I shuffled
And this is what honest-to-goodness came up:

1. "Bellona" by the Junior Boys
When is their new one released? I am eager to hear it, and apparently Domino doesn't give us any promo love. I've heard a few new ones from the upcoming record via mp3 blogs, and while I like them, I'm waiting for the whole record to put them into some kind of perspective. So far something about the way the vocals sound on the new one seems different in a maybe not as good way. So we'll see. But Last Exit was a bit of a slow burner and now I love it, though I'm a little afraid that I've gotten too attached to the very particular way that album sounds.

2. "Solo for Voice 22, from 'Songbooks'" by John Cage
Emusic got a bounty of Cage stuff, so I downloaded a bunch. I haven't gotten into this particular piece yet ("Litany for the Whale"), but the prepared piano stuff is nice.

3. "Different Trains: After the War" by Steve Reich
Another Emusic score, this Reich piece is incredible. He took recordings of interviews with people who lived around the time of WWII, speaking about the trains they remember from that time. Then he notated the melodies of their speech and wrote music incorporating those melodies, and using samples from the interviews in the performance. The result is beautiful, moving, and kind of catchy too.

4. "Standing by the Sea" by Husker Du
I wonder where I got this mp3 from? I suspect Merlin. Years ago I watched the Bergman film about Medea, which contains the line "Husker du, Jason?". I hear the voice from the film speaking that line every time I think of the band.

5. "Fixed Frequencies" by Propagandhi
Oh how I wish I loved the newest Pgh album. Instead, if an older song of their comes up on shuffle, I get nostalgic for those poppier times. And if a new songs comes up on shuffle, I'm often inclined to skip it. Which makes me sad, because they were my favorite band during the, what, five years between releases?

6. "The Dead Man: Fanfare" by John Zorn
Emusic has the whole Zorn catalog on Tzadik -- hours and hours of stuff. Of the stuff that I have listened to so far, my favorites are these incidental little (<1 minute long) melodic-yet-repetitive pieces that show up, lay a little groove on you, and move on.

7. "Who Got the Funk?" by The Streets
Filler track on the first Streets album, still one of my favorite records of ever.

8. "Common People" by Pulp
Needs no explanation, surely.

9. "Sleeper" by John Cale
I heard they reissued Paris 1919 with new mixes and bonus tracks? I wonder if that's worth getting. This track is from Artifical Intelligence, an album that I really like but don't know the tracks very well individually. Also, this particular song comes after "Dying on the Vine", and I often find that the song that immediately follows the standout track often gets overshadowed in my mind.

10. "Moving On" by Kimya Dawson
Kimya is one of the best people on the planet. Her new baby's name is Panda, and if I may quote from her journal: "there is nothing like natural birth to remind a lady that she is a powerful beast and nothing like a squirmy newborn to remind us all that we are just a bunch of critters."