So there's this movie out called Snakes on a Plane, starring Samuel L. Jackson-- perhaps you've heard of it?-- and it contains a scene in which Jackson says the line, "I'm tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!" The line was voted into the film by the internet-- after filming was completed-- as a collective expression of the informed public's growing skepticism of the War on Terror. Or the public's love of Samuel L. Jackson saying, "motherfucking." Either one.

Listening to "Ophidiophobia", I am reminded of Queen's "One Vision" from the soundtrack to 1986's Iron Eagle. In that film, it was Louis Gossett, Jr., the hardassed drill sergeant from An Officer and a Gentleman, who saved us from evil, and Freddie Mercury who willed him, and us, through song. "One flesh, one bone/ One true religion/ One voice, one hope/ One real decision," Mercury sang, "Wowowowowo, gimme one vision." Cee-Lo, though more specific and personal, sings of the same unity and bravery, "I feel like a helpless child/ As I pace the aisle/ It's too bad to be true/ Or maybe I could help/ I'd fly this plane myself/ It's the least I can do."

The least Organized Noize could do was craft a funky snakecharming beat for Cee-Lo. The production team behind most of the classic material from Outkast and Cee's own Goodie Mob provides an uptempo, electric guitar driven track that links their work circa Aquemini with Danger Mouse's recent global domination with Cee-Lo on the Gnarls Barkley project. While it may not reach the heights of their best work together, Organized Noize and Cee-Lo certainly do enough here to get this motherfucking ass out of this motherfucking seat.

 

First Andrew W.K.'s "Pushing Drugs", now another over-the-top rock act's purchasing them. What next, OK Go starts a meth lab? Seriously though, at least the Electric Six's released a single without the words "fire" or "dance" in the title. Rather than hawking arsony or cutting a rug, Dick Valentine strictly channels Jack Black here, delivering a braggadocious monologue of his swingin' junkie lifestyle.

Over a slightly out-of-tune piano line, Valentine waxes lyrical about his illicit hobby, swelling with pride into an intentionally clumsy breakdown: "Send in a self-addressed stamped envelope to/ P.O. Box 900 Los Angeles, CA/ 90212/ And I will fill your prescription with some degree of accuracy/ Then I'll send it back to you." Unfortunately, the rest of the band's equally diarrhetic approach doesn't come across as so funny, leaving the song pretty unmemorable with its glam yet garden variety power chords and piano riffs. Valentine may deliver the punchline, but no one's warming up the crowd.

Wee DJs aren't a Scottish duo. They're an alias for individual-Scottish-person Dave Being, and play dark, industrial-stained electro. This track (the first on their most recent full-length, Fear and Lothian) is aggressive and sharp, but just digi-messy enough to blur the fine-precision gears in the drums. The chemical-cloud of synth that Being uses for a melody carries a numbing, foreboding effect, like being tapped on the ear with a warm, fluffy cube of steel. When I first heard the track, it reminded me in spirit of old Autechre, maybe because of the messy/mechanized quality, but now seems closer to Art of Noise with, uh, more noize (and minus the Pop Sensibility). In any case, I really don't see how this could hurt a party: If anyone complains about the bass, just remind them that we play music louder these days.

Harry Nilsson's vocal cords were famously shot when he recorded Pussy Cats with friend and patron John Lennon, but I've never understood why they opened the record with the most glaring example: His hoarse rendition of Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross" pissed all over the grace of the original like a homeless veteran holding a sign saying "Will Sully Classics 4 Food." It's no surprise that the Walkmen painstakingly recreate the boozy sentimentality of Nilsson's version, from the lush bed of strings to Nilsson's fuck-all scream in the song's final moments. Such a carbon copy is worth a double take and a triple-check of your ID3 tags, but there's something more disconcerting about their uncanny karaoke.

No band out there turns not giving a shit into such craft, and when they're going for broke for one perfect musical moment (like, say, the horns in "Louisiana"), it's something I admire. But when they're romanticizing someone else's dark days, I'm ready to snatch the Brandy Alexanders from their hands (though that title from their last record-- A Hundred Miles Off-- was likely one more tip of the hat to Nilsson). There's no bravery in recreating something tragic, even if that approach suits the Walkmen better than anyone, and no risk taken in gravelling up your voice to imitate Nilsson on a bad day; it's just farce.

Drinking songs, for obvious reasons, tend to be sloppy and rude, sonic replications of the alcohol experience. Such inebriated territory would therefore seem to be antithetical to Stars' Torquil Campbell-- whose songs are usually marked by prim pronunciation and delicate arrangements. True to form, "Incredibly Drunk on Whiskey", a song from his Amy Millan-less side project Memphis' forthcoming A Little Place in the Wilderness, may be the most polite, sober song ever written about going on a bender. Built on a jaunty jazz beat and merry clarinet, the only tipoff that Campbell might be tipsy is the chorus, which is overstuffed with words in such a way to make the song an awkwardly catchy valentine to mutual liver damage.

If the indie-kid version of songmeanings.net ever goes live, expect this three-and-a-half-minute Mac McCaughan gem to be in the most-viewed column. For one, it's probably the most disgustingly catchy thing the Superchunk and Merge Records co-founder has ever recorded, high-fructose taffy flavored with a purposefully overdone arena rock hook and no-nonsense verses nailing it down in doubletime. A handful of guitars, drums, bass, and keyboards comprise this perfect sing-a-long for people who like to stumble through their verses.

