This is a musicblog. Every weekday we post a couple of mp3s and write about them. Songs are only kept online for a short time. This is a page from our archives and thus the mp3s linked to may not longer be available. Visit our front page for new songs and words.

May 30, 2008

Caveat: Come Along

Titus Andronicus - "No Future"

A speaker as big as a house, enough furniture to get drunk on, and a screen door to keep the bugs out. A slow dance with the wolfman, four aspirin, a shooting star and a swimming pool. A dark grass field, noise complaints, tagging a tot lot and begging for sex. Wasted allowance, shock value, breakfast and sleep. [Buy] [Previously]

Now, Now Every Children - "Everyone You Know"

Inside me there lives a 15-year-old girl named Helen who is living this completely separate life to me; she has a bastard of a boyfriend, a poor diet, bad posture, she watches figure skating and Idol (secretly) and Gossip Girl and Criminal Minds, she has a gym membership and doesn't use it, a cell phone and overuses it, a smile with dark edges and eyes that always dart for the floor, too-small breasts and an obsession with animal rights that manifests no further than giving herself nightmares by going to disturbing websites. This is her favourite song, but other than listen to it together, we don't really hang out. She's got her own things, you know? [5$]

Posted by Dan at 2:26 AM | Comments (3)

May 29, 2008

SPRING 2008

a lily

Carl Spidla - "Blackfly Rag".

It's a wide, wooden chest. It is larger than you expect. Two people could fit inside.

The first thing you put in the chest is a bowl of cherries.

The next thing you put in the chest is a chandelier, its lights still going. Then you add postcards, old glasses, a watercolour set. A tennis racket, never used. A large map, rolled up. Bike spokes, binoculars, pussywillows, linen. A window. A brick. One CD, four books. You take one of the books back out and set it on the floor. You pour some tea into the chest. You pour some wine. You add spent matches, old lightbulbs, melted snow. Sea salt, sugar, and ink. You fill the rest with broken chairs, the chairs you threw from your window into the parking lot last night. The broken chair-legs look like the masts of ships.

You close the chest. You lock it with a deadbolt. The lock is never as good as you remember so you wrap it up in belt after belt, round and round, and thick hemp rope, and chain, and fishing line.

And you do not douse the chest in paraffin. You do not let it blacken and crackle and turn into ash. You do not haul it to street-side for the garbage-men to pick up, for the recyclers to pick through. You do not throw it in the lake. You do not give it to the fishes. You do not toss it from an airplane; it does not smash in the desert, it does not leave a crater.

No, you leave the chest where it sits in the middle of your floor. You throw a giant carpet over it. You set on it a potted fern and a stack of magazines. Maybe a shoe-tree for your dress-shoes. And as you all know, you pretend the chest's not even there.

[More of Carl Spidla. "Blackfly Rag" was recorded at the Mile End Mission on April 27, not five feet from where I sat cross-legged. It's one of my favourite songs of 2008.]

---

Montrealers ought to go see Receivers at O Patro Vys tonight, where they will be launching their luminous debut record.

Elsewhere: Go gaze upon the marvel that is Jez Burrows' Destroyer screenprint, analyzing Destroyer's Rubies with whimsy and verve. Jez helps to maintain the indispensable It's Nice That.

Posted by Sean at 11:34 AM | Comments (3)

May 27, 2008

Perfect Copy

Urinals - "Hologram"
Urinals - "Hologram (live)"

One brother is creepy, he walks around the schoolyard late at night when all the kids have gone home, he takes extremely long showers, he smokes, quiet and long, on the porch every night, just looking at the dark street. He's young looking, but he doesn't tell anyone when his birthday is, so no one knows how old he is. I've never seen him with a girlfriend, but I don't think he's gay either. The other brother is a lot easier to understand. He speaks a lot clearer, he has bright eyes, and it seems like he's always partying. He'll make you an omelette if he's having one, you know? He likes sports, he has a really pale girlfriend, and he can fix a lot of stuff. But he also smokes, and I also couldn't say how old he is, and, now that I think of it, they both kind of have this same quiver in their voice, this hint of hollowness, that's kind of like they're dead. [Buy]

Digital Leather - "Perfect Copy"

Rubber sidewalk, maroon garage, "Wheel of Fortune", looking glass.
Bending board, Humber College, keep a secret, jell-o gold.
Tantric banking, "Hello, World!", lumber pile, New York Shitty.
Servant school, Lake of Post-Its, german shepherd, Halloween.

