At the start of the video for "Audience in the Room", from their about-to-sting Like Bees EP, Dirty on Purpose appear guilty of having cleaned up on purpose-- ties, guys?-- and the rest of the time, it looks like they're having fun intentionally, too. Guess the noisily buzzing Brooklyn rockers figure people can gaze at their own goddamn shoes. Director Brendan Colthurst plays with effects that make the band members wobble like the guitars, although much of the video for "Audience in the Room" simply shows the band playing, to an audience, in a bare-walled, smallish room.

Dirty on Purpose drummer Doug Marvin, who wrote and sings on the track, has said it's about that unique and terrifying feeling of being onstage in front of people. Those black-and-white shots of someone letting go and jumping into a pool might be a decent metaphor, although once you're on stage you can't rewind the way Colthurst does here. At least Marvin and the band aren't alone-- look out for Oliver Ackermann of A Place to Bury Strangers and Marvin's wife, Annie Hart of Au Revoir Simone, both of whom make cameos. "Audience in the Room" has something of Ackermann's band's roiling guitar distortion, driven home by tomahawking drum fills, though such brute force is complemented with acoustic guitar and Marvin's honeyed, understated vocal. As for shoegazing, enjoy the sight of two Chuck Taylors tapping. After beginning indoors, the clip ends in a car under a blue sky, trading the pressure of the stage for the freedom of the open road.

[from Like Bees; due 01/15/08 on North Street]

Be still, seventh-graders' hearts. Lil Mama, whose "Lip Gloss" popped to #27 on Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks of 2007, teams up with hot-stepping hearthrob Chris Brown and robot-voiced hit maker T-Pain on this remix of "Shawty Get Loose", ostensibly from the 18-year-old Brooklyn rapper's delayed debut album, Voice of the Young People. After forever redeeming Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" and teaching us how to "G-Slide", the rapper born Niatia Jessica Kirklan has lost none of her impressive vocal dexterity here. "When I spit it's like mucus, gotta get rid of it," she explains, en route to resuscitating Pussycat Dolls catch phrases and name-checking everyone from Janet Jackson to Twista. T-Pain can barely keep up, but with a CV packed with Shawty songs ("Buy U a Drank", "Bartender", Plies' "Shawty") he and Brown deliver a chorus much more likely than that of "G-Slide" to catch on with even a grown-up crowd. (via Blender)

[from Voice of the Young People; due 2008 on Jive]

A garage-rock band covering a mid-1980s art-pop deep cut, like a wreck by the side of the road, promises to be oddly compelling no matter the damage. Great news for rubberneckers: Detroit's Dirtbombs turn long-running duo Sparks' synth-laden "Sherlock Holmes", originally from 1984's Black Kids-cited (on "I've Underestimated My Charm (Again)") Angst in My Pants, into a pretty awesome-sounding car crash. And nobody gets hurt. Beyond that, I guess it's pretty much what you'd expect if you know this sad, strange love song: The synths turn into guitars with blaring car-horn distortion, but it's still midtempo and dryly witty.

The Dirtbombs founder Mick Collins pulls a Damon Albarn-like falsetto out of the bedlam, imploring, "Spend the night with Sherlock Holmes/ Hold me tight like Sherlock Holmes/ Just pretend I'm Sherlock Holmes." There's a punkier force behind the disheartened bridge, a series of shouted questions: "Do you want to have fun?/ Do you want a good time?/ Do you want me to laugh?/ Do you want me to cry?" etc. What on Earth do they want from poor Collins? As Shop Boyz might say, "Elementary, dude."

It's Missy, bitches! "I got more hits than you can get out of a bat," Missy Elliott notes on new single "Ching-A-Ling", and man, no argument here. Six platinum albums! While the Virginia-born rapper's unmistakable delivery and bling-bling rhymes certainly had a lot to do with early-2000s smashes like "Work It" and, of course, "Get Ur Freak On"-- there's a reason Robyn copped those cadences for "Konichiwa Bitches"-- there's no mistaking the importance of co-writer Timbaland's production, especially his borrowing of elements from such diverse genres as bhangra. With Tim in high demand these days, "Ching-A-Ling" enlists another of the more audacious hip-hop producers of recent years, Swizz Beatz, and if the single doesn't quite reach her early heights, it's still a welcome return.

