I Was Born Into Your Loving Arms

The Rapture “Sister Savior (DFA Vocal Mix)” – This new, almost guitar-free mix is taken from the brand new UK single. The full-on electro pop approach suits this song much better than the more rock-leaning arrangment from the Echoes LP. This new version sounds more confident and assured, whereas the album version seemed stuck in an uncomfortable halfway point between disco and punk, when it should have been a straight disco tune all along.

Jandek “I Went To Hell” – I hadn’t been keeping up on Jandek very much in 2003, and as it turns out, I missed FOUR Jandek records, and completely missed an entire phase in his long, strange career. It seems like only yesterday that I was feeling deeply creeped out by Worthless Recluse, the second of his three consecutive spoken word albums. After the third part of that trilogy, Jandek put out a couple of records which returned to his trademark guitar and harmonica, recalling the longer songs from his early albums like “First You Think Your Fortune’s Lovely” from Ready For The House.

“I Went To Hell” comes from Jandek’s newest record, The Gone Wait, on which Jandek’s pained voice is accompanied by thudding, arrhythmic and non-melodic bass, along with some occasional overdubs of his distinctive atonal guitar playing. I’ve never heard anything quite like this album (aside from maybe Jandek’s own Telegraph Melts-era recordings.) The rumbling bass on this recording seems random and arbitrary, but has a strange musicality to it. It is eerily remisiscent of the sounds that the furnace in my basement makes. It’s not hard to imagine this music as being the soundtrack to hell, actually.