Babe Rainbow remixing Lindsay Lohan-"I Can Try To Run (Stuck)"

Lindsay Lohan's life is a circus. No two ways around being internationally in/famous for a party girl persona that would eventually lead to jail time: LiLo's career and its demise hold the bizarre allure of some Ray Bradbury circus. Babe Rainbow has taken this tragic fable and synthesized one of LiLo's (crappy) pop tunes into a freakshow track that stumbles and gaits along with the drunken humor of someone who read the entire wikipedia page about LiLo. This track, in conjunction with the larger "Let Me Shine For You" album is a deconstruction of glittery pop through re-interpretation of Lohan's heavily influenced (read:preassembled) music. Fitting, that the tracks are each handled by producers who are making names for themselves as outre artists and experimenters in sound. There are some pretty meta layers happening all throughout this album but the opener 'Stuck' spreads the gallows humor thickest of all the different producers represented in this six track effort (all available to download for free!!).
Babe Rainbow's interpretation of 'Stuck' isn't as spry as the original. LiLo's album edit was the kind of dunka-dunka, synth-driven pop that could have been written by Santogold before she broke out of her Ashley Simpson cage. The original could have easily been written for a great number of equally attractive, talented and disposable young women. The Babe Rainbow interpretation strikes at the trashy/throw-away vibe by recrafting the song entirely into something that sounds unlike anything near the radio. The track works by retaining its pop heart. The tracks soars because of its invention. It slows everything down to the bounce of a slow-mo scene where the camera shows us how much creepier the circus is at night. I'm sticking with that metaphor because it really is perfect. If the idea of a highly self-aware album full of meta-commentaries on the recently incarcerated sounds awesome to you, go download it. http://tinyurl.com/2wgdr4k

Song Review- Arcade Fire "Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains"

Arcade Fire doesn't half ass much. The about-face disco-pop of 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) delineates its style from the rest of The Suburbs but the track cogently flows and serves as a fantastic close to Arcade Fire's modern tragedy. Sprawl II features Régine Chassagne's strongest vocals to date in a character grown from The Funeral. It's an insanely catchy, sing-along anthem that recalls 'Heart of Glass' and 'Heartbeats' in the same instant with the song opening "They heard me singing and they told me to stop, Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock." The immediate break from its predecessor 'Sprawl I (Flatland)' accentuates the rather un-Arcade Fire orchestration that reads more Andrew Butler than Thom Yorke. The Indie rock powerhouse has crafted their most immediately topical and peer-influenced single in a stupidly successful four album discography.
The track itself is something like 2004 and and 2011 with a deeply unhappy emotion packaged in a translucent synth line that accentuates lyrics from the musings of a modern Sylvia Plath(?) with the voice of Madonna(?). The song builds as it repeats melancholic lines built around the Houston-inspired imagery of "Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains, And there's no end in sight, I need the darkness someone please cut the lights." The track itself is exactly what you'd expect from disco night with Arcade Fire; it's sad but pretty and emotive without succumbing to pop dramatics. It's a song for alot of emotional states. What most struck me as I listened the first time was how the song never quite got to being angry about its subject matter. Arcade Fire aren't mad or all that sad now. The whole album builds to Sprawl II in typical Arcade Fire fashion with the album's penultimate track being its strongest. The great vocal turns and beautifully detailed loops expand the horizon of The Suburbs and its pensive mental state. A sense of disco in the streets makes the tragic irresolution of Sprawl II all the more heartbreaking. The song never falls but its protagonist left outside, belting her heart out to a land with "no end in sight, I need the darkness someone please cut the lights." Shit, that's epic.

Song Review-: Robyn - 'Dancing on my Own'

Robyn has worked a long time to be able to craft a song this cheesy, dumb and affective. She took something personal and played it to a pop world that runs counter to the leather and lace ethic of “Just Dance” and “Rockstar 101”. She's just Robyn and she's just telling us how it is. Robyn has said that the dancehall is “the new church. It's where people go to experience something bigger than themselves.” Robyn applies this motif to “Cry When You Get Older” in a way that lesser artists would preach instead of perform. Robyn presents images of the “other dream I'm on top of the world ahead of the game.” A theme that hits close to home for the often-cheated artist who formed her own label to avoid the effect of corporate producers. She references the “incomprehensible boredom” of suburban life and sings directly to its inhabitants. Robyn and co-writer Klas Åhlund crafted a song that doesn't stop at discussing the melancholia of our times, it offers a solution. “Love hurts when you do it right/ You can cry when you get older.” This message created a song custom made for the times in our life when we experience something bigger than ourselves.

Robyn's emotional range has been utilized to great effect to tell the stories of other songs but she's never gotten the last word in. Some man is always tying another girl's laces or dancing with his new friend or she's just hurting “With Every Heartbeat”. Robyn's always the loser. Her albums may open on a vehement statement of personal awesomeness but by album's end the cracks have begun to show through her consistent pop sensibilities. Robyn may be dropping danceable beats and emoting over hook-laden backtrack but “Cry When You Get Older” is the odd track, written in a way that hasn't been in vogue for years. This song runs counter to the commonly held belief in music that self awareness and irony mitigate an artist's ability to convey an idea earnestly. Robyn earnestly believes in what she sings and it sets her performance above any other this year. Robyn's vocal style is unique in the lengths she goes to let her defenses down to embody the music. Where other acts rely on theatricality and technology to portray themselves in the music Robyn simply sings and proves herself the strongest diva in the crowd (sorry Antony).

Robyn has described herself as the outsider always looking in and many of her songs reflect that ethic. “Dance When You Get Older” transcends the limitations of the Robyn character to impart a simple catharsis both for herself and the listener. After years of being almost-a-pop-star and almost-independent Robyn finally doesn't have to act or fluff her own feathers. Somewhere along the way Robyn figured a few things out and decided to just tell it straight. This year's best song is a new call to the dancefloor. The song is compassionate and unpretentious; it's appealing after many listens and it's unafraid to be uncool. “Cry When You Get Older” is a reminder of the power that art has to not just comment on its surroundings but to also improve them.