The International House of Bacon

* Shirley Bassey - “Let’s Get This Party Started”: If there’s any sort of musical style I enjoy almost all the time, it’s Bond themes. Shirley Bassey sang four of them, and experienced a revival of sorts 10 years ago with the Propellerheads’s song “History Repeating.” Her take on the Pink hit is really great, as is most everything she does, and the instrumental flourishes in the background really make the song more than tolerable, where it was just somewhat annoying before.

* The Moldy Peaches - “Anyone Else But You”: Sure, the song is all over the place at this point, and the band has essentially been broken up for five years, but the popularity has driven me to revisit the band a bit, and brings up two conclusions:

a) This is a really difficult album to love. It’s noisy, it’s not always musical, and it’s often obnoxious. I’m certainly in a different place than I was when the disc came out in terms of musical preferences, and I loved this CD when I was first way into it, but I can totally understand why Barbara Walters was absolutely befuddled by the whole thing.

b) It’s surprising this didn’t catch on more. Maybe it will with the added publicity, but how many other bands like the Moldy Peaches have you heard of? Sure, Kimya Dawson and Adam Green have decent indie musical careers now, but why didn’t any of the anti-folk stuff take off? Kind of weird.

* Kathleen Edwards - “I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory”: If the only redeeming part of this song was the line “You’re the Great One/I’m Marty McSorley,” it would still be classic, but this is really a fun little song that, as usual, showcases Edwards as one of the better lyricists out there today. It takes a lot for me to notice lyrical content, and she consistently pulls it off.