Michael Barthel- "Hallelujah". Although the catalyst may have been his EMP paper on the movement of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" through pop culture, Mike Barthel's full-length reimagining is a joy in its own right. There is none of the sadness of Cohen's, Buckley's or Wainwright's versions, and whereas the intimacy of those renditions rested on their acheing slowness, Barthel places the song's eroticism in a landscape of fun, whimsy, and easygoing pleasure. The call and response in the track's opening verse ("And it pleased the Lord" "He's a bit picky.") may at first seem irreverent, almost undercutting, but it's in some ways one of the sexiest sections of any "Hallelujah" ever: a man and woman united not in po-faced transcendence, but in play. (Swagger-smiling: "There was a time when you let me know / what was really going on below...") Through falsetto, synth washes, fake drums, we never lose track of that weird, great melody at the song's core, and in places it feels liberated for the very first time; I love the eagerness in Barthel as the song accelerates and he sings lines that have (bafflingly) never been allowed to sound excited before: "I remember when I moved in you / and the holy dove was moving too / and every breath we drew was Hallelujah." Like true love's not just souls caught unmoving in trembling moonlight - it's a dude in a smile and a girl in a sundress, a park full of dandelion & hibiscus.

[read Mike B's "Hallelujah" paper / read Clap Clap / read his excellent piece on Amerie and Rihanna]

Säkert! - "Sanningsdan". Säkert!'s a band with an exclamation mark and "Sanningsdan"'s the kind of song that makes you stamp your foot in exclamation marks, each toe-tap leaving an aspirate gasp in the air. "Safe!" the band-name means, like safety is something awesome and amazing, which I guess it is, or like you're playing hide-and-seek and you totally just won. It's a new project by Annika Norlin, aka Hello Saferide, aka a voice who is dear to Said the Gramophone, but here singing in Swedish. And at 1:19 she squawks like a buzzard and at 1:43 the drums start playing fast enough to turn the worlds' oceans to ice, and the chorus is horns and ahhs and drums and harmonies and the certainty of new splendours always just around the bend. !!! ! !

[$7 digital download / swedish blog / Hello Saferide guestpost on Said the Gramophone]