[Site]

Posted by Dan at 12:58 PM | Comments (2)

May 26, 2008

THE SOUND OF WINGS

Photo by Katja Mater photo by katja mater

Mount Eerie - "In Moonlight". A hundred black cats cross your path. A hundred black birds cross your sky. A hundred black thoughts cross your mind. & in moonlight you go walking, not even knowing what i'm looking for / my life is just saying one thing / "i will find you". And there where you expect stillness: noise. The same black shapes, thousands of them, shrieking, and as the moonlight meets their fur & feathers you see your own face reflected there, the colour of never. [buy]

Rajaton - "Mita kaikatat, kivonen?". This is a song whose English translation is "Wherefore Grumblest Thou, O Grindstone?", performed by a Finnish folk-choral acapella group. It's also wonderful. The reason the grindstone is grumbling is that life seems hard, but the song Rajaton are singing says: uh, dude, no it's not; check out all the good stuff that happens. And then they sing it in sweet-tea, cardinals, bluejays, kites. [buy]

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Elsewhere: A thoughtful introduction to Jim Woodring's wise, broken, baffling, genius Frank comic. Love Michael's comment -- I always saw Frank as equal parts smelling salts and embalming fluid.

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Visiting the site today you might be lucky enough to have landed on our new header graphic by Kit Malo. If not, you can hit reload a bunch of times til you see it. Kit's a dear gramo-friend and long ago did a guestpost for us, with Alden Penner. Thanks so & so & so much, K Quebec.

Posted by Sean at 12:13 AM | Comments (2)

May 23, 2008

GREENHOUSES

The Tough Alliance - "Taken Too Young (cover/remix of Taken By Trees)". The Tough Alliance rediscover "Too Young", by Victoria Bergsmann's Taken By Trees project (& which I wrote about last July). They make it one of the songs of the year. And when I say rediscover I mean they found it in among diamonds, saffron and milkweed pods; in with childhood, sex and distant waters; in with the way you feel, your eyes laying on hers, when all that's green in you curls. [buy things]


(original video source)


Darker My Love - "The Fool".
The One AM Radio - "Wayward Wind".

Two bands record songs from 1956, and what they find there is very different from the usual nostalgia. These songs are not in shades of sepia, they're in shades of white ("The Fool") and green ("Wayward Wind").

Darker My Love slow down Lee Hazlewood's "The Fool" until it can fit in the space between heartbeats. Here's a singer so full of regrets that the day stops moving, that the sun's disc never dips in the sky, that all things are covered in the still light of melancholy. The band's psychedelia is kept gorgeously restrained, just a ghosting of dream at the edge of an insomniac's sight.

One AM Radio's "Wayward Wind" cover is meanwhile perhaps the best track they've ever recorded. Instead of turning the song into a drudge, the often-sleepy group lets it stay a skipping pop-tune; only the corners are dusted with fatigue. It's part Yo La Tengo and part Camera Obscura, the texture of click and thump and ba-ba-ba like all the postcards you've ever sent.

The strangest thing about these recordings is that they were made as part of a cross-promotion with the PF Flyers shoe company, who are reissuing the 1956 Bob Cousy All-American sneakers. And I view these corporate tie-ins with such cynicism - not because I hate all corporations, not because it's an unethical "sell-out" thing to do, just because it almost always produces mediocre art. But here are Darker My Love and One AM Radio making exquisite little songs, making them for a sneaker company, and the thing we learn again, well, it's that artists - it can be okay to get paid. [more info]

Posted by Sean at 11:50 AM | Comments (1)

May 22, 2008

Humble Horror

creepy.jpg

Jumbling Towers - "Gamble"

I urge you to follow the grim extended come-hither finger from the caped and shadowy Jumbling Towers, all haunted stomp and flash-eyed flourish. Because they deliver on promises made. His voice is part snake part fireworks, part challenge-to-a-duel part running-out-of-fuel. And his band around him creeps jangling and moaning through dawn.

