Cheer up, Billie Jean! Oh, what can it mean to Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #224 and a dead homecoming queen!

Michael Jackson — 23 Million Skidoo (Settlement) :: Over to you, Casey.

Casey Kasem — American Top 40 (RIP) :: I want a goddamn concerted effort to come out of a record review that isn’t a fucking up-tempo record review every time I gotta do a goddam death dedication!

Caledonia — We Are America (self released) :: I know where this band of Canuckleheads is coming from when they kvetch about America culturally sucking Canada dry. Sure, they mean it as a protectionist slam, but I wouldn’t have it any other way — besides, being a good Detroiter, I’m a Vernors man myself.

Snooks Eaglin — Baby, You Can Get Your Gun! (Hep Cat) :: Anyone widda moniker like "Snooks" has gotta be cool but, as you might’ve already guessed, that ain’t his real handle: It’s Fird, which is even cooler — just like the beyond butane blues-infused scorchers which ignite this reissued 1986 session.

Fanny Brice — The Baby Snooks Show (CBS) :: Geddit?

Odis — Feel (Miss Press) :: Miss Odis regrets how bands these days sound like everyone else. But here’s an admirable exception with a pulse that’s hard to put my finger on but I’ll sure try: I hear a loud Living Color rock aesthetic at play here, ably augmented by a Southern sensibility with a playful underpinning of Prince. Too many slushball ballads, though.

Barbara Streisand — Funny Girl (Columbia) :: Oy vey, baby!

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Chairlift — Does You Inspire You (Kanine/Columbia) :: I may hate ballads, but I bought this one nevertheless because the sticker on the front cover claimed that it contained "beguiling heroin ballads, nodding deeply to David Lynch’s Angelo Badalamenti-scored oeuvre." Musically, that happens to be true. Vocally, it goes without saying that Caroline Polacheck is no Julee Cruise — which is understandable. She’s more like a sonorous soporific pop suturing of Beth Gibbons and Eno — which is unmedicated.

Angelo Badalamenti – Music From Twin Peaks (Warner Bros.) :: Number one in a field of none.

Be seeing you!