What We're Listening To: Currently Spinning on the Cream's Turntables and Playlists

Every so often, your humble Scene music scribes like to let you in on the songs and albums (and cassettes, and MP3s, and streams) that we're listening to on our own time. It's a great way for us all to stay connected to what's happening beyond the week or two on either side of us.

So feast your ears on some Cream-curated good ol' rock 'n' roll, a couple of great reissues, a case of mistaken identity, and some thoughts on waterfowl (Surprise! Not from "Goose"). All that, plus a book that's making Jewly Hight listen to things a little differently.

Read on after the jump to see what your dedicated staffers and freelancers have been spinning lately. What's blowing up your stereo right now? Tell us in the comments!

Adam Gold, music editor

Twin Peaks, Wild Onion

I love this fuckin' album so much, like almost as much as a season of the TV show Twin Peaks. I love it because it sounds like this four kids from Chicago rifled through my record collection and wrote a concept album about my impeccable taste, setting my favorite Stones LPs, punk jams and shoe-gaze tunes ablaze with speaker-blowing teenage spirit and winning songwriting chops that never go out of style. Onion's breezier jams like "Making Breakfast" and "Mirror of Time" are what "Beast of Burden" or "Crimson and Clover" sound like in my fever dreams. But it's waterlogged-sounding, pounding, at-seams-bursting breakneck rockers like "Strawberry Smoothie" and "Fade Away" that really get me off, so I'm embedding both below.

Adam Ant, "Human Bondage Den"

This is actually the second best Adam Ant song about bondage, but it's the one that's been tying up my stereo speakers lately. Plus, the best Ant song about bondage, "Ligotage," is too rare for Spotify — the only version I know is from a 1979 Peel Sessions recording. It's on YouTube now and it's great. This song, "Human Bondage Den," is also pretty great. It was a tacked-on bonus track on some editions of Ant's spotty 1985 LP Vive le Rock. Tony Visconti produced this shit and you can totally tell — it sounds like mischievously anthemic Adam Antified T. Rex.

The Black Angels, "Empire"

This is the kind of thing I listen to when I smoke weed.

Betty Who, "Somebody Loves You"

This is the kind of thing I listen to when I stop smoking weed.

Ted Hawkins, "Watch Your Step"

And this might be the best song you've (probably) never heard.

Jewly Hight, contributor

Kendrick Lamar, Diamond Rugs and the upcoming Jason Isbell and Kacey Musgraves albums.

Could I add a book? Not technically "listening," but it's affecting the way I'm listening for sure. I returned from the EMP Pop Conference with a list of books I wanted to read, and the first one I dove into was

.

Edd Hurt, contributor

The Go-Betweens, G Stands for Go-Betweens: Volume One, 1978-1984 (Domino)

Good luck finding the G Stands for Go-Betweens box — the four-disc, four-CD deluxe package seems to be virtually sold out worldwide, and its price has risen accordingly. Comprising the Australian pop band’s first three albums along with demos and rarities, singles and a 1982 live set, the box also comes with a 102-page book that includes commentary by Go-Between Robert Forster. Released early this year, G Stands for Go Betweens documents the evolution of a punk-influenced pop band, and what’s remarkable about their early music is how confidently they turn the tense, sprung rhythms — post-Beefheart and post-Lou Reed — of punk to their own purpose, which turns out to be combining the rhythmic savvy of drummer Lindy Morrison with the somewhat diffident but never tentative post-Guy Clark songwriting of Forster and Grant McLennan. After listening to this band for years, I’ve come to the conclusion that Forster and McLennan were indeed songwriters the equal of such esteemed figures as Clark, Reed and Jim Webb, and they achieved a truly cosmopolitan rock ‘n’ roll style on Spring Hill Fair’s Creedence Clearwater-meets-Stax track, “Draining the Pool for You,” among many other examples found on this box and on all of their other records. McLennan’s death in 2006 ended the band, but The Go-Betweens’ music grows in stature every year. They were as good as The Easybeats, and that’s really saying something.

James Luther Dickinson and others, Beale Street Saturday Night

Omnivore Recordings’ spiffy reissue of 1979's Beale Street Saturday Night makes available a record that documents the decay of Memphis, and it proves a suitable companion to Alex Chilton’s Jim Dickinson-produced Like Flies on Sherbert, also released that year. You could draw a line between Chilton’s fucked-up Sherbert performance of The Carter Family’s “No More the Moon Shines on Lorena” and the equally unfettered and out-of-tune rendering of “Furry’s Blues” that long-time Beale Street figure Furry Lewis delivers here. So, dig the decay as described by Lewis, Dickinson and Mud Boy and the Neutrons, Sid Selvidge, Teenie Hodges and another long-time Beale Streeter, Thomas Pinkston, who narrates this aural documentary.

Sean Maloney, contributor

Torres, Sprinter

You can read my in depth analysis in this week's dead tree edition of the Scene but, long story short, Mackenzie Scott turned in an absolutely thrilling indie rock record. You need to go to this show and you need to buy this record.

Chris Stapleton, Chris Stapleton

Is it too soon to call this the country album of the year? Nah. It's the damn country album of the year.

Terry Riley, In C and Persian Surgery Dervishes

It has been a weird, weird fucking week. Sometimes you just gotta jam out to Terry Riley and make it all disappear.

Isaac Adni, "I Wanna Be A Duck"

Like I said. It's been a weird fucking week and this song pretty much means the world to me right now.

Stephen Trageser, listings editor

I still haven't listened to the new Belle and Sebastian record, but the news of its release reminded me how much I love their first record, Tigermilk. I bought it because I heard "Electronic Renaissance" on WRVU. As I learned, that song is pretty much the only thing like it in their entire catalog, but they're one of the best in the gently erudite pop vein that they usually work in. I've also dropped in "Expectations," my other favorite song from that record. If you're curious as to what they sound like, it's a much more representative track.