Archives : all posts by Dan

A Day For Kites - "Bobby Pin"

This song is like a really busy day, where you wake up and the television is still on, but it's showing three shows at once, and you're late for your tap dance recital, and after there's a picnic, and then back home to do some dishes and waltz with the broom, then catch a plane (grab a nap) to someplace close enough to drive to, where you friend is getting a huge award the size of a bear, and then skating to celebrate, where you literally turn into a jewel and become part of the sky. [Buy for 5$!!! Yes!]

Carey Mercer & Carolyn Mark - "Claxxon's Lament"

This is the original, somehow unknown to me until recently, of the Wolf Parade cover posted about by Jordan way back in June.
I like the cover better, but the lyrical discrepancies between the two versions illustrate the sheer savagery of this song. In the cover, it's a last hug, it's a warm dying. But here, it's a cold grope, a gaunt-cheeked stagger. Consider the following:

Wolf Parade version: "nobody will die / while I've got money in my hands"
Mercer version: "nobody can die / till I've got money in my hands"

From the first, I get a tragic rich man, a delusional sick tycoon. From the second, I get a ruthless monster, harvesting the weak to stay alive. It's like those matchstick puzzles, where you have six matches in a square pattern, and just by moving two matches you can make, like, the devil's face.
[Buy Blackout Beach]

Fiery Furnaces - "Nevers"

(spoken over broken harpsichord with perfect enunciation)
I invented a language with my family
We would speak it to each other on trips
So none of the other tourists could understand us
To Zimbabwe, to Munich, to Parson's Ridge in Indiana,
I tried to teach it to Benjamin Benton Bradley
My next-door neighbour with a limp and a Game Boy
He just called me a gimp and a tomboy
I'll see if I can remember some to show you, listen:
(. . . . . . . .)
I moved to Precinct with my boyfriend
Went to church and yard sales on St. Fleet
Mrs. Cadell, our landlady,
Used to talk about seeing Humdinger Grant,
The old boxer from back in the day,
Walk around naked in the parking lot,
Between the Accords and three-door Saturns,
Picking up phone cards and arousing himself,
And I swear I saw him too, speaking the same language,
As me, my parents, and my little brother Grant

[Site]

Micah P. Hinson - "The Leading Guy"

(I had Sean and Jordan over to my house yesterday. We played scrabble (Jordan won), we sat on a pink carpet by a fire, and listened to these two songs. I recorded our conversation, and here's a transcript of what we said)

Me: I chose this one because it just felt like the penultimate example of gramofolk.

Jordan: Penultimate?

Me: Yeah..

Jordan: So what's the ultimate?

Me: Oh. Did I misuse that?

Sean & Jordan: Yes.

Me: Oh, oops.

Sean: Is that the only reason you like it? Gramofolk was kind of a joke.

Me: No, it's like a really good Mars bar. 'Cause you're going along, and everything seems pretty normal, and then you realise you're listening to a really great song. It took a few listens before I got the narrative about letting go.

Jordan: You mean the chorus?

Me: Yeah, I guess. But it took a while to sink in. I can hear him missing someone. Everyone who's gone.

Jordan: Yeah, I'll agree with that. Is that Rochester I hear in the background?

Me: Rochester...from the Jack Benny Program?

Jordan: Yeah.

Me: I don't think so.

Jordan: I think it is.

Sean: No, no, no. There's no Rochester, there's no Mars bars, this is a story told by a Giant to his nieces and nephews, all giant children, about their father who was run out of town. The story goes that he turned evil, but the Giant gives a wink and a smile as he tells it, and you can hear the giant children clapping in the middle. There's hope for the worst of us.

Me: Hm.. Uh, yeah.

Jordan: An argument for this song's being good: 1) I think it's about Bob Dylan, 2) Every song about Bob Dylan is good, therefore 3) This song is good.

Me: Uh, I like the song, but can I contest premise 2?

Jordan: No. It's an axiom.

[Pre-order]

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Kimya Dawson - "My Rollercoaster"

Me: Too precious?

Jordan: Possibly. I don't know if it's time for a medley.

Me: But I thought it was fitting--

Jordan: That since her singing style is that of a double-dutch rhyme, that her song structure begins to mimic that?

Me: Yeah. I find it endearing.

Sean: Yes, she's cute. She takes our hand and we jump into a mine cart that travels backwards through our high school top 40s and radiobuzz hummings. And she likes video games!

Me: Yeah, see? Sean agrees.

Jordan: Is it a novelty song? What else moves you?

Me: I think it's her love of fearlessness. When I think about her loving that in someone, I imagine that maybe she's kidding herself, and that everybody that loves me loves something that might not actually be there.

Sean: Her frenetic pinball synapses are like the ADD kid in elementary school before ADD was something diagnosed. Just hilarious, hyperactive, constant infatuation. One second drawing on the wall with marker, the next running down the hall after a friend who passes by.

(long pause)

Jordan: Okay. I still won, though.

[site]

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it's also my sister's birthday. happy birthday, meg.