Jumbling Towers - "Classy Entertainment"

Listen again.

You're brought running through woods, branches whipping your face, by the hand.

Towards wildfire clearings, where the flames are contained and the chorus is safely celebrating.

Back on familiar grass, you may have damp dew cheeks, your friends may be around, but the memory of that wizard still remains. You check your phone for pictures, but they're all blurry and orange.

[Site]

Posted by Dan at 12:54 PM | Comments (2)

May 21, 2008

Oiho

Henry Spaulding - "Cairo Blues"

There are at least eight Cairos in the United States. There's one in Georgia and one in Illinois, one in Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota and New York. There's a Cairo in West Virginia and there's even one in Ohio, that nearly palindromically named place. Little is known about Henry Spaulding, an American blues musician active in the 1920s, so which of these Cairos is the subject of his song, and therefore which to avoid, is impossible to say (though from the exotic picture he paints of the town, it might as well be in Egypt). "Women of Cairo," Spaulding will have us believe, "treat you kind and strange." The kindness is but a ruse, it turns out, and the strangeness is something far worse than merely strange. They "kick you and knife you, beat you and cut you, too," he sings, before adding the temporal location of these offenses (and the only reason anyone might construe these belligerent women as kind): "when you're through." Still, Spaulding has a masochistic streak, and though he sings throughout of leaving, we're not sure whether he's leaving from or to Cairo, whether he's departing from or reuniting with his kind and strange Cairo baby.

[Buy]

Posted by Jordan at 8:53 PM | Comments (2)

May 20, 2008

BON PRINTEMPS

Amethyst image from The Nonist

Bon Iver - "Blindsided". I was up by the lake, this weekend. I listened to this song in the dark. I thought, then, of a story to write about it. I can't remember the story now, just its gleams. Its gleams were blue, green, and gold.

The song's central lyric is: because blinded / I was blindsided. These are two events: the blinding, and the blindsiding. Justin Vernon lost his sight, and then something knocked him over. First the gold, then the blue and green. (First the kiss, and then the dream.)

[buy]

The Wave Pictures - "I Love You Like A Madman". The Wave Pictures' David Tattersall is not sure he's going to make it through the Christmas holiday. He's going crazy. He shakes Her father's hand, smiles at Her mother, uses the correct knife & fork at dinner. He teaches Her little brother to play Chinese checkers. And then every night he kisses Her on the cheek, bows his head, murmurs good night to mum and dad. Then he goes out into the guesthouse and lays on the single pallet bed and amid the smell of spruce feels himself going crazy. She's so close. He imagines Her closing the door to Her childhood room. He imagines Her slipping off Her jeans, leaving them in a heap by the illustrated atlas. He imagines Her in Her sheets. He imagines the frayed, stuffed seal propped up against Her pillow. And he imagines the slope of Her cheek, and then Her breast, and then Her hip, and David's alone in the back-yard, writhing in his quilt like a saxophone solo, waiting for the morning and the way their knees will touch under the breakfast table. And his eyes are ever-darting through the guesthouse window... Throw the back door open / let me see your breath.

[buy]

---

Over at Fluxblog, there's a remarkable string version of Vampire Weekend's "Campus" - by the band's own Rostam Batmanglij. (Yes his last name contains the word 'batman'.)

