The theme at Said the Gramophone this week, through no efforts of my or Dan's own, appears to have been sex appeal. I had expected it to be coincidences, bling, the frustrations of noise music, or the cities built by buildings - but nay, no. Instead it's the way words slide on tongues, the clumsy and the quick; the way our pistachio-green background might just make you blush.

Or so I would like to imagine.

Let's imagine a photo booth.

Ola Podrida - "Photo Booth". I wrote about Ola Podrida months ago, with demos in my hands (fish-hooks were on the brain, even then). But now the album is finished, due out on Plug Research in 2007, and it's become pretty clear: this is a record I want to keep with me. David Wingo's songs at first seem modest and merely warm - lullabyes, irons & wines. But what I've found is that the songs are hot. Behind all that lull is organ churn, guitar resound, sharp want and skin-on-skin. "Down each-others' pants / in the photo-booth." The folksy calm lets the songs feel easy, lets them feel familiar; and yet deep in there, beneath the easy and familiar songs, is something more than status quo. There's a fierceness that feeds these soft-voiced things, something far too sensuous for bedtime. If this were a 2006 album, it would be one of my albums of the year.

Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands has the finished "Instead," perhaps the album's best song - the demo of which was posted on StG way-back-when.

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Chet Baker - "I Get Along Without You Very Well". The xylophone that opens this song is the sound of everything, everything spilled. But don't worry. Chet starts singing. Everything's fine now.

Elsewhere:

Skatterbrain has a new song by Phantom Buffalo!

My Best of 2006 Contest is still on: enter and win an excellent CD.

Finally, do we have any readers in Krakow, Iceland or Istanbul? (Or for that matter, other than the ones I know, in Paris?) Please consider getting in touch - I'm coming to visit.

(photo by this girl)