But it's the content that will nab web readers: "I'm in love with Arthur Dove," sings McCaughan, a guy that has spent nearly two decades singing about slack motherfuckers, cursed mirrors, and smarter hearts suddenly refraining about Arthur Dove, a six-decades-dead artist who became the first abstract American painter by curving nature's edges and dimming her colors. McCaughan wraps Dove in parable paint, explaining that he's just not ready to commit to the maturity of science and reason quite yet. Oh, yeah? Then why does this stick like proteoglycan?

As active pop remixers go, Rex the Dog falls squarely on the side of "workmanlike and dependable," which is a polite way of saying he makes up for his lack of imagination and recontextual prowess (for that, consult the mighty Jacques Lu Cont) with a solid ear for pop structure and a good instinct for knowing when to stay hands-off. That means when his source material is strong enough he barely has to do anything at all; as with his remix of the Knife's "Heartbeats", for which he played the role of no-frills dancefloor translator, this "Marble House" recut finds him nudging up the bpms, fortifying the rhythms, fussing about with a couple extra synth leads, and...not much else. Thing is, you can dance to this now, and it turns out it sounds pretty mega at mach speed, so I guess that makes RTD kinda like one of those re-decorators who can totally transform a room by painting it three shades darker and moving a chair-- you just shrug, pay up, and enjoy.

Audion (Matthew Dear) and Ellen Allien team up for this 12" backscratcher on Spectral, each contributing a new track and a reworking of the other's track, and both sound good here. Especially strong are their remixes of each other: Audion's take on Allien's "Just a Woman" is spooky, with deep, burnt drums laying down trance like they want to stare you down, under this repeating, clav-y synth motive. Likewise, Allien's version of Audion's "Just a Man" uses the creepo-synth line, but here behind soft, bouncy clip beats-- but where Audion's original was blunt and hypnotic, Allien's is a little cute. Her "Just a Woman" original, on the other hand, is pretty great: beats that pop like a hundred light bulbs in sequence, and a synth melody harmonized exactly an octave and a half-step apart, thereby destroying tonality completely. It's bleak but aggressive, and not "just" anything.

Linda Ronstadt sings this high-lonesome take on the Left Banke's signature hit with Cajun music singer/chronicler Ann Savoy (the Savoy-Doucet Band and Magnolia Sisters), but the results aren't as intriguing as they should be. With Ronstadt sounding more restrained than on previous collaborations with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton-- or even Aaron Neville, which is saying a lot-- this cover strips the song down to its barest elements, finds the harmonic possibilities in the melody, and inadvertently makes it safe for Starbucks worldwide. Instead of capturing the mod melancholy of the original or infusing it with any of the rhythmic complexity found elsewhere on their album Adieu False Heart, Ronstadt and Savoy emphasize refined harmonies that are both too precise and too tasteful to be very interesting. What this song needs, it seems, is a harpsichord.

Well, you can never accuse Ciara of showing off. Her vocals, best described as heavy breathing with occasional undulating tuts, are either about restraint or lack of range. But the girl's technique is flawless, she never reaches for melisma when it isn't necessary, and irritant/svengali Jazze Pha has a knack for placing her jagged rhythmic tones on top of jumpy 808 cotton candy. "Get Up" is no great progression, but it's refined and the tension in her voice implies a clearly coached delivery, the sort of thing that requires numerous takes-- she's no one-shot Betty. Chamillionaire's sing-songy (shocker!) verse is triple-tracked, making the H-town lizard sound like a lean Darth Vader. Thing is, Cham might be a better singer than Ciara. After his crisp ca$h flow, he moves into a breezy bridge: "You know Chamillionaire stay on the grind/ A hustler like me is hard to find/ I ain't really impressed, yes/ Unless it's about some dollar siiiigh-ns." Maybe he should get in the studio with Jam & Lewis.

Demerit points for the so-lovingly-rendered-it's-almost-plagiaristic homage to the deep thuds and carnivalesque whirlygigging of Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", but if you can get past that, "Distraction" is actually a pretty wonderful slice of disco house. As the cringingly-named Melee Beats, fledgling Sacramento-based producer Nic Bertino makes French house from his American bedroom. There's good reason that sounds like a bad idea, but the 20-year-old Bertino's (junior) boyish vocals and considerable maximalist production chops say otherwise. "Distraction"'s chockers with sweep filters, slap funk basslines, and wheezy vocodered vocals, so it's obvious that Bertino's Daft Punk man-love runs far deeper than the obvious "Harder, Better" connects, but, know what? There are worse bands to sound a lot like, especially at only 20.

"Waiting on the World to Change" is the sequel to John Mayer's "Your Body Is a Wonderland", replacing the politics of the flesh with, well, politics. Preaching the gospel of non-action and civic apathy, the song has the gravitas of an infomercial but only a fraction of the soul, pairing, for example, a half-hearted impulse "to bring our neighbors home from war" with adult-contemporary horn samples is just one instance. But who needs soul when you can have...soulfulness? That drum groove, a sort of anesthetic ?uestlove parody, could soundtrack a root canal. And who needs rebellion when you can have rebelliousness? Mayer actually mentions "the system," bro. This is his fainéant fiat to the ultimate-frisbee set: Leave agitation to the other dudes and text me later. In the meantime, you get feel-good Hammond licks, some sweet handclaps, a glockenspiel, and "when you trust your television/ What you get is what you got," which might be a koan. So this is how you corrupt the youth.