Abner Jay - "Depression". The way the blues can be a power, a force, a lodestone in your chest that sends you plunging through space. Imagine a ship that has no cannonballs, only heavy hearts; the black powder booms and they sing away over the waves, crack timber, splinter bone. My heavy hearts have sunk a thousand ships. Whole navies foundered, sit now at the bottom of the sea. And I am on my flagship, my lonesome flagship, with every sail unfurled.
[Abner Jay recorded another version of this song, visited here / buy]
Camilo Diaz Pino - "Scott Pilgrim (Plumtree) - 16-bit cover". I enjoyed the movie, but this is better. And it's better than Plumtree's original. It takes the chugging angst and just lets it go. It forgets every detail, forgets the clutched hopes and back-story. It is what it is, fragile and bittersweet, nostalgia without irony. It accomplishes the same thing, maybe, that Bert Jansch used to do; only today an acoustic guitar has different valences. And this cover sounds different, now, than it would have in 1995. And I'm a different person, now, than I was when I was young.
[this comes via YouTube / with every thanks to Matthew Perpetua]
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For those who don't follow me on Twitter, I made a mix for the end of August. It is now September, but you can probably still enjoy it. Download here (1h14, 107.5mb), and track-list (spoilers! wait 'til after yr first listen!) here.
[photo source, taken about a century ago]
Young Bruce sat tear-eyed in the corner and sung
With voice sotto, his knees pulled up to his chest,
"The Good Lord's love has left me nigh wrung,"
He looked out the window, he'd forgotten the rest.
Young Bruce's parents were no longer around,
His father a victim of helium madness,
His mother disappeared without nary a sound,
So the maid cared for Bruce, with her few scraps of gladness.
Bruce prayed every night for a change to arrive,
"Take my soul, my Good Lord, do not keep me alive,
Lest you pluck me from wand'ring this dark wild wood,
Please God grant me leave of my childhood."
Youth was a failure according to Bruce,
He would much rather die than live stuck as a kid,
His soul a steam engine, his body a mere caboose,
His soul hot baked beans, his body merely the can lid.
When he wished one hot August, his prayers warm as blood,
The bark of a far dog happened right at that second,
A hope in Bruce's mind had started to bud,
He looked in the glass, God had answered when beckoned.
That night was a turbulent sleep for the young boy,
He tossed legs and arms, and turned to and fro,
Dreams of God's perfect and almighty ploy,
Swam out from his head and were beginning to show.
When Bruce woke the next morning, the dog was now near,
Barking outside the window, barking right in his ear,
His bed felt like a matchbox under his back,
The floor sagged like a hammock, the walls were starting to crack.
Bruce looked at his hands and his legs and his feet,
For they seemed the same, it was all else that was smaller,
But still the house shook with his heart's thund'ring beat,
There was no denying, he was a good twelve feet taller.
He tried to see the looking glass, his neck craned with pain,
But decided better not peek, lest he get sucked inside,
He was read this very story again and again,
By his fair mother's breath as she lay with him bedside.
But he had eaten no muffin and this wasn't a story,
He had drank no damn potion and had no crumb trail,
Bruce looked up at heaven and said, "I wish you'd ignored me,"
And poked his head out the window, looking quite like a snail.
Bruce dragged 'round that house for the rest of his life,
He'd wanted to be 'grown-up' but could now take no children, no job, and no wife,
Orphan Bruce had reached God, which is far more than most,
Only God had felt guilty, and so tripled his dose.
The Good Ones - "Sara". Sara, look here. Look this way. Yes, you with the clear eyes. I call you Sara. I will hold up this twig, this maple stick, and make it a wand. Swish, swish, be mine. I will go to the sea and draw shapes in the sand. I will call my cousin, the astronaut, have him etch your initials into the hull of a satellite. Also he will etch my initials, and a crude heart. I will hope and pray. I will corrupt the soothsayer and bribe the fortune-teller; I will scheme and I will cheat, Sara, I will do whatever I have to do, to make you look here. This is how we have always done it, heroes like me. It is not always enough to be a champion. You have not looked at my medals.
[The Good Ones are from Rwanda / Kigali Y' Izahabu is out November 9 / more information]
Ô Paon - "Masks". A man lives in the west wing of his house. In the east wing is the library. The man spent the first third of his life becoming rich. He spent the second third of his life building his library. He travelled the world in search of philosophy, allegory, picture-books. He met collectors and archivists. He traded gold coins for thick tomes. He spent it all. Now he lives in the west wing of his house and in the east wing is the library. He does not leave the west wing. He is too frightened. The last time the man stood in his library he looked at his books, every one of which he had read, and he found himself faintly realising something. He was faintly realising something about himself. Some wisdom these books had taught him - he felt this wisdom turning and shining over his own shadow. It was ugly. The man fled. He hides. He walks the rooms of the west wing and tries not to remember the thing he faintly realised. He is not sure what judgment he almost reached. He suspects he is a monster, or a pervert. He is not sure. He does not think about it. He does not think about what he faintly knows.
