Shove Off : Luke Lalonde

Here's my first recommendation for 2013. While compiling a mix a few weeks back, I found a song called "Shove Off" by a guy named Luke Lalonde who released a solo album in October called Rhythymnals. Normally Lalonde fronts a band called Born Ruffians, but he took advantage of some down time with the band to work on his own stuff, according to an article Exclaim.ca.

The song immediately jumped out to me, starting off sparse with a quirky little three-note line, and then got pretty damn cool in the chorus. Besides the distant echoing sounds of LaLonde sining "If you want me to shove off," there's another part to this song I really like. Normally I hate commonly used phrases like "and stuff," but Lalonde expertly wedges it into a line that so solidly evokes a youthful other time. "So elated and so caught up, times were weird and wild and stuff, trouble's far away," he sings, and I totally buy it.

The album isn't on Spotify, sadly, but if you go to Lalonde's site you can stream it.