Video & Audio: I searched for my spark and I found it

Précis comme le sabre d’un Yakuza

Kabin Crew & Lisdoonvarna Crew: “The Spark”

Old news for many of you, but since it appears many of my American readers haven’t heard it: this is two groups of Irish children, one consisting of refugees, brag-rapping in surprisingly varied voices over a pop-D&B beat. I played this a few times in the summer and liked it; by the time year-end relistening was over I was “I would defend these kids with my life.”

Joé Dwèt Filé: “4 Kampé”

Pushed hard by Bluesky’s international music savant LokpoLokpo, this is Haitian konpa with a tinge of Afrobeats in the singing of JDF (a big star in France.) They keep you waiting for the synth through Joé’s regalings of Lamborginis and “full BBL bébé”, and when it arrives in the final minute, it’s glorious.

Margeret Glaspy: “The Sun Doesn’t Think”

Unconditional familial love is currently out of online fashion, and maybe it’s never as unconditional as it seems (really does depend on the family), but at least when you’re young, love that appears unconditional is the most comforting thing in the world. Also comforting: the guitar accompaniment sounds like “Fast Car”.

Nelly Furtado: “Corazón” (DJ Arana remix)

I appreciate Furtado showing up once a decade with something both uncharacteristic and excellent. Here she takes a single she did with Bomba Estéreo that didn’t quite hit, and Arana, best known for being able to synthesize every current trend in Brazil funk, to synthesize every current trend in Brazil funk. It would seem feasible for her to do this two or even three times a decade, I’m just saying.

VIIS: “Chop Chop”

Thai five that at some point turned from standard Asian girl group thematics to “slice, chop chop chop, slice, cut cut cut”, the wubstep synths dropping out to let them put across their message with Musashi-like self-reliant artistry. Look what you made them do!

Memphis LK, DJ Boring: “Don’t Touch Me Baby”

Maybe it’s only Australasians who’ll find it funny that arch-Ocker songwriter Paul Kelly’s daughter is doing garagey house now, but it’s very funny. As a singer Memphis resembles Kah-Lo (complete with counting and prominent use of the word “funds”) much more than her dad, refusing to hold a tune because she’s emancipated. All I would ask is that she does one of these about Shane Warne.

Les Savy Fav: “World Got Great”

I’m going to take my dreams of a brighter future wherever I can get them. Middle-aged indie vets whose one album I care about I’ve played once since 2007, channeling all their post-punk anxiety into a major-key chorus resolution? I’ll trust in their vision enough to help them make it that way.

Mabe Fratti: “Enfrente”

Guatemalan classical cellist (and W.G. Sebald fan) teams with Mexican avant-postpunk producer, and somehow to my ears it sounds Franco-Brazilian, with a very nice shift into a chimey bridge at the three minute mark? Yeah, it was overdetermined that this be my favorite discovery of the 2024 People’s Pop Poll.

Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few: “Trials and Tribulations”

Sometimes it’s good for jazz to bluntly state its subject—here, Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager who rang the wrong doorball in Kansas City door and got shot in the head—to give a concept for the instrumental music that follows. Collier’s sax work is mournful but with the odd brief high note that one can read as hopeful. The shooter is being prosecuted, though let’s not count our chickens on that.

DJ Khalipha: “Nostalgia Street House”

Nigerian cruise, a genre that basically asks “what if [existing African dance-pop trend] but faster?” This has intermittently aggressive percussion and some beginning-level violin tying everything together. It’s pretty simple, it’s pretty beautiful, it’s over in 2:20.

babyMint: “Booooooring”

I heard a minute of this Taiwanese progressive girl group’s single on a Dave Moore mix last year, thought “oh yeah, the Pierces”, and hit skip. Mea culpa, though the best part, when they start doing their “boring”s in all kinds of funny voices, doesn’t peak until the two minute mark.

Moon Boots: “In My Life”

Brooklyn disco dork makes a backward-facing but not totally stuck-in-the-past floor-filler and does it properly, i.e. there’s an actual song and singer (Montel Moore.) The bassline is active, there are dingy bells that echo the important parts of the vocal, there’s some Moog shit.

Gordão Do PC, Mc Menor DN, Mc Leozin: “Fantasma” (versão Gordão Do PC)

Trying to work out who was who, I Googled Gordão Do PC and got a picture of a pink-haired guy holding a hamburger. Anyway, the beat sounds like that, but the main attraction is the vocals of influencer Ana Laura Lopes, whose syllables about falling in love with a ghost (not literal but let’s just say) are sped-up to produce a phantasmagoria that the two unghostly male rappers can’t dissipate.

Al Green: “Everybody Hurts”

Really testing the old saw that “Rev. Green can make any song holy”, but, well, he can.

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Next week was scheduled to be my pro wrestling matches of the year, but depending on how the upcoming week goes, I might have to write about fascism? Either way, apologies in advance.