Random Five is a rare one.

L-Y by Tom Lehrer
Album: Revisited [Live]
Which would you choose: reclusive-but-brilliant ex-math-professor, piano savant, and keen political satirist Tom Lehrer? Or the Electric Company, that 70s kids’ show that saw Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader and Rita Moreno as the first Latina to ever capture my nascent erotic interest?

Ahem.

Well, fortunately, you don’t have to choose; they’re both here in this song. A bright vaudeville number designed to teach kids to recognise adverbs. How would you listen to this song? Enthusiastically. Enthusiastically. Enthusiastic… L-Y.

Antistar by Massive Attack
Album: 100th Window
Mezzanine was a cold album. If this album was any warmer, it was because of the female vocalists like SInead O’Connor. This also upped the annoyingness factor, but never mind. This is the final track, a jangly edgy number that ends with ten minutes of trancy pulses. It’s not very fun, but it’s not meant to be. Suffer well.

Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo by The Bloodhound Gang
Album: Triple J Hottest 100, Volume 13
This track is my reward for listening to all of the last track. Three minutes of inventive sexual euphemisms. If you ever had to sit down and make up female anatomical synonyms, would ‘ham wallet’ ever occur to you? What about the male ‘pork steeple’? Yet here they are and more. Rarely does a song fulfill the promise of its concept so thoroughly. Well done, lads.

It’s a Boy by Wire
Album: A Bell Is a Cup Until It Is Struck
I listened to this album pretty heavily during a bad breakup, so for me it became associated with an unhappy time when food had no taste and life no meaning. It didn’t help that it’s such an austere and surreal album. I’ve come around to it now. My advice, only listen to music you hate during sad times. You’ve been meaning to cultivate a distaste for Arcade Fire for a while now. Save it for when you have chemotherapy.

Stranded by Nick Duffy
Album: Hotel Angst
I really like Nick Duffy, multi-instrumental folk musician. Or I think they’re calling it ‘roots’ now. Myself, I can’t decide whether to call this music ‘bucolic’ or ‘pastoral’. Either way, it’s good, but I think if I could somehow remove the female vocal, I’d do it. His albums are available on iTunes and Wippit, by the way. Go to the Duffypedia and have a listen.