[image of amethyst from The Nonist Bluebell.fm (by Arthur Smith)]

Posted by Sean at 11:29 AM | Comments (3)

May 19, 2008

Whatever Means I Can

window.jpg

An Horse - "Warm Hands"

The back of the CD case says this is called "Warm Hands", but when I put it in my computer, and it does that thing where it looks up the tracks, it comes in as "Scared as Fuck". I don't like one title more than the other, in fact I quite like both titles being the title, simultaneously. Because to me the song is about two things at once; running away and sticking it out. "I'm not really scared" can be said by someone running with tears on their cheeks just as much as it can by someone with drunken fists clenched and swaying. And tonight, in the sink of a national holiday, I really feel for this song's hero. There's something young and intrepid in her novice lilt and shout. Something similar to that dippy place where your collarbones meet. Soft, gorgeous, rested in a ridge. I can hear her sing this song to herself at night on hallway streets and to dark black parks, to keep whatever forever away. [Buy]

Hologram - "Mommies"

I've posted Hologram before, but I'm not sure I made my point. They have a 5$ collection of songs that will change your life. They won't turn you from something into something else, but they will change your life the way an icicle changes a whole house, or a safer bike route changes your whole scenery's dayscape. They're a brilliant band because they're impeccable, they don't make mistakes. I won't let them. [Buy]

Posted by Dan at 2:55 AM | Comments (2)

May 16, 2008

MORE OF ADAM & THE AMETHYSTS

polaroid photograph by Elina Virtanen

Adam & the Amethysts - "The Return". Time works differently in the lake. On the surface it's all silver-flash, fish-fast, slap and splash and light-on-drops. But underneath - everything's slow, lunar, with weeds & shadows & long white legs. "The Return" isn't a song about swimming but it's a song about all those other things: dip, slip, gleam, flash, hide & find, rise & dive, love and ache, belly-flop, cannonball, swan's flight. It's like The Microphones as produced by The Neptunes (or like a wedding ring in a trout's belly). Adam's found a way to fold butterflies in half.

It's one of the most richly Canadian albums in years & years, and I haven't yet found all the right words.

But - do you like pennies? Do you like polaroids? Do you like going swimming? You'll like Amethyst Amulet. Order it here. Dan wrote about "Bumble Bee" yesterday, I wrote about "Stupid Ocean" for the National Post last month, and there are yet more songs at the Adam & the Amethysts MySpace page. The album will be released in June on The Luyas' Pome Records. It's the kind of thing people are going to be whispering about.

Are you a promoter? I think Adam's trying to book shows.

[photograph by Elina Virtanen]

Posted by Sean at 8:26 AM | Comments (2)

May 15, 2008

Adam & the Amethysts

This blog has a very certain palette of themes. Growing up, yes, that's one. Connections between people, the smaller and truer the better, sure. But today's theme is home. StG's home, for instance, is Montreal. We have not always lived here, some us lived away for years, some are still away, but here is where it was born and still lives. It was born out of excitement and inspiration and a delight for music, for writing, for work, for each other and all the rest.

And from an amber apartment in Montreal, comes this city's newest shimmering gem; Adam & the Amethysts and their first album Amethyst Amulet. Today, and tomorrow, are dedicated to this bright and grinning debut.

Adam & the Amethysts - "Bumble Bee"

When I saw Adam & the Amethysts play their first live show, the songs were all about home. Adam comes from Thunder Bay, and every song either related to or was described as completely unrelated to, but yes indeed indirectly related to, Thunder Bay. I didn't ask about any truth or anything about this song, because I was too caught up in the rumble of that marching drum. There's a subterranean kind of power to this song. It's a song about what's under ground, about what flows underfoot, under the bridge. And what else is this riverbank, with its rocks and its rushing, rolling water, but home? A light green fluorescent white cotton-poly sheeted home lined in chrome-bars at waist height and machines machines machines. But never, despite wanting to, despite being perfectly able to, does Adam ever explode, it's all held in, it's all kept rather civil. Civil and shaking.

[Site]
[Pre-Order]

Posted by Dan at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2008

Luring Luridly

Marvin Pontiac - "No Kids"

Amid the opacity and obfuscation, the grown-up eccentricity, the adult artsiness, non-rhyming verses, and then, when you least expect it, rhyming ones, a chorus that's not a chorus, and back-up singers who don't belong, there is a sad and stuttering guitar riff - perspicuous and lovely - and a bass line like scotch settling warmly in your chest. There is also a single moment of lyrical clarity, which, while revealing nothing directly about the otherwise obscure words, tidily captures the narrator's ambiguous feelings about childlessness: "I have no kids/to bother me when I'm sleeping/to sing goodnight to."

