So to pop on ice

Tracks enjoyed recently thanks to a decent eclectic FM station in the Portland (Maine) area, as Old Grey* Whistle-Testing

*in spots

DSL. attempts to catch up with what All the Young Dudes and Dudettes are listening to on their transistors and Hi-Fis and PeaPods – those, that is, outside that youth-market slice for whom baggy knee-drooped denims and caps-backward constitute rebellion, and whose historic time horizons extend back beyond the default three days otherwise rendering them ashamed to be seen with their superficially-unhip uncles and aunties still jammin’ over their c. 1990 Panasonic boomboxes, dinosaurs amid the digirati, Jurassic carps amid the fresh-spawned minnows of the morrow…

Kate Nash -Foundations

Cockney lass explains, mate, why she’s bit-tah…and I wonder if I’m the only one disc-archival enough to detect, thirty years on, echoes of the 1978 tale-of-Cockney-woe “Jilted John” by the artist of the same name (nom de tune of John Shuttleworth):

Here we go – two-free-four!
She finks he’s bet-ah lookin’ than me
She finks he’s cool and trendy…
I was so upset I cried
All the way to the chip shop -
Gor-don is a moron…
[It's not fair - yeah yeah, she's a slag, he is a creep, yeah yeah...]

YouTube – Peter, Bjorn & John – Young Folks

Whistling Swedish popsters responsible for my latest “Mondegreen“, in which I mistook “talkin’ ’bout our own stuff” as “talkin’ bout the OnStar…”*

*Mondegreen monographers will recall the canonic instance triggered by “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” by England Dan and John Ford Coley, prime avatars of mid-1970s mustache-meets-expanding-forehead “sensitive-guy” Top-40 pop, from whose lyric “I’m not talkin’ ’bout movin’ in” came the common misprision [Guilty, alas - Ed.] “I’m not talkin’ ’bout the linen“, which latter variant, with the appended coda “Well, we are!” might have made an ideal Ford-era white-sale TV spot for JC Penney…

YouTube – Sara Bareilles-Bottle It Up

Spunky piano-pop diva – the secret lovechild of a fourway between Billy Joel/Ben Folds/Tori Amos/Vanessa Carlton – pulls out all the stops and swoops

YouTube – THE DUKE SPIRIT – THE STEP AND THE WALK …

Grace Slick and Nico meet Sonic Youth at the Frisky a-Go-Go

YouTube – The Shins – Phantom Limb

Ethereal vocal harmonies at pastoral pace – “ah-woos” as cottage industry…

Amy Macdonald – Mr Rock & Roll

Rousing, uplifting anthem by young Scottish lass with a bit of Sandy Denny at her edges

Matt Costa – Cigarette Eyes

Young onetime skateboarder turned injury layup unto learning music – the rest is his story – with a bit of Al “Time Passages” Stewart in his lilting vocals

The Raconteurs – Old Enough

Jack White takes off the Stripes and with a band of brothers fiddles with American rock roots