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A pat­tern has devel­oped. Girl Talk releases an album, and I doubt it. In 2006, I put Night Rip­per on my top ten albums of the year, but I cush­ioned that move by remark­ing that I might look back in embar­rass­ment. When Feed the Ani­mals dropped in ’08, I knew Girl Talk would be able to do it again, I just wasn’t sure I’d still care. When Girl Talk sur­prised us with the release of All Day last week, my reluc­tance actu­ally out­weighed my excite­ment. The other side of this pat­tern is that my expec­ta­tions are con­sis­tently exceeded by a lot. Night Rip­per is one of my favorite albums of the ‘00s, Feed the Ani­mals has has worked its way into my top five albums of ’08 (even though it wasn’t in my orig­i­nal top ten), and, in what has been one of the bet­ter weeks for music in 2010, it’s All Day that lingers in my ears when all the noise is silenced.

I’ve already shared my favorite moments of the album, but the tapes in my mind aren’t lim­ited to those. Yes­ter­day alone, I found myself think­ing, hum­ming, whistling, singing: “Party in the U.S.A.,” “Rude Boy,” “Shut­ter­bug,” “Danc­ing in the Dark,” “Pos­sum King­dom,” and just the words, “black and yel­low, black and yel­low.” Had I heard these songs in their orig­i­nal con­texts (which I have, many times, except maybe for “Black and Yel­low”), I doubt they’d be so stuck in my con­scious­ness. There’s some­thing almost mag­i­cal that hap­pens when Greg Gillis mashes up. He has an ear for what most attracts us to a song, a verse, a cho­rus, a line, a lyric, a riff, a sound, etc. He iso­lates it and resets it in a brand new context.

Girl Talk is the sound of the new excess, all-access indul­gence, with “infor­ma­tion” and “con­tent” being both price­less and free for the tak­ing. This is the ful­filled proph­esy of Andy Warhol’s Coca-Cola phi­los­o­phy. This is the sound­track to life as we’ve come to know it since the avail­abil­ity of broad­band (both in its afford­abil­ity and in its acces­si­bil­ity at libraries, uni­ver­si­ties, etc.), which is to say that every­thing that isn’t con­fined to mat­ter is at our fingertips.

Nev­er­the­less, there’s some­thing to the skep­ti­cism, the doubt I con­fessed above, that seems legit­i­mate. It’s hard to imag­ine an influ­ence that Girl Talk will have on other music-makers. I can only con­ceive of a Girl Talk-influenced artist as a copy­cat who can be judged strictly by com­par­i­son: poor-man’s ver­sion of, just as good as, even bet­ter than, Scan­don­a­vian answer to, etc. And, even though every album has sur­passed my expec­ta­tions, I keep won­der­ing, how long can Girl Talk keep doing this same thing before it no longer does any­thing for me?

The ques­tions high­light one issue of the new excess and con­sumerism in an era of dis­pos­abil­ity. For one tidy exam­ple, I have been think­ing about buy­ing expen­sive, clas­si­cally styled shoes, but I feel pre-emptive guilt about big-ticket pur­chases. Mean­while, I’ve spent at least as much on cheaper, trendier, lower-quality shoes in the past few years. I’ve tricked myself into see­ing big-ticket mate­ri­al­ism as the car­di­nal sin of con­sumerism, miss­ing the friv­o­lity of a nickel-and-dime propo­si­tion. Truth­fully, I could prob­a­bly spend $300–500 on a pair of shoes I could wear to my retire­ment recep­tion, maybe be buried in, or even pass along to one of my nephews. My path, so far, has been paved with the good inten­tions of non-materialism, and the result is donat­ing out-of-style shoes to Good­will, or just toss­ing worn-out shoes, every cou­ple years, and leak­ing large por­tions of money slowly, rather than at once. Maybe All Day is another emblem of dis­pos­able consumerism.

On the other hand, All Day might be an anti­dote to the overly earnest pleas of Arcade Fire’s The Sub­urbs, best demon­strated in the line, “Hope that some­thing pure can last.” It may be the ulti­mate expres­sion of Warhol’s con­cept of democ­racy via Coca-Cola. Like any bev­er­age, Coke, by its very nature, is meant to be enjoyed in the moment. “Last­ing” is not an option. When drink­ing a Coca-Cola, one does not worry about one’s retire­ment recep­tion, funeral, or nephew’s inher­i­tance; when those bub­bles tickle one’s nose, there is no tomor­row. Coca-Cola, at its most refresh­ing, has us mash­ing up the words of the Preacher and Isa­iah, prompt­ing us to declare, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomor­row we die!” All Day, like other Girl Talk albums, can cer­tainly con­tribute to our mer­ry­mak­ing, whether that looks like danc­ing or geek­ing out over the mul­ti­tude of samples.

Any philo­soph­i­cal ten­sion cer­tainly seems appro­pri­ate. After all, isn’t ten­sion a big part of the appeal of Girl Talk’s music? His crown­ing achieve­ment still has to be blend­ing The Noto­ri­ous B.I.G.‘s “Juicy” with Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” on Night Rip­per’s “Smash Your Head.” One of the most strik­ing moments from Feed the Ani­mals is the first half-minute of “Still Here,” with the mourn­ful organ of Pro­cal Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” pro­vid­ing a back­drop for Lil’ Jon’s and YoungBloodZ’s chants of, “You don’t give a damn, we don’t give a f***,” and, “You don’t start no s***, there won’t be no s***.” And it’s Lil’ Jon, again (this time with his East Side Boyz and the Ying Yang Twinz), on All Day, chant­ing “Get Low” over the afro-pop acoustics of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia,” in “This Is the Remix,” that, for me, pro­vides the most com­pelling ten­sion of juxtaposition.

With that in mind, maybe Girl Talk is lead­ing the way. In any ten­sion we feel, we are often tempted to cling to an extreme. Maybe the best answer to that temp­ta­tion is cherry-picking jux­ta­po­si­tion, tak­ing what’s dis­pos­able with that which will last with our very best discretion.