Cuddle Magic - "Pillows". A voice like a trombone solo, which is to say at once mournful and vaguely funny. Like the Magnetic Fields after drinking a bottle of cough syrup, waking up in the orchestra pit. There's jazz in this insofar as there's jazz in all regrets, doubts, wondering (i.e. in the messy emotions), but in its succinctness, in its constancy of feeling, "Pillows" is punk rock.
Cuddle Magic - "Paper Mask". Cuddle Magic hide their convoluted time signatures in laze & softness, in crinkle and sun. "Paper Mask" seems like such a gentle wind-in-willows waltz, easy as afternoon - that is until a piss-drunk clarinet comes two-stepping, cackling, down the riverbank. It's like a scene from The Muppets where an intruder makes it in through a crack in the doorframe, through a mouse-hole, and Kermit has to run around flailing and insisting that the creature get out get out get out. But here the clarinet just laughs itself to sleep and Cuddle Magic are free to return to their song, warm, sun-dappled, unruffled.
Cuddle Magic's self-titled album is weird and wonderful and many of the things that make P:ano, White Hinterland, Born Heller and Bowerbirds so special. Write them to buy a copy while you still can.
---
Elsewhere:
Would anyone like to buy me a moustache?
David Horvitz's artworks-for-sale delight me very much.
Ainsley Wallis, who made a Video Contest-winning clip for Sufjan Stevens' "Decatur" was approached by yuk-yuk folkster Joel Moss to do something similar for one of his songs. And so she did - a cute, notebook-animated, pencil-crayonned video about a penis. Who drives a truck.
[image from Antony Gormley's Field - thanks narges]
Posted by Sean at March 27, 2008 8:00 AMSean,
here in the states we are in or near economic recession and can't afford $60 mustaches.
BMR
That link... David Horvitz's artworks are absolutely incredible. I wish I had money for my rent AND his rent.
Really lovely. Thanks.
How dare you. Statler and Waldorf are the best muppets.
Posted by: colawarmonger at March 27, 2008 5:38 PMSTG, thank you for your always positive reviews of music. It's so much more effective and lovely to talk about why songs are good, because every song has some good in it in the right light.
Posted by: Sarah at March 29, 2008 12:43 PMThat Penis video had me in tears! Awesome!
Posted by: cindy at March 30, 2008 12:31 AMwhoever wrote this owns my life.
Posted by: c4 at April 10, 2008 7:08 AM