LATELY...I'VE BEEN TRYING TO ERASE ME...SEE I'M NOT INTO HATING ME

Plastorm and I have been discussing PM Dawn recently, that beautifully pretentious duo, unashamedly bundling up a smorgasbord of influences and not caring whether it makes them laughable or not. Their music, in retrospect, has as much to do with early 1990s rave culture (imagine Andrew Weatherall remixing some of their songs) as it did the post-De La socially conscious hippy rap (see also: Arrested Development). Revisiting their third album, Jesus Wept, I find it an underrated, soulful gem. I mean, how can you not love a record that audaciously begins with an intro song that samples both Jim Morrison and Peanuts? And that ends with a triptych called "Fantasia's Confidential Ghetto" that is actually three separate covers--Prince's "1999," Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime," and Harry Nilsson's "Coconut"--and also includes samples of Otis and Carla's "Tramp" and 3 Dog Night's "Mama Told Me Not to Come" and, I swear, one of the "Schoolhouse Rock" songs ("Figure 8" is also part of the intro track).

My favorite song that I rediscovered, though, is this one, "Apathy...Superstar!?"