Said the Gramophone - image by Ella Plevin

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Emptied Out
by Jordan

Shotmaker - "Uninhibited"

From Ottawa and more specifically, from my very own high school (I own it), this screamo band is better than all the others. The bass is a big brick building, coming to life, marching forward, stopping to contemplate, then onward ho. The drums and voice relentless and violent. But it?s the guitar that makes the band what it is: both extraordinarily precise and densely sublime. [Buy]

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The Cay - "Hey, Lady"

From the Sala Rossa last night, because the sound was so good (and because I only care about exposing you to my own band). Buy!

6:30 AM on Jan 22, 2005.
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Spent
by Jordan

I have obliged Kill Rock Stars? request that I remove ?The Infanta? from the site. Sorry to everyone for the confusion.

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The Prisonaires - "Surleen"

The Prisonaires were prisoners in the Tennesse State Penitentiary. Sixty percent of the quintet were incarcerated for murder. Of the various Prisonaires, John Drue, who was serving three years for larceny, posed by far the least serious threat to Surleen?s health (but not to her pocketbook).

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Final Fantasy - "Peach, Plum, Pear"

Final Fantasy (aka Owen Pallett of Les Mouches) arranged the strings on the Arcade Fire record and is opening for the band on their American tour. Here he covers a song by this past year?s other hot indie act, Joanna Newsom. He fashions out of her gumptious harp-pluck, fairy-voice fantasy, a pizzicato, click and feedback delicacy that turns into a rousing piece of bowed violin counterpoint.

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For Montreal readers: My editor, Max Maki and I are in a band together called The Cay. We will be playing tomorrow night at the Sala Rosa at around 9:30. If you don?t come I?ll be crippled by self-doubt and might play the wrong chord at the wrong time, thereby ruining music. Are you prepared to have that weighing on your conscience? No!

2:08 AM on Jan 20, 2005.
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What Needs To Be Done
by Jordan

The Decemberists - "The Infanta"

Why would I post a second song by this band that I don?t really like, you ask? Well, I?ve had enough of your questions. God, I?m not your dad!

?The Infanta? is a trip on a pirate ship setting off from England and travelling eastward. The melodrama appeals to the prog fan in me: tom drums drive, organ pushes, strings swish and crash like a mighty sea, distorted guitar strums explode like cannons, the story is preposterous.

Anyway, it still sounds like a big Neutral Milk Hotel jack with a Fiery Furnaces chord change and some Genesis showmanship. [Info]

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Society of Rockets - "Little Road"

Acoustic guitar and reverb drenched vocals present a lullaby for driving and searching. Don?t fall asleep at the wheel. [Buy]

4:28 AM on Jan 18, 2005.
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If I'd Played a Song, Would They Have Stopped Talking?
by Jordan

The Impossible Shapes - "Our Love Lives"

From Bloomington, Indiana, the Impossible Shapes tread incredibly diverse musical terrain, nodding to a wide range of influences along the way, while still doing something coherent and their own. Deep bowed strings, concrete pastiches with superimposed bass melodies, back-porch picked banjo, Love-like sweeping folk-pop melodies, Microphones-like use of sound-space in production (voices coming in from all directions, sometimes right in your ear, sometimes from way over your shoulder; sometimes bass drums hit you in the gut, sometimes snares are warning from a distance).

?Our Love Lives? is one of the most straight-ahead songs on the limited vinyl-only release, Tum. Heavy acoustics are strummed with electric guitar and piano weaving in and out of the mix almost unnoticeably. The voice, like a brass instrument, cuts through the melee and engages in melodic interplay with the round playful bass. At 2:33 the song begins to slip away, moving into unexpected minor chords. When it gathers itself back up and the driving guitars kick back in, the two voices peel away, one in each channel, humming and singing. For the remaining few seconds the instruments and voices take turns falling apart and regaining control.

The ambiguity of this song?s title is cleared up in its first line, ?Our love lives inside the sea.? Actually, writing the line out doesn?t really clear up its ambiguity, so listen and find out for yourself. [Info]

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The Invisible Cities - "Synaptic Gap"

On ?Synaptic Gap? The Invisible Cities sound like Yo La Tengo: delayed guitar feedback, deep tremolo, cymbal wash and crisp tom drums. An ethereal female voice floats above.