Shelley Short - "The Sunny Side"

Yes, this song is sung by Shelley Short, but to be more accurate, it's sung by Shelley Short's smile. She's a bird flying pressed up against the ceiling, a child in a swimsuit humming to themselves. This should totally be a national anthem of somewhere. A stadium full of people singing this would be great. [Buy]

Bound Stems - "Risking Life and Limb for the Coupon"

I'm reminded of the review I would have given "Razorblade" by the Strokes if it hadn't been done by such a famous band (dangerous!). And that was to communicate the idea that my enjoyment of the song increases like a steady climbing hiker as the song rolls out like a carpet in front of me. I start in the standard brush and nice, worn path, soon reaching the steeper parts, drum bursts like rocks falling away under my feet. Eventually I crest the peak and I can shout that Isaac-Brock-ish yell part, so that it'll come back to me. And then a quick climb down (oh, an elevator!). [Buy]

Owen Ashworth is the soul of the burgeoning Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and he is here today to share some songs and stories. They are stunning, suprising, and completely new to me. Enjoy.

Gordon Wilson Ashworth - "Battery Point Light House"

In January, my brother Gordon and I drove my '92 Dodge Ram from Redwood City, California to my new home in Chicago. On the first day of our drive, we took a detour off of the highway to visit a cement factory that John Fahey wrote a song for more than forty years ago. The Portland Cement Factory isn't actually there anymore at least not the way that Mr Fahey saw it; it's been rebuilt and renamed since then, but looking on the massive structure that stands outside of Monolith, California, simultaneously futuristic and absolutely prehistoric, was overwhelming and desolate and sad and beautiful. I took my brother's picture in front of the factory from across a dusty road and then we got back in the car and watched what used to be the Portland Cement Factory recede into the landscape. I hope he saved me a double, even though I don't think I'll ever forget the sight of him, dwarfed under those towering stacks in the view finder. It's funny how a thing like a cement factory can inspire a sense of absolute reverence. Anyhow, this here is one of my brother's songs. Whenever I listen to it now, I think of our field trip to Monolith, California. [site]

The Papercuts - "Oh, So That's What They Meant By Humid"

This is one of those songs so full of hurt and memory that listening to it in any company at all somehow feels like a betrayal. So, please, put on your headphones for this one. Here is my dear friend Jason from those good old dark days when we both had more hair and less serotonin working for us. Listening to this song immediately takes me back to crumbly old apartments and late summer night walks to the liquor store and the ghosts of so many friendships and loves. It took me some years to decipher all of the words of this song and also to really recognize just how depressed we both used to be. We sure were some sad bastards back then, and I sure am proud that we have seen each other through. [site]

The Papercuts - "Another Thing To Dust (Live)"

Here's one more from Jason. This song was recorded live at the Che Cafe in San Diego last Spring. Jason just happened to be in town the night of a Casiotone show, and I begged him to jump up and sing something. Jason was drunk on tiny mini-bar bottles of white wine and he jumped onstage with a borrowed guitar and played this. God bless Alex deLanda for having some tape rolling. If this song doesn't slay you, then I don't understand anything. A slightly more psychedelic version of this song will be on the next Papercuts album, which is mercilessly gorgeous, by the way. [site]

Pablo Neruda - "Untitled"

This is an untitled track from Jherek Bischoff (from The Dead Science, The Degenerate Art Ensemble, Xiu Xiu, and most recently CFTPA)'s long-standing solo project, Pablo Neruda. I don't know that any of the Pablo Neruda songs even have titles, but every so often I'll get an unadorned CD in the mail with some of the most raw and ingenious song-making I've ever heard. I think this was the one that made me want to make an album with Jherek. The clatter and ring of the percussion just sound so perfect to my ears. It feels like a gondola ride through an elegant junkyard. I want to live inside those sounds.

The Donkeys - "Black Cat (Demo)"

Here is a demo from San Diego's The Donkeys, who will be touring across the US with me in March. A hi-fi version of this song will be on their soon-to-be-released first album, but there's a warmth and sadness in this version that I just love. It's that choked-up, sorry feeling that only someone who's got your blood can lay on you. It's family, man. [site]

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Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and The Donkeys will be embarking on a U.S. tour in March, in support of the truly marvelous new CFTPA album, Etiquette. more information at cftpa.org. especially check out the scrumptuous video for The Subway Home.

P.O.S. - "Stand Up (Let's Get Murdered)"

This song is a constant climax, like one of those circular songs that manages to continually ascend without ever hitting that final note. Because it's a good lesson, the time to dance is when the fuse is burning down, not after the explosion, so if the whole song is just fuse burning, then we can keep dancing, no matter how early we work tomorrow. [Buy]

Nethers - "Daybreak Hallelujah"

I know it wasn't too long ago that I posted about Nethers before, and there's nothing new to tell you, except to stress again that this album is so worth getting. This is the last track, it's a kind of release, while still remaining focused. Like happy teamwork, smiling and passing along the bucket of water to the next in line. [Buy]

MGMT - "Time To Pretend" (4:29)

I saw these guys open for Of Montreal and they sucked. But when I saw the name of their cd, Time To Pretend, I thought it was so honest of them. They don't play instruments (literally, a guitar hung from strings and they strummed it with a drumstick), they can't really sing, they just want to be cool, so they buckle down and start pretending. And it's only fitting that the song of the same name, the only good song on the disc, is actually quite fun to listen to. So pretending is being, and everyone's wrong about being right. The Wizard of Oz reminds us that we're all fakers in some way, and MGMT reminds us that if you're willing to pay, you can have it. [Buy]

Karl Blau - "Crashing Waves" (7:28)

I feel so welcomed when this song begins, like I belong here. It's as if the song were made of older kids that were going to protect me, because I'm suddenly very young again. I feel so safe that we can all take a nap, while someone goes on a car trip to pick up the horns, and the songs starts again once the horns arrive back at camp. We're either going fishing tomorrow, or playing Frustration, depending on whether or not it rains. [Buy]