James Murphy

I kind of want to hate on him, but his ability to consistently step up his game makes it hard. The new single does obviously recall Arthur Russell, but he adds funk from sources that are more like Ricardo Villalobos (one the one hand) and Yello (on the other) than they are like Bootsy Collins. I saw him with 10 million other people (inlcuidng MTV’s John Norris!) in NYC last summer, which didn’t make up for not seeing the Boredoms with 77 drummers, but was pretty ok in its own way.