[source]

Horse Feathers - "Helen" (song removed by request)
Horse Feathers - "Curs In The Weeds" (approved from Kill Rock Stars site)

An orgiastic past. A turgid and turbulent past. Like a flipbook where every image is different, it's confusing to think back on it. It's sometimes painful or shocking to think back on it, especially compared with the current surroundings; so calm and warm and sun-dimmed. With a dry clicking swallow, it's the easiest thing in the world to just never think about it again. And yet, it's kind of like starting at zero, you feel jealous of strangers, like they must have a head start. Until, walking in the park, you happen to see an old tree, a big old tree, and a little sapling next to it. And you realise the world takes so damn long to change, which makes things better. It'll be another ten years (or until a flood hits your town) when you realise it takes just as long to change back.

Horse Feathers will set free their new and shining album House With No Home for purchase next Tuesday. [pre-order here from Kill Rock Stars]

Silver Jews - "Strange Victory, Strange Defeat". Saw the Silver Jews with Dan last night. What an amazing, beautiful show. David Berman up there like a kid and a teenager and a wise-man, all at once. He and Cassie having conversations with their eyes, there for us all to see. The band playing their instruments with a fierceness I'd not heard before; the Silver Jews' live sound is more fearsome, sparking, wild than on record. And still Berman's lyrics cutting right through, mouth close to the mic, words slipped into our ears like hands into pockets. Sweat was pouring off his face like from the spout of a teapot.

I saw the Silver Jews two years ago, in Edinburgh. It was their eighteenth-ever gig. Last night was their sixty-ninth. Though in 2006 there was a more innocent joy to the show - a clean country jubilance just in singing the songs, - last night's freer, louder stuff shook the heart even more. Now is when you should go see the Silver Jews. They're at a threshold - still new enough at this that every night's a discovery, a shambles, a treasure; but comfortable enough in their touring shows that the songs, well, they kick ass. The balance won't stay this way forever.

But some of what I wrote for Plan B two years ago is still true. Not the earring -- the gist:

We’re not losing ourselves in the crowd – eyes rolling back in our heads as we cheer. No. I watch the earring on Berman’s ear, like a tattoo brought back from sea. I watch the way Cassie looks at David, sometimes, when he doesn’t look back. I watch the way he glares at his monitor or stumbles over a lyric. And I feel a mortal kind of joy – the stuff of human beings and human lives. The sterling wonder of a gift that’s made by fallible human hands, by creatures with hearts more silver than gold.

Annie - "What Do You Want (The Breakfast Song)"

I took the city bus to and from high school for four years. Every day there was an autistic woman who would sit in the same seat, and every time we hit a certain corner in the route, she would begin repeating the question: "What are we having for dinner?" Over and over, practicing for when she walked in the door I imagine, over and over. It didn't take long for this ritual to become very comforting, and the rare days when she was absent, I didn't notice until we hit that corner and the phrase started repeating in my head on its own. Now I suppose the same kind of memory trigger will be true for this song. I have to assume the most appropriate set of circumstances to trigger this would be a roller-skate rink with multi-coloured disco lights and people in animal costumes. Or somehow getting around town by slide. Like a slide that works like public transit. [site shop]

Orouni - "A Greased and Golden Palm"

This chorus is like looking out a basement window, squinting in the light of a day that was never supposed to come. Like, there was no day scheduled today, but it showed up anyway, proof that it really does love you, that it missed you during the night.

[album released tomorrow on MonsterK7]

The Swingers - "Counting the Beat". It's Labour Day and here's a song for the labourers. Or rather for the labourers who aren't labouring. The ones lifting crates or typing memos who get distracted mid-crate, mid-memo, staring off into space. There's a girl or a boy in the glaze of their eyes, a skip in their heart, a tap in their toes. Can't get anything done, no, they're too much in love; fire the bosses, go on strike; call in sick, smash the timeclock; scamper dancing all through the warehouse, all over the office, til' the weekend. (Thanks Jessica!) [out of print]

Langhorne Slim - "Spinning Compass". And then something a little more Monday. "Spinning Compass" sounds like an overture, an introduction, a first date. Like a first & a beginning. Then again, here's the thing - it ain't. Listen to the lyrics. So here's a song for turning not-beginnings into beginnings, turning dead ends into open roads. Turning cello and accordion into a crop for your horse. [buy]

---

Elsewhere:

Montrealers, take note! Silver Jews play Sala on Wednesday night!

Owen Pallett pointed me to the weirdoness of this synthesiser blog.

