Sheer Agony - "I Have A Dream" [out Oct 30th on Couple Skate Records]

Check out the excellent video directed by Freelove Fenner's Peter Woodford

t's been 16 years. It was 1999. I was in Grade 11 and I was daydreaming about a Guided By Voices cover band, Guided By Vocoders. Maybe not. Anyway, there is a print shop called Copie 2000 in Montreal. I always wondered about the name. Maybe the owner thought 2000 sounded futuristic when he opened in 1984 (I just googled their website). Maybe he was really pessimistic person and thought the Y2K bug would actually happen and world would end and didn't care beyond.
If the later was the case, I continued to daydream that in 1999, the owner of Copie 2000 was really self-destructive He would yell, "What do you want!?" with whiskey in his hand, to customers.
"Why do you want business cards printed!? Huh? We are all just gonna die anyways!"
"Whatever, I will print them. But just so you know that your business will fail next year. Because WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE SOON!!! GAHAHAHAHAHA." as he takes a sip from his whiskey bottle.
If this was the case his wife would be really worried about him. Worried that he was coming home at 3am every night, spending all his money on the Video slot machine at Primetime across the street. About the time he ordered a foot long Cheese Steak sandwich with extra cheese at Subway and said to the high school kid employee "You aren't sandwich artist! Give me that South-West Sauce!" then mocked him as he was put the sauce on "Look at me! I'm the Jackson Polluck of Sandwichs! GAHAHAHAHA!" He was out of control. It was opposite of what he used to be. He always made his own sandwiches with homemade bread, tuna and no mayonnaise just sea salt with plenty of organic vegetables from his community garden. He didn't really drink much. In fact, he'd rather go running on the mountain every other day, early in the morning.

All this because of the Y2K scare.

But then, judgement day came, the 31st of December 1999.
"5! 4! 3! 2! 1!" his relatives, his friends, his wife, his kids around him counted down. He sat on his chair very intoxicated, closed his eyes and sighed quickly. He thought, at least, he is surrounded by loved ones.
"Happy New Year!!!!" everyone screamed!
"see! nothing happened! I told you so!" His wife came to hug him.
"what....? I'm...alive? I'm alive!!!!!"
He jumped and hugged everyone at the party.
"I have a dream!" he yelled. "I'm gonna make Copie 2000 to the best copy station in Montreal...no....in Canada! oh maybe in Montreal!! oh whatever!!!!! GAHAHAHAH"
Anyways, 16 years ago today, Sega Dreamcast was released.
The end.

"Downtown" - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (feat. Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, and Grandmaster Caz)

"Downtown" is two songs jammed together. "Downtown" sounds as if it has always existed. It's like a hazy memory from another time, indistinct. It begins with Ryan Lewis's re-creation of old-school hip-hop, referencing the early-1980s Sugar Hill records catalogue, and featuring three heavyweights of the era throwing down verses in unison. The song rolls along at the typical Macklemorian pace, a picaresque about buying a moped and his subsequent adventures. It's a new page from the "Thrift Store" playbook, part of an indistinct genre of kid-friendly funk music, spanning everything from the Electric Company's "Easy Reader" to Was (Not Was)'s 1988 hit "Walk the Dinosaur" and last year's Bruno Mars-fronted Mark Ronson hit "Uptown Funk," which I last heard sung by a group of pre-teens walking down my back alley a few days ago.

But the song transforms into something rarer near the two-minute mark, where an homage to Grandmaster Flash's "Rock the Bells" Wild Style routine gives way to a Nile Rodgers's lick and a strangely compelling voice belting out "Downtown! Downtown! Dowwwwwwwwwwwwwnntowwwn!" Thus begins the chorus, which seems part of another song entirely, taking a sharp left turn out of the Boogie Down Bronx and into Transsexual Transylvania. From here, late seventies Meat Loaf- or Queen-style piano and ballad vocals float over a mid-tempo marching band rhythm, horns, and chanting backing singers before settling into an arena rock banger. Things get anthemic. It's catchy as hell.

The voice belongs to Eric Nally, whose circus-y glam rock band Foxy Shazam were road warriors for the last decade. Nally absolutely steals this song. He has the pop star's effortless ability to sing trivial lyrics with total conviction and pathos, alchemically creating something catchy and powerful. Nally has been compared to Freddie Mercury, and in the video for this song he wears tight-ass jeans, a moustache, and looks fucking great in a leather cap. But while his voice gestures to Mercury's street-fighting tenor, it is lighter, soaring over the song - at times channeling Off the Wall-era Michael. These and other classic rock references come across on repeated listening but really Nally is unique, particularly on Top 40 radio today. A voice like this could only have originated in the underground rock scene, whose embarrassment of riches rarely crosses over into mainstream culture.

