It’s almost the end of the year, and I’m struggling to put together a list of my top favorite, er, things, so instead all of my posts from now until then will be in list form.  Take that list-o-mania!   I subvert you.  Bend to my will!

This Dirty Beaches album is on cassette.  I don’t have a cassette player but I do have means to all the ends of the whole musical universe.  Here’s why I like Dirty Beaches “Low Rider”:

1.  The vocals feel as if Jim Morrison and Ian Curtis got stuck in a transporter got all of their end bits spliced together and ended up in someone’s dirty basement with only a microphone, a tape deck, and some auxiliary percussion to keep them company.

2.  I could almost say this music sounds tropical but then you’d probably think of bongo drums, howler monkeys and white sand beaches.  That’s not this.  This is tropical in terms of the back alleys of Manila.  It’s hot and you want a pineapple coolie, but all you can find is exposed electrical wires and heaps of garbage.

3.  So, Jim and Ian are hanging out in a trash-scattered back alley, sweating and smoking a lot.  You’d think, “this doesn’t sound like an enjoyable experience.”  You’d think that and then let this Night People released cassette spill out of your eighth grade boombox, and you close your eyes, and you feel a tingly warmth spread through out your ears, and with it comes the sudden strange realization that Club Med is for septuagenarians and you’d rather be stepping over feces and heroin needles while Dirty Beaches ricocheted off the concrete.

Dirty Beaches - Low Rider