July 7, 2008
AND THERE'S NO HANGOVER
The Essex Green - "Don't Know Why (You Stay)".Cars drink gasoline. Old men drink gin. Turntables drink electricity. Young men drink beer. Trees drink sunlight, drink rain. We drink songs. We drink like fishes. (Fishes drink saltwater.) On a hot day I'll drink a hundred songs. On a lonely day I'll drink myself sick. And the thing with songs, the thing that makes them better than booze, hooch, moonshine, is that you can drink the same song a hundred times & get just as drunk with every listen. You can listen to the same song a thousand times and on every instance lose yourself, talk to the girl, get a tattoo, dance on the table, admit you're sad, find you're glad, black out, get married to the road. You can find a song like "Don't Know Why", go on a three-day bender, and emerge from the other side no worse for wear: with guitar and organ and drums gone metronome in yr heart, Essex Green's voices as persistent as your pulse. (Thanks oh thanks, Toby.) [buy]
Bonnie "Prince" Billy - "I'll Be Glad". I think maybe this is what it's like to believe in God. You sing a beautiful song, sing it in your own crooked way, leave room for other peoples' pauses and backing vocals and organ solos. And then if you're lucky, before the end, a beautiful and unexpected chorus appears - at least one holy moment that is utterly undeniable, as clear & certain as the voices that appear here at 2:17. [buy]
---
Montrealers - three things:
- Adam & the Amethysts and Tune-Yards are launching their new CDs together at Casa on Saturday. I will be there with bells on, maybe literally.
- This weekend is the Pomme-Pomme Craft Fair, what will be a marvellous, heavily curated shindig at La Sala Rossa, organised by folks from Woodenapples and comic-bookers Drawn & Quarterly. Don't miss it - and there's also a recommended Pomme-Pomme closing concert on Sunday, with Shapes & Sizes, Brave Radar and Elfin Saddle. A quiet & forceful way to end yr weekend!
- Finally, it has come to my attention that Bilboquet ice-cream is celebrating its 25th birthday this weekend. From 2pm-4pm, Saturday and Sunday, there are free tastings. And all weekend a "généreux" is the price of a "raisonnable". I felt it was my duty to pass these wonders on to any of my fellow ice-cream eaters. (There must be at least a few of you out there.)
Sure sure my craft fair is bound to fun but....FREE ICE CREAM!!!! What a weekend!
Posted by: amy at July 7, 2008 3:18 PMThe Essex Green!! Oh, man. I adore them. I first discovered them in 2004 after digging in my college radio station library.
Favorite EG song: "The Late Great Cassiopia"
Posted by: t at July 7, 2008 3:36 PMYet Moka is young and likes the gin. And talking about herself in third person.
Posted by: Moka at July 8, 2008 3:58 AMI've been thinking a lot lately about my relationship with music, how to articulate what it does for me, why I have such a thirst for it, how to describe it to people who don't share my thirst. The first paragraph of this post is much better than any of the explanations I have come up with so far.
Posted by: Lindsey at July 9, 2008 3:49 AM