The word "crazy!" repeats in the background, much as it does throughout Swizzy's own One Man Band Man and its lead single, "It's Me Bitches". But "Ching-A-Ling" plays more like a cross between a Swizz Beatz production and a Timbaland track, starting with the chaotic sirens also heard in "It's Me Bitches" or Eve's Swizz-produced "Tambourine", then settling into a droning snake-dance rhythm, complete with erotic moaning. As for Missy, she's got a lot of money, apparently, alluding to Outkast ("so fresh and clean you can call me Irish spring"), T.I. ("big things pop, little things stop"), possibly Ludacris (lots of "Money Maker" talk), and, um, Ex-Lax. Like Britney Spears, she wears no drawers.

Stream:> Missy Elliott: "Ching-A-Ling"

BONUS: The Fader has posted a remix where Elliott is joined by another rap legend who has stacked some paper up, ex-Def Jam CEO Jay-Z. Hova is back on his made-man Kingdom Come tip here, but luckily his verse manages to build somewhat on the momentum of 2007's American Gangster, particularly in a couple of well-phrased lines about the Notorious B.I.G. What sound did you make on your way up the ladder, Jay? "Ha, ha ha ha." All the way to the bank-- or, given the title "Ching-A-Ling", at least to the cash register.

[from the Step Up 2 the Streets soundtrack; due 02/05/08 on Atlantic/Warner]

Photo by Gary Burger

Dave Day, original guitarist and founding member of the innovative garage-rock outfit the Monks, died yesterday. It's hard to convey now how impossibly cool the Monks seemed in the early 1990s, just before the time their debut album Black Monk Time was to be reissued. I remember reading a few magazine pieces about them that set my head swimming. They were G.I.s stationed in Germany. Only a select few in the know had ever heard their music. They released a single album in 1966. They played heavy, repetitive, tribal rock'n'roll. They experimented. They shaved their heads and dressed in robes and called themselves the Monks. I mean, what the hell? They seemed like the Velvet Underground with cool costumes and a better sense of humor a year before the fact. And then, if you watch these videos, especially this German television clip of "Monk Chant", all that energy and originality comes across. They eventually reformed in 1999 and played live periodically thereafter. The force of the last clip, from 2006, forty years on, is equally amazing. R.I.P.

The Monks: "Monk Chant"

Almost two and a half years after third album Tournament of Hearts, gruff Toronto rockers Constantines are set to deliver their first 7" for Arts & Crafts next week. Both A-side "Hard Feelings", which is slated to appear on Constantines' forthcoming album, and B-side "Easy Money", which isn't, are now streaming on the band's MySpace, and initial listens suggest the songs have some of the fiery eloquence of prevous records. It suddenly occurs to me that Constantines are probably due for a slice of Brooklyn band the National's recently burgeoning fanbase: Both sing about the life of working drones. Both have deep-voiced, distinctive vocalists. And where Constantines were initially (accurately) tagged as a "Fugazi/Springsteen hybrid", as former Pitchfork writer Chris Ott put it, the National are more like Tindersticks/Springsteen. What is Shine A Light's smoldering "On to You" but an older, grittier, and inarguably more Canadian cousin to Boxer anthems like "Fake Empire"?

However, that isn't the side of Constantines we get on "Hard Feelings", which has the manic edge of faster-paced Constantines tunes like "Nighttime/Anytime (It's Alright)" or their masterful debut's ""Arizona". We don't get any declarations as sweeping or high-concept as the latter song's "As long as we are dying, we want the death of rock and roll." But you can tell by the way the one-time Rod Stewart-quoting band picks at Bee Gees' lyrical skeletons-- "You can tell by the way I walk"-- that they're pissed off about some kind of shit, likely a splintered relationship. The flip-side, "Easy Money", is slower, simpler, and sludgier, finding the band more in the mode of their occasional cover subjects, Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Like the last album's "Working Full Time", it's a song for working stiffs who long for an easier living. Surely making old Neil proud, the song morphs into a scraggly "Freebird"-esque guitar-solo at the bridge.

Streams:> Constantines: "Hard Feelings" / "Easy Money"
[from the "Hard Feelings" 7"; due 01/15/08 on Arts & Crafts]

More astronauts! The latest video from Jon Spencer's Heavy Trash project finds the kitschy bluesman donning a cheesy silver spacesuit and stomping around sandy interstellar terrains. The hammering beat to "Way Out", from last year's Going Way Out with Heavy Trash, provides an oddly psychedelic cadence for some vintage sci-fi visuals. Add a few Martian go-go dancers and Spencer's stuttering rockabilly delivery of lines like "Slip through the airlock/ Go on and get free," and the whole thing comes off as an even lower-budget tribute to The American Astronaut.

