Fiery Furnaces - "Pricked In The Heart"

This song's refrain, spoken clearly and with eyes straight forward:

"I gathered all the tokens of a passion people waitin' for the promise of a father where have you heard of me in the past? John baptised with water not with wine but don't weep he'll make sure, pricked in the heart the Wednesday after last."

But it sounds like flipping a flipbook, or like spinning your niece under your arm on the dancefloor at a wedding reception, or like hearing a melody hummed by your grandmother, some old and foreign song that sounds nothing like you've heard but feels comfortable.**

In fact, the title and the religious imagery makes me think of a story my grandmother once told me. But I want to tell it in this fantastic cadence-speak (I can't call it rap, because rap is so based in rhyming, this is something else): growing up in Ballinamore, little Nora-Marie went to St. Garry's everyday for church and school, basically the same thing in those days. Sister Mary Garber and old Mother Master Frances ran a tight ship, tighter than little Ruth Trenton's secret corset that she wore under her uniform and one time showed to Benjamin Bryson while walking home through Kennery Woods. Every third Thursday Sister Mary Garber made the girls kneel down in a line and undo the tops of their dresses. Then she'd walk down the line and prick their bare breasts with a needle, only to show them that they were to treat their breasts as burdens, they were sins, and not fun. Nora-Marie was first in line and only got the dirt from the tip of the needle, which was taken from Mother Master Frances' red special sewing pin-cushion, but the rest of the girls got the blood of all the ones before.

**This song sounds like growing up, and growing up is probably my favourite thing in the world.

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Lightspeed Champion - "All To Shit"

The low bitrate here gives the soft sounds a soft edge that I like more than I would if it were clean. It feels like it would go well with old stock footage of a flower opening to the dawn. Or going to bed at dawn. [MySpace]