[Buy]

Posted by Jordan at 8:18 PM | Comments (5)

May 13, 2008

Said the Guests: Ariel Kitch

Ariel Kitch wrote to us. Sometimes people write and they seem like they're writing from across an enormous divide, that they're so far away that they can't even see what we look like, what the hell we're doing. Ariel - she had a pair of binoculars. She held up some of her drawings and Dan, Jordan and I peered through our telescope (we have just the one), and what we saw in those lines and curls was in a lot of ways a manifestation of just the stuff we find ourselves up to. Finding pictures for music, the right ones, even if it means lying a little bit. Ariel is gifted, insightful and gentle with her pen. She tells the rightest stories. We couldn't be more happy to be sharing with you her interpretation of a favourite song - and we hope to work some more with her in the future. Please leave her your comments below! - Sean

Astronautalis - "Short Term Memory Loss".

Artwork by Ariel Kitch




[Ariel Kitch works in radio and lives in Washington, D.C. You can write to her at ariel [dot] kitch [at] gmail [dot] com.]

(Previous guest-blogs: artist Aaron Sewards, artist Corinne Chaufour, "Jean Baudrillard", artist Danny Zabbal, artist Irina Troitskaya, artist Eleanor Meredith, artist Keith Greiman, artist Matthew Feyld, The Weakerthans, Parenthetical Girls, artist Daria Tessler, Clem Snide, Marcello Carlin, Beirut, Jonathan Lethem, Will Butler (Arcade Fire), Al Kratina, Eugene Mirman, artist Dave Bailey, Agent Simple, artist Keith Andrew Shore, Owen Ashworth (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), artist Kit Malo with Alden Penner (The Unicorns) 1 2, artist Rachell Sumpter, artist Katy Horan 1 2, David Barclay (The Diskettes), artist Drew Heffron, Carl Wilson, artist Tim Moore, Michael Nau (Page France), Devin Davis, Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Hello Saferide, Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi), Brian Michael Roff, Howard Bilerman (producer: Silver Mt. Zion, Arcade Fire, etc.). There are many more to come.)

Posted by Sean at 10:43 AM | Comments (11)

May 12, 2008

Break Water Like Ice

Golden Boots - "Days Are Night"

May I say something before you begin? May I say that your boots are glorious. Your shirt is thin, it almost billows when you walk. Your teeth, the ones that you show when you give a little smile, they're very shiny. Before you begin, can I just add that standing next to you is like standing with someone in a phone booth; close feels closer, and your breath feels nice. Can I say that I loved this immediately? Like, right away, no second thoughts. I think you're stuck in a muddy old bar, in a basement and I want to stay. Okay, you can start now. [buy the double EP EV/Coyote Deathbed Surprise]

--

Festival - "Valentine"

This is like the musical version of old-timey fireworks. Dark tall grass, a hillside in lantern light, old dresses with underdresses, and three layers of slips under that. Candy-crusted apples, sweaty glowing skin, hand-holding, and yips of excitement. The sky lighting up with cracks and streaks like absolutely nothing you've ever seen. [Buy from Drag City] (thanks, Damian)

--

Lykke Li was, as if I may, completely bangin'.

Posted by Dan at 2:30 AM | Comments (3)

May 9, 2008

Spry

Snake & Jet's Amazing Bullit Band - "Favourite"

If I were to choose a song to open my midnight radio show in the 90s, broadcasting from a brown-carpeted, basement studio at a college, this would be it. I'd be a junior, I'd be dating an activist named Paige, I'd be an emaciated chain-smoker vegan, wearing clean tight jeans but a dirty shirt that said "Prince Paul!" on it, and I'd talk mostly in smirks. I'd make up movies and then review them on the show, I'd take an occasional call or two, but when 12:05 on a Thursday came, and you heard this song, you would know that it would be my turn to turn the tables for two hours.

