Archives : all posts by Dan

Tokyo Police Club - "Citizens of Tomorrow (Space Ballad Version)"

This is the only Tokyo Police Club song that I like. And this is the only version too. What bothers me so much about the band's other work is that it makes dancing feel like a mandatory requirement, like some kind of depressing dress code, so I just refuse to get into it on principle. This, however, drops that. He sings easily, almost to himself, and I'm finally free to float in the images, the clouds. The more you sound like the lost carnival dream of The Robot Ate Me, the better. [Buy]

The Morning Benders - "Damnit Anna"

This song has a very "introductory" quality. It's the first track on the new Morning Benders ep, but it's also inherently an "opener". What is it? Is it the lyrics passing by like a bus ad that doesn't sell anything? Is it the arcing refrain that melts and steams in the morning sun? Well, yes, it's these things, but the better question is why is it the 2nd song posted? No rules here. [2nd ep out March 13th]

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last chance to see Space Jail. ends this Saturday. make reservations or you won't get in.

Frog Eyes - "Bushels"

This song is an open letter to the surrounding crowd. It says: I'll work with you, I'm willing to help, and I'll do it happily. I love each of you in a way, and hate each of you in another. We have been given a plan, and we'll see if the steps get followed, if everyone pitches in the right hands, the proper sweat. At dinner time, we'll sup and gain our strength. Some of you will read or make love to pass the time, or start fights. Weather will be a huge factor in our charge, and its fat stagger is as predictable as a sick dog. Who knows if we'll succeed, at anything more than turning the world inside out. But once you leave, I'll still be singing, and once you die, I'll mount my own projects, I'll play half in tribute, half in spite, to your stupid prayers, to your written leavings. [pre-order and free shirt!] [Daytrotter version]

Laibach - "NSK"

This is the national anthem to a theoretical state. Created in 1995, NSK is the state created by the art collective of the same name, seemingly a club with a membership card shaped like a passport. It's the last track to Laibach's album of re-interpretations of national anthems of the world. This track is by far the best, as it's the only one presented almost untouched, or as a new work if it never existed. It plays like you're watching it on TV, in an empty small shitty eastern European living room, with overly-decorated walls. The answering machine sings along, the most patriotic thing in the room, because it listens all day long, it knows only the hollow tone of a human speaking to a machine. [Buy]

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Papercuts - "Take the 227th Exit"

At ten in the morning, there's a paper thin line between "already drunk" and "still drunk". This song shows up on your steps, party in full swing, the morning light beating hot against its face, even in the early spring chill. Its wearing a worn leather jacket over a dollar-store tux, and speaks in smiles and slurs. A limo creeps behind, driving at a walking pace behind the stupor, the driver constantly gesturing "get inside, get inside". The marriage goes off without a hitch, though, because the bride's in no better condition, hair still wet from a wake-up shower as she slinks in sunglasses up the aisle. [buy from Gnomosongs] [Papercuts previously on StG from Owen Ashworth]

Spalding Gray - "Monster in a Box" (introduction)

He must have written the best suicide note in all history, if he wrote one at all. Suicide is such a personal exposure, like being a nude model and shitting yourself. It's completely grotesque, base, and primal, but also, to better connote, human. And I imagine that's what Spalding Gray would have done in his note, he would have made his choice seem slick but cold, pitiable but enviable, the rightest wrong choice you can make. Listen how he touches the future with a knowing smile, tells you his plan before enacting it; his life's a goddamn five-paragraph essay. There was never anyone more fit to deliver his own eulogy than Spalding Gray. [Buy]

Bodies of Water - "These Are The Eyes"

Bodies of Water have just finished a 13-song LP due out by the end of April. They sent me this because they're very proud of the record. And it sounds to me like they're right to be so. It sounds like an overture to a musical, and it makes me curious to hear the rest. I almost hope it is a musical. I think it would be about forest animals, during the last few days before they lost another part of their forest. It wouldn't be about the fight to save their land, they'd never win, it'd be about learning to deal with the things you can't change, getting your affairs in order to totally change your life for a cause completely divorced from your own. It'd be about how much the rest of the world can affect you, and how much is in your control. There would be the deer, who are the most submissive to the situation, industriously packing and running away. The beaver, who would rather cry about it than do anything. The owl, who silently stays, even when they're cutting down his tree. It ends with the animals doing the closing number on a plastic kids' play structure, right where they used to have their "hidden glade". [site]

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So, Montrealers (and intrepid travelers), I'm in a new play. It's called Space Jail, and it opens tomorrow. It would be so great if you could make it out, it plays at Theatre Ste. Catherine every Wednesday through Saturday in February. It's actually the most fun play I've ever seen.

Shaky Hands - "Summer's Life"

This song has the replay value of an old stationwagon. The rhythm of a much-tar-stripped country road. A melody like the sun poking under the pulled-down visor. Lyrics like an old Babysitter's Club book, the only thing to read in the glove compartment. It's a car trip, a Sunday, warm when you close your eyes. And the air is much easier to move through than to breathe. [More]

Destroyer - "From Oakland to Warsaw"

Dear Roger,

I'm sorry I ever said Your Blues sucked. I'm sorry I didn't believe you when you tried to defend it's glowing, pulsing beauty. When you said, rightly, that it's perfect for walking in the woods. I'm sorry it took me 3 years to understand the yellow, bejeweled and bejangling currents of this album.

yours, Dan
ps. hope you're well.

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Dear "From Oakland to Warsaw",

Thank you for your strident, stalwart posture, and your howling bursts like striking diamond-studded windchimes with a rhinestone-studded leaf blower. Thank you for being the unassuming yet garish, lavish yet humble, chapter of the book that makes you finally realise "hey wait, this whole thing is genius."

yours, Dan
ps. hope you're well.

[Destroyer deals at Merge]

Crystal Castles - "Alice Practice"

I can't tell you what I like until I hear it.

I hear a teenage girl ripping her robot heart out in front of her parents. It's 4a.m. and they were asleep. That night, they had caught their android daughter in the arms of a human girl when they came home. Driving the human girl home, the father told her that her love was misplaced, that his daughter and her had nothing in common, that his daughter was computer-based and couldn't provide what another human girl (or boy, whatever you like) could provide, and that she should just leave her alone. Around 2:30 that night, on instant messenger, the android girl, hyperventilating from the tears, received the message that the human girl knew all about her android nature, and even kind of made fun of her kissing. It wasn't long before she completely unraveled, and climbed the carpeted stairs to her parents' bedroom. [site]

The Micragirls - "Rockin' Date"

The Micragirls, here, have distilled everything from their music save the core necessary elements: simple (as guitar class), familiar (as brand names) structures, played like they've been told they're "too quiet", and covered in delicious screams. I think on this track, they went so insane that they were locked out of the studio, but just did their screaming from behind the door. [Buy]

The Besnard Lakes - "Cedric's War"

Don't give up on this song. Just pretend you're listening to The Mamas & The Papas, on a phonograph that plays while you eat dinner with your family, you're 14. Do whatever you would actually do in that setting. Spread your food into a pattern, examine the clear edges of the milk as it bonds to the glass, rub the inside of the chair leg with the top of your foot. Then at 2:34, you'll be rewarded, let out to do whatever you want with your August evening, your first summer of real "freedom", and you'll bike down to the yellow open-air canteen and listen to Beach Boys through a loudspeaker, sipping ginger ale and trying to fit in. [pre-order]