Six new songs from six new albums.

So far in 2017, it's been heavy portions of Krautrock and jazz, some classical, and less pop/rock. here are six new songs representative of the latter.

With the exception of Deep Purple and Depeche Mode, the albums containing these songs have been released.

Right when Greg Phipps said it's no big deal; after all, the sycophant-packed mayoral lickspittle NAHA-N board would have to vote on any public housing changes.

Suggested accompaniment to this council recap is Alfred Schnittke: Concerto for piano, 4 hands & chamber orchestra

"I am just fixing what I hear ... It's not me, who writes
my music, I am just a tool, a bearer ..."

-- Alfred Schnittke, composer

Last evening, 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps formally and publicly capitulated to Cool Papa Gahan, and the News and Tribune's Elizabeth Beilman was there to record the moment for posterity. Following is an excerpt, but you'll want to read it all.

New Albany's comprehensive plan challenged by public housing advocates

Council approves 20-year plan

NEW ALBANY — One section of New Albany's 150-page comprehensive plan brought public housing advocates to the city council meeting Monday to voice their opposition.

They say the 20-year plan, passed unanimously by the council, will displace low-income families and leave some with few options for affordable housing alternatives.

"This would create a disparate impact that is negative on people in protected classes under the fair housing law, leaving the city vulnerable to a fair housing claim," Cathy Hinko, executive director of the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, told the council.

The comprehensive plan calls for reducing the number of project-based public housing units and replacing it with voucher-based housing dispersed throughout the city. Vouchers subsidize a family's rent through federal funding, if the landlord is willing to accept them.

According to the document, the goal is to decentralize public housing, creating neighborhoods with mixed incomes and de-stigmatizing low-income communities.

However, housing advocates who spoke Monday are skeptical the switch between public housing units to vouchers wouldn't be equivocal.

Wendy Helterbran, a New Albany resident who was a member of Southern Indiana's Homelessness Task Force, believes many people will be unable to use housing vouchers because of a lack of homes with affordable rent.

The New Albany Housing Authority calculates how much assistance a family with a voucher receives, but that doesn't limit how much a landlord can charge.

"It means families will have no place to go," Helterbran said. "It means that homelessness and the risk of it will increase in this community."

Hinko believes the comprehensive plan's public housing recommendations, if acted upon, would have a "draconian effect" on city residents as well as the workforce.

In the Louisville metro area, 42 percent of all jobs pay a wage that won't support renting a modest two-bedroom rental unit "without significant burden to the household," Hinko said.

"You should be adding, not subtracting, units that accommodate people," she said.

City Councilman Greg Phipps said demolition of housing units won't happen without the New Albany Housing Authority Board's approval first.

"If we do eliminate public housing, we do need to make affordable housing available," Phipps said.

Weary sigh. The housing board of which Phipps speaks has been packed to render the predetermined result, and he knows this, and as for Phipps' "affordable" option, don't you think this is something that might be pursued energetically before residents are cast out?

Let's keep it simple.

Last night's city council meeting surveyed the bottomless depths of the ongoing depravity of New Albany's political culture. Council "Democrats" stared at their shoes while Dan Coffey described the proper mission of the housing authority (the wizard's thoughts on the kinetic theory of matter would have been next, but time elapsed), and of course there is no reason for Republicans to object to an opposing political party intent on self-destruction.

If you're a Democrat expressing fury at the absence of democracy in Washington DC, then at least spare us the blatant hypocrisy. You have your own tinhorn despot right here in River City, your own vacuous cult of personality, and your own group of slobbering bootblacks pretending to be economic development directors and council representatives.

Suggested coda to this council recap,
courtesy of Elbow (and Richard Hawley):

The fix is in

The odds that I got were delicious

The fix is in

The jockey is cocky and vicious

-- Elbow, "The Fix Is In"

May each and every one of them choke on it.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 6: The Take Off and Landing of Everything, by Elbow.

Earlier in 2014, I wrote at some length about "This Blue World." the opening track from The Take Off and Landing of Everything.

... On about the sixth or seventh listening, it finally was time to read the lyrics. I was, and remain, flabbergasted. The words don't speak to me in any specific, personal way. They're just extremely moving, in a universal, timeless sense, as though to suggest that no matter where we are today, we remain a composite of everything that came before. There isn't enough beauty in this world, but a song like this gives me hope -- in art, achievement, possibilities and redemption.

And then there's this sentiment, seemingly encapsulating the Instagram Era of beer enthusiasm as it appears to me.

I am electric with a bottle in me

Got a bottle in me

And glory be, these fuckers are ignoring me

I'm from another century

I am a preacher when I've got it on me

And I've got it on me

And glory be these fuckers are ignoring me

We never learn from history

Neil McCormick offers a worthy summary at The Telegraph:

What an extraordinary group Elbow are turning out to be. On their gorgeous sixth album, there is really no one you could mistake them for. Mellifluous and melodious, they concoct sparkling paeans to the joys and woes of human existence that flow with musical compassion, easy on the ear yet full of twists and surprises. Their songs hark back to the elegant pre-rock contours of Broadway show tunes, but interpreted with the post-rock mix-and-match adventure of 21st-century sonic magpies.

It is odd to consider that Elbow arose in the shadow of Britpop, evincing some of the same bluff spirit as fellow Mancunians the Stone Roses and Oasis, when, it turns out, they are barely a rock band at all.

"This Blue World" by Elbow.

It may help to know that I've barely a shred of musical training, consequently embracing an almost mystical approach to listening. It's all about mood and feel -- what grips me in ways I can't explain. This is the ideal. Lyrically, I'm notorious for not listening to the words at all; there are songs I've been hearing for 40 years that would stump me if asked to recite them.

I already knew of Elbow. It is an uncommonly literate and thoughtful musical group of the sort that transcends easy categorization, and isn't always easily grasped on the first listen. The new album arrived about three weeks ago, and it did not make an immediate impression. However, and perhaps significantly, there were enough smaller, nuanced pleasures to compel repeated playings.

In particular, there was the album's opener, "This Blue World." The music itself seemed melodically sparse at first, until the elegant, subtle hooks began emerging from the orchestration. The whole notion about "tears of joy" -- it never really made sense to me, and yet I'd listen to this song and feel them welling up. The song was beginning to exercise its hold.

Then, on about the sixth or seventh listening, it finally was time to read the lyrics. I was, and remain, flabbergasted. The words don't speak to me in any specific, personal way. They're just extremely moving, in a universal, timeless sense, as though to suggest that no matter where we are today, we remain a composite of everything that came before.

There isn't enough beauty in this world, but a song like this gives me hope -- in art, achievement, possibilities and redemption.

"This Blue World"

This blue world and her countless sisters
And all that came before that day
Our atoms straining to align
Was the universe in rehearsal for us

When all the world is sucking on its sleeve
You'll hear an urgent morse in the gentle rain
And if you plot your course on the window pane
You'll see the coldest star in the arms of the oldest tree
And you'll know to come to me

In the back of a broken car
When the blizzard blossom flew
Reading aloud with our fingers
What we both already knew
And the blizzard blossom flew

A sober midnight wish
Flies over the roofs and down through the years
Would that you and yours are sleeping
Safe and warm in size formation
While three chambers of my heart beat true and strong with love for another
The fourth is yours forever