Archives : all posts by Jordan

Just one today (and a half) . But it's a doozy.

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The comments on Friday's post, as I'm sure many of you have noticed, are not working. Here is a summary of what was written:

1. Everybody loves Wolf Parade.
2. Some people love The Decemberists.
3. Some people just are not sure about the Decemberists.
4. Some people who have seen me in person mentioned my nearly super-human agility and good-looks.
5. Some people pointed out that the comments are not working.

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Blind Willie Johnson - "John The Revelator"

From deep down in the centre of something, from inside a desert on fire, comes this sweaty brooding dirge.

"Who's that a-writing?"
"It's John the Revelator."

Is "John the Revelator" Saint John the Baptist emerging out of the desert with clothes "of camel's hair, and a leather girdle about his loins?" That would be fitting.

"What's John a-writing?"
"Ask the Revelator."

Johnson's voice is a thing of the earth, busting out of the ground like thick crude. The back-up singer stays with him, is not afraid.

Blind Willie Johnson died destitute, sleeping on wet newspaper in the place where his house had been before it burnt down. He sings as if aware of that biographical fact, which of course, he could not have been.

Is he a man? An alligator? A time past?

***

Richard Buckner - "Lovin Her Was Easier"

I compulsively buy Kris Kristofferson albums at garage sales, and yet have never enjoyed one of his songs.

Then Buckner tries his hand at one and gets it exactly right. It seems unjust.

As Dan points out, his voice flutters between notes entirely without effort.

"I have seen the morning burning golden on the mountains in the skies."

This song is drenched in an entirely different kind of sunlight than drenches the songs of The Beach Boys and Love.

In Celebration of David Pajo:

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Tortoise - "Tin Cans And Twine"

The first time I saw Tortoise play live they were touring in support of Standards. Tortoise being one of my favourite bands from when I was in high school, I looked forward to the show with prodigious eagerness, and with some old friends, gin and tonics, and a few cigars (yes, that is the type of lifestyle I lead) we rolled down to the Cabaret. They played most of the canonical repertoire; ?DJed?, ?Along The Banks Of Rivers?, ?Seneca?. But it wasn?t until their fourth encore, when they finally came to understand that people would not stop clapping, would not leave satisfied unless it happened, that they played ?Tin Cans And Twine? (a song they had sold to be used in a Calvin Klein add). They seemed peeved and played a strange and stilted version that never quite developed into anything more than noodling.

The emotive, riff-based low end with occasional aching high end is Tortoise?s signature, and never was it writ more elegantly than on ?Tin Cans And Twine.?

A simple bass riff complimented by a high-hat, bass drum and snare is transformed and melodically explicated (there was more there than we understood) by the baritone guitar. The guitar exits and we are left with the same bass part, but now listened to entirely differently. It continues (like all things) until it stops, at which point we are left with quiet; then a simple and evocative baritone guitar. Everything comes back in. A high pitched signal in the background increases its rate, and so its pitch, like it?s fighting to breathe normally while running.

Come to think of it, the song is perfect for running... slowly.

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Papa M - "Over Jordan"

This is another song from an album I don?t like much. I am a very big fan of Pajo?s guitar playing, but I don?t find him to be a particularly good folk/pop songwriter. For the most part, the vocal parts seemed tacked on, and too unvarying in pitch.

This, however, is an exception.

Mmm, that?s nice. Sounds so soft.

Acoustic guitar, banjo like glass. His voice in the chorus is just like Leonard Cohen, and Will Oldham?s backing vocals sound just like Leonard Cohen (an octave and more up).

This song has my name in its title (?tis why I like it). Can you deal with that?

1) We're back in business.
2) This is thanks in very large part to the hard work of Dan Beirne. Praise him.
3) It turns out that Sean already posted "Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts." We are like Two Bad Dudes, he and I. Well, here's another perspective.

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The Decemberists - "Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect"

I heard the Decemberists' album a few weeks ago and was unimpressed. It sounded to me a bit like Neutral Milk Hotel without the good songs or interesting production. Not pleasing.

Then I heard this song. And everything changed. Everything. Most notably, the mercury I'd been stirring for weeks, finally became gold.

A swaying, zigzagging electric guitar walks in and out of the path of forward looking drums and acoustic guitar. The expressive vocals and Romantic lyrics recall Destroyer and a Great War era Rousseau (had such a thing ever been [!(?)]). The organ falls note by note onto the intricate instrumental dialogue. Gusts of Mellifluous backing "ah"s pass through undisruptively.

