Archives : all posts by Sean

Window Twins - "Maybe It's Time". Window Twins' I'm This Tall City is a diffuse and yarny album - diffuse like stovesmoke, yarny like yarn. I've been listening to it off and on for weeks and now sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night hearing one of their half-melodies. At first I thought it was just an earworm, a song stuck in my head; but then I realised No, it's actually playing somehwere. Somewhere in the dustbunnies, there's a tiny gramophone. [MySpace]

Reefer - "Blue Moon". I know this song was actually recorded in Hawaii, and certainly it's got a recorded-in-Hawaii vibe, but in the messy croon of Nick "Unicorns/Islands" Thorburn's vocals I hear just someone wanting to be in Hawaii. Someone who isn't there and yet who hopes by force of ooooo-ooooh they might get there. As if a beachside beat and some tuneful strength of will could carry you wafting over the snowbanks and the conifers, up over to those sandy sunsets. [MySpace]

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Elsewhere:

Have been really enjoying the curation at Sunday Is For Sounds, an mp3blog by Peter Bayne.

Marcello and Lena have finally offered up their Top (100!) Albums of 2008. And with, I'm surprised to report, Kanye and Coldplay tied for #1.

Finally, NICE SNACKS (aka THE COLD DRINK) is the new t-shirt & prints company by my friend Dave B (of The Diskettes, Popsheep, Endless Bummer and more). So far it's just t-shirts, but they are doozies! Shaq and Yao Ming holding Major League Baseball's greatest prize! Audrey Hepburn wearing a t-shirt of Al Pacino wearing a Los Angeles Raiders poncho! Oh man. Limited editions, affordably priced, and even the location-specific postage rates are hilarious.

[photo source]

Martina Topley Bird - "Lying". If every affair was this perfect - if every philandering this slow-slinking handclap trumpet-to-organ perfect, - well then society would crumble. Skyscrapers would tumble in slow-motion as their employees streamed out on extended lunch-breaks; bushes would take over lawns and then curl like hands over houses; kettles would whistle forever on stoves; and we'd power our cars with cuckold's tears. Promises would be worthless in this world, and children would not understand. But affairs are not this perfect. Don't take my word for it - listen to Martina. She tells us right there. This song is a lie. [buy]

Denson-Parris Sacred Harp Singers - "The Good Old Way 213T". On Marc 8, 1934, the Denson-Parris Sacred Harp Singers got together in a room and prayed. But the place was bugged. A microphone was there, scooping up every prayer, and their fa-so-la was gulped up like goldwater. The Denson-Parris Sacred Harp Singers sang "hallelujah" and they meant it. There were no histrionics, no s-t-re-t-c-h-e-d-o-u-t ache, just the word "hally-hallelujah", voices chiming, the Denson-Parris Sacred Harp Singers reading their notes and singing it the right, honest way. // There is swing in this song; more than any other sacred harp song I've heard, there is swing. Something jazz in the sloop of vowels. As if it's a psalm for a nightclub on the morning after, pious & hungover & standing in the tinsel. [buy]

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One last reminder - Montrealers, please come to this show on Friday - celebrating the launch of Inside the Frozen Mammoth. Tune-Yards, I hear, has a new rhythm section.

Just noticed that Skatterbrain has released its first compilation album! Silkscreened, handsome, and filled with the finest indie-pop. Also: the price is a steal.

And finally, the Burning Hearts song at Shake Your Fist is absolutely terrific. Finnish pop that swerves rose, and as Amy says, I don't even want to know you if you don't immediately love -- or can't come to love -- this song

[photograph by Aino Kannisto]

Xylos - "This House We Built". Xylos advertise themselves as friends of Yeasayer and indeed it's easy to imagine that Xylos have a lot of friends; a lot of people who come over for bottles of beer and Settlers of Catan, listening to Yo La Tengo and Animal Collective, going out to the balcony for a smoke, leaving a sketch of a peacock on one of Aaron's rolling-papers. [more/free download]

Max Tundra - "Which Song". If true love were a game show, well, there'd be a lot of mystery doors and one really killer theme-song. You'd go and be "Uh, I'll take Door #17, Alec," and then if you were picking the wrong one, leading yourself to a six-year marriage and then a messy divorce, Alec'd force you to "Ask an Expert" or "Call your Dad" or "Sober Up". Or the producers would cut to a commercial break and lead you back over to Door #6, hinting strongly of a soulmate hiding right behind. In fact if true love were a game show, things'd be a lot simpler. Sponsors don't like unhappy endings, and there's always a right answer. [buy]

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Today is the last day to vote for Said the Gramophone as "Best Weblog about Music" in the 2009 Bloggies. Please do!

