Related posts:

1. Recipes for the delica­tes­sens of the future Discussions of the recent communist conference hav
2. The most boring can­di­date in the world Is John McCain’s creepy linguistic tic an at
3. Best ofs Thinking some more about the decade just ended, on

There is, though, one significant exception to this indifference: “Fly on the Wall” is absolutely fantastic. All the elements of the song work together perfectly: the tense build-up of the verse spills over into the psycho-sexual bass rumblings of the chorus; better still, the industrial clanking of the drums suggests a social context for the whole thing.

Related posts:

1. “While you’re getting your cry on, I’m getting my fly on” It took me an unconscionably long time to listen t
2. Dancing com­mu­nist pirates on a train = rev­o­lu­tion Discussing the question of when the Russian Revolu
3. Hip-​hop is dead You can tell, because KRS-One made a record saying

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.

1. Sally Shapiro – I’ll Be By Your Side

   I don’t generally follow Pitchfork-approved pop, so I hadn’t heard of Sally Shapiro until recently. My loss; Disco Romance is a pretty great album, from which this absolutely beautiful song is the standout track. It’s perfect for early February, the beginning of spring, when the weather is still freezing cold and isn’t actually getting any better, but you can just about imagine that, perhaps, at some point, it might.

2. tATu – 220

   I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m still listening to it; and now it has a video, featuring Yulia and Lena as 1930s burlesque robots, which is, you know, pretty awesome. Tatu were supposed to be playing nearby last night, but apparently they’re ill. I was wondering why they were playing in suburban San Jose rather than metrosexual San Francisco; but actually, it makes perfect sense because, if Internet message boards are to be believed, Tatu’s main fan base is made up of bicurious suburban teenagers. They should probably play Fresno (and isn’t “bicurious” a stupid word?).

3. Charlie Parker – April in Paris

   I’ve recently become, for reasons I may explain at a later date, interested in the post-war aesthetic; which translates in my music collection to Charlie Parker (although now that I think about it, I should dig out my Best of Buddy Holly, too). I’ve also been listening to “All of Me” a lot, but this was an obvious choice for the meme. It’s such a splendid spring song, right from the opening flourish of trumpets that crunch like a sugar-snap pea, or a grape.

4. The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name

   Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong have certainly done the world a favor by choosing a terrible, terrible name, in order to warn people off their unbelievably shit music. The Ting Tings have managed a more subtle example of the same thing, in that their name is perfectly calibrated to their level of kind-of-annoyingness. “Shut Up and Let Me Go” is absolutely tailor-made for an iPod advert, in that it’s funky but, you know, tasteful; but the rest of their album is wierdly reminiscent of mid-90s American indie of a Jo Whiley/Steve Lamacq sort, most obviously in “Be the One” (which I kind of think sounds like Belly, though I may just be imagining it) but more unexpectedly, and more interestingly, about three minutes in to this track.

5. Sugababes – Surprise

   I can’t quite place exactly what it is, but there’s something very soothing about the last Sugababes album. Like a barbecue on a spring afternoon? I may be stretching the metaphor a bit. I’ve no particular reason for choosing this track over the Strokes-sampling “About You Now,” or the anti-Obama anthem “Change” (“Ain’t it funny how you think you’ve got your whole life planned/till you find out it was never ever in your hands/Change”), or the Ian Carey remix of “Denial,” all of which I’ve also been listening to a lot, unlike the album’s one miss-step, unfortunate rocksteady track “Back Down.”

6. Taylor Swift – Our Song

   Taylor Swift is another album it took me a while to notice; I saw “Teardrops on My Guitar” on MTV, and then jane dark wrote about her and last.fm started encouraging me to listen to her. Anyway, I’ve been listening to the album again recently;  I particularly enjoy the casual homophobia of “Picture to Burn” (“So go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine; I’ll tell mine you’re gay”). I’m also intigued, and perhaps this just shows that I don’t listen to much country, by the world-weariness of some of the tracks, like “Should Have Said No” and “Tied Together With a Smile.” But this song is my current favorite and, conveniently, the best one for this meme, being one of those songs that produces an imagine of summer spreading out indefinitely in front of you.

7. Alabama 3 – Whores of Babylon

   And this song enacts that feeling of an infinitely long summer, the infinity of the early hours of a summer morning; it shares this quality with a million other dance records, but this is the one I happen to be listening to right now.

Related posts:

1. The 90s pop war did not take place Especially as it was preemptively won by Alistair
2. So, the di­rector of the forth­coming t.A.T.u. film used to work on Coro­na­tion Street. Perfect. It’s a good Fall for music: I like the Sugab
3. “Is it better, is it worse?” Cheryl Cole’s new song is really quite incre

I think the only thing that could make Girls Aloud better would be if they started filming their videos in Britain’s decaying industrial heritage.

