Happy Canada Day, to those of you over there. (And my woo-hoo congratulations huzzah [to Spain as well!] on the passing of the gay marriage legislation.)

I wrote about Canada Day in a blog entry two years ago. I talk about fireworks, melancholy, and riding on the bus. I still quite like it, and since (probably) none of you were reading back then, you might like to take a look.

I don't have much Canadiana to share with you right now that I haven't already, but I'm absolutely delighted to bring you this.

I was mint-green with envy, reading Carl's review of Final Fantasy's gig in Toronto earlier this week. New songs in a perfect setting, string quartet at the rear. Has A Good Home remains my favourite release of the year so far, but I'm more excited still for what Owen has in store for us later this year.

It was a great pleasure, therefore, to find at the Final Fantasy LiveJournal community that someone had made an unexpectedly exceptional recording of the event. And it was available to download.

So here is a song from Final Fantasy's performance at the Music Gallery in Toronto on June 25.

Final Fantasy - "If I Were A Carp [live]". Somewhere between Caetano Veloso and Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet (yeah, the one about the bombing of Dresden). It's a song thick with dread, utterly compelling, but also a rising dark shape that you daren't look in the eye. The orchestration is frankly remarkable; there's the burnished main theme, those slow sea-strokes, but then you'll hear a shimmering, a sigh, and a lighter motif... But it's an uncanny breeze, a Wrong Wind, and suddenly there's the blackness yawning before you, unshakably so.

In this terrifying section, amid the screaming damning truths, it's hard to make out the lyrics. So I'll share with you what Owen told me about this song, writing a couple of months ago.

"If I Were A Carp" is about necromancy. It's the saddest song I've ever written, there's no humour in it like Les Mouches stuff. It's about a dead man coming back to tell the living: "Death fooled you! No black robes! No scythe! No skeleton! No throne of bone! Nothing! It's all nothing!"

[buy Has A Good Home and stuff. "If I Were a Carp" should (?) be on his next LP, He Poos Clouds.]

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And because I don't feel right leaving you both in this place, here are two fantastic, beautiful, wonderful songs about girls. They might look like opposites, but they're not. (And if you want, they can also be songs about boys.)

R. Kelly - "Kickin' It With Your Girlfriend". TP-3: Reloaded is a marvel of smooth, round sounds, of heat and melodies and finger-snaps, so masterfully composed that its complexities are essentially invisible. I'm beginning to understand why some people scoff at the Postal Service, say, when used for purposes of seduction. "Such Great Heights" is nice enough - but gosh, isn't this a more true statement of love? Or at least of like-very-much? I don't deny Ben Gibbard's feelings, but the clarity of Kelly's rhetoric seems much more difficult to doubt. His feelings are so sweetly, so gently, so totally confessed that I can't, I cannot disagree with him. Sung like this, so slow-and-easy, his logic seems so sensible. "I did not ask for this / it just happened outta nowhere since the day we kissed." So now he's "kickin' it with your girlfriend". It was meant to be. "I never meant to hurt you / but girl I LOVE HER." (And it doesn't hurt that there's a closet reference.)

[preorder at Amazon]

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Damien Jurado - "Apart". I don't recommend listening to this when you're on your own walking through a park on a bright greenyellow leafypicnic summer day. Because it's one of those lovesongs so simple and sappy and magnificent that it can also be real hounddog sad. This is just a man and his guitar, but when Jurado sings with his river-run voice a statement that you believe, a truth that you feel, it's so purely powerful that it may just take your breath away. So plain, so fair, so lovely. The sweetest Rothko painting ever sung.

(from the tour-only Walk Along the Fence LP)

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Tonight I saw Antony and the Johnsons at the Liquid Room here in Edinburgh. It was an excellent show. And not excellent because I like Antony and so all he does must be gold - no, because he performed beautifully, because he gave us more than he had to, but most of all because he surprised me. His voice is far more lovely than even his recordings suggest; it's so supple, lifting with every palpitation of his heart, but in person it's also plummy, soft, very easy to listen to. Furthermore, whereas on record he's a rather ferocious performer, (melo)dramatic and forceful, every song very boldly sung, tonight Antony's power was much more restrained. It was an immanent presence there on stage, with vastnesses and fastnesses of feeling that didn't impose themselves on you if you didn't choose to reach out and take them. It helped that his band (cello, violin, accordion, bass and wonderful classical guitar) were superb. Better live than on CD, I think, and definitely worth seeing if you can.

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