post] | [Best New Music]
" Turns out the Clientele are pretty good at peppy, upbeat guitar pop with orchestral flourishes. They've so far been one of those bands less interested in "branching out" than perfecting a unified aesthetic, but here they sound different, energized, more expansive, and less hermetic, and the change is welcome." (Previously playlisted)

>> Elliott Smith: "High Times" [download MP3] | [original post]
"This track is included on New Moon, Kill Rock Stars' upcoming album of Elliott Smith rarities. All the songs were recorded between 1994 and 1997, the same time period during which he recoded his self-titled album and Either/Or. Part of the proceeds will benefit Outside In, a Portland charity that helps low-income and homeless youth and adults."