So Dubai arrests some guy for having weed stuck to the soles of his shoes. Brooklyn charm-poppers Vampire Weekends release a song that echoes Paul Simon’s Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes. Hilarious skinny-jean wearing Max Gogarty gets demolished for privileged, promiscous traveling through India and Thailand. Gender-neutral pronouns emerge in Baltimore. The TSA travelog goes unmentioned in a long presidential weekend of crazy weather. Soulful world - soulful world music. Sorry haters but its what I am.

Maria Daniela y su Sonido Lasser - Miedo
The Exciters - Yo Que Nada Tengo

We don’t normally do this at TMYLM but a particularly abject night leads us to a reposting of this delicious DJ Hoff mix, which came to us via the Neutered Noel via The Sweet Fix via Discobelle (via ethanol subsidies powering electricity, newly responsible for fucking bagels rising to over $1).

DF Hoff - Stereo! Mix

Today TMYLM continues our tour of aural worldly delights, after a brief respite in honor of plagiarism and death surrounding the blogosphere in these darkened times. Yes, you’ll have to put on your famous sunglasses for these ones, both picked up, sans venereal disease, in a hostel somewhere in the southern hemisphere. First up we have rootsrock band Kultiration bringing in a dancehallish rhythm over some weird-ass Swedish mixing. Sounds lame until ya hear it, don’t ya know… Next up is Colombian band Aterciopelados notspinning out some cool ass cumbia but without the beats so prevalent in, well, these darkened times. Next time you’re waiting in some cold ass line to hear Diplo at your local shithole, you’ll appreciate these in your mind.

Kultiration - Sparkar Och Slag
Aterciopelados - Baracunatana

Ok, now you got me angry - and at least I don’t need to artificially, New-York-cop-style pump myself up on public insurance funds to demonstrate just how much. But fast on the heels of my last post, reader Miss Momo asked me for some good recent-ish songs. So let’s get on with it, eh?

The first song stands as perhaps the perfect end of the year song for living in New York. Hinging on hipster opera vocals, the irony of would-be-gentrifiers lamenting the purchase of the city by fuckheads would stand at the forefront were the song not so damned great. It’s fantastic to see a song explicitly about urban politics that is handed down by white newcomers; its a sign that America is a) waking up to realize our total and complete lack of livable urban infrastructure and, simultaneously that b) we have no plans to reshape it - are, in fact, blocking it all attempts at salvation.

Was it any different, though, way back? Tanya Stephens sings about the music biz in this 2004 classic, but it would be remiss to not see the same kinds of trends happening in the political and other worlds. Emphasis on superficial additions to our city - ooh, bikes on Governor’s Island!! - over sustained commitment to the myriad of other deeper endemic problems that revolve around people’s engagement with the civic sphere plague the real business going on in this country, a thesis a priority-lover would love.

Indeed, it is the dark end of the street. But what will the new year bring?

LCD Soundsystem - New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down
Tanya Stephens - Way Back
James Carr - The Dark End Of The Street

This is how New York does it - but despite our city descending into revanchist, neoliberal hell, some people, namely us, still manage to find time to throw a party or two. Or perhaps we throw them because, being inside already-existing late capitalism, we subjects can’t really articulate a response that has not already fallen, Britney-Speaks-like, to the jackals of consumption. Below, then, are two unabashed pop songs that we will play at our party on Friday. And if you don’t want to subject yourself to more lectures, you’ll blast them right now.

Yes, I’m in finals mode. Tough shit.

Montell Jordan - This Is How We Do It
Gameboy Gamegirl - Sweaty Wet Dirty Damp

She’d gotten a snare and a hihat and a cymbal and I couldn’t believe how loud it was. Her parents said she’d quit by year’s end. She did. She gave me a tape with weird indie music I’d never heard before–The Magnetic Fields, Pavement, Papas Fritas, the Legendary Jim Ruiz Group.

I had dreams of running up mountains and doing a thousand pushups a day and setting up old tires to run through in the backyard. Instead, I lounged around the living room flipping through the Minty Fresh Records catalog and listening to the Mets on the radio.

Legendary Jim Ruiz Group - Urban Gentleman
Legendary Jim Ruiz Group - Every Other Sunday
Legendary Jim Ruiz Group - Glad They’re Gone
Papas Fritas - Passion Play