[buy]

Yo La Tengo - "Before We Stopped To Think".

I guess that covering a song is like waving a flag. I guess it is. Temporarily, for two or three or four minutes, you are stepping inside the lines that another artist painted on the ground; you are stepping inside their circle, hoisting and waving their flag. It is a little like dating the same person. It is a little like moving into the same apartment. Maybe sometimes you are waving the flag ironically, dating the person ironically, ironically living in a high-rise with a pool. But it is difficult to pull off these ironical things. Mostly I think you are just kinda trying to wave that flag you love, to watch its colours change in the day's different bands of sunlight.

"Before We Stopped To Think" was originally recorded by a band called Great Plains. Their version is winsome and jangly, with a thin line of synthesizer. Yo La Tengo, on the other hand, make the song sound drowsy and sincere, the kind of drowsy and sincere that happens at the very end of a night, in the early morning, when the stars are at their loudest, your voice is worn out. Perhaps it is a strange way to cover someone: to sing their song but to sing it all worn out.

But then my favourite covers aren't purely about celebrating another song. To interpret a song is to engage with it on a deeper level than mere advocacy. It is the same with writing or talking about music: on your best days, strive to be more than a champion. You must commit to what you are doing; you must give it stakes; it must be possible to fail. Maybe you fail because you lack the ability, perhaps because you do not manage to express yourself in this particular instant, perhaps because you run out of strength or patience or the means to continue.

Yo La Tengo's performance of "Before We Stopped To Think" is like waving a flag. It is like stepping inside the lines that Great Plains painted on the ground, hoisting and waving their flag. But before Yo La Tengo raised that flag they lived for thirty years in the circle that Great Plains had painted. They listened to this song, listened and listened, tried to understand this ring in the dirt. Maybe they stared at Great Plains' high flag and felt a flicker of recognition in their hearts. Maybe immediately, maybe after some time. But eventually the moment came that Ira or Georgia or James or Dave decided that they could play their own version with sufficient clarity of intention that it would be possible to fail. In the singing, the brushes on drums, the low bass, Dave's searching electric guitar: they could raise this same flag in a way that's honest and true, vulnerable, valiant. You can hear it in the recording, the way this is so. A flag in the air, an old flag, star-spangled like it's new.

[buy / thanks Charles]

The Weeknd - "Often"

Dudes (well-meaning dudes! good dudes! almost always dudes!) will want to talk to you about The Weeknd, the same way they always want to talk to you about Drake. You will be trying to articulate the strange topography of goosebumps these songs bring out along the back of your neck and they will be all how do you like this or what's the appeal or I cannot stand this guy's Whole Thing or I think the faux-sensitive self-destructive swagger is toxic and shitty and so don't you why don't you why why why why?

These are not necessarily bad questions, but this is one of those spots where the patriarchy has wrecked everything for all of us, brutal- and thoroughly. Here's the trick: when you're forced to meet the world as a woman or a man first instead of just as a person, you've always got to be explaining stuff or fighting back against it, to be forming consistently definite opinions that line up perfectly with the thing you ostensibly are - a woman, a man, a feminist, a good one. The more you're forced to meet the world this way, the better you get at overcoming. You learn to turn away from being overcome.

People (well-meaning people! great people!) sometimes forget how lucky it is to be able to enjoy and dwell and fuck around in the tension between opposing forces - that allowing yourself to get carried away by art that doesn't necessarily jibe with your ideas about how the world should be is a private kind of privilege. It's hard to be open to the pleasures and possibilities of dissonance when you are constantly finding yourself painted into a corner by the thing you're supposed to be, when you are constantly being forced by the culture at large to shout your way out of the boxes it's shoved you into. Someone will ask you what you like about these songs and by the time you've finished - no of course I don't think it's necessarily good, no of course I don't like the way some people treat these dudes' personas like a road map or an excuse, of course not of course not of course not - you come back and they've lost a little of their lustre. The darkness dulls; the undertow feels weaker, watered down. You're forced to compromise even in the act of explaining yourself. It's uncanny. It's a bummer. It's a trap.

The Weeknd - "The Hills"

So anyway: There's a steady chaos in these songs that can and will undo you if you let it - the chemical reaction between what The Weeknd's saying and what you can actually hear, the sloping voice and stuttered beat, thick bass and panicked siren, how he doesn't care about you, how he does. When you touch me, not feel me. When I'm fucked up, that's the real me. That pull apart: together and alone. These songs are if pure tension was an element; they want to meet you in the darkest part, the space between what's good for you and maybe what you want. No explaining. Go to.

