Buck stops here

Don't waste a dollar on the current crop of buzzy singles (Cullum, Krall, Morrissey, I'm talking about you). Here are five free downloads worth your time.

By Thomas Bartlett

May 19, 2004 | This week, for the first time, all five downloads are free -- but that doesn't signal a change in policy, despite the many requests I've received from readers to feature only free downloads. It's just that I couldn't find any newly released music genuinely worth paying for this week. Jamie Cullum? Diana Krall? Those two standard-mauling, faux-jazz crooners (currently No. 1 and 6, respectively, on the iTunes album chart) make Norah Jones sound like an artist of startling depth and maturity. I don't know which is more heartbreaking to hear, Cullum's showy, insincere emoting on Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should Have Come Over," or Krall's neutered, gentrified cover of Tom Waits' "Temptation."

The Morrissey record? Stephin Merritt describes its problems perfectly in this week's New York Times Playlist. It's a pleasure to read, after Merritt's long absence from music criticism, and his humor and insightfulness stand out against the Times' generally dull, sometimes just plain incompetent (that's you, Ben Ratliff) non-classical-music critics. I particularly like "Maybe Delays and the Darkness will start a great castrati revival in England, and there will be a new golden age of music."

In other news, I'm regretting having ever recommended D12's "My Band." Two months later, and still in heavy rotation, this song has not aged well for me. I hope it dies soon.

And enough of you have written to ask why I didn't mention Modest Mouse's recent "Good News for People Who Love Bad News" that I should probably comment. I've never been fond of Modest Mouse, and I can't really explain why, except to say that Isaac Brock's voice doesn't appeal to me. But I'm being slowly worn down by my girlfriend's conviction that they're brilliant and that I'll love them, and starting to see that my prejudice against Modest Mouse has been a little misguided. Their new record is available at all the major online music stores, and the catchy single, "Float On," which has a very cool guitar line, can be streamed (but not downloaded) for free from Better Propaganda.

"Habite Em Mim," Arto Lindsay, from "Salt"
Given the fractured nature of Arto Lindsay's musical career -- from skronk guitar master leader of the seminal no-wave band DNA to '80s art-popster in the Ambitious Lovers; from legendary (in Japan, naturally) noise improviser to esteemed producer of Caetano Veloso, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and more -- it's surprising that he's spent the last eight years essentially making the same album over and over again. Luckily, it's a great album. His delicate Brazilian pop is smoothly urbane, but all the energy and originality of his work with DNA is still there, just in a sublimated form. It's rare to hear song-based music in which so much attention is paid, and so effectively, to sonic minutiae. His latest, "Salt," doesn't quite measure up to his two best records, "Mundo Civilizado" and "Prize," but it's still predictably excellent. And "Habite Em Mim," sung half in Lindsay's oblique, poetic English, and half in languid Portuguese, is one of the record's best tracks. Free download: Habite Em Mim

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