Hello there! For those who have come to the blog since Jordan took over, I would like to bid you an eager hello. For those from way back - an even more eager howdy. It's been too long.

As Jordan and Dan have intimated, Said the Gramophone will shortly be the product of three authors, with occasional cameos. The three of us will trade up posting duties, guaranteeing that Gramophone will be updated every weekday (at the very least). Since this is an increasing rarity in the mp3blogging world, I hope you'll bear with us as we iron out the kinks and launch things properly. Which will be soon. I'll be blogging this week, we'll have a couple more weeks of surprises, and then, likely at toward the end of March, StG will be roaring, full-force, in its new mode.

For the next five days, though - me.

I do intend to go through the music I picked up when doing my Europe-hopping a few months ago, but that will be saved for later. This week will be dedicated to

Music That's Been Blowing My Mind, At Least A Little Bit [not literally]

Because I've been relatively offline for the past five months, I'd like to catch up and talk about some stuff that some of you may be sick of. But most, I hope, won't mind a few hundred words on some very worthy things.

I'm going to write about 4 or 5 things each day, albums and songs. Each day there will be at least a couple of mp3s to download. I'd share everything as mp3, but some of the stuff I downloaded from other mp3blogs anyway, and other things are major label - and I'm scared of them.

Enough prattle! Onward!

---

Music That's Been Blowing My Mind, At Least A Little Bit [not literally]:

Final Fantasy - Has a Good Home
--listen to "Please Please Please"
Final Fantasy sounds so fucking good that I can't believe there's not a slew of artists that are doing the same thing, carving out their own micro-genre. Singer-songwriter with violin and a smile. Joanna Newsom with the yawl turned down. I'm a long-documented fan of Les Mouches, but Owen Pallett's work here is much much more approachable, more friendly and catchy and plainly beautiful. It's not just that he sings with his sensitive everyboy's voice, or the elegance and restraint of those looped violins, the way the harmonies weave and curlecue into each-other: It's the simple loveliness of the songs. "Your Light Is Spent" is light and pizzicatto-jumpy, but then there's that groan of old wood, and toward the end that pastoral counterpoint... It sounds so effortless, but is of such a rare calibre. There's the Pärtesque close to "None Of You Will Ever See a Penny," the pluck (ha!) and pulse of "This Is the Dream of Win and Reg", the elegy of "Better Than Worse". And the album's only got one dud - the transitional "Learn To Keep Your Mouth Shut, Owen Pallett". Sixteen tracks and only one dud!

"Please Please Please" is the most riotous thing on the record - via Zoilus I saw that Owen plans to release "screamier" stuff on 7"s (which is irritating for those of us without turntables). But I love the way the way the cheery, Beach Boys-y middle tumbles into profane pleading, down-and-dirty yelling, men with clenched fists at the back of a room. I turn it up loud when the subway's coming, I let it toss me from murmur to shriek.

You can order the CD cheap-cheap-cheap from BlocksBlocksBlocks, and I can't understand why anyone wouldn't. Unless you're outside North America, and have noticed that it's still unlisted on the UK distributor's site. And Mr Kado isn't answering your email. sigh.

---

Kelly Clarkson - "Since U Been Gone"
While I was in Latvia, I was reading about "Since U Been Gone" at Clap Clap, but I was a long long way from hearing it. Maroon 5 was ubiquitous, Kelly Clarkson not. Eppy's got such a fantastic taste in singles, though, that it was one of the very first things I hunted down when I went to Canada. And hunting it down, as you all know, was not hard.

But I know I'm not alone on this one. On the Site Which Shall Not Be Named, I read a thread with indie kids asking "Is it ok if I like this?". The answer, of course, is yes, because "Since U Been Gone" is awesome.

I'm a total sucker for those pop-punky guitars, the buzz and vocal blast. I heard the line that Avril Lavigne wrote this (which is fine by me!), but I love the way that Kelly performs it, stripping any attitude from the lyrics, making the sassiness a weary pose. The "yeah yeah"s don't have any of the chorus' triumph - they're brittle shrugs. "No no, I don't really care. Course not." "Since U Been Gone" isn't about someone who's moved on - it's about someone stamping and shouting and dancing her way to the place where she's moved on. Someone who still can't talk about this stuff without a strained, flat-voiced (fake) non chalance.

But still! When she does that stamping and shouting and dancing, that roar, it's just as potent as the Flirtations' "Nothing But A Heartache." Who knew that that little American Idol girl could flare so bright? But that's the point, isn't it? Look how strong she can be, how big, how loud, how inflamed.

Why don't guys do songs like this?

---

Stars - Set Yourself on Fire
--listen to "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead"
This is a band that had been passing me by, mostly because I was nonplussed by the very-well-received Heart. But oh my, this record's not one to skip. Set Yourself On Fire is energized and melodic, with glad-making boy-girl harmonies, razzle-dazzle climaxes. It's got peach-fuzz and christmas lights and strings and horns. Electric guitars! A singer called Torquil! Reminiscent of The Delgados, only much more intimate - sexy, personal. For fans of the Postal Service, of soft pop choruses, of love.

"Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" lacks the thick electric hooks of the rest of Set Yourself On Fire, but instead there's melodica [?], cello and french-horn - oh, and drums. DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM. And when those drums are beating towards the chorus, or when the girl vocals come in (whoosh!), when everything twinkles and swoops and soars, there's fewer things I'd rather be doing than listening, a-listening, a-listening. [buy]

---

Destroyer - "I Want This Cyclops"
This was one of the very first tracks Jordan posted, way back in September, as I was fleeing the country. It's an astounding piece of music. First of all, it makes no clear sense - at least not to me. This is Dan Bejar, though, so I don't much care. "Two French sisters / on a DC-10 / sped from Dallas / just imagine them / peppering / their respec- / tive speeches with commas / and cupids / and I don't wannas / I don't think sos." The play of the words, the click and slur and assonant blur. But it's not that which most dazzles, nor the simple acoustic guitar strum, nor the boozy blushed buzz of sax and clarinet, two minutes in. No, it's the remarkable, the plain but flowering drums. It's the ring of cymbal, the dance of tom and snare and bass drum, the conversation going on behind, the story-telling and humour, the grins and history. I don't know how I hear so much in those drums, that simple jazz beat, but I do, I do, I hear a life with all its sorrows and joys. I hear a friend, a good one, or maybe the promise of someone I've not yet met. [buy on City of Daughters]

---

The Cay - "Hey Lady"
And speaking of Jordan, the man posted this about a month ago - a bootleg of his band, The Cay, at a show at La Sala Rossa in Montreal. I was at that show. And when I heard this tune I was floored, smacked, blown near over. And though the recording lacks the volume of the real show, though you hear the read-of-the-crowd's murmur a lil' too loud, you can still feel the tearing in each mounting verse. The first minute's pretty, pale, but when the vocals rip something open, send stuffing flying, I feel something jerk in my chest. Feel it at 1:28, and then again at 1:57, when the bassist yells his monster yell. The song's being tugged, punched, bruised, burnt; vocal chords can barely express it, then barely pinch it out. And then it ends with that reassuring fugue, the drums falling over themselves, the push to forget.

Please record this in a studio.

---

Still to come this week: Amerie, Okkervil River, the Sugarcubes, and more.