A beautifully presented mixtape of Tim Hardin covers.

A bizarre, luminous, sci-fi music video for Jay Bharadia's marvelous "Snowy Day".

The Record of the Week Club is a terrific project out of Winnipeg where all sorts of local musicians get together on a Wednesday night and then have to record a song before they can leave. Many fascinating things! Though of course I am most partial to "Keewatin Arctic", featuring the Weakerthans' John K Samson, Inuit throat-singer Nikki Komakslutiksak and electronico Blunderspublik.

And at the Lifted Brow, Christopher Currie is writing stories inspired by titles or prompts from other folks. They've now published "The Flannerys", his response to my challenge: A story that talks about one hundred and twenty women, all individually named, and never more than 10 named at one time (ie, in reference to the same thing/in sequence). Or is that too complicated?

posted at 12:16 PM on Sep 1, 2008 | Leave a comment (2)

Veda Hille - "Luckyluck". A devotional for destiny, faith and the way that truth is veiled. But done with glee, see? The flickering oh oh oh of a child lighting a candle or seeing it lit. The wide-smile awe of standing in a church or temple or forest, a gull circling above, something not-quite-clear through the canopy. And the thrill of realising that when you take a step, you are merely trusting it will land.

(Carl Wilson weighs in on Veda Hille - one of the country's finest songwriters, I agree, - and encourages you to vote for her in the Echo Songwriting Prize competition. Sandro Perri and the Weakerthans are also excellent choices.)

[buy This Riot Life]

---

Elsewhere:

Our friend Matt Forsythe launched his new graphic novel, Ojingogo on Wednesday and it's bee-yoo-ti-ful. Explore his website and pick up the real thing from Drawn & Quarterly some time soon. Oh yes - and we might just have something Forsythey in StG's own pipeline...

My new column has debuted. I will be writing every six weeks or so for the McSweeney's website. The first piece is now online: REFLECTIONS ON SEEING LEONARD COHEN PERFORM IN MONTREAL ON JUNE 23, 2008. I hope you like it. (Oh and in the end I settled on a very boring column title.)

Of Montreal - "Nonpareil of Favor"

Skeletal Lamping is described by Kevin Barnes as his most confessional album. For an album dedicated to hunting out, killing and mounting, or cooking and sharing around, the skeletons in one's closet, I love that the introduction is a thank-you note. It's the kind of thank-you you say just before your lips dip under water. You know that kind of half-swallowing last word to the sky as you slide right under the water. Into the blaring pressure of those guitars, those transfixing and transformative guitars, all you hear is loud, and you know that you will hear always these sounds foreverever in your new shape, they will have to compliment everything else now, you hear and see and look a totally different way now. A last thank-you before starting the process of opening your skull at the seam and turning right inside-out. Kevin Barnes understands me.

[via Rolling Stone]
[pre-order starts next week for this incredible album]

Chad VanGaalen - "Rabid Bits of Time"

I moved into a house once where someone had left meat in the walls. I think the landlord had made them mad, so they put meat in the walls, and re-drywalled right over it. I moved in in the winter, slippery and messy as hell, so I didn't notice it until the first real heat wave in late May of that year. Something as hideous, as obvious, as death slept through the winter, ignored its duties until spring, until it exploded into a rush of decay. And that's exactly what this song makes me want to do. To just forget all the stuff I should be doing, all the little tiny bits of tasks and touch-ups that line the pathways of my day like knots in a winding bannister of dental floss, and just wait until it all falls out at once, until I do something different, easier, better, bigger. Chad VanGaalen understands me.

[pre-order from Sub Pop]

Jolie Holland - "Mexico City". The "free" song from Jolie Holland's The Living & the Dead and it's splendid, golden, with enough swells of feeling to swell your heart even on a sullen, sodden, storm-soaked day. M Ward is on guitar but I'm not complaining - anything that gives Jolie Holland the chance to sing, to sing, not to sing along but just to sing. Her voice still full of briar. [info]

Frenemy - "I Know, Fuck Damnit". You gotta cut down trees to build a house. Wait - no. You could mine stone and make bricks. Or um make walls out of plastic using the process-for-making-plastic. And let's not even start on coral. But to make a house you need to build. You need to work & do. You don't build a house by dreaming. You don't dwell in your imagination. Lift that rock, heave that brick, hear the song of the hammerhead against the nail. [MySpace]

[photo source]

[source]

David Byrne & Brian Eno - "Life is Long"

Sincerity is a chore that we perform every day. Honesty is a conscious constant effort, like hiking up your pants when you don't have a belt. Love is the nearest street corner to your house, you see it every day and you pass it by, always reminded, always there for the taking. Truth is brushing your teeth, you can force it, fake it, or mean it, but if you get it done eventually you'll come to like it. I can't understand this song, like I can't understand "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed, but I can react, and I react by lying down in the back seat of a car, putting the middle seat belt over my chest, and watching the telephone wires making that eternal rising dipping line in the sky.

