The best song this week is "Black Flowers" by Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo are legends. You should know this. Plus they got their name from a great baseball story, so that elevates them even higher in the canon. But after 1997's masterpiece, “I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One,” they seemed to be resting on their laurels. “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Out” came out three years later and just seemed sleepy. It’s aged remarkably well, but at the time I was massively disappointed. The only song I really liked was the vocal rhythmic exercise “You Can Have It All” (which is especially entertaining live with choreographed dancing from James McNew and Ira Kaplan). Three years later, “Summer Sun” came out and seemed to be a statement that they were just pretty much done. The title and overall mood suggested sunset, and my mind immediately made the jump to “twilight of their careers.” I only listened to it once or twice and nothing grabbed me. People have told me since that it’s worth revisiting, but I’ve never felt compelled to, because...

In 2006, word came that they were coming back with a new full-length, ingeniously and unexpectedly titled “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass” -- especially amusing coming from the soft-spoken trio. Sure, they have moments of guitar violence and freakouts, but even these seem somehow restrained and proper compared to, say, Sonic Youth or Trail of Dead. So off I went to the record store, and suffice to say, I was floored. It’s my favorite record of theirs start-to-finish, showing off their incredible range even more than “Heart” and displaying a mastery of elegant walls of noise as much as pop concision. And it has a whole lot of horns. A whole lot of horns can be a scary proposition, but not in the hands of these pros.

I’ve been on a “listen the whole record” kick lately (we have to let shuffle go for a while so we can begin to appreciate shuffle when we let it back in) so after I got through “Odd Blood” by Yeasayer, I scrolled down and saw good ol’ YLT sitting there, neglected and aching for a listen. I don’t think I’d ever listened to it on headphones, either, so the time seemed nigh. I love every song on there, but this time “Black Flowers” really stood out. I’d never noticed the chimerical vibraphone (or keyboard?) hovering in the background behind the delicate, R.E.M.-y piano chords, but they grabbed my attention this time and I felt like I was listening to the song in a bright white tunnel. It’s a James McNew tune, pretty and poppy, and the horns absolutely make it. There's even a tuba playing a part that's downright peppy; it’ll glue itself to your brain and you won’t mind at all. I whistled and smiled all the way through doing the dishes with the tuba melody popping through the ol’ mindgrapes, and I hate doing the dishes.

I could go on about the effortless vocal melody resolving to an instantly memorable "laaa-la-la la-la", about the harmonies that soar in on the bridge, about the celebratory horn blasts that come in just as the song's fading out, but at this point I'd rather just listen to it again. Mild-mannered Yo La Tengo, blowing minds since '84. The best song this week is “Black Flowers”, off "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass" (I just wanted to type that again). It’s been way too long since I’ve seen them play.

The best song this week is "Partners in Crime" by CSS

Never cared much for CSS’ aesthetic. Their singer goes by Lovefoxxx and she dresses in skintight psychedelic bodysuits? OK, I get that she’s Brazilian and things are different down there, but it’s still not something I’m going to seek out. And despite R.E.M. being awesome, band names that are just letters/numbers and such are generally a hurdle to be jumped rather than a harbinger of good music.

But then there was that cover of “Knife” on Grizzly Bear’s Friend EP, and man -- that was good. Better than the original? I think so. It was certainly more fun. And there’s a yearning in her voice that you don’t hear in a lot of electro pop. Those keyboard tones were right on, too.

So when “La Liberacion” hit the internet, I went ahead and put it on my iPod. The only CSS song I’d heard prior was the aforementioned Grizzly Bear cover -- somehow their earlier efforts had managed to avoid my ears, and I’d never felt the need to seek them out. I read some lukewarm reviews of “Liberacion”, got a bunch of other stuff at the same time, and continued to fail to seek it out even though it was right there in my pocket.

And then, of course, shuffle happened. Walking back to my car after work as some droney black metal fades out (I think it was Alcest), and this song catches my attention. It’s instantly hooky and fun, then at 1:36 the bridge kicks it up from fun into downright good -- the guitar/bass interplay amplifies the vocal hook, and all the while it sounds like Steven Drozd is vamping some latin-flavored piano twinkles; I'm digging it. The fact that the singer has a goofy was of saying "the" lets her get away with clunky lines like "I fall for it, oh boy, like butter on the mild heat!” It was CSS, and the song was “Partners in Crime.”

It’s a classic budding romance excitement song, complete with cheesy “ahhhh!”s and a total I-want-to-be-Kim-Gordon delivery of “You know what? Let’s do this!” The drums are bouncy, the guitar strums are nicely staccato and that piano rolls over it with an otherworldly quality that elevates everything else that’s going on. The coda is replete with classical flourishes and the whole thing shows a maturity that I really wasn’t expecting from CSS, and that you don’t find much elsewhere on the record. Not that it’s a bad record -- it’s got some cheeseball moments but it’s mostly pretty fun and effortless sounding; it’ll stay on the iPod and definitely see some spins in the summer months. But “Partners in Crime” will find its way onto playlists and road trip cds, and it’s the best song this week.