The dish

I’ll be on our Chicago affiliate with Chuck Swirsky tonight, but I’m taping it before the show so I’m not sure exactly when it will air.

Anyway, I have discovered that there is one substantial benefit to XM (Sirius XM, XM Sirius, whatever the hell they’re calling themselves this week) – an hour or so of their alternative stations usually gives me a half-dozen songs I like enough to purchase. Of course, listening for an hour a week is sufficient, so I’m not about to renew my subscription (which I let lapse in 2006), but I get it via DirecTV at home and occasionally in rental cars, which is how I came across these songs.

Ida Maria – “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” (video)

Arresting title, for starters. Ida Maria is a Norwegian singer who has a smoky voice and exudes a woman-on-the-verge vibe throughout the song (“What the hell do I do that for?) and seems to have some issues to work through (“I like me so much better when you’re naked”). The unbalanced lyrics ride on top of an upbeat, sparse guitar/drum backing. Good luck getting this out of your head.

Tokyo Police Club – “Your English Is Good” (video)

The shoutalong intro is kind of menacing – “Oh give us your vote/give us your vote/If you know/what’s good for you” – and the generally obnoxious lyrics, complete with snotty delivery, are backed by an Arctic Monkeys kind of rapid Britpop/punk guitar riff.

Men Without Pants – “And The Girls Go” (no video, but the whole song is here)

Best band name I’ve heard all year, and it turns out it includes Dan the Automator (of Gorillaz, Handsome Boy Modeling School, and Dr. Octagon fame). It’s delightfully trashy rock, deliberately underproduced so it has a garage feel, with a guitar riff that never quite resolves so you’re given the sense that you’re listing to one side as you listen. That’s a good thing, by the way.

Rise Against – “Audience Of One” (video)

I was familiar with Rise Against from their acoustic song “Swing Life Away” but hadn’t heard any of their regular material until I heard this on XM. It’s solid-average, plays up a little with some good tempo changes and unusually sharp lyrics (not just for neo-punk but for rock in general), with the opening stanza, “I can still remember/the words and what they meant/As we etched them with our fingers/in years of wet cement” the first of a handful of strong images which, really, is about all it takes to rise above the lyrical level of the average rock song.

Living Things – “Oxygen” (video)

I had Living Things pegged as a one-hit wonder – and it wasn’t even a big hit or a particularly great song – after their terse and kind of juvenile anti-war song “Bom Bom Bom,” which hit #21 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart in 2005, but this is definitely a step up for them in the songwriting department. It has a stronger hook and a wave of sound behind a chorus that features some actual singing that wasn’t present on “Bom Bom Bom.”

Editors – “Blood” (video)

This song is actually from 2005, but I didn’t hear it at all until last year and didn’t think it worth buying until the second or third time I caught it. It’s very Joy Division/Interpol, and if you don’t like those bands, I don’t think there’s anything I could tell you about this song that would make it worth your while. Mostly I just wanted to mention that I was sure the first line in the chorus was “Blood runs through your feet,” when in fact, it’s “Blood runs through your veins,” so either the Brummie accent pronounces “vein” with a long “e” or my ears are shot to hell.

Franz Ferdinand – “No You Girls” (video)

They write good songs – I doubt you needed me to point this out. I was thinking the other day about how FF are kind of like Stone Temple Pilots in that, while you weren’t paying that much attention, they’ve racked up a bunch of good singles that would make a pretty strong greatest-hits album if the record company was in the mood for a money-grab. STP was there after four albums; FF might not even need that long.

Cage the Elephant – “Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked” (video)

CtE seems like your basic college jam band, which really isn’t my style, but the slide guitar riff and the vocalist’s half-rapped/half-drawled delivery had me singing the song to myself at the SEC tournament despite the fact that I didn’t think I even liked it. The lyrics aren’t especially clever – the singer meets a prostitute and a mugger and sees a crooked priest on TV, territory I’m pretty sure we’ve covered before. Apparently the song went top 40 in the UK last year but just started getting radio play here in the last few months.

Matt & Kim – “Daylight” (video)

Picked this one up a few months ago – I’m a sucker for a good call-and-response song, and this one comes with a shuffling percussion beat for a sort of minimalist punk-pop sucker-punch in just under three minutes.