[buy Beauty Behind the Madness]

I was probably 10 or 11 years old. There was a park around the corner from my house that all the neighborhood kids played at. It felt like a 30 minute walk, but last time I was back there it only took me 5 minutes. My friend when we were kids, couldn't hold his poo even though it was only a 5 minute walk to my house or 4 minutes to his. He sat in a little bush and pooped. I handed him the smoothest leaf I could find as toilet paper (probably about 600 grit if it was a sandpaper). He had a nice poo and saved the day.

I used to have stomach problems all through childhood. Later in life, I found out it was probably because of my generalized anxiety. In the morning, I used to get a stomachache, so I would poo and felt better. Also after school, I used to get a stomachache and had to hold it the 15 min. walk home. There was a steep hill which made my holding poo power tougher and that's how I learned about gravity. There was no apple tree near by. Just me and my tummy and my poo in it. Every step was a challenge as I needed to walk slow to hold it in. But if I walked too slow my friends will notice something strange. So I had to walk average speed to avoid suspicion. I walked with my bum really tight like a synchronized swimmer before diving into the pool or a America's next top model on the runway. It might have looked a little strange, but oh well.

Once, I got home and my mom wasn't home so I had to wait. I sat in the garage, on the bricks. I thought a hard surface would help me hold my poo. I waited and waited but later I found out my mom was at dentist and it took longer than she expected and I don't blame her. I held my poo as long as possible but there was always a breaking point. I had no choice but poo somewhere. We had a little yard. I mean Japanese housing size yard with houses built really close to it. So I decided to go to our yard and release this demon inside of me. So I did. I finally let the dark side of me go, under the beautiful sunshine in the afternoon. Very peaceful. I could hear neighbour kids playing in the park distantly. War was over. But I realized there was nothing I could wipe with close by. Our yard didn't really have many plants at that time. So I looked around still in squatting position like a baseball catcher waiting for the perfect pitch. I found a clover. It was not a four leaf clover. That would make an epic 3 hours fantasy movie if I find it that time. I just found a sad looking 3 leaf clover. and I wiped my ass with it. I felt really magical. It felt like a 1200 grit automobile sanding paper. really really smooth like a fine sanding of samurai sword.

Then, I realized it was my hand. The clover was too small and my fingers were covered with my own poo. If I found four leaves clover, maybe it would have been a different result. Who knows.

The end.

RP Boo - "Bang'n On King Dr."

All summer I've had a candle lit for my Chosen One, my self-ordained Summer Jam of 2015, waiting for the sign that it had caught fire, left deep scorch marks across the summer jam landscape. But now it is September and I must turn away from this internet-window, hope hardening into steely autumnal resolve. Time now for us to mourn, to bid farewell to the most fleeting summer we've ever known. Time now for us to do the work of remembering, of giving name to those second-tier jams that got away from us. I'll go first.

"Bang'n On King Dr." may not have burned as brightly as many of its peers, and yet we are all luckier for it having happened. It's a masterful execution of a staple footwork principle, taking a sample of tiny duration and repeating it endlessly so that it becomes a kind of texture, a strange and cool cluster of tones and timbres removed from their original context. The song seems to gather momentum effortlessly, verging almost on too-amped silliness, and it's surprising that so much forward motion is being generated by so few elements: the relentlessly repeating voice samples; the two dead-dry thudding bass notes that you won't even hear if you're listening to this on a laptop; the janky drum machine getting dialed up to 160 bpm. There's a supreme IDGAF approach to the production, seams showing everywhere -- you can literally hear how he is just shouting those street numbers into his MacBook's built-in microphone. It feels like it was made in five reckless minutes, a surge of irrepressible stoned enthusiasm captured in real time.

We don't have to stop drinking radlers just this second, but let's not lie to ourselves either. Soon it will be time to haul the cardigans from the closet, time for the new Beach House record to enter heavy rotation on coffee shop playlists, time to pin hopes to Jennifer Castle improbably winning the Polaris Prize. Summer's a dead raccoon on the sidewalk, having lived fast and died hard, not knowing any other way. We have "Bang'n on King Dr." so that we can remember it in all its hot and stinky glory.

Let us do the work of remembering. Let us not forget the names. Hit the comment button below and share a lost summer jam. Let us commiserate over having had it so good these past few months.

[buy]

Low - "What Part Of Me". Spend twenty years honing your craft, studying your books, practicing your scales, running your course, writing your rhymes, hitting your ball, repeating your tenses, learning your tools, tracing your circles, swimming your laps, dancing your steps, loving your loved ones, sitting on your cushion, carrying your weight, and then listen to all that you will have.

[soundcloud / pre-order]