Wouldn't you know it... I try to post five days in a row and I fail on day two. To make up for it, I intend to do the unprecedented TWO posts in one day on A Thought and A Song. The one you're reading now is being furiously clickity-clacked over my lunch break. The second will come tonight before I head out to the always enjoyable UCDNB !party.

I tend not to write very much about my day job, just because I don't think it's a good habit to get into considering I need that job to put my roof over my head. Who knows how people interpret different things that get posted online. I'm just not even going to risk it.

However, I will write about one new development on the job. In the three years and one month I've been working for CITES, I have worked in five different offices, and today I'm moving into my sixth. However, instead of being bummed about being bounced around yet again, I am thrilled. Why you ask? Because I finally have a window that faces to the outside world!!! I've had an office with a window before, but the window looked out into a hallway (don't ask... it'd take a page to explain the building that I work in). Anyway, today I'm halfway moved into an office with an honest to goodness window. Here's a picture of the view:

Haha. I wish! The view basically looks out onto a street and some bike stands, but I really don't care. Having natural sunlight in my office is going to increase my day to day happiness about tenfold. I guarantee. Consider me a happy Mertz.

Now With Hooks!

Well if there is one promise I am going to be able to follow through on is the promise to post up more unreleased songs for you. This post I'm sharing something from the French group M83. Their new album Saturday = Youth is definitely a different direction from the uber good, but far more mellow and textured, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts. There is far more of a pop feel to it, but pop as in songs getting stuck in your head, not pop like Lindsay Lohan or whatever schlock American Idol is peddling these days.

Saturday = Youth saw M83 enlist one of my favorite producers, Ewan Pearson. He has this psuedo-retro sound with his synths, but he knows how to make songs that get stuck in your head and you're happy to have them there. I listened to Saturday = Youth before realizing Pearson was involved. After learning that, the sonic similarities to his work on Tracey Thorn's Out of the Woods jumped out at me. And that is a good thing.

Anyway, I'm posting up one of the most hook laden, enjoyable tunes from the album. Clear some space in your head, because this song is going to get lodged there. You can thank me later for that. And you can thank M83 by pre-ordering Saturday = Youth, which is due out on April 15th.

M83 - Kim & Jessie

Back from an absence of more than two months, I've got a new goal, and it is pretty simple. I want to post five days in a row. The posts are going to be shorter, just to get into the habit of writing every day. But on the last day, I think I will have a pretty good rant readied about my comparison between the lyrical content of soul and funk of the 1970s versus hip hop today, and what outward effects the differences have created. But that's getting ahead of myself...


For this first post, I'm just going to link you to a brilliant article by William Safire about the origin of the word waterboarding. After reading it, you will hopefully laugh when anyone puts forth the ludicrous assertion that waterboarding isn't torture.

Bobby!

So the goal of this week on the song side is to post up tunes from upcoming unreleased albums. Hopefully I can post up these exclusives and get them out to some people, but not get noticed by the copyright fascists. If an artist or an uptight representative from a label wants a song to come down, just contact me and it'll be done.

Anyhow, I'm starting things off from a new cut from Mr. Bobby Digital, the one better known as the RZA. Much like young white suburbanites go through Led Zeppelin and Beatles phases in high school, this grown white former suburbanite is going through a massive Wu Tang phase right now. In the last month, I've purchased the Afro Samurai double LP, the Only Built 4 Cuban Linx LP and the Liquid Swords instrumentals CD. I could spend a year studying the Wu Tang Clan, all of their members, and all of their affiliates and it would be a year well spent. But in the immediate, I am just going to savor what I enjoy the most about Wu Tang, and that is the RZA -- specifically his beats.

From what I've gathered from other blogs, RZA has another Bobby Digital project due out in the summer of 2008. This cut from it, "You Can't Stop Me" has been circulating through the blogosphere, so I'm not breaking any new ground here. The cut features Inspectah Deck (who is my favorite MC out of the 9 main members of Wu Tang). But more than any particular lyrical prowess in the song (RZA's first verse is enjoyable), what is making me play this track again and again is the beat structure, and that wonderful soul hook. Trust me, you're going to rewind this cut a few times too.

RZA ft. Inspectah Deck - You Can't Stop Me