[buy the A)B)C)D)E) EP / I haven't yet heard the new Courses LP]
(photo via Horses Think)
Swans - "Reeling the Liars In"
This song is about justice, doled out by the guilty. Punishment on all sides, reciprocal ruin. I am attracted to this attrition, it shows dedication, loyalty, grit. Recently, I heard one 12-year-old say to another "pain is only temporary, quitting lasts forever". Yeah, the fact that it lasts forever is what makes it so good.
[Buy]
Fantasia ft. Cee-lo Green - "The Thrill is Gone". While the memesphere somersaults for Cee-lo's other song, I'm letting this one swing around the wooden frames of my apartment. The production's classic, hot, with uncowed drums; Cee-lo raps (and I've always preferred his rapping to his singing); and Fantasia sings with every confidence, every clear-eyed certainty (earlier this month, long after "Thrill" was recorded, all this had slipped). It's one of those rare songs where the verse is stronger than the chorus, gold-knuckled. With one glance over her shoulder, a knock-out. [buy]
Keri Hilson - "The Last Time". In these last singing weeks of Summer, r&b remains the thing (along with Smog's River Ain't Too Much To Love), and I'm loving the "1 Thing"/"Survivor" stop-stutter of this one, Hilson slipping sighing through picket-fences. It's a song pleasantly lacking in metaphor: she tells us it's the last time with her man, until the next time, and the song's fittingly ambivalent, part love-song, part dumping-song, trapped in the stretched-out impulsive right now. [website]
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I last wrote about the Luyas for McSweeney's (describing a show documented here). While they're playing with Twin Sister and Bear In Heaven early in Pop Montreal, the band are also raising money for some crazy installation thing later in the weekend. Donate here to help make it happen, replete with a dancers, artworks, and a film by Vincent Moon. But besides all that, it's a chance to get the Luyas' exquisite debut for almost nothing, plus original portraits, t-shirts, et cetera. (Their new album drops in January, I hear, with a bigtime label.)
Speaking of the Blogotheque kids, they just posted a new Adam & the Amethysts video, with Montreal cemetery and raccoon, shot two days after Adam and I almost died in a car-crash. There's something very true in this "Bumble Bee"'s sudden strangeness, the flat and post-traumatic sunset. (Another film from the session, including an eerie empty rue Ste-Catherine, went up earlier this summer.) [Why aren't these at the Blogotheque site yet? WTF, la gang?
In here it's a different world, in this world there's no Lady Gaga, there's no Ceelo, there's nothing fun and sexy. It's a damp dark basement, it's exposed brick and paint over paint over paint. You could take a core sample of the air in this place, and you'd see a rainbow of colours, the rings of age. There's no fresh fruit or new books, it's all mouldy old cast-off and dried preserves. And the lights buzz a noise that ruins your hearing. Take your pick: watch or listen, you can't have both. [Buy]
The Harvey Girls - "Smile Like Gwynplaine"
I will not argue over the merit of those minor chords, the moaning chorus. They are like that guy, when you're playing keep-the-beach-ball-in-the-air, they're that guy that pulls a fakie like "oh, I'm gonna let it drop" but he's got it the whole time? They're like that. [Buy
(image by Hilma af Klint)
The Vaccines - "If You Wanna". A song of utter foolhardiness. The singer knows he is being foolhardy - not just fancy-free, reckless, but hardy as a fool. He knows he is singing a love-song to a lover who has not been loyal; he knows he is giving his catchiest chorus to someone who doesn't deserve it. But he doesn't mind. He just wants to get back to that place, running through the dry bright sunlight, with small fast plans, toward kisses with bumping teeth. His band-mates, the Vaccines, they are like: whatever. They are like: whatever, man. They are like: just tell us when we can start playing. They've got hooks ready, riffs stored up; they've got a tambourine beat they'll throw onto anything that moves. C'mon, they say, let's just become famous already. [The Vaccines are new / website / Facebook / thanks Ryan]
The Band in Heaven - "Dreams". The Cranberries' consummate classic, drenched in reverbbbbb. I do not know if it makes the song better, but this version of "Dreams" feels closer to what "Dreams" has become for me, these 17 years later. It is not something I can cleanly recall. I recall it only as a collection of dark shapes: a flicking melody, Dolores O'Riordan's voice. It is a submarine. It is shadowed, hidden. It rises suddenly, at ridiculous times, walking into a movie theatre or riding my bicycle - and I sing it under my breath, wordlessly, because I can't remember the words. "La la la?" The Band in Heaven get it right; they get it indistinct. [MySpace / get the record for free or almost nothing]
John Cale - "Summer Heat"
Fela Ransome Kuti & The Africa '70 - "Swegbe & Pako"
BeatGrooves teaches a free drumming class in Pierre-Gérand park on some summer afternoons.
"I wanna go!" Jason wears cut-offs and a Dragonball t-shirt, and stands in front of the BeatGrooves banner.
"Do you wanna go, Ryan?" Jason and Ryan are staying with their grandmother in Pointe-Claire.