From their self-released cd, Watertown. [Info]

9:27 PM on Jan 14, 2005.
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Silly and Crazy and Hard To Do
by Jordan

Arthur Russell - "A Little Lost"

New York dance music producer and cellist, Arthur Russell died from AIDS in 1992.
___

In ?A Little Lost,? Russell?s cello never settles into a single mode, doesn?t stop surprising. It alternates between providing long notes (a bed for the lightly strummed, low-mixed acoustic guitar), quick stabs of lead melody, and playful harmony or counterpoint to his amorphous vocal line.

There are no points of reference for a song like this. (Except that) as Joni Mitchell?s songs sound like her own and Neil Young?s songs sound like his own, so too does this song sound like Arthur Russell?s own, the sound coming from within him and belonging to him alone.

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Animal Collective - "Leaf House"

Animal Collective blends unadulterated insanity, acid trip psych jamminess, rich harmonies and a surrealist lyrical approach to make something tense, propulsive and beautiful. When they sing ?kitties,? my kitty (Bruno the Berber (purr-purr) kitty) listens, and so should you (and your kitties (and their kitties)).

4:13 PM on Jan 12, 2005.
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Wanting (It) To Work
by Jordan

Okkervil River - "It Ends With A Fall"

There are a few Okkervil River songs that I like a lot, and a few others that I like significantly less. This is not so unusual, I suppose.

Sheff is undoubtedly a gifted songwriter with a penchant for heartbreaking melody and an uncanny ability to underscore those melodies with subtly blended arrangements. He also manages the impressive feat of writing lyrics that sound like they came into being with the song - not before or after. But sometimes he pushes too hard with his voice, screams over the band, blows apart the confidently written, arranged, performed songs, with uncomfortably, embarrassingly raw vocals. The band is at their best, as in ?It Ends With A Fall,? when the rawness and vulnerability emerge organically from the emotional force of the music. On this track his voice never breaks apart completely, but only wavers, and when it does so, the organs have already made us feel the undoing in our chest. Sheff doesn?t rip out his heart and pummel us with it; he simply shows us something, invites us to empathize, and we do.

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Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band - "Van Dieman's Land"

Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band have in common with the Fairport Convention:

1. A bassist

2. The use of traditional folk-songs of England in combination with rock instrumentation to forge a new kind of music.

3. Jangling guitars.

4. Gifted female vocalists whose voices cut through the rock din and preserved the pastoral feudal Englishness of the songs.

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Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band differ from the Fairport Convention most notably in this way:

Whereas Denny?s voice is clear as day, Collins?s is overcast, cold and mossy. In this way her voice can at first seem more dated, but also communicates something unique in folk-rock. As Alan Lomax put it: ?What comes through is sincerity, purity... Here one occasionally has that rarest of musical experiences - hearing a young girl singing in the house or garden, dreaming of love.?

4:31 AM on Jan 11, 2005.
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I'll Be Right There
by Jordan

Elizabeth Cotten - "Freight Train"

Elizabeth Cotten plays slow, deep, aching guitar and squawks her crude and creaking vocal line expressing her inane world view (what does this song mean?).

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Destroyer with Frog Eyes - "New Ways of Living"

It took me a few listens, but I've come to embrace Your Blues, Destroyer?s latest album, as if it was my own child. The album?s synth sounds, mostly bad imitations of other instruments, initially come off as corny, but as you explore the fragile melodies (preferably with headphones on) you come to realize that the synth soundscapes create their own fairy tale world, a perfect location for the set of songs.

I saw Bejar (Destroyer?s front and sometimes only man) play in support of the album in Ottawa with Vancouver?s Frog Eyes as his backing band. The synths were replaced by a full rock band and Carey Mercer?s (from Frog Eyes) wild hooting back-up vocals and sharp, loud leads. The latter of which I found overpowering and distracting (though when I mentioned it afterwards, I was jeered out of the room, a social pariah).

This version of ?New Ways Of Living? (recorded with Frog Eyes as part of Destroyer?s CBC studio sessions), (however), outdoes the Your Blues version by a mile. Frog Eyes knits a tight weave of frenetic pop around Destroyer?s camp. The song?s a sustained sprint with Mercer crowding Bejar, pushing him, breathing down his neck. Then at 1:49 Mercer sets in with the perfectly surreal yodel of an undead little girl and the guitars pick themselves up into a wave propelling the song to its anthemic climax.

1:02 AM on Jan 7, 2005.
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