After hearing "Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect" I decided to give the album another listen. It still stunk.

Maybe they lucked out and stumbled onto a good one, or maybe this is an indication of their potential. Either way, the status of this song as a winner remains unchanged.

Epicurus says: Listen to it because it makes you feel good.

***

Wolf Parade - "Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts"

Here is raw, vital pop gospel. Scratchy keyboards bubbling up. Distorted electric guitar biting tentatively. Full throttle glam-soul vocals calling to arms.

53 seconds into the song, when the band's energetic anger turns to a manic focus on a detailed and substantial plan, we are given the gift (so thoughtful (what have we done for Wolf Parade lately?)) of a most gloriously propulsive keyboard line. "The Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" hits you in your chest.

"But God doesn't always have the best goddamned plans. Does he?"

The band is a preacher, and the song, delivered on bended knee, is a desperate but most righteous sermon.

Though this music is new sounding and clever, it's the body (the power, energy and sweat) and not the mind, that draws me in and makes me want it. I know, I'm shallow.

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p.s. in celebration of the new server, Neale has purchased saidthegramophone.com. Thank you, Neale.

The End of Something

Said The Gramophone will be taking a day off tomorrow as we prepare to move to a new home. I'm utterly baffled by the computer science issues (which, I believe, are fairly simple), but I do have a crafty team working on the move. Hopefully, we will be up and running in our cosy new place on Wednesday.

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Spengler - "The Choice Is Made, The Traveler Has Come"

Driving through New Brunswick and into Nova Scotia in February, the smell of evergreen is pungent and the fog can be blinding.

This song, through screamed harmonies and shredding guitar, manic energy and unexpected changes, vividly evokes that drive. Though I've never seen the Bay of Fundy, one gets the sense from "The Choice" that it is a grand, fearsome natural wonder (I just looked up the Bay of Fundy, and apparently it has extremely high tides, which, I guess, could be seen as both grand and fearsome. Well done, Spengler.)

Spengler the band is to be distinguished from Spengler the mathematician and philosopher, whose own recordings are subtle and subdued (more in the vein of Low). [Buy]

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Joy Division - "Decades"

Atrocity Exhibition, the first song on Joy Division's exceptional Closer, is an invitation to "come inside." "Decades", the last song, is a farewell (to life, as it turned out).

The muted bass and Gothic hammer-on guitar combine with the synthesized string slashes and low-down stilted drone of Ian Curtis's vocals to make the sort of medieval Requiem that could only have been composed in early eighties Northern England.

At halfway through the song the keyboards start to lose their tuning and the band comes out of time. This is the "degeneration" that Curtis sings about. It's giving up.

"Decades" is a song for the end of something.

Sniff...Goodbye Tangmonkey. [Buy]

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House warming party on Wednesday. Everyone's gonna be there.

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No, I Won't Call You Back

So, I'm going home to Ottawa today, where there is no computer.

"In all of Ottawa?"
"No, just in my shack."

Alas, this will be my last post until Monday night. And it's short. Why? Because I have to go to my apartment, feed my cat (Bruno, the Berber (purr-purr) kitty), pack some stuff and come back here (to this land of computers and technicians), all within the next hour (I should allow for about an hour of travel time), so that I can get picked up by (the) Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet, who will trustily pilot me homeward.

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Muluqen Mellesse - "Wetetie mare"

From the first volume of the terrific Ethiopiques compilation, this track is a party replete with noise-makers and jaunty horns (do they have those at parties?). [Buy]

Because it's Canadian Thanksgiving in Ethiopia too.

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Happy Thanksgiving, Canadians. See you on Monday, everybody.

Herman Dune - "The Static Comes From My Broken Down Heart"

I?m not sure if it?s a language barrier, but there is something slightly off about Herman Dune?s lyrics. The words are clunky and misspoken. And here they are perfect. The guitar sounds like an old Sears clunker with the treble turned down, coming through an ancient tank radio tube amp.

?And all I want is, that you ponytail your hair. Keep it ponytail in[?]?

Each singer misses someone tonight. The slide guitar pines and longs. The vocal harmony is so delicate:

?And there is nothing wrong with the stereo.
Well, the static comes from my broken down heart.?

Have you ever missed someone so much that you start to shut down? So much that you stop working?

But we can be repaired, right? It gets better. And that?s why we can listen to the song without weeping ourselves to death. [Buy]

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Syl Johnson - "I Hear The Love Chimes"

If, on the other hand, you are not lonely, but with company, you might awanna listen to this slice. Syl Johnson is looking at me right now. There he is on the back cover of Music To My Ears with his lustrous moustache and soul patch. It is evident that this man knows something about love.

