The racket coming out kids' bedrooms changes, but there will probably always be songs about having, as the Beach Boys put it, "a world where I can go and tell my secrets to." On "I'm Very Scared Buster, Yes At Last", Oxford, UK-based George Pringle gives a dramatic monologue about everyday youthful lovesickness over digital beats, wordless backing vocals, and a spare bass line provided by an iBook G4 she's named Truman. "I'm off to hibernate," she sings in between spoken-word verses, and it's easy to picture her heading up to her room to LiveJournal her weekend, messing around on GarageBand and fighting an awful cold. The typewriter sound effects seem anachronistic.

Pringle's lyrics are strikingly detailed, mostly avoiding the common melodramatic pitfalls. Pringle conveys her malaise through descriptions of everything but the boy (though she does mention males' "hearts of stone"): the wind gripping her neck, the scratchiness of her throat from cigarettes, the sun hitting panes of glass on a beautiful Sunday. She ends by naming off the items she sees around her, as the computerized cymbals grow glitchier and more frenzied: "Iron, book, remote control/ Hope I die before I get old/ Jumper, CD, glasses case/ I haven't got a heart to break," Pringle repeats. Meet the new kids, same as the old kids. In their rooms causing a different commotion. (via RCRD LBL)

Stream/MP3:> George Pringle: "I'm Very Scared Buster, Yes At Last"
[from the Poor EP, Poor EP Without a Name... EP; due to be self-released in February]

Day for Night is named for a French New Wave film, but this song, from their digital-only EP, shares a title with Terrence Malick's very American flick about spree-killer Charlie Starkweather. Such are the subtle contradictions in this cinema-centric New York band, which features members of now-defunct Bastion backing the Affair's Kali Holloway. From its epic opening chords to its ten-story chorus to its grinding outro, "Badlands" is all controlled thunder, with guitarist Keith Ehrlich and drummer Bill Kovalcik churning U2-style drama but exhibiting admirable restraint. Holloway is blessed with an enormous voice that suggests the Heartless Bastards' Erika Wennerstrom without the blues grounding, but she never sounds big for big's sake. In fact, she's most expressive when she's projecting. As a result, "Badlands" sounds large yet measured, as if the band is simultaneously giving everything and holding back.

No John Mellencamp, no credibility. But Madonna? Strange as it may seem, we're still living in a time when there are people who get truly, deeply, flaming-the-listserv- with-bile-dripping-down-their- fingertips upset about the fact that a bona fide superstar like the Material Girl will soon be inducted into the Roll and Roll Hall of Fame. Other inductions, or the by-now old-hat irony of an institution set up to enshrine music that was sold to generations as anti-establishment, are, like the Doobies' Jesus, just all right with these detractors. Most likely some of the haters have never heard Madonna deep cuts like "Stay", from the flipside of 1984 sophomore LP Like a Virgin, but although her albums have long been uneven, you'd think the many confident, girl-powered, pleasure-seeking, and yes, sometimes knowingly cheesy hits scattered across Madonna's singles collections would've been enough to win them over.

Shortly after the latest indie-oriented Madonna tribute album, former Arab Strap half Malcolm Middleton is set to release a cover of "Stay" on his follow-up to last year's A Brighter Beat, the forthcoming Sleight of Heart. The Scottish songsmith apparently initially conceived the new LP as an acoustic album, and his "Stay" is very much in that mode, emphasizing the melancholy in the original composition by Madonna and Stephen Bray. Middleton's weary burr brushes up the torment in lines like, "I'd think of dying instead," and his backing of resigned acoustic strums, piano, and strings offers little consolation. This version doesn't work quite as well as the uptempo original, which masks its depression behind synth sparkle, but it does sound a lot more like what the title of Middleton's 2007 single "We're All Going to Die" seemed to promise. If we're all gonna die, might be time for the anti-Madonna camp to remember life is short, and pop discographies with as many memorable songs as Madonna's-- even if her true art is her persona-- are rare indeed.