"No, not really," Ryan wears dress pants and skate shoes, a bit of dark hair on his upper lip and between his eyebrows.
"Come on, it'll be fun," their grandmother says, taking a long drag, dealing with the kids in one place is hard enough.
The next day all three of them are at the free BeatGrooves lesson, with assigned djembe in hand. The class is about 15 people, and it's attracting attention from around the park. The spunky instructors in tight t-shirts and radio mics.
Jason taps timidly away at his djembe, smiling up at the instructor. Ryan pounds frantically at his drum, as if trying to patter through three lessons at once, some kind of double-speed head-down show off. Their grandmother, meanwhile, has almost no rhythm at all. She hits the drum at random intervals, and her sunglasses and half-smile are a sign to the group that she doesn't want to talk about it.
Jason closes his eyes and begins to feel the music. The boom-boom-cha and the dut-dut-bop and all of the noise together. He feels that rhythm is the great unifying thing that crosses all borders and differences like love or natural disasters. Even deaf people could feel rhythm for goodness' sake. Jason is smiling euphorically now, taking his small drumming steps as he's instructed and beginning to feel like he may be part of a whole system of energy called Mother Nature, that he may be in the blood that beats the pulse of the universe, and that today he has been shown that the light lives within him, trying to scrape its way into the world, and that he can let it out through his openness, through drumming.
An enthusiastic young girl down the row from Jason is showing lots of potential and commitment, she's shouting and adding an extra bap or tup here or there, the kind of energy that BeatGrooves likes to highlight. The instructor brings her to the front of the class to be the metronome for everyone else.
"Follow Julie, tout le monde, she's the leader now. Go Julie! Go Julie! Go Julie!"
Jason's brother Ryan, still trying to play a beat so fast he'll lap the rest of the class, takes no notice of Julie at all. Jason's grandmother is still a masque of medium enjoyment and zero rhythm. Jason, however, is losing steam. His smile is fading and within a few minutes he's tapping lazily with one finger, leaning back in his chair. By the end of class, when they're handing back their djembes and Julie is high-fiving Alex the instructor, Jason is holding back tears.
He stands in the bright hot sun, outside the drum tent, with his brother and his grandmother, suddenly looking dumb and pointless in the grass, like the Three Bears of BeatGrooves. Way too much rhythm, way too little, and Jason in the middle, with almost but not quite enough rhythm, to compete with the likes of Julie and her funky braids and her neon socks. The Julies of the world will always get the attention, the Jasons will always stand dumb in the grass with their dumb families and their dumb bodies in dumb clothes.
"Wanna get some ice cream?" another long drag. They head to the car and Ryan thinks about what it would take to make homemade fireworks.
The Skeletones Four - "Sexy Breakfast". This has nothing to do with a sexy breakfast. It has to do with swaggering as you read instruction manuals, slipping confidently into life-jackets, being handsome & prudent at the same time. The Skeletones Four aren't going to get tricked again. They're not gonna slip on any girls' shadows. Their band is tight as a new bicycle chain, as sunbeams through a plexiglass window. [MySpace/live video/Gravestone Rock is out soon.]
Curren$y - "Get it Ya Self (ft. Deelow)". Take a broken window, hold it over an open flame; it heals. This is true of everything. Broken hearts, crushed asphalt, earthquaked bridges - hold them over open flames, Bunsen burners and solar flares, and see the damage undone. There's nothing that a precise summer can't heal. [buy This Ain't No Mixtape, from which "Get It Ya Self" is taken / or buy his new album, Pilot Talk]
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - "Ride My Llama"
"In the ongoing battle against sobriety and writer's block, just showing up with a drink in your hand is half the battle."
In college a young classmate of mine, who could not hold his drink very well, had one of the most peculiar, affected, and downright nerdy drunk habits I've ever seen. When he would have two too many rum & cokes, which was often, he would take to reciting, verbatim, the correspondences and arguments between famous writers. Playing both parts, he would storm around the room saying things like "systematization is a thing the literary world hasn't seen before!" and then answer back, "but a system is boring, like the clockwork of government!" It was embarrassing to say the least, people would usually watch for a minute, perched on the arm of a chair, and then leave to the balcony to have a real conversation. In one of these situations, I found myself penned in by his pacing. I would have had to interrupt his little script in order to get past, and I was too polite, and too unsure that a better conversation awaited me on the other side, that I just sat there. I thought about the idea that one must know as much about the creative works of one's time and the creative works of history in order to maturely add to the canon of new creative work. I thought about what it would be like to consume every conceivable piece of media in order to make an educated statement about the current situation of creativity, or to make anything truly new. It would be a lot of Law & Order episodes, a lot of Dean Koontz novels, plenty of Steely Dan, Zucker Brothers movies, freshman-year poetry compilations, Jandek albums, the works of all the Justins, for instance: Bieber, Timberlake, Trudeau, and Long. Ugh the non-fiction alone is staggering, but it would be worth it.
[Buy]
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