Archives : all posts by Dan

Hot 8 - "Sexual Healing"

I can't help but feel like I've been taken advantage of a little bit. I feel impressed at first by the brassy posing and vamping of the first 3 minutes, like watching a peacock or a dude showing off how he can do that thing where you run up a wall and flip onto your feet. Then I feel nothing short of sweet-talked for the next 3 minutes, as I'm shouted at, just into my ear so I can hear above the music, that I'm the best thing out there. That sex is better than sushi for your constitution, and that I need to get healthy. Then the next 3 minutes, I hear nothing except the slow bassy tension beneath the brassy wowzy-towzy. Wait a 9-minute cover, I'M BEING MADE LOVE TO! And suddenly it's over, and whether it's the sushi (I did have that for dinner, to be fair) or what I do feel pretty good. [Buy]

The Whiskers - "The Idle Rich"

How shall I describe this world for you? It's very much like this world. It's based on isolation, and it gives the impression of connectivity. You would think these layers are connected to each other, that the pulsing organ and the steppy-step guitar and the one-two dance beat, you'd think they were chosen because of the way they connect with each other, but you'd be wrong. They work together the way roots of different trees work together; they take up the space the other isn't consuming. It's a harmony of necessity. It's dirty. It's hypnotizing like riding in a car.

The singer is alone with his two twin brothers. Their arms and legs entangled in such a way that they can still play their disgusting instruments, and their single voice echoes like in an empty chapel, or community centre.

I like this song because it makes me feel okay about the orange heavy rain that falls hot all around outside. So much will get done, but so will so much not.

[Buy]

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The art above is by Michael Rytz who, along with Said the Guests alumnus Matthew Feyld and other great people, will be featured this week at the new show at My Hero Gallery. The vernissage is Friday, and you really shouldn't miss it if you live in Montreal. It's such a great little gallery, so full of life, it brings the pink out in art, makes it blush.

The comedy album is having a very good year. I've selected 5 things I want you to hear:

Paul F. Tompkins - "Elegant Balloons"

What I love about Paul F. Tompkins is how friendly his comedy is. He makes me feel safe. Not in a timid way, just more like he's the opposite of the kind of comedian who's looking for people to make fun of. That's why he wears a three-piece suit every time he performs. He's a gentleman, and he's dressed up for the occasion of this his comedic performance. His album feels classical without feeling retro, it's completely comfortable in its skin, in its suit. [Buy Impersonal]

Patton Oswalt - "Physics For Poets"

The cover of Patton Oswalt's Werewolves and Lollipops is an illustration of his face, removed from his head like a marble, and the only thing left in the hole for his face is a row of teeth, with fangs. This is a perfect cover, because crossing Patton Oswalt is a bad idea, he takes down hecklers in a more harsh and overdramatic way than I've ever heard, but as long as you're not asking for it it's okay. Like in this bit, for example. It's just a completely seamlessly crafted little story about a college exam that involves Star Trek and physics. It's exactly what college was like for me, there were courses like that, and questions like that. [Buy Werewolves and Lollipops]

Stewart Lee - "90s Comedian (excerpt)"

An oddly under-appreciated comic. He seems to run into more controversy than he deserves, and it's gotta be getting old for him at this point. His anger isn't unfocused or hateful at all, it's very calm, very examined. You can hear that here, especially in the explanation of the fact that you can't send a friend to have investigative surgery in your place. He's like a philosopher, he'll go over the simplest details with dignity and patience, and it's hilarious, because he's nice about it, no matter how stupid it is. [Buy 90s Comedian DVD]

Maria Bamford - "Mental Makeup"

Maria Bamford is perfect. She's heading up the stand-up division of the ongoing revolution of female comedians. Her comedy, while inherently female, has none of the former hang-ups that a lot of female comedians had. It's just incredibly funny. Her role-playing is, while maybe her best, just one element in her style. Her voices give instant depth to the characters and we're suddenly interested in them, but when we come back to bits just about her, she's just as interesting. fantastic. [Buy How to WIN!]

Scharpling & Wurster - "Jock Squad (sample)"

And of course, my favourite. This was the first piece I heard on Fluxblog over a year ago now, and it's now on the Best Show 2006 compilation. I was so taken in by this, the simultaneous feelings of spontaneity and genius calculation, the always-surprising fluidity and integrity of the character work, Best Show has inside it a graduate thesis just waiting to be written (but first we need comedy, like film, to be studied, so that those who fail at doing comedy can study it instead). [Buy the new Scharpling & Wurster cd Art of the Slap]

Little Wings - "Gone Again"

