Said the Gramophone - image by Danny Zabbal

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'Max' Is The Boy Name Of My Lady Editor
by Jordan

As you can see, I haven't posted any songs today.

This is because I have a 48,000 page paper (one word per page) due at 3 in the morning (my school is a night club), and so was unable to fulfill my posting duties on this day. However, to continue my futile attempts to satiate your insatiable appetite for The Good, I will provide an extra special extra weekend post.

I will also take this moment to urge you all to buy the Arcade Fire album, if you haven't already (it's all I listen to now). I heard a rumour that Funeral is sold out across North America, but even if this is true, many more copies will soon be printed in order for the band to fulfill their destiny.

1:08 AM on Oct 5, 2004.
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Blitz Nog: Blintzes! Blintzes!(?)
by Jordan

Little Wings - "Look At What The Light Did Now"

The natural evolution of bedroom pop brings you here, to this song. A boy in his bedroom considers and remarks on sunlight, sneaking through curtains, making impressions on hard wood.

Bedroom pop, historically speaking, takes place in a bedroom but is about the outside world. It's about how the artist in the bedroom wishes that he wasn't so awkward or so scared, so that maybe he could get the girl, get people to listen, make an impact. Little Wings, however, is content to sit in his room and watch the outside world impact on it. He makes great entertainment out of the light. And it sounds fun. I want to be there and watch the light with him. And somehow, as the light morphs into different shapes, and finally into a dead tree, the song actually turns into a brief treatment of death and reincarnation. This is some seriously introspective action. [Buy]

***

David S. Ware - "Glorified Calypso"

There's no playing around here. This song is about urgency. About brimming over. The whole band is barely contained. The sax and piano are ecstatic. The bass is frantic and repetitive. The drums overcome, indecisive. You want some relief, an outlet, a resolution. But the tension keeps building. The size and brass of Ware's sound is unrivalled. He repeatedly returns to the theme and somehow manages to play it each time, even as he thinks to himself, "This is it. I can't keep this up." And finally, he can't. He lays back and lets the band take over, no less immediate and visceral.

And then he's back. Louder than before (is it possible? How deep are his reserves?).

Like a transcendental religious, sexual, mathematical or gastronomical moment or like a hyper-active child. [Buy]

***

I hope you all have a good weekend.

8:55 PM on Oct 1, 2004.
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No Doiron Doiron Day
by Jordan

In honour of Julie Doiron's show in Montreal tonight, I have decided to have a Julie Doiron day, on which I will post songs related to, but not performed by, one of our city's finest singer/songwriters.

***

Okkervil River - "He Passes Number Thirty-Three"

"He Passes Number Thirty-Three" is taken from the split Julie Doiron/Okkervil River ep.

I know, this is Sean's band. But still, today is No Doiron Doiron Day, and there are only so many great songs that apply. So, we will share. Sean would want it that way.

Sheff is buoyed up by his love. Whatever she needs he will provide. This sort of altruistic optimism, though deeply foreign to me, is always tremendously satisfying in a lyric.

Also satisfying is the impressive competence and good taste (that most rare and essential of combinations) of the band. Thickenings and fleshings out keep propelling you to the inevitably rocky chorus. On banjos and bass new melodies emerge without warning. There are more good melodies in this song than in the entire work of Honus Wagner, who, admittedly, was a baseball player.

This is also the best song to sing along with in the history of all of the times. I encourage you all to try. The louder the better. [Buy]

***

Neil Haverty - "Seven"

This is a Julie Doiron song from her collaboration with the Wooden Stars. It was covered by Haverty for All Their Broken Hearts, the Doiron tribute album.

"Seven" unfolds easily, maintaining a warm, conversational tone throughout (does treble exist in your world, Haverty?). At first just guitars and voice. Then drops of keyboard. A vocal flourish. Shakers. Drums. Everything's up in the mix. There's the treble.

