TWO BUS-RIDES
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.


 

Fever Ray - "Concrete Walls". "It wasn't scientists who discovered the fever ray; it was a woman. She was 23. On January 22, 2009, she returned home by public transportation. She wore a navy blue down jacket, jeans. She had a backpack with three notebooks, stories by Kelly Link, Milton's Paradise Lost. Disembarking from the 55 bus, she walked to the apartment she shared with a man. The apartment was full of sounds. The television was on, the radio was on. As the woman crossed the rooms she turned the devices off. She then heard the other sounds. At the end of the long hallway was their bedroom, and in their bedroom the man was with another woman. The woman stood in the doorway watching them. Finally she lifted her arm and pointed her open hand at the man. The ray was invisible and did not feel of anything. The man noticed her standing there, stopped what he was doing, said "Kay, I--". She turned and left the apartment. She waited for the 55 bus. One day later, the man developed a fever of 103°F. He developed nausea, fatigue, insomnia, chills, sweats, mild hallucination; there were effects of the fever ray. The man did not get better. Nor did the man get sicker. The man's fever persisted for 51 years, until he died of unrelated liver failure."

[buy Fever Ray, the tremendous solo album by The Knife's Karin Dreijer; and more important still, watch the music video for "If I Had A Heart".]


Aidan Moffat & the Best-Ofs - "Big Blonde". This is a song about seeing your love through a window and loving her, richly. And about her being the only one, even when you see one of your "heart's former keepers". I can confidently promise I could not give a fuck. Because you love the love you love, richly, with skip of heart and glitter of guitar and rhyme of rhyme.

[the music video for this one is fucking beautiful, too, in basically the opposite way from Fever Ray's; and it reminds me of the way Aidan Moffat bellowed "YES!" at this Herman Dune gig we were both at: because he meant it]

---

I would vote for Jay.

Posted by Sean at January 22, 2009 12:17 PM
Comments

I love The Knife. Silent Shout was one of my favorite CDs' for a long time.

I am definitely gonna give this a listen. Thanks for the heads up.

Posted by Chris Ronk at January 22, 2009 12:31 PM

Funny you should mention Kelly Link. When I read Stranger Things Happen (to be fair, I read about half of it), I thought "I bet Sean likes this." Ha!

Posted by Amy at January 22, 2009 1:15 PM

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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.

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