MP3:> Malcolm Middleton: "Stay"
[from A Sleight of Heart; due 03/08/08 on Full Time Hobby]

Talib Kweli getting sentimental over a Barry Manilow song? Yeah, that's exactly what would've made the Brooklyn rapper's 2007 album, Eardrum, just that extra bit better. If it helps any, Kweli's previously unreleased "Momma Can You Hear Me" features production from Kanye West, who falls back on one of his most recognizable moves by speeding up the sound of the schmaltzy strings, keyboard, and vocal from "Sweet Life", originally off of Manilow's 1973 debut Manilow I, and adds a mid-tempo beat with hissing hi-hat. It might also reassure you to know that a recent remix of Jay-Z's American Gangster track "Sweet" used the same Manilow cut at actual speed. Unfortunately, hearing all the conflict, the figurative language, and even just the viscerally joyful non-verbal utterances ("th- th- the life!") in Jay's song only underscores the contrast between it and the flatly literal, by-the-Hallmark-card drippiness of Kweli's verses.

All that said, it's a real shame the track didn't turn out to be better-- if only for the sake of West, who can no doubt appreciate what Kweli is feeling even if the execution isn't perfect. (As you probably already know, West lost his mother, the educator, author, and businesswoman Dr. Donda West, late last year, and back in 2005 he recorded "Hey Mama", from Late Registration, for her.) "Gotta take the time to say I love you while you're still alive," Kweli raps at one point. I'd write more, but sorry, guys, I think I'd better go call my mom.

MP3:> Talib Kweli: "Momma Can You Hear Me"
[previously unreleased; Eardrum is out now on Blacksmith Music/Warner Bros.]

Photo by Kathryn Yu

"The Arm", a new song expected to be on Islands' forthcoming album Arm's Way, up today on the band's MySpace page, is a big and colorful slice of baroque pop, sorta ELO-like, with swooping strings, a rushing swell of sound on the chorus turnaround, and a suite-like structure that hints at Broadway and/or prog. On the first few listens, the thin melody doesn't seem quite up to the Technicolor production, but the sonic ambition is promising.

Stream:> Islands: "The Arm"
[from Arm's Way; due 05/20/08 on Anti-]

Paired with the band's name, the title "The Flicker of a Little Girl" makes me think the members are setting young children ablaze. Fortunately, there are no arson elements on this track from Tindersticks' upcoming album The Lonely Saw-- their first in five years-- just a laconic sound like a lonely walk under a threatening sky. The band plays as if through a gauze filter, with the flute, piano, and guitar fuzzing together into a soft-focus pastoral backdrop for Stuart Staples's vocals-- Nick Drake in slo-mo. A bewitching instrument that has deepened slightly with age-- hollow where it should be full, and vice versa-- Staples' deep voice instills the song's reminiscences with a gentle mournfulness. What truly sells the sentiment, however, is perhaps the most potentially incongruous sound in the mix: the back-up singers ooh-ooh-ooh-oohing behind him like the Pips on an autumn hike.

MP3:> Tindersticks: "The Flicker of a Little Girl"
[from The Hungry Saw; due 04/28/08 from Beggars]

Even for a chamber-pop group, Vancouver's P:ano were eccentric. The unusual punctuation habits of e.e. cummings made their way into the band's name, and their music was all over the map in a way it's still hard to get my head around. 2005's widely overlooked Brigadoon jumped around with the ADD of the bands briefly dubbed "hyper-prog" (Fiery Furnaces, Architecture in Helsinki), but also incorporated the theatricality of showtunes, the assured directness of 1970s AOR, and, on "Dark Hills", the rumbling, off-center intimacy of Arthur Russell. Three P:ano members-- singer/songwriter Nick Krgovich and multi-instrumentalists Julia Chirka and Justin Kellam-- have returned as No Kids for the forthcoming Come Into My House.

"The Beaches All Closed", the new album's second mp3 after "For Halloween", shows No Kids' growing interest in current r&b, an area too many Belle & Sebastian-inspired indie-poppers neglect even as they gleefully borrow from 60s Northern Soul. Krgovich doesn't quite have the vocal chops of a Timberlake, but he knows how to make his falsetto as frosty and thin as the voices of female r&b singers like Amerie, Ciara, and Cassie; the track has the imposing, marble-cut edges and bump 'n' grinding hooks of a Jimmy Jam-Terry Lewis production like Janet Jackson's "Call On Me" or even Usher's "U Remind Me", with reserved strings and crisp electronics beats. "Stevie's on the radio," Krgovich sings. The indie-pop world's forays into what we might undisparagingly term "chart-pop" aren't always successful-- hey, Hey Willpower-- but when your old band's as unpredictable as P:ano, a little normalcy can go a long way.

