Archives : all posts by Dan

Snake & Jet's Amazing Bullit Band - "Favourite"

If I were to choose a song to open my midnight radio show in the 90s, broadcasting from a brown-carpeted, basement studio at a college, this would be it. I'd be a junior, I'd be dating an activist named Paige, I'd be an emaciated chain-smoker vegan, wearing clean tight jeans but a dirty shirt that said "Prince Paul!" on it, and I'd talk mostly in smirks. I'd make up movies and then review them on the show, I'd take an occasional call or two, but when 12:05 on a Thursday came, and you heard this song, you would know that it would be my turn to turn the tables for two hours.

This song is a kind of cool I never was. [Buy X-Ray Spirit]

((Sounder)) - "Good Things"

The sound builds like a snowball, like a storm, like ringing a bell. It's the first song on ((Sounder))'s Good Things Come and Go Like Bad Things, which is a waterfall-shaped album. What I mean by that is that I've seen a waterfall before, but I let myself stand underneath it, which is a refreshing experience. What I mean by that is that while the album is fairly mainstream, it's put together with care, with honesty, with heart. What I mean by all this is that I like it. [Buy]

--

Also: El Perro Del Mar and Lykke Li are playing in Montreal tomorrow (Sat. May 10th at Club Lambi). See you there. [Press Page]

(wait until the finger-picking is over)

Given six minutes to pack up my entire life
Stupidly, I went right for the kitchen
I just packed up food and soap and liquor
I even forgot your picture, my wallet
My shoes, a change of clothes
A blanket, believe me
I panicked, pissed in the plant
brushed my hair 28 strokes
and tripped out the door
I've already forgiven myself and lost the key in the grass

[Buy] (thanks John B. C)

--

Allegedly, illegibly, ineligible to join for dinner
hand claps on the door, I lost the damn key
The rain ruined your note
I can't read what you wrote
There is an enormous child out here
Giving me the beating of his life
It takes as much effort to let me in
as it does to keep me out
I ate garbage
I'm not blaming you

[Site]

Tapes 'n Tapes - "Lines"

The paranoid wanderer narcissist believes that cities are just government conspiracies to put as many people and obstacles in the way to their destination as possible. The newlywed solipsist wonders to himself, while making love, whether he has masturbated to the point of breaking skin. The pathetic sympathetic pet store owner imagines every time she flips the closed sign that these are actually her pets for the night. The self-inflated and widely hated culinary teacher's assistant believes that cooking for anyone but yourself is worse than prison. Tapes 'n Tapes are convinced unconditionally of their cause, they've made plans, they've written letters and drafted schematics. T-squares, ledgers, levels and chalk, "Lines" is nose-to-the-grindstone homework music. I'm impressed. [Buy]

Sloan - "Cheap Champagne"

Sloan, I only have room for so many bands in my life. I can't give myself to every single one, there'd be no me left. There are a ton of unlistenable bands in the world, and there's even more mildly listenable bands. There's a bit less listenable bands, and the smallest group is very listenable, or great, bands. But even though it's the smallest group, it's still a very big number. Too much for me to hold them all in my heart. So you and me, Sloan, we never got together. But whenever I see you, and I see you, around or whatever, I always know that if I'd lived my life differently, we might have been something. Canada's Queen? [Pre-Order]

Of Montreal - "Feminine Effects"

I don't have the photograph that goes with this song. The one of a woman of 29, with passable posture, sitting at her dinner table in the afternoon, smiling nervously just off to the left, probably at the photographer, a stranger in her apartment. Her wall is wood-panelled, and there's a poster for a Proclaimers show, and some framed pictures of her cousins and parents. Behind is the yellow floor of her kitchen coming through the side of the frame, the grey carpeting in the mirror leads to the window, with a vase of cloudy water. Her hair is in a bun, with a bit coming out the middle. Her chestnut cardigan and pink blouse are the bishop and the rook in a ready line of white. Her hand, the veins on top catching white sunlight, the king.

