Archives : all posts by Dan

Sybris - "Oh Man"

Buildings are made of money, people are made of money just the same way. Animals, appliances, a forest, cars. You can sell them as one piece, you can get money that way, or you can break them into little pieces and sell them that way. It's difficult to tell what way will make you more money. Money is also made of money, you can keep it in a locked room and it will manage to attract other people's moneys to it. Food is made of money, decisions are made of money. A crack is made of money (as in a brick), and to fix it is made of money (as in a window, or a widow). Sybris might be the only thing that is not made of money. They are made of teeth, slippery and separated. And with a sneer, there is no tooth fairy. I want some change. [Buy old Sybris]

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Elsewhere: Super Deluxe is apparently a nice place for interesting artists.

Jeremy Jay - "Airwalker"

The ease with which this song is produced is completely infectious. If lyrics are this easy, if singing a languid tenor is this easy, if steppity-step drums and whistling organ lines are this easy, then maybe everything is just as easy. Maybe I can snap my fingers in time to the pace of my feet and everything will turn into this gray night cityscape fog. Everything will have the easy grace and breezy moves of an unexpected dancer, a stranger, hiply dressed with a gaunt face, who's suddenly got it goin' on. [Buy]

No Little Kindness - "I'll Try"

No Little Kindness have endeavored to produce a new song every week. Not like "until we have an album's worth" or "for 10 weeks straight" or even "until we're famous", they're just going, no end in sight. And this week's is so far the best. It's taken eight weeks to get here, but it was well worth it. "I'll Try" is a fervent and glowing cloudburst of a song, it's a smooth, blue, revolving, gem. It's, like most NLK songs, a series of thin layers, that first start by getting laid on top of each other, and then end by getting cut through, like chopped in half, to see everything at once, to suddenly see everything at once. And here it's as if this idea suddenly occurs to the singers at the end of song, when they hit "I'll drive in an ocean," (or is it "I'll drive in a notion"?) they almost seem to look at each other, to make sure they're right, that they can destroy everything with guitars and cymbals and that that will sound great. [Previously] [Site]

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Elsewhere: unreleased Sunset Rubdown song in their new Daytrotter Session. "Idiot Heart" is quite nice, but their "tour version" of "Three Colours" is really fantastic.

Soul Merchants - "Love"

To be dragged by your hair, leather clothes squeaking on the shiny tile floor, down a high school hallway between classes. Kids stare open-mouthed in horror through locker mirrors as this beast, cuff spiked and hair the same, has found her prize. A few measely nerds step in the way in feeble attempts to "stand up" for you, but they are cast away with mere snarls, thrown crumpling into locker doors. Even teachers are helpless to your state, their true non-authority revealed so quickly, like they had just been pants'd. A trail of dark fluid draws a line behind you, as you head, head-first, out to the football field. To be strung up, arms and legs tied taught in a star formation, between the field goal posts. Your body, now a sort of grotesque flag, signals the start of a ritual, one to be played-out beyond your control, one of overwhelming events, the least of which you have experienced up to now. All these things together, I believe, to Soul Merchants, are Love. [Buy]

Bon Iver - "Skinny Love"

A much different kind. A kind much softer, made of small sticks, of weak coffee. This is a love felt while looking at your watch. It has a bit of a teenage feeling too, but it seems also very weathered. Like, can we do this thing?

"Hassy, do you ever pray?"
"Mostly on buses."

- from Rabbit Redux, by John Updike

[MySpace] [Buy Updike at a local bookstore]

Figurines - "The Air We Breathe"

I had written off the new Figurines album as terrible. Over a year-and-a-half ago, I was swept up in Skeleton immediately, and I saw them live within a week. The live show didn't measure up to the album, and they didn't play the soft piano number (head and shoulders the best track) so I left disappointed but still focused on them as a "studio band", so this new album When The Deer Wore Blue was much anticipated by me. But it fell real flat. After one listen I just felt the same way I did at the live show: empty, pulled in a direction I didn't want to go, like they weren't playing the notes, the songs, they ought to be playing. So I wrote it off. And many weeks have passed since I deleted it from my computer, and I heard "The Air We Breathe", as if on the radio, as if it had fallen like a raindrop softly against my window, on the Paper Bag Records compilation. I thought it wasn't from the new album, I thought it was a new song, that's how much I loved the orange sunset beach boys falsetto foundation, and the hard like ribbon candy verses, snaps in the cold, but stretches when heated.

The Acorn - "The Flood Pt. 1"

Also from Paper Bag Records, here come The Acorn from sleepy Ottawa bringing way more elation, way more clear talent, than I've heard from them before. Here we're riding on brown feathers, we're whisked right away and into the blue. The peppered layers of light percussion imply travel, to me, while everything else implies home.

