Archives : all posts by Dan

Wings - "Tomorrow"

I don't always want to write. Neither do you, I'm sure. Sometimes you'd just rather not do some of the things you like to do, I know that. I'm sure McCartney doesn't always want to be fucking catchy as hell. But this song makes me want to write. It makes me want to write about giving all my stuff away, and about a thousand different people and things. A fire chief eating a breakfast of only toast and butter to watch his weight. An old frog, like a bullfrog, who keeps going to the same lily pad every day because he saw another frog he liked there one day and doesn't know what else to do. A bubble, an actual bubble, that covers "Tomorrow" by Wings. The bubble is wearing a lush purple velvet robe, like a king would wear or the bubble version of James Brown. I don't think any of these things, be they stories or poems or scripts or outlines, thought webs, would be any good, but it makes me want to, and that, Mr. Rainbow*, is enough for me. [Buy]
*Mr. Rainbow is my name for "readers" while "Tomorrow" is playing.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring - "Colour Television"

If I've left some door open, a crack in a window, or if I've not repaired some pipes, then forgive me, but this is an infestation, a take-over. It's come up from the floor somehow, like rising water, or bugs even. It's covered me, it's under my skin, swirling up inside my head. Plus it sounds like The Headstones so, you know, muscle memory and all that. [comes out in september]

The Horrors - "Cold Blooded"

The blues are not enough. God is not enough. Hot kisses are not enough. Hot coffee is not enough. Giving back is not enough. Tipping is not enough. Being lazy for a day is not enough. Going crazy, not enough. Being cool is not enough. Love is not enough, which is hilarious. Vegetables, singing, smoking, sex, I.Q., training, risk, it's not enough. Belly-aching is not enough. Having money is not enough. Having no money is not any better. Grace is not enough. Only this. Only this. [Buy]

Tune-Yards - "Fiya"

I've let loose all my pets, let my plants return to the wild, turned all my clothes into cut-offs. I moved apartments without telling anyone, without making a sound. I've changed cities, left my family in the night, started eating better. I pretend to speak Italian now, I live in paintings, I piss golddust. I take pictures of everything, I collect unfinished sentences, I grow actors in my garden out back, I even hug bums. I'm completely unbearable, insufferable, wrong. But this song still breaks my heart. This song is full of death-row redemption and rose-coloured break-ups.

[It says you can Buy by donation at the site, but there's no link so send an email to tuneyards @ gmail.com. The album is really great]

Diamonds - "Seasons"

I might have Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. Or I might not get along with heat waves.

Everything romantic happens in the Fall. Nothing romantic, and I mean romantic, happens any other time.

My car won't start. That is because God is fed the fuck up.

Self-righteousness is the breakfast food I am addicted to. Every morning, without fail, even sometimes at night.

Hail lines up in an eaves trough single file. I put a bucket at the spout and shoot balls at the neighbour's, taking my one chance a year.

I listened to this song, and my behaviour really changed. I think the guitar was like stomping my grumpy side to death.

I give up coffee.

[I just followed Sean's advice and downloaded this amazing record. Yes, he still knows cool well before I do.]

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Fiery Furnaces - "Teach Me Sweetheart / Evergreen / Bitter Tea (Reprise)"

I was highly sceptical of Remember when I first heard it. But, just like it always happens with them, I gave it a full listen, and I was able to find my own favourites, as if they were waiting for me. This is the last three tracks on disc 1, and a better representation of a great live FF show I haven't heard. It's huge, it's perfect, it's completely functional. Like a jumbo jet covered in long brown mammoth fur. Woah, that flies? Yes, we'll be flying in it today. Awesome. [pre-order]

Night Shall Eat These Girls and Boys - "Where Did Our Love Go?"

