Duels - "What We Did Wrong"

Three images:
1. David Bowie hitting a row of tee-balls out of the park. One, two, three, four, five, six home runs, no outs.
2. Matthew Friedberger's piano, finally fixed, rushing downstream, him laughing from inside.
3. The Harlem Shakes, wrapped in a Beatles flag, jumping off a ten-storey building into a waiting hammock.

Duels are loud, without being compensatory, regular without being uninteresting. This should be a "hit". As in, it should hit you. [Buy]

Frog Eyes - "A Latex Ice Age"

On phoningitin, Carey Mercer describes this song as being, about his girlfriend, evocative of great happiness, that every time he hears it (hears himself playing it, I guess) he hears birds singing and sees sun shining. This is the first version of this song where I can relate to that. Every other version is so dark brown, so distant church-bell resonant, I never saw it as anything but another ominous dirge from the best producers of ominous dirges the world has ever known.

But now I see it.

It's a bedtime story, it's a grinning shrug, a giving up on all that doesn't matter. It's still a plodding march, but the kind you do at a wedding, or the way a baby slowly marches towards the light. [Buy The Golden River expanded re-issue]

posted in memory of the cancelled Frog Eyes show. next time, please come soon.