I Owe It All To You

GOMM “Don’t Take A Chance” – “Don’t Take A Chance” vamps along steadily for a few minutes, cycling through a twitchy post-punk phase and a droney jam section before settling into a brilliant final third that bounces restlessly as two voices attempt to talk each other out of pleasures, commitments, emotional connections, or anything else that could be considered a risk. The music sounds like a constant threat of danger, and though the male voice puts up a bit of a fight, the woman seems sorta eager to jump into the fire. (Click here to buy it from Bleep.)

Gudrun Gut (with Uta Heller and Matt Elliott) “Rock Bottom Riser” – Covering a Smog song is certainly not the easiest way to my heart, but Gudrun Gut and her partners pull it off, mainly by creating a track that sounds very little like anything Bill Callahan has ever recorded. Their take on “Rock Bottom Riser” is chilly, spare, and rhythmic, with three asymmetrical vocal lines that all fall on a scale that ranges from entirely dispassionate to hesitantly soulful, with opposite extremes overlapping at several crucial moments. Much like the original, they approach the drama of the lyrics with great caution, but Gut’s version is more evocative and musically descriptive, and best of all, it lacks Callahan’s hideous deadpan vocal inflections. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)