We Sure Are Hot For Two Cold People; There's a Fire in My Snow Pants

This month's compilation is filled with obscure little gems and may, again like last month's, not have a clear favorite. Thee More Shallows' song, Night at the Knight School, may however have a good chance of rising above. The strength of most of this month's songs are found in their lyrics, "polly pocket shoots off her head," "I'd like to pay some other girl to just walk up to her and hit her," and the lyrics that inspired this month's title, "we sure are cute for two ugly people" and "there's a fire in my jeans" (we must keep the fire burning, whether it's in the taco bell or in someone's pants).

Tracklist as follows:

Bonus Tracks
21. Pink High Heels - Melanie Horsnell
22. Bonafied Lovin' (Chromeo Remix) - The Teenagers

January CD Release: January 30th

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"1. Anyone Else But You - The Moldy Peaches My name is Adam, and I'm your biggest fan. I'm sure there are plenty of frowning hipsters who'd grouse about "Anyone Else But You" being overexposed after being featured so prominently in "Juno" (itself the victim of a Mighty Hipster Backlash), but I still really dig it. Wow! As many times as I've heard this song (including my first whirl through this mix), I completely missed the legendary Contra code being quoted in full. That makes me swoon over it that much more. 2. Night at the Knight School - Thee More Shallows I really love the dissonance the opens the song, although it kind of loses me once the vocals kick in. 3. I Will Wander - The Features "I Will Wander" really roars to life in the choruses, buoyed by those '70s disco-fried strings and the nimble danceable groove of the lead guitar. 4. When You Were a Millionaire - The Eames Era "When You Were a Millionaire" is packing sugary sweet female vocals anchored by a pretty infectious beat, and that's some awesomely frantic work on the hi-hat. 5. Jacket - David Vendervelde I think I'd be even more keen on "Jacket" if the vocal style had been reined in a bit, but the music is inhumanly catchy, especially the vocal melody in the chorus that's firmly lodged itself deep in my head. 6. Polly Pocket Says Goodbye - Miranda Gjerstad As long as Littlest Pet Shop is still alive and kicking, I can hang on in there. 7. If You Find Love - Naked and the Boys I really like this one: a deceptively upbeat and poppy acoustic guitar strummed with a sly smirk. Playing against type, though, I think "If You Find Love" is at its weakest in the chorus; that's almost never the case. 8. Ghetto Ways - Scissors for Lefty An absolutely awesome '80s synthpop homage and, although I'd have to stop and mull this over before committing, maybe even the best one ChipperDemon's served up this side of Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. As part of America's most oppressed and underrecognized minority -- the left-handed -- I might be letting the band's name bias me, though. 9. Saving Myself - Identity #1 My two favorite songs on this mix are back-to-back. Nimble bass, cute female vox, that peppy, half-skanked guitar...if Identity #1 had dialed the Wayback Machine to 1996 or '97 and recorded this album at the peak of the Third Wave, they might've been a colossal hit. The island-flavored organ, squeaky "1-2-3-4!" countdown, and scattered record scratching infuse it with a ridiculous amount of color and personality. I'm kind of surprised-slash-disappointed I'd never heard of them before this. 10. Pushing the Shine - Lovedrug "Pushing the Shine" is okay, but it sounds like Lovedrug is trying much too hard to out-Muse the competition. 11. She's a Rejecter - Of Montreal I gushed over Of Montreal in college back when they were playing nothing but giddy Beatles-based pop, masking a dark, depressing undercurrent under layers of hypercaffinated melodies, but I lost track of them after "Aldhils Arboretum". I was completely thrown off when I caught them at the Popfest in Athens a few albums later to discover that they'd transformed into a wholly unrecognizable quirk-dance outfit. Stewart's made an effort to convert me over, and I did like a lot of "Skeletal Lamping", which seemed like more of a musical collage than a collection of songs in the traditional sense. That's an awfully long lead-up just to say that I kind of like this one too. 12. The Little People - The Grates I'd give "Burn Bridges" off the other "Hot" ChipperDemon mix ("You're Too Hot and I'm Too Hungry to Wait") the nod as my favorite of the two Grates' songs I've heard, but I really dug this one too, as if I'd /EVER/ shy away from chipper, female-fronted indie-pop. 13. Absorb the Lip Gloss - The Hood Internet Is that "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC sampled and cranked up to 11 up front? Google informs me that it's not, but I'll ask rhetorically and pointlessly anyway. that dog. still gets the nod for writing the all-time greatest song about lip gloss, tho': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_t0j1VmKzM 14. Tonight Party - Trabant I'm loving the synths, especially in the bridge where they sound like an Atari 2600 on a Jelly Belly bender. 15. Madeline - frYars I'm trying to figure out what I dislike more: the overwrought vocals or the fact that they spelled the title as the vastly inferior "Madeline". I think I'd like it more with someone else in front of the mic, and that's a drag because the keyboards are pretty ingenious and just all over the place tonally. 16. Fake Your Death - Orion Domisse Very intriguing, this mix of bows, plucked strings, and falsetto vox, and it's too clever to settle into any of the clichés I'd typically expect from a song with this sort of title for any length of time. 17. Creepy Addicts - Coal Beautiere "Creepy Addict" also belies the usual expectations, not leaning on slow, eerie instrumentation as a crutch to triple-underline the title. The underlying instrumentation /IS/ kind of haunting, but "Creepy Addicts" doesn't revel in it. 18. Plus Ones - Okkervil River It takes "Plus Ones" a little over a minute to grab me, but once it does, its grip is pretty unrelenting. 19. Electric Bird - Sia It's not my usual speed, but the soulful vocals and the soaring horns in "Electric Bird" make for my favorite of this block of songs. 20. Let the Burden Be Mine - Coyote Bones I love the way "Let the Burden Is Mine" deftly slides from solo acoustic singer/songwriter territory into something more richly textured and even more powerful. 21. BONUS TRACK - Pink High Heels - Melanie Horsnell Brilliantly jazzy and upbeat. I'm not sure what I'm smitten with more: Melanie Horsnell's gorgeous vocals or that clarinet. Awww...it abruptly cuts off on this CD. Sad, really. 22. BONUS TRACK - Bonafied Lovin' (Chromeo Remix) - The Teenagers This is another one that could've easily crept up the charts if it had bowed back in '87." posted by Adam on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 5:13 PM.

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