This Whole City Loves Me Back

Holy Ghost! “Hold On” – This is city music. Specifically, this is New York City music. Holy Ghost! don’t even try to hide that in the lyrics. It’d be like putting a rubber George W Bush mask on a large house cat and trying to fool a visiting dignitary that it was, in fact, the president of the United States. (I CAN HAS EXEKUTIVE POWERZ?) This is smoothed out, urban disco angst, drawing heavily from the past, but lustfully ogling the future. We always build new stuff on top of history here; there’s only so much space. We can always make new history, and at the end of time, the entire city can be like a giant layer cake of cultural significance. (Click here to buy the mp3 release from Bleep and here to buy the 12″ from Midheaven.)

T2 featuring Jodie “Heartbroken (Radio Edit)” – T2’s track is effervescent and immediately engaging, but it wouldn’t work quite as well without Jodie’s girlish, slightly wounded vocal performance. This is about a young sort of heartbreak, something that stings because it’s lacking in context, and so minor consequences seem enormous. There’s some awareness of that in her voice, but she conveys too much in-the-moment angst for it to come off like emotional nostalgia. (Though that’s exactly how we’re supposed to respond to it.) Her voice skips over T2’s bouncy bass and beats like it’s a jump rope, and the coy playfulness keeps the track from falling too deep into melancholy. (Click here for the T2 MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: How bad can comic books get? REALLLLLLLLLLLY BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD.