Shelby Sifers - "Are You Devo? (The Spirituals remix)". If I had heard this remix last year, when it came out, it would have been on my Best Songs of the Year list (ps: this list is still online!). But no I just heard it last week, trollin' around after the Sarcastic Dharma Society. Shelby is a singer I know, but Tyler Tadlock & The Spirituals - they are new to me.

"Are You Devo?" is a song about loving someone as fiercely as you love a song. "Are you a man or are you Devo?", Shelby asks. "Because I get the same strange feeling next to you / as when I put my favourite record on." It's an odd thing to hear, coming from Shelby. Devo evokes blippy synthesisers, energy domes, "Whip It" - not the twisty earnestness of her songs. It's herky-jerk.

But what I later realise - and what the Spirituals understand from the beginning, - is that Sifers isn't saying that "my love feels like Devo". She's saying "my love feels like how Devo makes me feel". Which is to say, more herk- than -jerk, lunging and longing and lusting and leaping, breathing and dreaming, makes her feel alive and full of sparks. The Spirituals fill this beautiful song with bells, rings, swishes, claps, drums; they fill it with a lush pitterpat of glimmers, crashes, gleams. It's a remix that sounds like a kingdom falling down the stairs, a chandelier in the wind, a jazz combo at sea, a heart spun silver. It's the sound, I think, perhaps, of being in love.

Update: Mat from the Sarcastic Dharma Society in fact recorded the original "Are You Devo?", and played guitar. Also, I got the year wrong. Anyway - thanks, Mat! [and later, Shelby!]

[Shelby Sifers's MySpace/download her albums free, Creative Commons-licensed/The Spirituals' MySpace]

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Marvel of marvels, no less than Bonnie Prince Billy is coming to Montreal in May - to play the Ukrainian Federation! Buy your tickets while you can.

Carrie Brownstein, on the dissolution of Touch & Go's distribution arm. I can't agree enough. If you care about music, please don't stop buying the records you love.

Being found is as splendid as the finding. Stumbling upon an MP3 or a blog or a Web site is only half the search. We seem to have forfeited our duties and become half-participants -- and at the cost of the creators. But we have to realize, and the Touch and Go announcement is a reminder, that in order for there to be anything left in which to participate, we have to show up. We have to show up with not just our half-selves, our virtual selves, our broke-ass selves, but with our whole selves, and in the spirit of giving. Mock participation is more than just an absence of real engagement; it is a falsehood that has allowed us to justify our apathy. When, exactly, did we stop showing up? And how long until there's not much left worth showing up for?

(photo via Everyday Marvels)