Shhhhhhhhhhhh....lie down. See the ceiling? Feel the still heat? Hear the quiet? This song's for me, and this paper airplane's for you. Written on the paper is a contract between you and the person who catches it. You can toss it at whoever you choose, and then you're set for life. You can either toss at it your long-term boyfriend, or you can let it go up high in a stadium and see who you get. You can mail it to someone famous, though I wouldn't recommend it. But for now, in the still heat, the quiet, looking up at the ceiling, I'm about to fall asleep (I roll, watch out) because I'm tired from imagining all the ways to find out you chose me. [Pre-Order]

Mannequin Men - "22nd Century"

I was hoping something on the new Fresh Rot would stand out enough to be worth telling you about, because Mannequin Men have a lot going for them. The last piece they were missing was just to appeal to me. And here they've done it, with a beat like a mountain range, and a tambourine like a natural snaking river, and vocals like an indication of harmony. You know, like humans needs oxygen and trees needing carbon dioxide, that kind of indication. And I love it because it evokes in me a feeling that something you want is just out of reach. Of all the centuries left in time, the 22nd is the one that's just out of my reach. [more]

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My review of Captivity is up at The Movie Binge. That movie depressed me so much I had to stay to watch Ratatouille after it. THAT was fantastic.

Fiery Furnaces - "Pricked In The Heart"

This song's refrain, spoken clearly and with eyes straight forward:

"I gathered all the tokens of a passion people waitin' for the promise of a father where have you heard of me in the past? John baptised with water not with wine but don't weep he'll make sure, pricked in the heart the Wednesday after last."

But it sounds like flipping a flipbook, or like spinning your niece under your arm on the dancefloor at a wedding reception, or like hearing a melody hummed by your grandmother, some old and foreign song that sounds nothing like you've heard but feels comfortable.**

In fact, the title and the religious imagery makes me think of a story my grandmother once told me. But I want to tell it in this fantastic cadence-speak (I can't call it rap, because rap is so based in rhyming, this is something else): growing up in Ballinamore, little Nora-Marie went to St. Garry's everyday for church and school, basically the same thing in those days. Sister Mary Garber and old Mother Master Frances ran a tight ship, tighter than little Ruth Trenton's secret corset that she wore under her uniform and one time showed to Benjamin Bryson while walking home through Kennery Woods. Every third Thursday Sister Mary Garber made the girls kneel down in a line and undo the tops of their dresses. Then she'd walk down the line and prick their bare breasts with a needle, only to show them that they were to treat their breasts as burdens, they were sins, and not fun. Nora-Marie was first in line and only got the dirt from the tip of the needle, which was taken from Mother Master Frances' red special sewing pin-cushion, but the rest of the girls got the blood of all the ones before.

**This song sounds like growing up, and growing up is probably my favourite thing in the world.

[their YouTube account] [Buy]

Lightspeed Champion - "All To Shit"

The low bitrate here gives the soft sounds a soft edge that I like more than I would if it were clean. It feels like it would go well with old stock footage of a flower opening to the dawn. Or going to bed at dawn. [MySpace]

Port O'Brien - "I Woke Up Today"

On the Port O'Brien one-sheet it explains that these songs were written while at sea. There was trend back in 2004-ish of a lot of bands giving their work a nautical aesthetic (Picaresque, Blueberry Boat, BOAT) but where they presented "what life must be like out at sea", Port O'Brien is explaining that "it's still life, it's just out at sea." There's a song about accidentally catching a puffin in the nets, there's one called "A Bird Flies By", and I'm convinced. These are the thoughts you have in this kind of isolation, these events take the foreground and have no competition, so they mean everything. "I Woke Up Today" has a barefoot, wooden plank kind of feeling, lit by lantern, an orange light. I know it's the most unlikely case, but I imagine this recorded at sea too, and the loneliness, even of their collected voices, is unyielding in the persistent, empty landscape of the human part of the ocean at night. [Site]

School of Language - "Rockist Part I"

Half of Field Music, David Brewis, is School of Language. And this feels academic to me, so it's cohesive. It's kind of dressed in a uniform, it feels single file, it's on the clock. It's a bell-ringer, a study group, a five-minute washroom break. It's a contained kind of emotion, it looks up to sky but dares not reach. And for that reason, kind of fades out without ever really reaching its full potential, it merely does good enough. [MySpace]

Brighton, MA - "Good Kind of Crazy"

Jordan Himelfarb once said to me (about writing for this blog) that one begins to run out of ways to describe music. A lot of music is like a road, like a kiss, like a dream, like a movie, like a glance, a smell, a breeze, a memory, joy. I agreed with him, thinking of all the times I'd listened to songs and thought, "no, I've said that before". He hasn't run out of new ways to describe music and neither have I, so maybe it's just something you say when you want to seem humble, or you want to relate to someone, or you're tired. This song has both the feeling that I've heard it before (it's like a road, and also brown pants, and Bob Dylan) and the feeling that I want to relate to someone, that I'm tired. It's a lovely left-alone kind of song, in the backseat of a car, in your bedroom (decorated a year ago), could I hear the phone from here even if it rang? Yes I could. [Buy]