Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010

Pod Picks for February 18, 2010

This week we recommend a double dip of Nuevo Southern rock and a soon-to-be R&B classic for downloading (legally, of course) to your iPod or other personal media device.

"Birthday Boy" by Drive-By Truckers

To hype up the upcoming album, "The Big To-Do," Drive-By Truckers has offered up a couple of free downloads from the track listing on the band's Web site, www.drivebytruckers.com. This one gives you everything you have come to expect from these southern rockers. Dirty rhythm guitars, a slide guitar gliding between verse and chorus, a dependable backdrop of bass and drums, but most important, the lyrics. As always, lyrics that paint a scene of misery and loneliness - a stripper/prostitute, an unhappily married man - small lives examined and made universal despite their pleas to be left alone.

"Working This Job" by Drive-By Truckers

The second free download from DBT is a modern day "Take This Job and Shove It." Only this tale has a protagonist that is not quite as strident. Instead of walking out on a crummy boss and rebelling against being overworked and underpaid, this worker chooses to endure, to take whatever is thrown at him and try to make the best of it. Perhaps this is the better anthem in a time when unemployment rates are setting records and jobs are precious metal no matter how tarnished they are.

"Soldier of Love" by Sade

It is not very often when you can see someone survive musically 25 years without changing much. Sade's style has been the same since 1984, although the beats have gotten meatier, Sade is the same "Smooth Operator" that has been providing bedroom soundtracks for a quarter of a decade and she still looks great. A tight snare drum and an exotic rhythm accentuated with a snarling guitar riff is all Sade needs to purr out her lyrics, while tossing in a little "Wild, wild west" as a throwback to her early career. Sade typifies the motto if it ain't broke, don't fix it.