Top ten: September '06

1. Jon Faddis, "Teranga": There's a lot of African music with a jazz flavour, but comparatively little jazz with an African flavour: the fusions of Dizzy Gillespie, Faddis's mentor, always sounded less Afro than Cuban. The percussion here is integrated seamlessly, so that when the tempo quickens and Faddis belts his trumpet's upper register, it grooves like mainstream jazz never does.
2. New York Dolls, "Fishnets & Cigarettes": The other song in which David Johansen compares the object of his affection to a (chain-smoking) monkey. A fetish is lust ensnared.
3. The Shys, "Never Gonna Die": That's what Johnny Thunders thought. Love the way the riff tramps across the tonic, as if it's approaching an end instead of a new bar.
4. Todd Snider, "Just Like Old Times": He played this song at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass last year; more reason to see him there this year. The way to make a song about beautiful losers tolerable is to not have them lose.
5. New York Dolls, "Dance Like a Monkey": Red state girls, you don't want to anthropomorphise them. Animalism as choice not fact.
6. Rihanna, "SOS": The only way to make "Tainted Love" less annoying would be to ditch the vocals entiely.
7. Todd Snider, "You Got Away with It": The depressing thing is that he will get away with it, c.f. Nixon's pardon.
8. Mahala Rai Banda, "Mahalageasca": K. Harris -- "a busy crisscross of horns that sounds like a work of genius even before it reaches its near-vaudevillian ragtime breakdown."
9. Rhymefest ft. ODB, "Build Me Up": Meanwhile, in Death Shall Die news, Rhymefest has to restrain ODB to end the track.
10. New York Dolls, "Plenty of Music": Pace Robinson Jeffers, superfluous beauty isn't divine; pace David Johansen, it matters to everyone human.

Ten more: Band of Horses, "The First Song"; Beenie Man, "Jamaican Style (remix)"; Chamillionaire ft. Krayzie Bone, "Ridin' Dirty"; Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra, "Toumani" and "Ya Fama"; Dirty Pretty Things, "Gin & Milk"; Jon Faddis, "The Fiddle-Ow Blues" and "Laurelyn"; Chris Knight, "Dirt"; Todd Snider, "Happy New Year".

There are enough picks in the Xgau archives to keep my ears occupied for decades, but what of new music? I can spend a couple of months catching up, but I'll need my Consumer Guide fix sooner or later.