Buckhingham Nicks - "Races Are Run". Tusk, Rumours and Buckingham Nicks were produced by different people. This fact is astonishing to me, almost incomprehensible. Because I swear that the magic of a song like this, its gentle heat, the timbre and harmony - these things seem more complicated & subtle than just the woodgrain of Stevie's voice, the way Lindsey's brings out new colours in it. The beauty of Fleetwood Mac's most beautiful songs, and this lost track included, is in the way the tape interprets the sounds; the way their sweetness is heard, remembered, recorded just so. Engineers are magicians, and apparently mimics. [Buckingham Nicks is out of print.]

Motorifik - "Secret Things". So as I understand it, certain rhythms were actually invented in the 20th century. See: the Bo Diddley beat. See: this one right here, a Phil Spector boom, boomboom. When I think about this, I explode with wonder. I get actual goosebumps. I've brought it up with friends, but no one has ever matched my enthusiasm. These simple things, so simple they seem self-evident - boom, boomboom / badda da da, da da - some of them were dreamed up in bedrooms, basements and porches within my grandparents' lifetimes. It's as if a new colour were discovered in 1958, and added to the spectrum. As if a Beat poet found a new integer, located between five and six. (There may have been precedents, Bo Diddley hidden in Brahms, but these are irrelevant: what's important is not who first used these rhythms, but when they - suddenly! so recently! - felt & sounded obvious.) If these new rhythms - thrilling, timeless, a priori awesome - were waiting in the ether for Bo Diddley and Phil Spector, then imagine what other rhythms might yet lie in wait. Treasures hidden between the measures. Undiscovered beats. [buy]

---

Elsewhere:

One of our favourite new Canadian bands, PS I Love You, recorded a series of videos around their hometown of Kingston, ON. They asked us to tell you about one of them. "Exclusive!" they said. It doesn't matter that it's exclusive - it matters that it's good. Exciting, stifled, secretly brash. And I love that they don't have video of a new vocals track: "no, we're just gonna shred and play drums by the water." It's the title tune from their debut album, Meet Me At The Muster Station, and we think it's kinda killer.

(photo source unknown - found uncredited on a tumblr)