The Easy Gramophone

1. The Main Drag - All My Friends
LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends was one of the finest songs of last year, strident and funky and shot through with a sage thirtysomething sentimentality. Here the Main Drag ditch the piano and instead grab every instrument in the studio: guitars, synths, strings, glockenspiel, a choir of pals. It's too late for this cover to have rung in your 2008, but there's always New Year's Eve 2009.
Download at: http://www.myspace.com/themaindrag

2. New Ruins - Ships
Like The National, New Ruins are a band for the late, late night: the hour after last call when you're trying to stick it out just a little longer. "Ships" runs and tumbles but there's a stagger in its stride, a smear in its vision. Rock music running all the way home to bed.
Download at: http://www.parasol.com/labels/hiddenagenda/aha087.asp

3. White Hinterland - Dreaming of the Plum Trees
Even by another name, Casey Dienel still sings so sweet. The Brooklyn balladeer is back with a new moniker and her Joni Mitchell stuff is looser here, lighter, shot through with the swing & blossom of Vince Guaraldi.
Download at: http://deadoceans.com/mp3.php

4. Dirty Projectors - No More
White Hinterland's label-mates the Dirty Projectors have revisited Black Flag's canonical hardcore album, Damaged, and turned it inside-out. It's been covered "from memory", which is a vague way of saying that Henry Rollins' yelling is replaced with a kind of avant-r'n'b. This version of "No More" is all melismatic coos, backwards guitars and afrobeat filigree. It takes a few listens to figure out, but in time its nervous beauty becomes almost transcendent.
Download at: http://deadoceans.com/mp3.php

5. Times New Viking - (My Head)/R.I.P. Allegory
It's a song so fuzzed out that you'll think your speakers are broken, or melting, or your eardrums have come beautifully unstuck. It's punk-pop like from the dankest, gladdest basement - lo-fi as a puddle in a concrete floor, and you jumping in it.
Download at: http://www.matadorrecords.com/times_new_viking/music.html