The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Mark Sandford’s Lemon Life music picks of no particular order or relevance other than being really good songs.

Sia - Breathe Me (Four Tet Remix) click to listen

- You may recognize Sia’s voice from her work with trip-hoppers Zero7; soft yet evocative. On this track, the always wonderful/quirky producer, Four Tet, manages to throw in drunken-stumble-like drum fills to give it a 70s rock feel meets Northern Soul unpretentiousness. It’s hard not to think of Zero7 when you hear Sia’s soft voice, which feels like she is standing centimeters from your ears, asking you to be her friend, which any listener will gladly oblige. The original is a soft ballad, which is naturally beautiful, but Four Tet’s childlike impatience makes it groove like you never thought it could.

Rilo Kiley - Breakin’ Up (The Loving Hand Remix) - click to listen

-  Another remix, this time from everyone in the music industry’s favourite yet unknown producer, Tim Goldsworthy aka The Loving Hand. This song features extended disco spaciness that sends you to a proverbial space camp, where the only thing you learn is how to shake your tailfeather. Goldsworthy is the more electronic minded producer of the famed DFA production team, which has remixed everyone from Justin Timberlake to The John Spencer Blues Explosion. Goldsworthy shows us he can take a Rilo Kiley pop song and turn it into a psychedelic-relic of space-disco past. Perfect for solo dance parties on the iPod, or turning a boring get-together into a wicked party.

Free Energy - Dream City - click to listen

- The previously mentioned DFA Records latest addition, Free Energy brings 70s pop-rock to 2009; rife with sing along goofiness and ‘everything is okay’ attitudes, it is a decent attempt at having the indie hit of the summer. Little is known about this band, and their Myspace only has a few songs, but it’s an interesting direction that the dance-centric DFA Records has taken. Invite a few friends over and clap along, but make sure you’re drinking a Gin and Tonic or something frozen in the primary colour scheme. Bubble gum not included.

The Juan Maclean - Accusations - click to listen

-  Channeling one of the classiest albums to come out of 1981, Human League’s “Dare”, The Juan Maclean gives us a perfect re-imagination of the relationship of the female vocal lead and technological obsessed futurist music. The drum beat and organ breakdowns will make even your grandma two step in her orthopedic shoes. The Juan knows how to get a party started, and even if your party is filled with grandma’s in orthopedic shoes, they’ll know exactly what song this is, and how to move to it. If you have to, keep on replaying the drum parts at the 2:55 mark and extend your own groove.

Grace Jones  -  Williams Blood (Aeroplane Remix) - click to listen

- You may have seen a Grace Jones poster when you were younger,  it’s the one where she looks like she’s made of chocolate (Google image that). Well she’s back. Known for her art deco fashion sense and her gender bending modernist skyscraper frame, her voice on this track will make you bow down to whatever it is she’s talking about. Apparently she has someone’s blood in her, which is fine, it doesn’t matter, just keep on doing whatever it is you do. This Aeroplane remix is epic, for all the right reasons. The repetition of the chorus, mixed with the thick kick drum and Goldsworthy-esque spaciness sends you in a baptismal freakout, which is exactly what this type of music is for.

Wilco - Bull Black Nova -  click to listen

- Steering away from dancey-remixes, this new Wilco track has more experimental rock ingredients in it than their previous alternative country recipes; which is a good idea for their musical cuisine. They’re still from the midwest, where most good ideas have no coastal port to be exported from, but it was recorded in New Zealand, where 2 members of Radiohead were in the same studio, although as far as I know, they had nothing to do with this song or album. A steady apache beat gives enough room for lead guitarist Nels Kline to do his thing; crunchy guitar vamps and tape echoed guitar paranoia. This isn’t alt-country. It doesn’t even sound like Wilco. It sounds like they had too many fermented kiwis and singer Jeff Tweedy talked too much about his constant migraine problem, but somehow it translated to this killer track.

Beck - Gamma Ray - click to listen

- Music straight out of a 1960s mod spy thriller, Beck has reinvented his house band, and picked up big name producer Danger Mouse to make something we expect out of Beck, but probably overlooked when it was released. That’s the thing with Beck, you expect something so forward thinking and obscure that when he does release a song like this, you just think, “Oh good job.” If this song came from anyone else, The Twist would become hugely popular again. What I’m trying to say is, this song deserves a lot of credit. It’s really good.

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks - click to listen

- After opening for Radiohead on the In Rainbows North American leg of the tour, Grizzly Bear must have learned a few things. Not saying they were less of a band before, but it’s like they matured over night. This song, even with it’s kind of freaky video, puts you in a very pure and whimsical state of mind. The chorus has arpeggios and soft vocal harmonies that make you feel like a child running through a a room filled with balloons or forgetting your obligations and leaping into a vat of cotton candy. If you can do that with music, you’re doing something right. Listening to this makes me want to read lead singer Ed Droste’s tweets even more. It also makes me want to eat cotton candy.

Portishead - Silence -  click to listen

- Everyone loved this album when it came out. It took me longer than it should have, but then one day this song came up on my playlist and I nearly keeled over in amazement. It’s not something you’re going to throw on to make an sandwich to, but it is a song that will make you refer to the city you live in as “the metropolis” and your friends as “confidants”. It has that power, it makes you feel like James Bond’s cooler older brother or Cat Woman’s sexy unknown human sidekick named Naomi or Natalia. Portishead is too good sometimes, they’re allowed to only release stuff every few years. I’d almost rather not know what they’re doing at all times as Kanye West feels the need to do. I like to think of them as our 21st century version of reclusive Kraftwerk types who sit in studios and play with their instruments like little nerds do with chemistry sets.

Best Music Related YouTube Clip of the Day / Week / Month - click to listen

Tiga: Ciao! Means Forever Pt 1/2 - Montreal producer/DJ Tiga shows us a side that many of us never knew; he’s absolutely hilarious. This Charlie Rose rip-off paints Tiga as a pretentious DJ who knows everyone, has done everything and throws aphorisms and anecdotes around like they’re whiffle balls. You’ll laugh your ass off in part 1, so check out part 2 as well, then go find his album. It has an incredible list of producers and collaborators.

Radiohead - Optimistic - click to listen

- Seeing as though I’ve been invited to share music on a site that is dedicated to our youthful search for employment and career oriented happiness, why not throw in a song that can be used to make a meaningful connection. What better song than Radiohead’s Optimistic, from the album Kid A. Our world has been turned upside down, technology has sped up the rate of everything, and many of us are finding it tough to gain the lucrative and secure employment our parents generation and even to some extent their parents generation knew. For me, I have music. It’s songs like this that let me know that in the end, we’ll be alright. When something gets you down, throw on your favourite album, or your favourite song. Put your phone away, close the laptop lid, and take in the sounds, the experimentation, and the lyricism. I bet you haven’t done that in a while. When the world is spinning into economic disarray or social upheaval, there will be a music  to get us through the night. This song, can do just that for me. It is a direct connection to the spot in my brain that knows what is straight and level. It is my drug of choice when everything else has gone haywire. Stay optimistic LemonLifers.

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