[order directly from David Byrne]

Parenthetical Girls - "Four Words"

This is the opening track on the Parenthetical Girls' new foray into a cloud of earnest brilliance, their hollywood-broadway-avant-garde musical Entanglements. I never thought of it before, but it's a perfect fit for Zac Pennington's already well-instantiated style; lead role in a musical. From the moment he starts his cooing warble, and his imagery that pushes on that part between your thumb and finger (the part that schoolyard rumour had it was connected straight to your brain) the album gallops away and never looks back (but of course always looking kind of back). The album is really wondrous, just to listen to it, you can't really do anything else, it's like being covered in three feet of velvet and jewels and creams. But specifically, "Four Words", like much of Entanglements, is made of very heavy orchestration, at times almost too heavy for Zac to hold cupped in his hand, but it's perfect for his character who is being overcome by music, by words, near possessed. What I love most about Parenthetical Girls, and it's true here, and all through Entanglements, is how unbearably sexy they are. Like, sexy to the point where I can't bear it, it becomes dangerous, dark, harrowing. "Four Words" is the extremely tempting beginning to a story full of moments lush, carnal*, and true. [Pre-order for the Sept 9th release]

*yes, sexual, but also just "relating to the body", Pennington is a genius of evoking horror and pure ecstasy about the human body.

[Zac also wrote for us some time ago]

--

Quintron - "Model Ex-Citizen"

Here comes Quintron, carrying a roller-coaster organ and a drum machine. He's here for you. He knows it's Friday. [site]

photograph by Mario Simnch

Für Amel - "Pink Eyes". It's stargazing when you stare right at the sun. You don't need a telescope or a clear night sky. You can lie on your couch and look out the window and even with a headache pounding you can come up with names for this constellation. The Blot. The Wheel. The Full Stop. There are other ways to stargaze as well. Fall on your head. Get up too fast. Bring your face up close to a glass of champagne. I think maybe Für Amel did all these things in one day: champagne, falling down, getting up, sun-staring. "Pink Eyes" has a halo - the way everything looks when you've drunk too much, fallen on your head, stared at the sun. A fuzz that seems to mean something. I think Für Amel have almost figured something out. They've collected all the blurs that look good together, flares and sunspots and the skirted edges of an eclipse. Don't stop rubbing your eyes - you're on the right track.

[Für Amel are from Montreal. This music is a love-song.]

---

Other things:

• We rearranged our sidebar a week or two ago. I encourage you to explore some of those great sites, especially the ones that are new to you. Foremost among these is Five Whys, the newish project of friend (and StG graphic designer) Neale McDavitt-van Fleet. Neale's fascinated with design, ergonomics, the environment and urban issues, just like you (probably), and his posts are a joy to read - succinct, insightful and teeming with Neale's amazing curiosity. Also, he can teach you how to make your own cleaning products.
• In Montreal, Thursday through Sunday, St-Laurent is again closed for a street fair. And once again, Pop Montreal is programming whole days of free outdoor concerts at Parc des Ameriques (St-Laurent and Rachel). The only difference is that this time I helped with the programming. I particularly recommend some of StreetPop's Saturday shows (Max Henry, Mussaver, My People Sleeping, Shapes and Sizes), and basically everything on Sunday, since that was the day I was in charge. Some of the city's greatest emerging music - and some feisty kids from out of town. Here's the Facebook event.

  Sunday line-up:
  14h00 Deleplage [Mtl]
  15h00 Georgia's Teeth (aka Carl Spidla) [Mtl]
  16h00 The Bitter End (improv ft. Dan Beirne) [Mtl]
  16h15 Little Scream [Mtl]
  17h00 very short modern dance works by Laurel Koop and Andrew Tay [Mtl]
  17h15 Postcards [Mtl]
  18h00 Construction and Destruction [Nova Scotia!]
  19h00 Videotape [Ottawa]
  20h00 Snailhouse [Mtl]
  21h00 Orillia Opry (acoustic) [Mtl]

  Many thanks to Pop Montreal for the invitation.