posted perfectly already on Fluxblog

[from a Green Owl compilation]

Family of Love - "God's Asshole"

I'm climbing off the dusty ground onto a smooth raised area. The floor of this area is softer, and easy on my feet as I attempt to mount the curved area above, curved outwards and almost impossible to climb, save the small ridges that seem almost built for hand and footholds. I eventually make it to what can only be described as some kind of wide diving board, which I'm forced to swing out onto, and use its slight elasticity to propel myself up onto it. I then run down its shiny surface and head towards the real climb. I use my grappling hook to latch onto wide brown soft bands that wind down around the massive pillars. Once the bands have stopped, I'm forced to climb only using the flesh of the pillars themselves. Thin black ropes hang, each about 4 feet long, across almost the whole surface of the pillar, which makes it easier. Eventually, even the black rope-like cordons stop, and I can only mash the soft sides into hand shapes, and just lift my whole weight that way, as if climbing a set of filthy rubber curtains. And as I reach higher and higher, as was foretold, I expect it to get brighter and brighter, but it only gets darker and darker. Until, having reached the exact coordinates of my destination, I find myself at something of a dead end, my bare hands covered in muck, my brow dripping with sweat. How could so much prophecy, so much legend, have led to this? I allow the anger, red now and venomous, to build inside me, until eventually I punch the very spot I was told to go, and lo, my hand sticks. A portal. A window. Salvation.

[Site]

No Age - "Eraser"

No Age has unseen powers. No Age is an unassuming tenant. A seemingly regular guy who plays loud music until a bit after midnight on Saturdays. Who can be seen carrying re-usable bags of groceries into the building usually around 6:30 at night. Probably because No Age works a regular job. Keeps no strange company, and returns a regular amount of beer bottles to the store. Has a secure wireless network (I've tried) and a plant that hangs a bit out the window when it's sunny and warm. And saved a goddamn puppy from a building fire across the street last October. No one really knows it, he doesn't advertise it, but I saw No Age do it, I saw him coming out of there.

"Eraser" is a home run.

[Buy from Sub Pop]

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Aimee Mann - "Little Tornado" (removed at label's request)

Aimee Mann has spiritual chord progressions. She sings like a prayer probably sounds, like, a real one. I can't imagine what different people are "saying" when they pray, but I assume they're talking to someone. Either asking a favour of God, or speaking to a dead relative, or even talking to a pet that never understood them when it was alive. But praying to the weather is a great idea. It's like a manifestation of God's changing moods, isn't it, the way it colours the day, the way it meters out the calendar heartbeat of the world. Make it go faster. Make it go twice the speed.

[Pre-order]

Nana Grizol - "Tambourine-N-Thyme"

Forgive me for not writing yesterday, I was flying back over the Pacific. The trip back was 11 hours, whereas the trip there was 13. I imagine some great current that starts somewhere deep under Oceania, coming up from the bottom of the world, up through actual desert islands, small ones, up through mountainous countries and growing trees, past all sorts of people who will never meet each other, who hold fast to the ground and ignore the immense pull on them, up to under Siberia, across frozen parts, out and down into ice fields and rushing over different tagged animals and condemned forests, right over insecure borders and map names and little insect-sized roads and homes and right to my house. If I was blown here, if I couldn't be anywhere else, why am I so tired?

I saw Modest Mouse when I was in Japan, and while there were moments where I felt like I did when I was 18, carried screaming "perfect" into unknown realms of musical enjoyment, mostly I felt like this was a different band, one I didn't really recognize, but still really respect. But with Nana Grizol, I feel that same kind of original perception, of expression, is here. It's less concerned with getting fired or getting your jaw broken, but more concerned with ol' fashioned love, and if Modest Mouse hadn't been too angry to fall in love, they might have sounded something like this in 1998.

[Buy "Circles 'Round the Moon" from Amazon, but the album is out in May from Orange Twin]