Extra Golden - "Jakolando"

Two brothers are headed into town, the hot afternoon sun white on the gravel road. Onyango has the money, to get the bread and sugar, and Ganabe skips alongside. They walk the alleys of the market, saying hello to the few people they recognise. They are referred to as a unit by the people in town. "Jakolando," they say, "you'll get fat on this much sugar." "My father makes less than you, Bunte." "You are too sensitive, Jakolando, I'm only kidding." Onyango does not smile as he takes the bundle under his arm to leave. "I want to stay and talk with the women," says Ganabe, tugging at his brother's hand and pointing to the tavern where the music is coming from, softly. "We don't have time." The women make eyes at the little Ganabe. "Hi, Jakolando." Ganabe will be a man eventually, but Onyango will be a man first, and there's no telling what will happen between then and now. The boys head home as the sun sets coolly behind the bare trees. Ganabe makes them stop for water, and then again to urinate. [Buy]

Fiery Furnaces - "A Candymaker's Knife"

Part two in my continuing insistence that Rehearsing My Choir is fantastic. "A Candymaker's Knife" is really when the story of the album's main character gets underway. It's the third track on the album, and there's been a lot of hinting, setting up, thematic beginnings, but its most clear beginning is here. A young woman, taking a cooking class, is swept up in her hectic life. The song's opening spookiness foreshadows the main plot point: that on the night she is to meet her father-in-law for the first time, she gets drunk and embarrasses herself in front of her new family. A simple and tender plot, approached (no, attacked) from all sides at once by call-and-response double-character illustration by Eleanor and Olga, and the music waltzing, sometimes leading other times following, along. The lyrical and musical synchronicities hit like a full-page image in a comic, or a sentence in all caps, "I wore the scarf he sent to me..." becomes blue, floating, a standstill. And my favourite image "I reached for the arm of the armchair and missed..." gets me every time, because I immediately go back to the title, as she's falling, and I think, as I would, drunk, about the knife. [Buy]