[from Going Way Out with Heavy Trash, out now on Yep Roc]

With all these music videos using vintage footage lately, who needs to see plain old musicians anymore? When we posted this song from Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox's forthcoming Atlas Sound solo album last night, we focused on the strong current of sadness pulling the track's lovelorn narrator to his watery grave. It didn't take long for a fan with the handle of epb21 to post a video for "River Card", emphasizing the outer-space ambience of the arrangement over the heartsick drowning in Cox's words. These space-program clips of rockets launching and white-collared engineers making the impossible a historical reality provide for something nice to focus on as the chiming, exquisite arrangement washes over. Just watch out for those Martian canals, spaceman.

At 10, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo shaved his head and tried to be a monk, if we can identify him with the narrator (always a dicey proposition) of Pinkerton's classic "Across the Sea". The video for "Blast Off!", from recent solo release Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, begins with some monk-like chanting as a mustachioed Cuomo flails his arms wildly outdoors, doing tai chi or perhaps just stretching. He's wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a winter cap, but he's got some exercises scheduled, so when the recording goes, "Get me another bottle of beer," dude takes off his pants. On the chorus, the scene changes, and we see guys on bikes, and the funny not-haha subject of "Across the Sea", Japanese schoolgirls. Cuomo jumps up and down on a trampoline during the song's talking-guitar solo, and when the music cuts off abruptly, he's painting black and orange lines on sheets of paper. Show 'em you're a tiger, Rivers.

Video:> Rivers Cuomo: "Blast Off!"
[from Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo; out now on Geffen]

There's a lot to mention about Southend, England-based Kafka fans These New Puritans' "Navigate, Navigate" other than its length. But it's really, really long. In 15-plus minutes, the track twists gnashing electric guitar, spacey synths, tape loops, stereo-panned clusters of relentless percussion, and cryptic, Fujiya & Miyagi-meet-Futureheads incantations into something that's difficult and exhilarating to, uh, navigate (just kidding about the "uh", I totally planned that needlessly elaborate metaphor). The track was apparently made for a 2007 catwalk show in Paris; I hope Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno character was there to get mind-fucked.

A bleary electronic hum sets things up, followed by what could almost be its own abstract two-minute song, all jumpy harmonies and forceful, mechanical post-punk dynamics. With, oh, six minutes to go, the track hits a high point as the guitars launch into a ringing crescendo and two male voices interchange intricately-- surely it's going to have to go back to the earlier dissonance soon. It doesn't: The guitars regain their earlier urgency, yeah, but the whole arrangement keeps turning in slightly new directions. The vocals repeat the same words-- "you know, you know," and "motionless, motionless"... I think?-- and the instruments, while only barely seeming to change at any given moment, somehow shift just enough to maintain their Liars-like hypnotic spell. Then it all stops. The 12" also features a remix by the Loving Hand (aka the DFA's Tim Goldsworthy).

[from the "Navigate, Navigate" 12"; due 02/05/08; the full-length Beat Pyramid is due 03/18/08; both on Domino]

Before the Mountain Goats go on tour, they're coming home, even if it kills 'em. John Darnielle & co. recently made available the first mp3 from the Mountain Goats' forthcoming Heretic Pride, and it opens the album with the tale of a wayfarer returning to his port of call. "Sax Rohmer #1", as the song is called (no explanation that we can hear, but we're patient), shows once again why Darnielle is rated so highly as a lyricist, while his familiar acoustic guitar strums anchor a clean, unobtrusive arrangement-- busy drums, some electric guitar, a touch of strings-- that's a whole lot livelier than most of 2006's quietly devastating Get Lonely, but still keeps the focus where it belongs. The scene: The sun and fog rise over a harbor, getting us to a well-placed "yeah" before the sailors, urchins, and spies come marching in. Yeah.

The chorus melody vaguely recalls that of one of the Mountain Goats' better-known songs, Nine Black Poppies opener "Cubs in Five", except rather than, "And I will love you again," Darnielle is vowing, "And I am coming home to you/ With my own blood in my mouth." But nobody's exactly killing the fatted calf for Darnielle's prodigal wanderer, and eventually his odyssey begins to sound frankly Odyssey-like. "A rabbit gives up somewhere, and a dozen hawks descend/ Every moment leads toward its own sad end," he explains, later adding, "All roads lead toward the same blocked intersection." Don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to learning what road gets this to an album closer called "Michael Myers Resplendent".

MP3:> The Mountain Goats: "Sax Rohmer #1"
[from Heretic Pride; due 02/19/07 on 4AD]