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[Buy When the Deer Wore Blue]
[Buy Glory Hope Mountain]
[Paper Bag Records, a very nice label in Toronto]

Timothy Dick - "Florence"

Like a lot of hymns, this song can be used to enhance the emotional impact of almost anything. Try listening to it while watching the news, or talking on the phone, or while snow lies quietly down on the sidewalk. Whatever you're doing, or watching, become suddenly expanded, it grows to the size of the room, and you can see all the empty space, all the little hairs you didn't know were there, and all the little scabs, the healing, the flesh. In terms of a "single" or a "hit", it isn't that, but this song isn't interested in that, it wants to walk around, anonymous and dark orange, looking for God. [MySpace]

(photo: Eden Veaudry)

Opium Flirt - "Saint European King Days"

I got an email with the subject line "new music from Estonia". As if the whole country had just finished catching up on old unreturned phone calls and raked the leaves and put on a sweater and had finally gotten around to making some more music. If this is in fact the case (I see no reason why it isn't) then I congratulate them. Still no words to say, they've written a warm wooly walk in the park, where green has become brown and grey, and the roads are getting harder, whiter. Opium Flirt have written a national treat, a crisp smile for the afternoon, for the world. [Buy for 185 EEK]

Boys Noize - "My Moon My Man (Boys Noize Remix Feist)"

Although in some ways the combination of heavy dance beats and ethereal soft female vocals was a standard played out long ago, I can't stop listening to this. Perhaps it's that same realization we all come to that in the realm of exciting work, old standards and new grounds have almost equal merit, depending on their execution. Though I can't claim to understand him as much as I'd like to, because my self-esteem makes me think he'd say "you're WAY off", but it's similar to Dave Hickey's idea of "the quality of the work" as opposed to "the quality of the job". This is great work. Beats that feel like robo-jaws chomping down on the empty hot dancefloor space, and Feist swaying by with a wrist-swinging hair-flipping walk that makes wind as it goes on by. Dreamy, dancey, black. [Buy from Amazon UK]

Unknown Artist - "Song From Bin Lu"

The room goes quiet and her voice rises like a single candle, flickering. Her whole family is there, and some other people from the town, and this was unexpected. She hadn't mentioned wanting to sing a song, she had been quiet all day, preparing the meal with a downturned focus. But now she is singing, and has everyone's attention, but is herself shy of it. It's as if the song has taken over, that the song has the attention, and she too is watching it, eyes open and welling, as it comes out of her. The day's work, the whole year's, has been hard, not as green as other years, and this is some sort of mourning. Like the suffering of the whole town, of her parents' strife, elegized. She glances at her brothers, then down at the floor to avoid crying, then up at the roof as the last bits of sky fall through the grass, and by now it's clear to everyone watching why she is singing. She will leave this family, this town, and never come back. [Buy from Sublime Frequencies]

(photo from here)

Le Loup - "We Are Gods! We Are Wolves!"

Le Loup's The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly is a heavy undertaking. It's kind of a whooshing stormy banjo warm front, and this is the breaking clouds. It comes in the middle of an album that stretches down into hell and reaches up to heaven, it's a very spiritual breadth, and seems pretty sincere too. Where this song exactly plays into the "plan" of this album I can't say, but I can ride that blippy part like a bus through a town of intricate spires and dark beige skies. I'm kind of scared of the vocals, even though they mean no harm, they sound like they're speaking another language sometimes, they sound very powerful, despite their sweet smiling and soft exterior. Like if the clouds were whispering at you, just their size alone would scare you. [Buy] (thanks, Jim!)

Okay - "Truce"

The new album from Okay, who Sean told me about, is wholly great. Right from the first song it's inviting like a warm living room with a fire and an old sofa. A bunch of 2-minute songs go by, and you're just getting to know it, you're kind of charmed by the crumpled-paper vocals and lush yet simple arrangements. Eventually after 13 short-ish songs and you're fully on board, tapping your foot and nodding and really agreeing with stuff. And then, a 7-minute song comes on, this one, and you're like "uh, no way" to yourself, "if you're bringing out a 7-minute song at this point, it's gotta be some giant droney solo-ey mess." So you cross your legs and get ready to be sympathetic. After all, you've really enjoyed yourself so far, you kind of owe it to sit through and smile. And then it's amazing. You uncross your legs at 2:30, you put your hands flat on the seat like it's going to lift off the ground at 3:48, and it's not long after that that your memory goes blank. You wake up in a sweat, and dazed, you clap for forgiveness as the fire dies to a shimmering orange. [Buy old stuff]