Various Artists Lounge-A-Palooza by Stephen Breton Hollywood Records Lounge music; it's all about decadence. It's about having the time and money to spend your evenings in either an alcoholic languor or in a seductive tango of death. Think of the Lounge genre as the James Bond of Music: it's either a free-fall fist-fight with Jaws or a seductive sip of a martini; tense, but still calm and cool. WWII scrapping made sloth a sin, but in post-war prosperity, Lounge made it big. There was liquor and ice in every suburban home, and on every hi-fi there was a crooner like Frank Sinatra or Mel Torme. The only modern crooner on Lounge-A-Palooza is Edwyn Collins, and he makes Sinatra's famous "Witchcraft" his own by slowing the tempo and adding record scratches. Torme's "Zaz Turned Blue" is likewise excellent yet unrecognizable, with PJ Harvey singing over Portishead samples. Poe recalls the decadence of days gone by with a groovy, swingin' jazz tribute to the cabarets, cafés, and salons of the anti-bourgeois intellectual. Cool. The song you'll probably like best on your first listen is Ben Folds Five's latin cover of "She Don't Use Jelly." If you've heard the Flaming Lips original, this one will make you laugh out loud. But it's not just a novelty song, it's a great mambo. The 80-year-old Esquivel! collaborates with his direct musical descendents, Combustible Edison, on a fantastic dance-track called "Miniskirt." If you ever hear singers going "zing-pow" or "doo-doot-doo" or "ba-baba-ba," it's either an Esquivel knock-off, or it's Pizzicato Five. P5, the Japanese masters of dance-pop, somehow added more syncopation to "The Girl from Ipanema," originally written by Bossa Nova's grand-dad, Antonio Jobim. Unfortunately for Lounge, and this compilation, the James Taylor Quartet's pleasant enough rendition of "Music to Watch Girls By" signals the end of the old, adult-driven music industry and the birth of the youth market. This song has been covered so many times that if Letterman said, "Play me something public-domain," 20 bucks says Paul would strike up this surf guitar classic. As surf, blues, and rock 'n' roll took over the airwaves, Lounge moved into the disgusting depths of the actual lounge. There you could hear such god-awful husband and wife teams as Steve and Eydie and the Captain and Tennille (monk : printing press :: lounge singer : Karaoke machine). The former covers Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" (this one IS a novelty song), and the latter have their signature piece (originally written by Neil Sedaka!) "Love Will Keep Us Together" performed by Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea. Yuck. Fastball does a great cover of Bacharach-David's, "This Guy's in Love with You." You say you've never heard of Bacharach, but you actually have. He wrote a full third of the songs from the seventies and did a rare singing appearance on the roof of the double-decker bus in Austin Powers. Glen Campbell and Michelle Shocked's "Wichita Lineman" and the Fun Lovin' Criminals' "I'm not in Love" are both semi-boring and only semi-Lounge-y. The album ends with "Robert Goulet on the River Nile," a tribute to Vegas-style singers by the lead man of the Presidents of the United States, if you like that sort of thing. Even though I only liked about 70 percent of the album, the good songs were very, very good. Buy the cassette version and tape over side B with "Walkin' on the Sun," some Stereolab, and Beck's "Deadweight." And when you come home tired from your day of spying, sore from holding microfilm in your butt for 16 hours, slip in this album and picture palm trees swaying softly.

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