This song is a kind of cool I never was. [Buy X-Ray Spirit]

((Sounder)) - "Good Things"

The sound builds like a snowball, like a storm, like ringing a bell. It's the first song on ((Sounder))'s Good Things Come and Go Like Bad Things, which is a waterfall-shaped album. What I mean by that is that I've seen a waterfall before, but I let myself stand underneath it, which is a refreshing experience. What I mean by that is that while the album is fairly mainstream, it's put together with care, with honesty, with heart. What I mean by all this is that I like it. [Buy]

--

Also: El Perro Del Mar and Lykke Li are playing in Montreal tomorrow (Sat. May 10th at Club Lambi). See you there. [Press Page]

Posted by Dan at 2:02 PM | Comments (2)

May 8, 2008

A FAINT OBLIVION

image by Darren Almond

Shearwater - "Leviathan, Bound". The new record by Shearwater, Rook, is one of the best albums of the year. It takes their last LP's great leap forward and adds patience, confidence, daring. They are a band who recall Mark Hollis/late Talk Talk, Final Fantasy, Silver Mt. Zion and Radiohead's Amnesiac. Since Rook arrived in the mail a week ago, I've scarcely listened to anything else. "Leviathan, Bound" is a song with dulcimer instead of drums, glockenspiel instead of rainfall, strings instead of thunder. It's beautiful and terrifying. Like when the waters begin to rise; like when the ground begins to shake; like then the clouds come barrelling & black; like when the trees begin to weep; like when the light flashes in her eyes; like when a shout comes from her chest; like when you're at your piano, scared, and every key turns to grey. The apocalypses Shearwater sing are the kinds we already dream of, the ones we already hold in our hands. [buy]


Calico Horse - "Idioteque". A song can have the heart taken out of it, singing it slow & strange. But not here. Calico Horse keep Radiohead's disquiet, sip the same cups of nightshade. There's something even more sinister in "Idioteque" turned lullaby - what are you doing to me, as I fall asleep? what promises are you weaving into my lashes? [info]

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My May column in the National Post features songs by Sister Suvi, Au, Frightened Rabbit, Colourbook, Wolf Parade and Snailhouse.

[image source]

Posted by Sean at 12:01 PM | Comments (4)

May 7, 2008

Saturation

Hayden - "In Field and Town"

What's the difference between Hayden and Haydn other than an 'e' and two centuries? Both men are men (as all men are), both composers, both keyboardists. The sound of synthesizers, like the momentum of life, can sometimes seem backwards when in fact it is forwards. Mopey indie rock can be soul music, too.

[Buy]

Posted by Jordan at 7:45 PM | Comments (2)

May 6, 2008

So Precious

Dodos - "Jodi"

(wait until the finger-picking is over)

Given six minutes to pack up my entire life
Stupidly, I went right for the kitchen
I just packed up food and soap and liquor
I even forgot your picture, my wallet
My shoes, a change of clothes
A blanket, believe me
I panicked, pissed in the plant
brushed my hair 28 strokes
and tripped out the door
I've already forgiven myself and lost the key in the grass

[Buy] (thanks John B. C)

--

Mata Mata - "Bears Encounter a Beast (ford escalade)"

Allegedly, illegibly, ineligible to join for dinner
hand claps on the door, I lost the damn key
The rain ruined your note
I can't read what you wrote
There is an enormous child out here
Giving me the beating of his life
It takes as much effort to let me in
as it does to keep me out
I ate garbage
I'm not blaming you

[Site]

Posted by Dan at 12:00 AM | Comments (2)

May 5, 2008

GETTING HIT

photo by John Isaacs

Frightened Rabbit - "Keep Yourself Warm". Frightened Rabbit's new one, The Midnight Organ Fight, is terrific and absolutely unrevelatory. The band aren't doing anything new - this is just same-old melancholy indie-rock, folk-inflected, full of wistful harmonies, booming choruses and bombastic dynamics, - but Frightened Rabbit do it so. very. well. Even Scott Hutchison's (pretty terrible) lyrics aren't an obstacle: his singing is still the band's greatest strength, turning turgid poetry into heartache, want, will. In my National Post column tomorrow I compare the band to the Constantines, Okkervil River and the Foo Fighters, and I like that there's a band somewhere integrating those three sounds into a single, simple pleasure. A song with the stupid-euphemistic lyrics "you won't find love in a hole" is nevertheless one of my favourites of the year. [buy]