This is a version of the song as performed when lost at sea. When slowly spinning in circles in a round little dinghy, with candles for atmosphere, and the supper of distilled salt water and dried seaweed having been joyously consumed. And when I say "joyously", please understand that it's all relative, this is as joyous, as raucous, as it gets for these men. But when the wind stops and the motion settles briefly, they keep on singing. An intention, a hallucination, being all they can claim as their own in this strange boiling air.
Luckily, they were being recorded by WCBN and were rescued instantly. They haven't spoken since. The band is still together, though. [Site]

The Dutchess and the Duke - "Mary"

I think this may be a misspelling of "duchess", unless this is a way of saying "a Dutch woman", and The Dutchess is indeed Dutch, in which case let's just listen to the song. A very certain period Jagger comes to mind, but in the same way hope comes to mind when you reach in the back seat and find a bagel. You eat the bagel and you feel nourished. It's delicious and keeps your mind on the road, and off the past. The nefarious, ungainly, mongrel, truant, restive, hideous past. [Buy]

Bodies of Water - "Even in a Cave" [09/07 - mp3 removed at label request]

Like shaking out that mysterious rattle from an old VHS, and out come coins, dirt, shrapnel, little notes tied to rocks. They say things like "old enough!" and "hard fuck!" and "noise". That's what the first half of this song is like.

Even in a cave,

Like holding your finger in a candle flame, or running down the middle of a usually busy street, or staring at a strange dog. That's what the second half of this song is like.

Bodies of Water - "Gold, Tan, Peach, and Grey" [09/07 - mp3 removed at label request]

This is the Bodies of Water I remember. But when I think back on them, they have a grand ensemble majesty. All wearing the same robes so I couldn't tell them apart. Now I hear the work of individuals, I hear a maturing kind of part-work. This male lead at the beginning is thin, wooden, and very lovely, like a reed. Then later, it has that incredible wailing, you know the one I'm talking about. After it's gone high enough, she starts shouting the colours and I can see them right there. I kind of listen to this music the same way I listen to really evocative opera. It's a very specific kind of enjoyment, but it's no less real, there is no less beauty.

[Buy A Certain Feeling, it says "signed upfront copies"]

Loxsly - "Virgin Isles"

A continuous loop. Though something is different every time. Like a crank slowly spins a word into place one at a time, they thunk into place and each one, with each one that comes up you keep thinking it's trying to make a sentence, like if you watch long enough, all these words will make sense, like it's all got some reason or design behind it, but it never does. Or rather, I've waited, and I can tell you, in fact I'm telling you, that it's never going to make sense, it's never going to make a thread it's like "great (ka-chunk) many (ka-chunk) people (ka-chunk) believe (ka-chunk) in (ka-chunk) the (ka-chunk) many (ka-chunk) great (ka-chunk) people (ka-chunk) believe (ka-chunk) for (ka-chunk) if (ka-chunk) enough (ka-chunk) of (ka-chunk) the (ka-chunk) population (ka-chunk) gives (ka-chunk) itself (ka-chunk) away (ka-chunk) then (ka-chunk) it's (ka-chunk) --" [Buy]

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Love is All - "So Far Away (Dire Straits Cover)"

I was in line for the bus tonight in Ottawa, and there was a really boring couple in front of me. He had a on a grey sleeveless muscle shirt, with "Pepe Jeans" (I've never had to pronounce that) written in really old-style font, and she had an old white spaghetti-strap tank top on. Brush cut, and bad old faded blond dye job ponytail. And I wouldn't have noticed them at all, except that they had this really touching good-bye, it made me immediately wish I could take back all the bitchy thoughts I had about them. It was all without words, they didn't speak the whole time we were in line, he just started staring at her and his face got all red. He pressed his forehead against hers and she closed her eyes. She let him step forward and give over his ticket, but she just stood at the window, stock still, staring, really damn hard, like the way a victim might stare at their assailant in a courtroom, at him as he got on the bus. And in her too-small flip flops and ankle charms she marched away out the doors and left, and me and Pepe Jeans went to Montreal together. All I could think was, "Baby, I'm not going to stay for Canada Day."

