Has it been one of those days?  Could you use a change in attitude?  Would you like to be grinning like the village idiot?  You need a dance break!

Pop in the new Phoenix CD, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and listen to the first three songs, Lisztomania, 1901 and Fences.  The music has quirky lyrics, throbbing beats with a kind of an 80s electric vibe.  It’s happy, summer music.  Don’t forget Lasso, Girlfriend and Armistice as well.  Enjoy!

I love Christmas music.  From the trite to the spiritual hymns, it all makes me happy.  Below are quick suggestions to add some things to your own musical library…and even what to skip…

 Saddest Song – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Judy Garland.  Her voice just aches, so good.

 Coolest Song – I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, Dean Martin.  Hip and unbelievably cool.  I want to be fireside with Dean…

 Most Fun – Donde esta Santa Claus? Guster.  Mamasita, where is Santa Claus?  Love it.

 Most Feel Good – Winter Wonderland, Rosemary Clooney.  Happy, happy music.

 Best Drummer Boy – Do you Hear What I Hear?  Martin Sexton.  Sweet and strong.  His voice and arrangement will you singing all day…

 Best Jingle Bells – Sammy Davis Jr.  Obviously.

 Best Swing – I Believe, Frank Sinatra.  Me and Frank – we believe in wishing wells and Santa Claus…

 Naughty in the Best Sense of the Word – Maybe Next Year, Meiko.  Breathy and delicious.   

 Best Surprise – Just Like Christmas, Low.  Bittersweet, just like Christmas…

 Best New Song – Winter Song, Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson.  Haunting and gorgeous.  December never felt so long…

 Most Disappointing CD – Harry for the Holidays, Harry Connick, Jr.  For all practical purposes this should work, but it doesn’t.  He sounds phony and over-produced.  Skip it.

 Worst Song – White Christmas, Katy Perry.  Screeching and off-key.  Can’t believe it made its way onto a CD…

 Best Instrumental CD – Celtic Christmas ’06.  Penny whistles and hymns = lovely background music.  

 Best Get in the Spirit Song – It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas, Bing Crosby.  Enough said. 

 Happy Listening!

Kings of Leon deliver yet another sexy, inspired album.  For me, however, it begins bleak – skip first two tracks (I know Closer and Crawl were big abroad but seriously, it makes you feel like - slash your wrists and call it a day…depressing.) 

 The tracks Sex on Fire, Use Somebody, Manhattan, Revelry, Notion, I Want You and Be Somebody are hot, plain and simple.  Take your clothes off to the left please.  There is a reason all over the trashy magazines have pics of all these famous people having illicit affairs and attending these concerts.  This music has a naughty yet intense edge to it - listen to Be Somebody or Cold Desert to understand this concept.   

 Kings of Leon are family (3 brothers and a cousin) who named themselves in honor of a grandfather and father, “Leon.”  I think this closeness absolutely enhances the intensity of the music because they are ‘safe’ to be more vulnerable in the writing and the creation of sound.  Happy listening!  

Just discovered this LA band, The Airborne Toxic Event and I love them.  The sound is raw, plaintive, punk-like, and incredibly personal – think a cross between Violent Femmes and Crash Test Dummies.

 The album was written while lead singer Mikel Jollett was struggling with heartbreak, his mother’s cancer and his own health problems…Needless to say the album is full of raw emotions and surprisingly – humor. 

 In “Does This Mean You’re Moving On?” with the lines like, “Oh Christ, she’s not alone…” and “I’ll bet your friends all hate me now.  I get the strangest looks from that bitchy crowd…guess I am not quite over you.” – let the giggling begin.  Or in “Something New” - a priceless appreciation of hoping the fighting will stop and the therapy works…If you have been in therapy with your mate, well this is a riot.  Set to a hopeful, happy beat – the couple is falling apart…

 Another wonderful quality of the music is the shifting and building tempos of the different songs, such as in “Sometime Around Midnight.”  The song opens quietly, building softly by adding instruments and strengthening his voice with each bar until you hear his anguish refrain, “You just have to see her,”  over and over.  Who hasn’t been to this broken place?  

Must listen to: Gasoline, Does this Mean Your Moving On?, Sometime Around Midnight, Something New, Missy

For the past few days I’ve been listening to this CD by Blind Pilot over and over.  From the very first refrain, I thought, “Road trip.”  This is fantastic, get moving music - I keep thinking I need to be listening to this while driving along the West Coast in a convertible with people I love and laughing ‘til it hurts.  Then I was amused to discover on their web site that this concept was in fact their touring strategy…but that is another story, the CD.

 The CD is a playful mix of quirky and softly vulnerable lyrics with unexpected pacing and instruments (horns, banjo, xylophone – what???…)  The boys of Blind Pilot are storytellers – twisting words and meanings, such as in “One Red Thread.”  It is haunting, hypnotic and sexy all at the same moment – when the narrator reflects on early selfish love by saying I remember, “When you were the savior, and I was the taker…”  You can feel his longing to be sure again of the love he was taking…for now he was being taken and unsure…

 Or “Two Towns From Me” with it’s dreamy, sing-along quality, “Had a dream you were two towns from me…got to sleep, spent the whole night running…”  Or in “The Story I Heard” with its toe-tapping rhythm and his pleading, longing words…Love this CD.  Ready for a road trip?  I am. Sounds like: The Thorns

If you are looking for some hip Christmas music try Hotel Café Presents Winter Songs, Various Artists – go listen to Winter Song by Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson first thing.  It is tender and exquisite.  The tune reminds me of waves with its ebb and flow rhythm - which immediately connects you to shifting emotions…”My voice a beacon in the night…my words will be your light…to carry you to me…Is love alive?…I’ll be your harvester of light…and send it all tonight…so we can start again…”  Trust me, go listen.  Unbelievably romantic and haunting…and haven’t we all tried to be beacons in the night, hoping to carry you to me?

 Other memorable songs on the CD – The Christmas Song, Frosty the Snowman, a lovely Mistletoe, Sleigh Ride, a playful All My Bells Are Ringing, and the sexy Maybe Next Year (X-mas Song) – who doesn’t love a bad girl?  Maybe next year I’ll be good…

 Skip Katy Perry’s White Christmas and bullet-to-my-temple Blue Christmas…Horrible, please ladies, go back to your real genres.   Happy listening!

Want to instantly feel better – listen to Faulkner’s song “Gone In the Morning.”  Every time I hear it, no matter the where I am – in a clothing store or a car  – I’m dancing like a gyrating fool.  This CD is quirky, creative and unbelievably sexy.  Why?  It’s his voice.  My favorite tracks are: “Feels Like Home,” “U.F.O,.” “Ageing SuperHero,” and “Gone In the Morning.”

 I had to laugh yesterday when I googled Faulkner and saw he was a dread-locked, red-haired singer from the UK – my favorite artist is Van Morrison.  I’m a sucker for a Celtic balladeer with smiling eyes…One of my best friends would always joke, “Give Quasimodo a guitar and a mic and you’ve got instantly hot.”  Anyway, I’m hooked…