Brilliant?

Questionably.

One of the foremost procrastinators of his or any other generation?

Without a doubt.

Last year, we put together the Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Mixtape, available in three volumes with an additional bonus volume of B-sides that didn’t make the cut.  What we didn’t tell you (but you were probably expecting if you were at all familiar with the books) is that there was a fourth volume to the trilogy.  And in keeping with Douglas Adams’ tradition of arbitrarily adding material in unexpected ways, we added an extra two weeks in front of its publication date.  At least…let’s say that’s why we did it that way.  As always, special thanks to DwDunphy for the stellar artwork.  Enjoy!

The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Mixtape – Book 4

BOOK 4:  SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH

1.  ”So Long & Thanks for All The Fish” – Keyboard Cathy
2.  ”Big Yellow Taxi” – Joni Mitchell
3.  ”Home” – Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes
4.  ”Dry the Rain” – The Beta Band
5.  ”I Can’t Explain” – Eric Thompson
6.  ”Tunnel of Love” – Dire Straits
7.  ”The Great Gig in the Sky” – Rick Wakeman,  C.C. White, Steve Howe
8.  ”Aladdin Sane” – David Bowie
9.  ”In the Dolphin Tank” – Port Blue
10.  ”High Hopes” – Pink Floyd
11.  ”We Apologize for the Inconvenience” – Sufjan Stevens

Having said all that, we must accept that we still live in a world where we’ll hear this new album by Brooklyn-based TalkFine and instantly identify it with a very specific time period, that being the early to mid 1980s.

The dance-funk-disco aesthetic that TalkFine principals Clark Baxtresser and Pierce Siebers (via San Francisco Bay Area producer Jack Stratton) have appropriated on Lesser Known Hits certainly has been used over again in the 1990s (remember The Cardigans?) and the 2000s (Gorillaz, anyone?), but it really started as an outgrowth of 1970s disco and came to a suave, classy, semi-ironic but mostly earnest head with 1980s New Romantic bands like ABC, Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran. This is the DNA of TalkFine.

What keeps TalkFine rooted in the present day, however, is the band’s tendency to write songs that aren’t so much rooted in drama (romantic, social or otherwise) as they are based around having fun with life’s absurdities, whether ironic or straightforward.

Take the electro funk of “She Didn’t Have A Name,” for example. Its thick groove sets the stage for a bump n’ grind session ripe for a successful stroke of the male ego. But rather, the male protagonist is deftly denied by a booty shakin’ babe who “didn’t have a name” (“she didn’t need one!”). Or a phone, for that matter. Rejection, at the very least, sounds fucking awesome in this case. If you ever had a hard time coming to terms with the idea of a certain pick-up artist‘s suggestion that it can be fun just to go out and see how many times you can be rejected in one night, just listen to this song and think again.

Turning the tables with a tune anchored by a classic disco bass line is “Can’t Wait To Say No,” a casual face-saving verbal revenge fantasy of the “don’t bother changing your mind” variety – now it’s the guy’s turn to be the rejector, at least in his wildest dreams.

Pushing the absurdity bit even further is the album’s closing song, sung from the perspective of a guy who wooed a girl away from her old boyfriend not because her ex was a jerk, but, well, the title says it all: “It’s About The Bike.” Bikers everywhere, whether they be the tough guy leather n’ chains type or urban bicycle hipsters, now have their own super hooky pop anthem extolling the virtues of their own self-evident supremacy, not just in environmental friendliness but in virility as well.

But the clincher on this album is a creepy synth pop duet with another San Francisco Bay Area artist, singer Erica Fink. “Anonymous Lover” tells the tale of an urban voyeur who has fallen for a girl in the building across the street. He’s so into watching her that, even though there are lots of windows out there, hers is the only one his eyes ever see. It all sounds creepy until the girl, vibed all too perfectly by Erica, responds: “I come alive with your eyes on me.” Whoa! You wish that happened to you, don’t you? I bet you do. If you’re not ballsy enough to play this fantasy out in real life, it might be a bit safer to simply watch the video for The Rolling Stones’ “Neighbours” with the volume muted while listening to “Anonymous Lover.” Conveniently, they are exactly the same length. The Dark Side of Oz ain’t got nothin’ on Anonymous Neighbours.