Haverty identifies Doiron's strong point as a songwriter, and emphasizes it. He breaks down what he has built up to highlight the lyrical centrepiece of the song:

Tell me you are lonely and I probably will believe you
Tell me you are lonely
Tell me you are lonely and I'll want to be with you.
Tell me you are lonely.

This is a standoff. She wants him to say that he is lonely. But she implies with the empty second halves of the second and fourth lines that she is lonely too (it would rhyme, see?). But if she can't say it, how can she expect him to say it.

Nicely done, Doiron. You too, Haverty. [Buy]

12:13 AM on Oct 1, 2004.
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Everything That Rises Must Converge
by Jordan

Sam Prekop - "On Such Favors"

What is this song about? My powers of interpretation (which, frankly, I had believed to be considerable) were shown to be feeble in the face of the obscurity of Prekop's song.

Is it about apathy? About having a gift and not wanting to use it? Is it about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? About social disease?

I don't know.

Sometimes, though, I've been up at night when everyone else in the world is sleeping (I know, it's surprising) and the song has meant something to me. I have known that it's true.

The words, the warmth of the guitar, the fragile harmonies, and above all, the tom hits (here's a drummer who knows how to tune his drums! He knows melody!). The song is simple; it never opens up. It's private; not for us. It comes in unassumingly and is gently ushered out by the high hat (are the cymbals made of brushes?).

It should be noted that this song is voodoo. Whatever favours Prekop believes should be rained on, my attempts at writing about "On Such Favours" were repeatedly poured upon. This morning, I left the cd in a computer lab at school and then had to convince a curmudgeonly (model-like) lady to give it back to me (she hated me). And then I missed my bus and was forced to sit around moping for twenty minutes and now it's quarter to one in the morning. So, I don't know, but... [Buy]

***

Young Marble Giants - "Brand-New Life"

This song was recorded in the Young Marble Giants' living room.

Two of the band members are brothers (as I am your brother (except more consanguineal)).

"Brand-New Life" was later rerecorded as "Brand-New-Life" and released on the YMG's only official album, Colossal Youth.

It's about pain and loss.

That's all you're getting. [Buy]

1:42 AM on Sep 30, 2004.
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Rilo and Chuck
by Jordan

Rilo Kiley - "Go Ahead"

"Go Ahead" is a brave face. Wide open eyes and twisted mouth. At first we're met with crisp, jaunty finger-picking and a courageous voice. She wants no longer to have to put up with the vacillations and threats, inconsistent love and chimerical stability. She seems confident, the keyboard backing her up. But then, something happens. A window opens - the sound is soft and tender - and she admits that if he (or she) wants to stay and settle down, she would like that too (especially, it seems).

Then she gets mad again, I think. I hope, for her sake, that she is being sarcastic when she sings "if you want to have your cake and eat it too, and if you want to have other people watch you while you eat it, go ahead." Because the frightening truth is that sometimes we are alienated from ourselves by the strength of our love, and so we become compromised into impossible situations.

This song either comes from within or from just beyond one of those situations. [Buy]

***

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
- Walt Whitman

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Charles Ives - "Song Without (Good) Words"

Charles Ives was the great American Transcendentalist composer - the musical counterpart of Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is no surprise then, that Ives favoured repetition and contradiction in his work.

"Song Without (Good) Words" is a slow motion rainstorm. It is at the same time airy and violent, exquisitely consonant and jarringly dissonant. The staggered pacing and the epiphanic unveiling of its unpredictable course add a sublime beauty.

Of course, the song is not only without good lyrics, but also without a human language with words to express its meaning. [Buy]

10:34 PM on Sep 28, 2004.
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To Do And Not To Do
by Jordan

Galaxie 500 - "Strange"

Do you get the sense, like I do, that this song was recorded in a really tiny room; the three members of Galaxie 500 squished together, struggling, for lack of space, to move their hands, their fingers, their feet, to nod their heads?