MP3:> No Kids: "The Beaches All Closed"
[from Come Into My House; due 02/19/08 on Tomlab]

Excepter is an improv-based band, so it makes sense that their "Streams" page-- where, for the past year and a half, they've been giving away unshaped heaps of synth abuse, moaning, and dub tactics ranging from about forty-five minutes to five hours long-- contains some of their best and worst music. Half of the gesture on the band's part seems to be a conceptual dedication, to-- toke and pass-- "the destruction of boundaries between the psychic friends network and reality television" (they're both mockingly and actually far-out, which, as a gag, never loses steam). Going through the whole project seems like torture-- I sure as heck haven't-- but from time to time, I'll click and find that they've loosed something great, like "Stream 42". Their dedication to sounding unpleasant has been especially acute in recent performances, in part because they've started incorporating more, well, comparatively pornographic music: horror movie soundtracks, KLF beats, corroded acid-house synths, funk, punk (frontman John Fell Ryan's concussed Jim Morrison routine is more Alan Vega or Mark E. Smith here). Also serves as a decent preview for the blatant meanness honed on Debt Dept., due in March.

Stream:> Excepter: "Stream 42"

Mission of Burma are on a mission for Burma. Though it may lack the glamour of a Belushian "mission from god", the Boston post-punk legends' latest calling has the virtue of being for a righteous cause: calling attention to the military junta-led mass killings going on in the country officially known as Myanmar. If this is news to you, consider the plight of those misfortunate enough to be ruled by fascist regimes that don't control massive oil reserves. (Actually, looking at the ongoing headlines from Iraq, maybe having oil doesn't make for a much better plight.) To do something about the Burmese turmoil, Mission of Burma did what many bands, not all as awesome as they, have done in the three-and-a-half decades since George Harrison's famous Concert for Bangladesh. They held a benefit show.

A sell-out crowd was on hand at Boston's Great Scott for Mission of Burma's Burma benefit, with proceeds going to the U.S. Campaign for Burma/Human Rights Action Center in Massachusetts. Lucky for us, The Boston Phoenix was there too, equipped with video cameras to record the event. After getting back together a few years ago for a reunion tour and going on to record two excellent new albums, the veteran band still sounds in great form here in a version of their classic "Academy Fight Song", as the crowd pogos along. The track from their debut 7" is among those set to be reissued in March with the band's 1981 Signals, Calls, and Marches EP and reissues of their other 1980s output. "I'm not judging you, I'm judging me," bassist Clint Conley shouts. Head over to the Phoenix's blog to see clips of two other songs; they're also promising to post one of four new, as-yet-unrecorded Mission of Burma songs from the benefit, so stay tuned.

Howlermonkey has been living on the beat quite a bit lately, remixing rapper Wiz Khalifa and electro-punks Heartsrevolution (on his MySpace) when not compiling a Crystal Castles "omnibus mix". Dropping the "DJ" from his name and adding vocalist Rebecca Bortman, multi-instrumentalist Andres Ortiz Ferrare, and rotating member Matt McDermat, Pittsburgh's David Litvin moves Howlermonkey past remixes with "Life on the Beat Part 1 & 2", a lithe electronic track with some of the alien spookiness of the Knife, spacey retro-futurist synths that are part Jan Hammer, part Crystal Castles, and at the center, a warm, free-falling melody and pattering, occasionally polyrhythmic percussion. The first half of the song features Bortman's understated vocal. "Why you gotta leave me all alone, pent-up?" she murmurs, just as guitar-like synth rockets in beneath her.

A low rubbery bass drum percolates beneath the opening verse, beset from both sides by tropical drum sounds; the latter remains as a heavy kick drum takes over halfway through. From there, the track carries on without words, 8-bit keyboard plinks glinting out from some lower, sustained synth notes. Instruments slowly drop out of the mix, and the chugging, guitar-like synth is all that's left by the end. Half reflective song fragment, half mid-tempo dance instrumental, "Life on the Beat Part 1 & 2" is an ambitious track that can make feeling "pent-up" sound both gut-wrenching and hip-swiveling. Wait until Howlermonkey gets loose.