Don't Know Much About the French I Took

There were other possibilities, but this is a family blog

- Scarlett Johansson's album of Tom Waits' covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head, is a tale of two artists (well, three, if you count Waits, and for my purposes, I won't drag him into it): Johansson, the voice and prime intellectual mover behind the project, and Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio fame who is essentially playing the Timbaland here to Scar-Jo's Timberlake. Sitek's musical contributions are fairly consistent throughout: Cocteau Twins with a side of Disintegration-era Cure. If he is the Y-axis, Johansson's vocals are like a sine wave, intersecting at strange intervals. On "Town With No Cheer" she seems robotic and disinterested, whereas with "Falling Down" - perhaps the most 4AD-ified track here - she is plaintive and hypnotic; yet I do not know if there is any meaningful mechanical difference in her singing. With a career as varied and hectic as Johansson's, perhaps it should not be surprising the album thus comes off as something of an ancillary patchwork; just as surprising is the rate with which such a hit-or-miss formula succeeds.

- If you require further evidence that they don't make 'em like they used to, check out Otis Redding's 1966 soul masterpiece, Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul. Cut with members of Booker T and the MGs, Memphis Horns, Isaac Hayes, et cetera, et cetera, it's chock full of the gorgeous virtuosity that leads people to use the word "widescreen" to describe music. According to the 'fork, a "definitive 2-disc hyper magical special limited edition" has been recently released, but fuck that mess. The best way to hear any record is the way they heard it when it first traversed the product-to-myth highway; special editions are for super fans. Ample evidence that sometimes the old ways are best.

- Oft-name-checked Wire/P'fork/eMusic contributer-cum-techno producer Philip Sherburne points the way with two excellent Supermayer (i.e. Superpitcher + Michael Mayer) remixes: a jaw-dropping rework of Rufus Wainwright's "Tiergarten" (at their Myspace; as a bonus check out the remix of Hot Chip's "One Pure Thought") and an idiotically disapproved remix of "Heart's a Mess," a single by some Australian band named Goyte, whom I've never heard of, and if they're in the habit of shelving awesome remixes, probably never will again.

- Excellent, playful electronic albums: Osborne's s/t Ghostly debut, and Matmos' Supreme Balloon. Both sound like the music that soundtracks the menu screens of subpar Sonic games for Gamecube, except way better. Er, above par. Takes me back to my more desiccated days. Smells like Papa John's.