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by Sean
Please note: MP3s are only kept online for a short time, and if this entry is from more than a couple of weeks ago, the music probably won't be available to download any more.


 

Freelove Fenner - "Mary". Is it wrong to call Freelove Fenner's guitar-lines "cartographic"? Does it make sense? Maybe it's just me who hears these trills and reversals as twisting roads, corners on a map, the thrust and parry of royal blue highways. A Freelove Fenner song feels like a neighbourhood, a city flattened out and populated; there's a topography, hills and valleys, furrows for rain to follow.

Maybe I'm alone in my synesthesia. Maybe, for you, "Mary"'s blues and reds are metaphors. Maybe you hear no winding lines, see no knots. But when I say this song is loose, does that compute? When I say it is loose and also tight? Montreal's Freelove Fenner are extraordinary architects of sonic space - their songs are filled with neat little figures, perfect and separate, or interlocking. They are stubbornly sweet-and-sour. Their sentiments are obtuse. Do Not Affect A Breezy Manner reminds me of Mary Timony's Helium, Let's Active, and Young Marble Giants, but never of other people's records - just the memory of their sound.

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Posted by Sean at November 21, 2013 11:53 AM
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about the authors
Sean Michaels is the founder of Said the Gramophone. He is a writer, critic and author of the theremin novel Us Conductors. Follow him on Twitter or reach him by email here. Click here to browse his posts.

Emma Healey writes poems and essays in Toronto. She joined Said the Gramophone in 2015. This is her website and email her here.

Jeff Miller is a Montreal-based writer and zinemaker. He is the author of Ghost Pine: All Stories True and a bunch of other stories. He joined Said the Gramophone in 2015. Say hello on Twitter or email.

Mitz Takahashi is originally from Osaka, Japan who now lives and works as a furniture designer/maker in Montreal. English is not his first language so please forgive his glamour grammar mistakes. He is trying. He joined Said the Gramophone in 2015. Reach him by email here.

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PAST AUTHORS
Dan Beirne wrote regularly for Said the Gramophone from August 2004 to December 2014. He is an actor and writer living in Toronto. Any claim he makes about his life on here is probably untrue. Click here to browse his posts. Email him here.

Jordan Himelfarb wrote for Said the Gramophone from November 2004 to March 2012. He lives in Toronto. He is an opinion editor at the Toronto Star. Click here to browse his posts. Email him here.
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