?I Hear The Love Chimes? bleeds soul. Every moment is a new, surprising gift of soul. The strings, guitar, bass, the drums and horns; they all make you want to say a slow ?hunh?. Here?s a preposterous proposition: that any man should have the vocal range of Syl Johnson.

Make love! [Buy]

Bruce Cockburn - "Going To The Country"

The subject of this song is something I know nothing about. Driving (I can?t) to the country (which, I believe, is full of bugs), having grown tired of urbanity (I have no real conception of anything outside of the urban setting).

Bruce Cockburn is still a Hippie, and whatever you think of his politics, this has a negative effect on his music (or, at least, his music is bad). ?Going To The Country?, however, was recorded when it was O.K. to be a hippie and that makes all the difference.

Everything is clear as glass. The guitar playing is complex, yet confident and sturdy, and with its melody, the singing faultlessly, unassumingly harmonizes.

Cockburn almost makes the country sound like a place I might want to visit. [Buy]

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Os Mutantes - "Panis Et Circenses (Bread and Circuses)"

Portuguese sounds kind of Slavic, doesn?t it? Any linguists want to explainee?

?Bread And Circuses? sounds like the arrival of a King (the King of Psychedelia?), a peasant?s soliloquy as reaction to that event, and a Michelangelo Antonioni dance party. It ends like My Dinner With Andre accompanied by Doctor Who incidental music. And I don?t feel any better about that description than you do, so don?t get mad.

Os Mutantes were nearly as technically innovative as they were musically creative; inventing their own instruments and pedals. Their production, the work of Manoel Barenbein (I dare you to be named something better than that), is clear and intimate.

Full of stops and starts and self-conscious experimentation, ?Bread And Circuses? builds momentum and finds a spaced-out regal beauty. [Buy]

Alexander "Skip" Spence - "Diana"

Skip Spence was 22 years old when he recorded Oar, his one and only solo album. Spence was the original drummer for Jefferson Airplane and a member of the California sunshine psychedelic pop/rock band, Moby Grape. He was also a lunatic who recorded "Diana" just after being released from the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital, where he had been incarcerated for attacking Moby Grape's drummer with an axe.

So, keep that in mind.

The fact that this song was written from within the hospital, lends an eerie quality to Skip's off-kilter incantations of the subject's name. Maybe he sees Diana as his chance at a normal life. Or his chance to communicate, finally. He wants her to understand him.

"Oh Diana, I am in pain. This is my heartbeat."

The song slips in and out of key. Solos come from all directions, often seemingly unrelated to the rest of the song.

He barely keeps it together, and it can be painful to listen to, but out of all the hurt and discord, the disorganization and opaque lyrics, emerges a stumbling, ham-fisted, yet trenchant love song. [Buy]

***

Arcade Fire - "Rebellion (Lies)"

I remember reading an interview with the Arcade Fire in which Win Butler (the band's frontman) said something about not thinking of the band as being part of the indie-rock genre, but as part of the broader pop tradition. At the time I didn't think much of this beyond it being just another example of the band's bravado. But now, after having listened to Funeral tens of times in the last week, I understand. These songs are not about experimentation or new directions, they were not written in the traditional sense. They were simply plucked, fully developed, from wherever it is that perfect pop songs like these are kept. Funeral is ten close approximations of the Platonic form of the pop song. The Arcade Fire has access to that very special room, a glorious song shop, visited in the past by The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye and New Order among a very select few others.

"Rebellion (Lies)" is a linear forward push. Only down strums and alternating bass drum and snare hits. A perfect pop bass. Though they are weighty and metallic (heavy metal?), the guitars (in cahoots with the piano) don't rush you forward, they just put their hand on your back and guide you faster and faster. Win's vocals ebb against the instruments' flow and you can always keep the pace up.

"Sleeping is giving in."

The instruments are sleep and the vocals are trying not to give in. The resulting clash is a dense shimmering piece of pop tumult.

At 3:18 there are two hand claps and "Rebellion" starts shimmering harder.

At 3:34 the chorus shifts into the minor key, it implodes on itself, and the guitars and strings turn to wind, pushing out in all directions.

The girl sitting across from me at the computer lab as I write this, saw the cd case and said:

"Are you listening to that right now?"
"Yeah."
"Fucking epic, man."
"Yeah, it's good."

What else can be said? [Buy]