[will apparently be available on emusic] [Site]

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I posted Chet last week, and I got this lovely comment from Camille: "this sounds like Carey Mercer with his feet planted in fresh cream". And although I'm not sure totally on the connection, I got the Chet CD at the Frog Eyes show the week before. Which is a nice segue, retroactively, to talk about the current Frog Eyes tour. I saw them with Shearwater (meh) at Lambi (big meh) and they were, typically, bestial. Despite bad sound (see Lambi) and an extremely douche-y group of fans in the front row, they lit up completely, as in immolated, that room. Carey Mercer does this thing where he steps away from the mic and howls at the ceiling, a cappella, for long stretches of time, and you feel like you're being sung to personally, and it becomes self-conscious, yet completely hair-raising and primal, and then he'll suddenly, unexpectedly fall, kind of topple, headlong into huge guitars and drums which become louder still with this new textured focus. It's quite an experience. There's one show left on the tour. Citizens of Victoria, I know I'm preaching to the choir, but go.

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Women contest: Thanks for all your submissions, all of you. But a quick contest has a quick winner; it's Bethan.

"women are what you get when you water girls and feed them with a good mixed mulch of cosmopolitan magazine and trouser suits."

second place goes to Harrison, and honorable mentions to Nina, Stephen, Kate. But there's only a prize for first place, sorry team. and remember, any time you want to leave sentences as beautiful as these in the comments, you don't need a contest to do so! smile

Nina Simone - "Gimme Some (Mike Mangini Remix)"

The drums in this song, in this version of this song, drop the ballast off the sides and the song floats up and hovers right around the place where you hear music come in your ears. In case you've forgotten, you don't actually experience music any other way, but this song reminds you of that, that you have ears. Or it doesn't, and I'm reminding you, but in any case, we're there now, so let's talk about it. "Dan, I can see dancing with my eyes," says one of you, "and I can feel vibrations with my hand, I'm deaf," says another, "and I'm reading your damn prose," says a third. All true, but listen to Nina Simone; she's asking you to "gimme some". She "can't stand it no longer". If "some" were "music", do you think she'd be content with mere vibrations or MTV on mute? No, she wouldn't. She wouldn't at all. And in conclusion, it's clear: Nina Simone is a raging ablist. [Buy]

Cassetteboy - "Brackish Water"

Cassetteboy is completely insane. His 80-minute album Carry On Breathing has 87 tracks, and they're all made of soundbites. From TV, radio, field recording, some of it famous, almost all of it British, but the point is: it's incessant. I went to a "mixtape party" once, the idea was that you bring a mixtape (or cd) and you put it in a bin, and then pick another one out and you get to bring home a little treasure from someone. I decided to make an experimental mix that featured 99 of the shortest tracks in my music collection that were a minute or shorter. It was organized from longest to shortest, and dated back to when I first started collecting music on my computer; like, the Napster days. So there were really stupid Simpsons quotes mixed in with 30-second punk songs, sound effects tracks, and those really short Pavement songs from Westing by Musket and Sextant. Anyway, it amounted to a downward spiral of insanity that was essentially unlistenable. This is kind of what Carry On Breathing is like, but Cassetteboy's project is handmade, crafted, designed. And this, "Brackish Water", is one of the few things that kind of works. It's nice to feel these different bits come from different days, so you pass like a third of a year in one song, to imagine it sequentially, each of those days having meant something to someone, including you. [Buy, if you dare.]

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Women Contest: (FINISHED! WINNER CHOSEN!) I have a copy of the Women album to give away. Write the best sentence you can using the word "women" (keep it clean, this is a family blog) and leave it in the comments on this post. I will judge the winner by the next time I post, which won't be before Tuesday next week, and I will award the album then. The winner gets to choose either vinyl or CD.

Have a nice weekend!