Archives : all posts by Dan

Julia Holter - "Coyotes of the Canyon"

A missed call. An empty cage. Two keys.

A specter that can only be seen when thrice reflected. A set of stairs up the inside of your mouth. Clothes that bend where no joints exist. Soup in reverse. A candle flame, euthanized in a two-fingered squeal. This house is married to a house down the street, and the rooms are like babies, unable to be born. Grown full-size and bulging, necks bent and contorted, pressed against the lining. [Buy]

Blanche Blanche Blanche - "The Kind Dry Stream"

This song seems to occur to itself, like a bridge that appears before each step. [Buy]

[Both these artists were introduced to me via the Be Witched Halloween Mixtape, which is fun, though long, in its own right]

Of Montreal - "Hegira Émigré"

An aspect of Waterworld unexplored: The Raucous Boat Caucus. Meet up with some boaters, one becomes a buoy and the others gather tying themselves to each other until quorum is reached. Lanterns light boat floors and the dancefloor is made of floating tiles. The human race makes new muscles and we all move on.

[Buy]

--

Eminem - "My Name Is"

A Honda Civic with underlighting and a 5-disc CD-changer. Chain-rimmed license plate, tinted windows, tail lights, side mirrors. Moon roof, fur-accented seats, rear headrest mirrors, and insulated cup holders. Silver skull shifter head, red dashboard readouts, heated floors, and a nightswitch.

A nightswitch?

Yeah.

What's a nightswitch?

It's a switch.

What does it do?

You flip it to night when it's night.

That's it? What does it do? What does it do differently when it's night?

Nothing. It's just a switch that you flip when it's night.

But what if you don't?

Well you do, because it's a nightswitch and you flip it when it's night.

Okay. Cool car.

[Buy]

Danny Brown - "Side B (Dope Song)"

Animal chay. God left everything in order for me, it's all here. The waterfall, the bagel-looking rock, the treetops, the smell of the cat, streaks like green smoke. The ribbon pathway like a thin blowing flag, it's all laid out, I just need to listen, follow. Nothing could be easier. Hear it go. [Buy]

Fuzz - "Preacher"

Acoustic artist Ari Ochre will be performing a new work in November, a collage of various unfairnesses. The recorded sounds of baby jays having their food taken away, the sound of a DMV closing while there is still a line, a real-time 24-hour airport security interrogation resulting in nothing. [Buy]

a stream today because I've already posted a track and would rather not release too much of the record for free. and I'm simply unable to write about anything else today, this is too good.

All strangers are your children. All strangers are your children and how far they've come, how much they've bested and how much they've left to learn. They don't know you, their mother, and they may resent you for that. But still in their heart of hearts they understand the sacrifices you made, and they also agree that mothering everyone who currently lives has been no easy feat. They understand that their relationship with you is not as important as your relationship to everything else. They are, perhaps unconsciously, humbled to be your child. You can see their wrinkled shirt and their mis-creased pant, their pained exhausted face, their steely resolve, and you are here for them. And they may choose to come to you, to nestle in the crook of your arm, on the subway or at the Subway, whenever they truly need to, but until then, they, like you, will be brave.

--

Carey's Cold Spring has stuck with me, it travels me, it swirls my head, speaks me before words can. And it is so much words. I've listened to every Frog Eyes song ever recorded*, most in the double-digit play count, some probably in the triple, and this album is where the poetry takes over, it's let loose. Frog Eyes don't often live in this world, they often create a place, an alternate brown leather world, with caravan breakers and wheat farmers and golden rivers, but Carey's Cold Spring is here, it's now and it's singing in your ear and somehow, even thought it's a record, a recorded and finished thing, it holds impermanence up in reverence, it feels like it could disappear, it knows it will. The world they see is a world with bright red Air Jordans, with dudes, with moving trucks, with rats chewing frayed HDMI, shitty boyfriends and bourboned liars, "The Speaker", David Bowie is there, The Black Bloc is there, capital e Evil is there. And capital d Dreams. The moon refuses to rise, a firing squad takes dead-eyed aim, a rioter screams so loud they take flight, an arrest is made on charges of being too good to be true. Last-dance songs, culminating reckoners, and songs made out of sap from the sun. This record has taken up residence in my heart.

[Buy]

*Sean introduced them to me at the beginning of our friendship in 2002

Frog Eyes - "Claxxon's Lament"

Peace will hide in unexpected places, under the fingernails of the world. Peace will hide inside the noise of guitars, in trees, in the tired eyes of beasts. Peace will hide in vanishing points, in cracked and stale memories. In this peephole, at its worst the last thing that would ever be seen, it watches the three closest neighbours and yet it seems to watch It all. The sigh, the pause, the silence, the nothing, all still the opposite of zero. Peace will hide in the simple declaration, the statement of fact: "I was a singer, and I sang in your home."

[Buy the magnificent Carey's Cold Spring]

Earl Sweatshirt - "Chum"

She lives here somewhere, city might as well be named after her. Might as well have a big overhanging light-up sign with her name on it. Welcome. Welcome to The Bees In My Stomach. Welcome to All I Can Hear Is The Breath In My Head. Headphones as meaningless as hot rain. In a ten-block squiggle-map I double-back while keeping track. All the open signs are see-thru, and people's windows all closed glass. One of them has her in it, she could be sleeping or watching a flatscreen. My shoes are walking, not me, and a cop threatened to beat me up for falling asleep on a bench. Only person i talked to all day.

[Buy from iTunes]

(image by Julia Randall)

Michael Nhat - "I Hear on Earth we Used to Live"

We live in the money-free zone. My grandma and me, we share a passport and only go out if we need to get multi-vitamins or pre-made clothes. My grandma has an old motorbike and the engine sounds like bad singing. Nenn! Nenn-nenn-nenn-NENN-NENNNN! It kinda hits the tops of my ears and sticks there. Every time I eat gula fish I think of my grandma. The smell of staples, fists, and hair. She's like a scaffold, my grandma, rickety enough to sway in the breeze but responsible for great things.

[pre-order the whole tape from the delightful Michael Nhat]