How can something so standardly composed (G, D, and A minor, over and over again) - and without any instrumental virtuosity in its execution - sound so completely original? It's more than that rattly cymbal and it's more than the reverb soaked vocal performance.

This song is about alienation. About having been in your room for two days, reading and talking to yourself, and finally going outside where you're met with the bizarre, incomprehensible world. "Strange" sounds original because it manages to speak across time (1989 (could you tell?)) and place, from one inaccessible island to another. From their small self-contained solitude (world) to ours.

"Isn't it strange out there?"
"Yes. Thank you for noticing."

It should be noted that this Galaxie 500 is not the same as
the contemporary Quebec band of the same name. It should also be noted that if you're in the process of coming up with a band name, names which have been taken by famous and great bands (The Beatles, etc.) should not be considered. [Buy]

***

Ornette Coleman - "Lonely Woman"

Is "Lonely Woman" like a Virginia Woolf novel

???

After a few false starts the bass settles into a stilted, crying lament. The drums push it forward "c'mon, we hafta keep moving." But the bass's pain is unfolded and expanded by Coleman's sax and Cherry's trumpet. Harmonic complexity is displaced by melodic clarity. Coleman breaks free of Cherry and into a raunchy blues. Cherry likes this wallowing indulgence and lets out a "woo". This dispirits the drums. They slow down, "Ok. If it's too hard we can stop for just one moment. But we have our duties and we must carry on."

"Lonely Woman" is an internal struggle. It's a brief, self- indulgent escape from life. It simultaneously wants to push forward and to stop and feel sorry for itself. And when at the end of the song, the bass reaches the end of its sniffling rise and falls back down to its cadence, we get a sense of resolution and finally, reconciliation to carry on. [Buy]

***

Tomorrow: something (really) old and something (relatively) new (somewhat borrowed and a little bit blue).

8:05 PM on Sep 27, 2004.
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Sapped and Sappy
by Jordan

Tim Buckley - "Once I Was"

It's not always time for a strummed acoustic guitar and a pretty voice. Generally, I think, it's best to avoid such stuff. So, why then is this song (strummed 12-string and perspicuous voice) any different?

For many of us, when we fall in love, we convince ourselves that the love that came before was somehow less real, so that we can justify the current love as of a higher order, more meaningful.

"Soon there'll be another, to tell you I was just a lie."

Buckley captures (correct me if I'm wrong) a universal moment of recognition in a dying love relationship. That moment when we have to gather up and justify our feelings. Why has this been so important? Have I been as important to her as she has been to me? Does the fact that the feeling fades diminish or invalidate it?

We want the simply strummed, slightly phased guitar and crystal voice because we want to see through it to that moment in our life, when, still in love, we realized that we soon would not be, and feeling ridiculous, hoped that our feelings were not insignificant or impermanent. That maybe there was some way to hold on. [Buy]

***

Television - "Marquee Moon"

Chalk full of huge guitar talent, Television were like The Yardbirds of the CBGB?s scene.

Three things I love about this song:

1) The production - Everything Verlaine (Television?s frontman, guitarist and co-producer, as well as Arthur Rimbaud?s lover (?)) sings lingers just a moment and then evaporates into the heavy background (tightly distorted guitars, crisp drums, tubby bass).

2) The solo - It starts off like a quarter-speed Lou Reed subway solo and then turns lyrical. The band lays back, probably with nods of understated appreciation.

3) The length - Sure, I like a song that leaves you wanting more as much as the next guy. But "Marquee Moon" leaves you just as you don?t want any more, but before you?re bored. It has an indulgent length. The band knows they're on to something good and they don?t want to let it go. At one point the song stops and maybe the drummer gets up and the guitarists undo their straps, but then they look at each other, and they smile. The drummer sits down and starts playing. The guitars converse, the bass agrees.

I agree. [Buy]

***

I?ve survived my first week. Barely. Sean clearly has a strong constitution and I am weak. But, fuck, it?s been fun. Any general comments? Words of advice?

10:03 PM on Sep 24, 2004.
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