Said the Gramophone

BY UNDERGROUND WIRES

Of Montreal - "The Past is a Grotesque Animal". These days we at Gramophone are very nervous about posting songs without permission ahead of album releases. Labels v often collaborate and collude with blogs when it comes to promoting releases, but advance leaks are still a touchy subject. So we're cautious; we try to do it only when we're really, really excited, and can't help but share that excitement with you. (See, most recently, Joanna Newsom.)

(Can I also say that two more of my favourite albums of the year aren't going to be out, I don't think, until 2007? And although they're unknowns and the artists are in touch with me, the labels don't want anything leaked early? So I won't? And how one of these artists was told explicitly not to send me anything, because I am a sneaky criminal music pirate, but they did anyway? And yet still I can't tell you about it? Just sometimes maybe drop hints? Argh.)

Ok ok ok but I'm getting distracted by talk of piracy (arr) from the matter at hand. The matter at hand is a set of synth scales that have been built like an Escher staircase, rising over-and-over-and-over-and-over. If I knew my music theory I'd be able to tell you how Of Montreal do this, the name of the cheap Godpseed You! Black Emperor trick they're using. (Anyone out there want to help?) But since I don't know music theory I just have to listen slack-jawed, feeling the song reformulate my spinal fluid.

Because seriously, this is a twelve minute Of Montreal song that leaves me feeling something close to awe. Until Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? leaked to the internet (it's due out on Polyvinyl in late winter 2007), I was only the most ambivalent of Of Montreal listeners. I liked that depressing, uncharacteristic song actually about Montreal. I liked to hear their stuff, occasionally, at indie dance clubs. I liked to hear of them from a friend who talks about this one line about wizards, and I kept meaning to listen again. But yeah - largely ambivalent. And now? Like I said: awe.

Hissing Fauna has many excellent tracks, but "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" is what forced my hand and made me write about the record tonight, months too early, risking fines and jail-time and being added to some indie-rock No Fly list. I do this not for your sake, not for Of Montreal's sake; just because there's some stuff I need to get down:

• I always think of grooves like this as being krautrock-like. But I only pretend to know very much about Can or Neu. Can it be said to be krautrock-like? Is this a motorik? Probably not. I hope it is, because then I will buy every Neu and Can record.
  
• I think I'd be willing to dance so hard to this that it makes me sick.
  
• The song hooks me, like, gets me to swallow the hook, right at the moment where Mr Barnes sings: "Standing at a Swedish festival". That's the moment. You can hear me gulp, if you listen close enough.
  
• Kevin Barnes reminds me of LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, in places. The way his voice creaks open at 3:19. Or how he sings silly-manic with himself; bipolar excited and lacrimose.
  
• I just want to dance till I'm sick.
  
• What is this? Psychdance? Synthpop? Psychedelic indie dancepop? I guess? Is there even a real bassline? Really there's just that overandover synthline, Kevin Barnes' singing, a bass-snare beat, and then random swirly noises. Ok and occasional organ solos. It doesn't seem complicated enough to even bear writing about. What's complicated is how it's making my blood flow backwards, turning my red bloodcells white. That's right: red bloodcells suddenly turned into fighters, getting into sweaty dancefloor shoving-matches with the mitochondria. And did I mention this reformulating-my-spinal-fluid thing? Crazy.
  
• I read someone complain that the song doesn't go anywhere. They were frustrated because they said that so much tension was built up that even tiny changes could feel amazing, and yet instead the track just repeats all static. ARE YOU CRAZY? This is like one of those optical illusions where everything swirls. You know? Where you look deeper and deeper and then realise you're in the World of the Elder Gods and there are tentacles everywhere and you're dancing so hard you're sick?
  
• I wish the last Flaming Lips album was this good.
  
• The lyrics are great! What they are like is a relationship breakdown, an existential crisis, a new love-affair, but all communicated only in semafore. Sentences that need to stand alone as you wait for your flag-waves to be transmitted from hill to hill. "The mousy girl screams 'Violence, violence!'" / "The cruelty's so predictable." / "Somehow you've Red-Rover'ed the gestapo circling my heart!" / "Sometimes I wonder / if you're mythologizing me / like I do you." / "None of our secrets are physical." Wisdom tied with string to nuggets of nonsense.
  
• This song makes me suspect that if the messiah is ever (finally) born, s/he will live exactly 11 minutes and 53 seconds.
  
• And then what?

[see them on tour! / buy other Of Montreal things and maybe lobby Polyvinyl to release Hissing Fauna ahead of next February, so you do not turn blue holding yr breath]

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Death Vessel - "Later in Life Lift". Recipe for finding friends:

1. Obtain one (1) wagon.
   
2. Place this song in wagon.
   
3. Go for a walk. (Take the wagon.)

People occasionally bitch that this blog is too opaque; that we write all metaphorical and stuff. But there's no metaphor here. This song will make you friends. Just put it in a wagon. It's the way those Providence voices blend over the acoustic guitar and tin drum kit; the way the folk-pop melody promises that you'll have fun, light-and-easy. The sweetest song you'll hear today.

[buy Stay Close]

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I noticed a few days ago that you can buy a print of the image that Keith Andrew Shore did for Said the Gramophone (illustrating Leonard Cohen's "The Old Revolution"). Only $35 - and it looks beautiful. Many months ago Keith also did a new banner for this here site, which we're implementing just as soon as Neale figures out the code.

At Giant Robot there is also an array of astonishing new works by another of our guestbloggers, artist Rachell Sumpter. It's honestly among the most exciting stuff I've seen this year. I've already ordered the print, but if anyone wants to get me a present...

Posted by Sean at October 9, 2006 3:00 AM