At only seven songs, Lesser Known Hits immediately acknowledges our collective tendency towards shorter attention spans. It might have been called an EP at one time, or a “mini-album” back when Thomas Dolby was riding high in the early ’80s. But today, it’s just a right-sized album that never overstays its welcome as it revels in the comic absurdity of urban awkwardness. And yeah, it’s fucking good.

• Lesser Known Hits is available at Bandcamp and the iTunes Store.

Dying to hear the new jam from Edward and his zeros which stick to certain types of metal? NPR’s got your back, brother. The new album, Here, doesn’t reach stores until next week, but you can stream the whole thing right here at this conveniently embedded link. Enjoy!

What do we have here? Teases: glimpses (was that a villainous Javier Bardem?), stunts, explosions, a crackup in the London Underground, terse dialogue, a bit of the Bond theme. Craig silhouette nudity. Erotic shaving. Well, it’s a teaser.

What we don’t know (and won’t really know until October) is what a new and exciting creative team will bring to the table. Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and the much-nominated cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Thomas Newman were an impressive troika on 2005′s Jarhead and 2008′s Revolutionary Road, and I’m curious to see how they’ll shake and stir the format. (Or simply right the franchise, after 2008′s worrisome Quantum of Solace.) Returning to active duty are scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who have written the last five Bonds, joined by three-time Oscar nominee John Logan, and editor (and sometimes director) Stuart Baird, whose work so distinguished Craig’s debut in Casino Royale (2006).

So many questions: Will this seventh turn as M be the last for Judi Dench? How will Q (played by indie and theatre stalwart Ben Whishaw) be reintegrated into the action after a decade-long absence? Will we ever see Moneypenny again? Who is Ralph Fiennes’ agent and how does he get him parts from franchise to franchise (Harry Potter, Hades in two movies, and now this)?

Mendes (quoted on Wikipedia): 007 is experiencing “[a] combination of lassitude, boredom, depression [and] difficulty with what he’s chosen to do for a living.” I know the feeling. But, James, you get to have your midlife crisis in the company of “Bond girls” Naomie Harris (28 Days Later, Pirates of the Caribbean) and Bérénice Marlohe, so look on the bright side.

Cheer up, Commander. This is also Bond 50–yes, the James Bond series is a half-century old (and I’m not much younger, either). The thick and thin of it is being revisited in a “Bond 50″ Blu-ray box set that will be released Sept. 25 in the U.S., and just a day earlier in the U.K. (ha). The good news is that You Only Live Twice (1967), the peerless On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Diamonds are Forever (1971), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Octopussy (1983), A View to a Kill (1985), The Living Daylights (1987), GoldenEye (1995), and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) will be making their format debuts; the not-so-good is that if, like me, you have the other 13 on Blu, you’ll have to wait until they’re available individually, perhaps in tandem with Skyfall’s home video release. (Or, like me, you can sell them off and buy the set, likely to be region-free, from Amazon UK for about half as much as it’ll cost in the U.S.; Amazon UK is a great place to find good deals for region-free Blu-ray box sets, like Harry Potter, Alien, and Lethal Weapon.)

I’m not too worried about the specs on these. The same features have been ported from reissue to reissue since the laserdisc era, and I figure this will be the same. I suspect MGM/Fox was just trying to keep its PR from getting unwieldy. Trust, but verify, as another Cold War figure once said.

2012: Skyfall, and a windfall of James Bond movies.

I’ve been writing songs for about 10 years now. I have definitely developed a process. I wish I could say that my process was some kind of formula for writing a great song…but I can’t say that. I’d like to think that I’ve written some great songs that I’m really proud of but for every great song I’ve written there is definitely a bad one. Maybe two bad ones, actually. Good or bad, though, I tend to go through the same motions when I write.