In other music news, two great Alabama 3 remixes.

Related posts:

1. I really really really want a… A day when the Spice Girls are rumored to be refor
2. “Like beau­tiful robots dancing alone” The steampunk genre is all about historical discon
3. Dancing com­mu­nist pirates on a train = rev­o­lu­tion Discussing the question of when the Russian Revolu

Aside from that, I’ve been:

• Worrying about Britney Spears. Everything I saw about the VMA performances was talking about if Britney is fat or not (she isn’t), which misses the more serious point. Britney Spears the supposedly “real person” seems to be having a bit of a tough time, but it’s not like any of us know her, so any sympathy is pretty abstract. More worryingly, the VMA performace was so uninspired in terms of coreography, design, costume; it suggests a serious crises in the Britney Spears machine. Further evidence: she has an album coming out soon, and her website is still totally insane.
• Studying for an exam in contemporary political theory, which has persuaded me of the deep wrongness of political philosophy. Attempting to come up with a philosophical explanation of why certain political disagreements are invalid is not politically useful. See also this post in which Brian Leiter quotes the excellent Raymond Geuss on Rawls, and a number of people miss the point spectacularly in the comments.
• Posting stuff on Twitter. Those of you who read this site via RSS may not have seen the twitter posts in the top right. You can read those via RSS too, if this blog isn’t trivial enough for you.
• Inventing a song about Max Shachtman to the tune of awful Beatles record “Taxman.” My favorite couplet so far involves rhyming “Fourth International schism” with “bureaucratic collectivism.”

Related posts:

1. Britney Spears ful­fills my fan­tasies Once upon a time, I suggested adopting Britney
2. How La­canian A wholly splendid article by Raymond Geuss on Rich
3. “Crazy as a motherfucker” A while back, I was listening to Le Tigre’s

The decision by tATu to attend Gay Pride in Moscow does strike me as genuinely admirable and even courageous; they are as charming as ever in an interview on the topic. And, in other tATu news, part of the novel on which tATu’s forthcoming film is based is available on the website of its author, Russian MP and pornographer Aleksey Mitrofanov.

I see that the theme for this year’s parade is “Pride Not Prejudice.” Good to see some innovative thinking there. The previous years’ themes of “Shame and Discrimination” and “Hatred and Regular Violence” were surprisingly poorly received.

Related posts:

1. So­cialism = Soviets + Electro The new tATu single “220″ has apparent
2. I really really really want a… A day when the Spice Girls are rumored to be refor
3. Don’t cel­e­brate, or­ga­nize Well, actually, feel free to celebrate a bit. Cert

I was reminded of this when &catherine posted something about the tATu best of, which I wasn’t aware of but which is pretty good. Apart from most of the tracks from Dangerous and Moving, the album includes the closest tATu have yet come to dubstep, a pleasingly eerie remix of “Cosmos,” and a “Bollywood” version of “Craving.” Which works surprisingly well, but more importantly served to remind me of a great film I saw a while back (with, coincidentally, the same friend who so wisely analyzed the Russian Revolution), Bhagam Bhag.

The film is about a group of actors from India who come over to London
to do a show and, broadly speaking, hilarity ensues. They accidentally
get mixed up with drug dealers, then get embroiled in a Vertigo-esque
mystery, while being chased around London by an enraged  ex-rock star.
And, of course, they still find time to put on their play which is, for
reasons that are never made clear, about communist pirates on a train.

Related posts:

1. The di­alec­tics of in­ter­plan­e­tary rev­o­lu­tion The Pacific Film Archive is currently running a se
2. So­cialism = Soviets + Electro The new tATu single “220″ has apparent
3. So, the di­rector of the forth­coming t.A.T.u. film used to work on Coro­na­tion Street. Perfect. It’s a good Fall for music: I like the Sugab

Where next for Russian space station promoters?

Moves to get official backing to send Madonna into space have been blocked.

My own answer is, I suspect, rather predictable (picture from the always-wonderful Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages, via Dwayne M.)

Related posts:

1. Britney, or, The New Heloïse For my part, I am convinced that it would be as ea
2. They want to knock our houses down to build some Ikeas There are some things I find difficult to apprecia
3. Against the fiction of “presentism” The true method of making things present is to rep

Related posts:

1. Dancing com­mu­nist pirates on a train = rev­o­lu­tion Discussing the question of when the Russian Revolu
2. What’s the deal with the RCP? I’ve been hanging out recently with a woman
3. Thesis titles I won’t use I’ve been thinking a bit about what I want t