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The Truth About Évariste Galois
by Jordan
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.
Early Day Miners - "Sans Revival" Peter Gabriel's So has not, as far as I know, had a considerable influence on the indie-rock community. Yet, imagine "Sans Revival" stripped of its arrangement and production aesthetic - what you're left with sounds very much like a So-era Gabriel song. The vocal is unabashedly manipulative, pulling you in despite yourself, like the rousing romantic finale of a well-crafted Hollywood movie (I'm thinking specifically of Say Anything and the cheese-festival that is "In Your Eyes"). So has a few likable aspects, but these do not include the arrangements or production aesthetic. The Early Day Miners revise the So model in this respect, and ensure that their album will survive sans revision. Here the formerly ubiquitous John McEntire produces, and he succeeds in matching the emotion of the vocal line with the intensity of the instruments: thunderous bass, waves of chiming guitars, bell-clear notes rising out, ringing, fading back. An open question: Since McEntire produced the record and there are no credits for arrangement, do we really have any reason to believe that the leader of Early Day Miners is anyone other than Peter Gabriel himself? N.B. Don't send me pictures or personal anecdotes about the time you saw Daniel Burton and he definitely wasn't Peter Gabriel. I'm no Empiricist. I want analytic proof. [Info] *** I cannot recommend strongly enough that you never listen to this song on repeat. That's what I'm doing right now, and it's changing me. Since I started listening - about twelve minutes ago, now - I've cried several times, flown into one frothing, uncontrollable rage, and become interested in, subsequently mastered, and finally grown tired of archery. LMP's talent is only barely exceeded by their boundless pop ambition. There's something in this imbalance, in combination with the fact that the whole song seems slightly out of time, that makes this sweet pop treat rather madness inducing. [From Tiny Idols Vol. 2, a compilation of obscure and out-of-print gems from the 90's indie rock scene, of which I will write more next week.] Posted by Jordan at July 14, 2006 12:03 PMComments
LMP = La musique populaire? The guys who did the century of song box set? it kinda sounds like them. Posted by david b at July 14, 2006 12:39 PMSame band. Posted by Jordan at July 14, 2006 12:44 PMMark also maintains a Tiny Idols blog here: Posted by j at July 14, 2006 2:13 PMAs regards similarities between the Early Day Miners track and mid-period Peter Gabriel: according to the band's Secretly Canadian bio, Daniel Burton learned production from Daniel Lanois. And in fact, aside from the vocal stylings at the end, the track sounds a lot more like Lanois than Gabriel. (Though Gabriel also sounds like Lanois, as Lanois is one of his frequent collaborators.) Not a bad thing, as Lanois = love. I think indie rock is totally antithetical, btw, to what Peter Gabriel was doing and still does, because: 1) he's interested in funk, and indie rock is rarely funky; 2) indie rockers think anything with African drums is hippie music; 3) it's much easier to dink around with a cheesy Casiotone and call it "electroclash" than to actually learn how to use your damn synthesizer; 4) Peter Gabriel actually listens to music made by non-white people who didn't record in their basement and didn't worship solely at the altar of Stephen Malkmus. (There's my grumpy old man rant.) Posted by Josh Ellis at July 14, 2006 2:30 PMWhere exactly is this aforementioned Malkmus altar and how can we go about making a pilgrimmage? Posted by greg and jess at July 14, 2006 2:37 PMI LOVE LMP! I haven't heard them since high school. I still think that their "Aunt Canada" album is one of the best I own. My friend Andrew even sang on a few tracks. Thanks! Posted by Jodi at July 14, 2006 10:22 PMThere're hints that indie rockers are listening to Gabriel; just pre-So. Futureheads steal the riff for their 'Skip to the End' from PG's "Modern Love." Aloha makes records easily aspiring to early Gabriel. Gang Gang Dance gets wiggy with the hand drums and pseudo-third world rhythms. And TV on the Radio absolutely rewrites "Games without Frontiers" or "Shock the Monkey" everytime they go out. Posted by J Frank Parnell at July 17, 2006 3:50 PMIn re, "indie rock is rarely funky," I give you ESG and Liquid Liquid on 99 Records, as indie as indie can be and probably a couple decades antecedent to whatever crap occupies your mind. If to you that isn't funky and Peter Gabriel is, I am afraid I simply pity you. Your critique in general is not wrong, but deploying it in defense of Prog Boy here is fundamentally misguided. Posted by wcw at July 31, 2006 8:01 PMPost a comment |
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all songs are removed within a week or two of posting. said the gramophone launched in march 2003, and added songs in november of that year. it was one of the world's very first mp3blogs. if you would like to say hello, find out our mailing addresses or invite us to shows, please get in touch: montreal, canada: sean toronto, canada: jordan montreal, canada: dan please don't send us emails with tons of huge attachments; if emailing a bunch of mp3s etc, use a service like MailBigFile. if you are the copyright holder of any song posted here, please contact us if you would like the song taken down early. please do not direct link to any of these tracks. please love and wonder. "and i shall watch the ferry-boats / and they'll get high on a bluer ocean / against tomorrow's sky / and i will never grow so old again." we are a member of MBV.
about the authors
Sean Michaels lives in Montreal, where he is writing a novel. His work also occasionally appears at McSweeney's. Follow him on Twitter or reach him here.
Dan Beirne is an actor and writer living in Montreal. He writes fiction fiction fiction on here. It may feel true, but it is never True. He is most proud of his most recent project The Bitter End. Email him here Jordan Himelfarb lives in Toronto, where he is editor in chief of The Mark. Jordan's posts appear at Said the Gramophone only on the last Wednesday of every month. Email him here. Site design and header typography by Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet. The header graphic is randomized: this one is by . 
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