There's this site on the internet called YTMND (named after "You're the man now, dog!", a line Sean Connery shouts in one of his films that suddenly became an overnight internet sensation, looping continuously over a picture of Sean Connery, which you can view here) on which people can make simple sites in the vein of the original YTMND---you loop an animated gif, put some audio to it, and BAM! you have a YTMND. Even I made one back in 2007 (set to The Pirate Ship Quintet, who I've unfortunately not covered here).

Years ago on YTMND some asshole posted images taken from a video of a cat being set on fire and set it to a song from the videogame Doom. Users who rated this YTMND five stars found their own YTMND pages under attack (being "down-voted") because people who were outraged over the animal cruelty saw fit to punish such assholes. One of these assholes suggested that he only five-rated the cat-burning YTMND because of the 'ironic' usage of Doom music. In response one of the users said something to the effect of: "Not even DOOM music justifies burning a cat."

Shortly thereafter several people created YTMND pages with the abbreviation "NEDM" on it and one used a loop from Coburn's We Interrupt This Program (JCA Remix) (which isn't the version I'm playing here, nor is it on the two-track EP I link to above) as a good example of "not doom music", I suppose. (You can read a more detailed account of the NEDM origins on the YTMND wiki, and see a YTMND explaining how this song came to be involved in the NEDM fad right here.)

I, myself, have enjoyed the NEDM fad---it manifested itself in funny ways across YTMND, with seemingly completely unrelated YTMNDs suddenly ending with a giant cat head and the recognizable loop from this song blasting at you (very Rick Roll indeed). On the upside, I've always thought the loop kicked ass and only now, years later, have I added it to my regular collection. I think this is one of the coolest dance/rave riffs I've ever heard, so I'm sharing it with you.

There's your internet history lesson for the day.

I don't often cover the kind of thing they play on KROQ here in Los Angeles---my KROQ days were also my methamphetamine days and my high school days, and as such are far behind me and thankfully so---but That Noise was brought to my attention and their cover of Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire improves upon the somewhat clumsy original in a multitude of ways.

Mostly they do this by stripping a lot of the 'rock' out of the song and replacing it with a vibe I'd compare most closely to HEALTH's Die Slow and various other yesteryear Nine Inch Nails dance remixes, soaking the whole song in a pensive late night post-clubbing vibe. Unlike the original, That Noise's version actually seems deserving of the ridiculous title phrase: the song now oozes slow burning sex appeal.

I do think it's weird that newcomers That Noise are covering a Kings of Leon song that's barely a year old, but when it's done in such a way that it improves upon the original so thoroughly (and I say this as someone who has listened to the Kings of Leon original way more times than I'd like to admit) that I can't really complain. Besides, it wasn't that many years ago (well, like, forty, maybe) that immediately covering an artist's popular song in order to piggyback your way into the charts on it was a common occurrence. If it's working for That Noise, good for them, especially because this cover rocks.

Let me save you some time: This is Fanfarlo's only good song. They have other songs, but most of them suck, and the other one that doesn't (The Walls Are Coming Down) sounds so much like it's trying so hard to be Beirut that it sucks by default. The album generally suffers from this, which should be obvious on Arcade Fire aping I'm A Pilot. I'm sure before you even got to this word you already thought, "This sounds like Arcade Fire..."

This is really the only song that does. The rest of the album sounds like it's trapped in some twilight realm between Arcade Fire and Beirut (and some people say Clap Your Hands Say Yeah but I've managed to avoid that band since their first largely unlistenable album) where all the fun, energy, and everything unique and interesting about those bands has been bizarrely sucked into the abyss never to be seen again. So easy, it is, to stop paying attention to Fanfarlo's Reservoir, that I... uh... well I don't even have anything to say about it. It is bland, and uninspired.

However, I'm A Pilot is a ridiculously awesome song. Thanks for that, Fanfarlo, but not really because it's only so good because you're trying so hard to be Arcade Fire.

It's not often that I get to cover something that seems to be virtually ignored but today I get to cover two such albums, both uncovered by Pitchfork (earlier it was Stellastarr*). I found a review of this album that repeatedly compares this band to The Postal Service. I'm going to say that this reviewer doesn't have any clue what he's talking about.

Plushgun doesn't sound like The Postal Service so much as it sounds like... something else... that isn't like---OK, you know what, when a band like Owl City can so thoroughly ape The Postal Service's sound and get away with it just fine, you're just an asshole for comparing anything else to The Postal Service. It's just not possible for a band to sound more like The Postal Service than Owl City, so let's just forget that anyone ever compared Plushgun to The Postal Service because they're not at all alike. Now that I've said "The Postal Service" six times I'll just move on.

Plushgun came to me much in the same way Kyle Andrews did, handed to me by my girlfriend who picked up the album on the cheap based on cute album art. Much like that Kyle Andrews album, Plushgun's suffers from having one standout track that is so good it overshadows most of the others, and that track is, yes, you guessed it, you might be listening to it right now, Just Impolite which begs comparisons to The Postal Servi---OH FUCK, I just did it myself.

Whatever.

This is one of those songs that feels immediately familiar. I like it a bit, but not enough to fall in love with the rest of the album. If you like this song A LOT then you'll probably love the album. Check it out, fall in love with it, and then promote it to all your Pitchfork reading friends who missed out on it because Pitchfork doesn't seem to review albums that merely strike the lukewarm chords. Stupid Pitchfork.

I'm trying something new today. I've recently started using the music service Lala. Since I'm such a Pitchfork fan, it's surprising that it wasn't until a Twitter user suggested that I check it out that I fell in love with it. I've been a devotee off Amazon MP3 for quite some time but Lala's perks are numerous: complete (undownloadable) 'cloud' held collection of all your music (even that which they don't have themselves) and cheaper prices for non-DRMed MP3s. Also their interface is slick and easy to use.

So, perhaps instead of embedding the tracks myself and going through the work and possible legal hassles involved, I'm going to use Lala embedded tracks. The only thing this should subtract from the site is the ability to listen multiple times. Lala only allows you to listen to the complete track once... but that's all you need, right? Without further ado... (Aside: I was going to just embed the single track but I might as well embed the whole album.)

My girlfriend, before she was my girlfriend again and after she wasn't my girlfriend anymore, picked up this Kyle Andrews CD for cheap at some record sale in LA. She bought it 'cause the cover art was pretty, and just luckily the music inside it is fairly awesome. Most awesome of all is the first track, Sushi, which makes me want to fall in love with everything. I listened to it over 10 times on Friday.

Sushi is almost a shame, because it's so good that it easily overshadows the rest of the record, which is also pretty good. The second track, Naked in New York, gets heavy, you can even head bang to it. Maybe it's telling that I've listened to the album several times and all I can really remember are the first two tracks. Hmm.

Regardless, this Sushi song is amazing. Dig it.