The Rob Gordon Shuffle, and an Announcement

Hi friends. As those of you still reading may have noticed, I took a couple of unannounced days off this week. So I’m sorry and I want you to know that it won’t happen again — the unannounced part, that is. I’m too busy with work, school and my other online writing gig to be able to blog every day, so rather than take on a contributor (which would by definition make this this a music Web site and not an actual blog) who listens to Tapes ‘N Tapes and doesn’t know how to use punctuation, I’m just going to post a little less. Cool? Monday and Wednesday are my rough days so those are the ones I’m planning on taking off — unless you guys would rather I skip the weekends or Fridays or something else instead. Leave me a comment and let me know.

Besides, music blogs are about quality, not quantity, right? Right? Well, they are around here. Proof:

Koop – “Waltz for Koop”: mp3
The new Koop album — the band’s first since 2001’s excellent Waltz For Koop — is a little less jazzy and a little more tropical. As a bossa nova geek, that leaves me pretty excited. Here’s a song from Waltz that you may remember from some movie trailer but is no less enjoyable for the association. Retro in a kind of detached, fuzzy way that’s somehow totally appropriate.

Frida Hyvonen – “Drive My Friend”: mp3
One of my favorite songs of 2005, the brisk, piano-driven “Drive My Friend” is the absolute best track on Hyvonen’s Until Death Comes — which has a stateside release from Secretly Canadian coming up. Carole King to Joanna Newsom’s Joni Mitchell.

Orange Juice – “Falling and Laughing”: mp3
The Of Montreal of the ’80s. I’ve only just discovered them, but I have a lot of catching up to do. There’s a lot of real pain in these synths, so take a moment to collect yourself before heading back out on the dance floor.

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The Rob Gordon Shuffle is a weekly Sunday rundown of fascinating songs without particular regard to genre or timeliness. It is absolutely not a top 5.