Random Song Review: The Postal Service - We Will Become Silhouettes (Matthew Dear's Not Scared Mix)

This isn't new. However, over the past 3-4 months BlackPlastic has become increasingly enraptured with Ben Gibbard's (of Death Cab For Cutie) electronic side project. Their album Give Up, released in 2003, pretty much sounds like being in love and that's no mean feat - recommendations don't come much higher.

BlackPlastic was surprised to find within the iTunes music store a Matthew Dear remix of one of of the tracks from Give Up, 'We Will Become Silhouettes'. Now feel free to disagree, but BlackPlastic has long had a lot of respect for Matthew Dear in any guise, but has never heard anything with enough emotional resonance to crow bar itself into your head and not let go.

On his mix of 'We Will Become Silhouettes' Dear demonstrates a deft touch. The vocals are left in place, the electronics stripped back and a subtle glitch-y backing added. The result maintains the sweetness of the original, something that anyone familiar with Gibbard's work will realise is important, and truly shows off a side of Matthew Dear BlackPlastic hadn't heard before. This man could produce pop music...

Also worth checking out is The Postal Service's remix of Feist's 'Mushaboom' if you can dig it up (try Good Weather for Airstrikes brilliant post on remixes). The addition of the uplifting sound of The Postal Service's electronics and Ben Gibbard's superb vocals really lift this to somewhere fantastic...

And I've not even mentioned some of the best bits from Give Up, check out 'Such Great Heights' if nothing else. Preferably play it loud in the car.

Watching the fire as we grow...

News: More Sounds of Silver 'out there'

If you've not heard any you're probably sick of hearing about it, but BlackPlastic has managed to hear another three tracks from LCD Soundsystem's forthcoming album, Sound of Silver, and as with 'All My Friends' it is all fantastic. In fact, fantastic doesn't do it justice. BlackPlastic would rather have just the four songs that it's heard from Sound of Silver than the whole of the first disk of LCD's debut album.

'North American Scum' is a hard-edged rocking number, a rant against perceptions of America and, quite possibly, a rant against America at the same time.

'Someone Great' features a portion of LCD Soundsystem's '45:33', but this time with vocals it is an ode to an unknown musician by the sound of things. Perhaps the least instantly accessible of the tracks BlackPlastic has heard, by the time you have heard James Murphy's climatic vocal, "When someone great is gone...", for the third or fourth time it is impossible not to love it.

The final track, which also happens to be the album closer for real is 'New York I Love You', a Bowie-esque paranoid rant at the state of New York post-9/11. The sound is elegantly wasted, the lyrics poignant and considered and the end result is probably the best example of song writing to come out of James Murphy. Truly, this track will give you goose bumps.

New York I love you, but you're freaking me out.