Your DOGE?!!?!

Yeah, yeah, I'll work on the Top Arbitrary Chosen Power of Five Releases of the Year soon enough. I just have a few things I promised myself I'd listen to, then I have to listen to all the good stuff over and over again until I'm sick of it and I abandon my list altogether.

No, seriously. I'm this close to just completing my list by putting everything in a bag and things out randomly, except for the top two, which will probably be I Am a Bird Now and The Sunset Tree in either order. Or maybe Radiance or something, I'unno. Hell, things are getting so confusing, With Teeth might even make the list.

I'm already thinking about next year's releases, though, and these two in particular:

Elvis Costello, My Flame Burns Blue (Deutsche Grammophon)

Yep. Our old pal Declan is trying out another genre (big band, in case anyone read past the label). Recorded live with the Metropole Orkest (yes, I read that off the cover), the record features Costello standards ("Watching the Detectives"), songs he wrote for other people ("Upon a Veil of Midnight Blue), and two jazz classics with new Costellified lyrics (Charles Mingus' "Hora Decubitus" [apparently commissioned by Mingus' widow Sue] and the title track, based on Billy Strayhorn's "Blood Count"). Neat.

Sparks, Hello Young Lovers (In the Red)
You never know what you'll get out of the Mael brothers nowadays. Yeah, they had a brilliant glam-rock period and a wonderful collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, but afterward, they fell into a poppy slump, followed by a discoey mire. Then they put out Lil' Beethoven, which confused everyone into applause. If I hadn't heard "Perfume" and "Dick Around" on Tom Robinson's show on Radio 6 (God bless BBC webcasts), I'd be just as in the dark as most of you.

And yes, Tom Robinson is that Tom Robinson.

I end with a NOTICE TO DAN, ARTHUR AND JESS: If you don't write anything in the next couple of weeks, you're all fired and I'm shutting this thing down. As Colbert would say, you're on notice.