Mr Gnome - "Pirates". On the night at the loft party, five stories up the concrete block, you spun and shook to dance music, and then the vodka you had drunk began to sour, and your friends were just blurs, and so you decided to go, brushed by everyone, slipped on your coat and ran a hand over your face. And you put on yr ipod (this song), closed yr eyes as you washed away the before and dove headfirst into the after; you pretended like the night had a crescendo all the same, listened to yr one night stand in your earbuds; yeah, yeah, yeahs; and when you fell down the concrete, heels over head, smashed and bloody, you didn't open your eyes or stop listening, you just fell, and heard the sound of your falling. [album out tomorrow]

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Saw Robyn last night. Had a really, really, really wonderful time.

---

I've made a few muxtapes lately: 1 2 3

[sharkmeat photo by John Isaacs]

Posted by Sean at 11:09 AM | Comments (13)

May 2, 2008

GRADE GRADE GRADE GRADE GUARD GRADE

Tapes 'n Tapes - "Lines"

The paranoid wanderer narcissist believes that cities are just government conspiracies to put as many people and obstacles in the way to their destination as possible. The newlywed solipsist wonders to himself, while making love, whether he has masturbated to the point of breaking skin. The pathetic sympathetic pet store owner imagines every time she flips the closed sign that these are actually her pets for the night. The self-inflated and widely hated culinary teacher's assistant believes that cooking for anyone but yourself is worse than prison. Tapes 'n Tapes are convinced unconditionally of their cause, they've made plans, they've written letters and drafted schematics. T-squares, ledgers, levels and chalk, "Lines" is nose-to-the-grindstone homework music. I'm impressed. [Buy]

Sloan - "Cheap Champagne"

Sloan, I only have room for so many bands in my life. I can't give myself to every single one, there'd be no me left. There are a ton of unlistenable bands in the world, and there's even more mildly listenable bands. There's a bit less listenable bands, and the smallest group is very listenable, or great, bands. But even though it's the smallest group, it's still a very big number. Too much for me to hold them all in my heart. So you and me, Sloan, we never got together. But whenever I see you, and I see you, around or whatever, I always know that if I'd lived my life differently, we might have been something. Canada's Queen? [Pre-Order]

Posted by Dan at 12:39 PM | Comments (5)

May 1, 2008

SIGHDAY

Edinburgh ca. 1920 - Alfred G Buckham

Minus Story - "Battle Of Our Lives". This song isn't about the beginning of love. It is, I think, a goodbye. It is a whisper through a windowpane, a hand on your own heart. It is sharp and rough and noisy and full. But a goodbye can still be a love-song, and a love-letter can still be a goodbye. I love you but... And later, when the words no longer contain all those evers, when the full-stops are just dots of ink, when the skies have fallen & risen, aglow, sundrenched, highing & oh, well then melt down those old love-letters, lose the old goodbyes, take the wood dust, nickel shavings, chips of ruby, and make yrself a new song. One that begins Dear, and means that word, fully; one that says darling, and knows that heat, hotly. [buy]

Fleetwood Mac/Gwen Stefani - "Everywhere (Paul Devro blend)". It's not that Gwen Stefani has anything to teach Stevie Nicks about love. It's that her band has something to say about boom boom boom. About-- what? About-- boom boom boom i'm boom sorry my heart is boom boom beating too hard boom to tell yoboom boom the full extent of my boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom feelings' flush.

(thanks, doug.)

---

I was a guest this week at Nothing But Green Lights (whose lovely redesign underlines how they're one of the best musicblogs out there, yes.)

Don't miss Jordan's 10pm post from yesterday; it's lovely.

[photo is of Edinburgh ca. 1920 - source]

Posted by Sean at 11:35 AM | Comments (6)