Alicia Keys ft Maxwell - "Fire We Make". Like Timothy Bloom & V Bozeman's "Til the End of Time" this feels intimate as two bodies; like Beyoncé's "1+1" it feels luxuriantly slow; like Alicia's own "Gummi Bears" it, uh, seems a trifle oversung. But I love this kind of old R&B slowjam, the sound that feels above all like two singers singing to each other, physical bodies, presences, inside four walls, with a closed door. What is modern is in the texture of the production, not the fact of handclaps, guitar solo, horns, but the woozy way of them, the weather on this particular fall day, purple clouds in a grey sky.

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If you live in New York and need photography, my friend Charles has relaunched his website. I met him years ago, in Edinburgh, on his first gig. Now his music photography is all grown up.

Speaking of friends, Richard Parks is about to premiere his old-timey radio drama, Wayne Coyne's Human Head-Shaped Tumor. Airing Saturday and Sunday, Nov 24-25, on KCRW, the show features the voices and music of (among others) the Flaming Lips, Eleanor Friedberger, Will Sheff, Paul F Tompkins, Bill Callahan, Edward Droste, and basically everyone we adore. More info at McSweeney's.

Finally, it's almost that time, and I'm soliciting songs for my annual Best Songs of the Year list. What were the best things you heard? Please send me mp3s or links to bundles of mp3s, the very best things, any genre at all, from pop to fizz, rap to folk, jazz to pop. But uh please do a quick search on Said the Gramophone to make sure I haven't written about something from that album already. Thank you so much! I rely on your help!

(Image is of Helen Keller meeting Charlie Chaplin.)

slow dance, 3:00 pm at the flagpole: be there!

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