Typically, it starts with one little idea. This idea could be a lyric line – for example, my song “If Only I” started with the line “slowly all the faces turn to yours.” Sometimes it’s a little piano riff – for example, my song “The Atmosphere” started with that high piano melody. It’s always just this one little snippet of the song and I’ll sit and play that little part over and over and over again until more comes.

Without fail, what comes next almost every time is the rest of the melody and music. The lyrics never come quickly. If I start a song on a Tuesday, there’s a good chance I’ll have all the music done by Wednesday. But then I work on the lyrics. If the music is a cheetah, the lyric is a freaking glacier. I will sit at my piano and play the music while I sing gibberish to the melody lines, and I will do this over and over and over. For me, if the lyric comes quickly, it might be a week. But it could take up to a few months to really get the lyric right. I have a song called “People” that I put on my record Indiana. I wrote the piano part in a day. I wrote the lyric in just under a year.

Jon’s new album, Promising Promises, will arrive in stores May 22. Find out more at Jon’s official site, and check out the video for the first single, “Summer Is Over” (featuring Sara Bareilles) below:

If you had to go away for awhile and you could only take five of your favorite albums with you, which ones would you choose? Yes, we know it isn’t a fair question, but that hasn’t stopped us from asking music fans who happen to be recording artists in their own right. This edition of Desert Island Discs comes courtesy of Jess Klein, whose latest LP, Behind a Veil, is out now. You can listen to the album below — after reading her Desert Island picks, of course!

Buddy Guy, A Man and the Blues

I never get tired of how his voice and guitar sound both so broken in because of how he stretches each of them so much to express his feelings. And yet neither ever sounds rough. There’s always that sweetness beneath the pain.

Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks

Probably nothing I can say about this album that hasn’t already been said. It just brings a girl comfort to hear such brilliant, intimate and impassioned writing. Idiot Wind is such a weird and perfect concept.

Candi Staton, Evidence: The Complete Fame Recordings

So earthy, real, and power packed. Believe me, if you’ve got a broken heart there’s nothing more satisfying to sing along to at the top of your lungs in the shower, or maybe in this case under a palm tree, than “The Best Thing You Ever Had.” “Get it When I Want It,” “He Called Me Baby,” “Mr. and Mrs. Untrue” — oh lord, so good, I have to go listen to it now! Plus it’s a double disc so I cheated – ha!

Damien Dempsey, Seize the Day

In my opinion, Damien is the best singer/songwriter of my generation. He puts so much passion and energy into his live performances and his voice and lyrics are deadly. He’s kind of a national hero in Ireland; in the States he’s less known. I had the chance to tour with him a few years back and watched each night with my jaw on the floor as he’d get the whole room singing along with him by the end of the first song. Damo’s work inspired me to keep going at a time when I was questioning why I play music. If I was stuck on a desert island, I’d want to hear the lyrics “I’m never going to let your negative vibes and comments get through to my psyche and cripple me”!

Free To Be You and Me

I’d bring this one because it reminds me of my childhood. If I was stuck on a desert island I would want to remember that I had a past. Plus it’s a great f*cking concept – not that I’d likely be worried about what anyone else thought if I were stuck on an island alone – but truly, we should all be free to be who we are.

Recently the great film podcast Filmspotting did a top 5 list of director/actor pairings they felt need to happen. Inspired by that, and a discussion I had with a friend recently, I decided to create a list of my top 5 male/female dream co-stars, ranked in order of potential awesomeness if they were (preferably dysfunctional) romantic leads. I know some of these actors have appeared in the same film, but not yet together as romantic leads.

1. Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton

2. Michael Fassbender and Michelle Williams

3. Javier Bardem and Juliette Binoche

4. Daniel Day-Lewis and Cate Blanchett

5. Colin Firth and Helen Mirren