Great concert in Montreal on Friday, as the official launch party for Inside the Frozen Mammoth (a visual arts blog I'm helping to write). Nut Brown, Shapes & Sizes, and Tune-Yards. Plus short films, DJ Khiasma, and art prints for the first 100 arrivals. At Il Motore! See you there!

[drawing by Mollie Goldstrom (it's for sale)]

Doug Randle - "Coloured Plastics". What seems at first like a jingle is in fact a wistful complaint, or rather it's a jingle for post-industrial angst; a psych-pop ditty that sounds as good now as it must have in 1971, warm & catchy & spry. Listening to Randle's rediscovered and reissued masterpiece, Songs For The New Industrial State, it's an outright travesty that he's been left out of the canon. And not just the Canadian pop canon; this is the stuff of John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, the Velvet Underground's Loaded. He quotes Simon & Garfunkel here (sorta), but it's to connect the dots between their NutraSweet folk-music and this world's plastic-wrapper gloss. Nostalgia's a complicated thing in a cellophane present: even the most beleaguered hearts get some battery-powered sun. [buy - highly recommended!]

Liz Durrett - "Wild As Them". There's a ton to love on Liz Durrett's Outside Our Gates, so why not take the song that doesn't just have her wild rose voice - but also a tiny guitar solo and whole fields of horns. There are so many horns that it's totally overkill, beautiful overkill, glorious overkill, Durrett almost getting crowded out of her own song but still standing fast, the beautiful glorious whole field of hurricane just flattening everything for a mile around, turning the grass to trampled copper. [buy - highly recommended]

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Said the Gramophone is looking for a major sponsor for an upcoming contest. If your company (or a company you er know) might be interested in a partnership, please get in touch and I can offer more details. It's just about the only time that Said the Gramophone ever takes anything close to advertising, and a great chance to team up with, um, the likes of us!

[photograph by Richard Mosse]

Nneka - "Heartbeat". A wonderful song, but Nneka also sings it wonderfully - makes the chorus's stumbling drums second to her own voice, makes her own verse second to that h-h-h-h-heartbeat. It's a little bit Robyn, a little but Lauryn Hill, but has the full ambitious believing bloom of a singer, a real singer, a pop-star-who-oughta. Fingers crossed that there's more to come (and that this'll be all over my radio). [MySpace / buy / & the video is great; mostly candid footage from Lagos, where Nneka lived until recently]

Andrew Bird - "Tenuousness". What I like about Andrew Bird is two things, and they are pretty simple. I like the melodies he uses, or chooses, or finds. (I imagine him like a taxidermist at a zoo; catching sight of a melody and thinking - oh, i ought to make that into a song.) And I like the way he sings the words. At this point I scarcely pay attention to what he's saying; mostly I care about the way he says it. I mean look at this: From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to Porto-centric Lisboans, Greek-Cypriots and harbor sots who "hang around", in quotes, a lot. Here on the page it seems like the worst kind of "literary" pop, like smartypants-lookitme. But hear it sung, well, and it feels like music, it feels like rhyme, words chosen for the way they skip off Bird's tongue, just right. As a lyrical approach it has more in common with Lil Wayne than with Colin Meloy, and that suits me just fine. [buy]

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A million thank-yous to all those who helped nominate us for the 2009 Bloggie Awards. We are nominated for Best Weblog About Music, and we would love if you voted for us. A Bloggie Award is a stupid, silly popularity contest, and relatively speaking we are not very popular, but whenever I get to use the word "Bloggie" it sure tickles my grandparents. The other nominees are Idolator, Stereogum, One Sweet Song, and Alex Ross's terrific The Rest Is Noise

Also, thanks to Matt, Said the Gramophone is now on Twitter. It is just a feed of our new posts, but we may one day do something else with it.

Have a lovely week.

This is a special Saturday post because I am extremely bummed out by David Berman's announcement that he is more or less wrapping up the Silver Jews. Berman wants to turn to writing - books? poetry? screenplays? - and is haunted by the fact that his band are "too small of a force to ever come close to undoing a millionth of all the harm" that his father, a right-wing lobbyist, has "caused". I want to wish David well in all his undertakings - and I'm as excited as anyone about a possible follow-up to his poetry book, Actual Air. But like Carl, I hope he is making his own glad choice - and is not directed by his father's sour one.

In any case, the Silver Jews are one of our favourite bands, and Berman one of our favourite lyricists. He is one of my favourite poets too, but as Berman has often insisted, these are two separate things. He is among the most beloved artists to Said the Gramophone, and in honour of him - in honour & celebration, not a memorial, as Berman has centuries left in his heart, - we have re-uploaded every Silver Jews song we have ever written about. The first was almost four years ago, the most recent just six weeks.

May the wind be at your back, David.

Said the Gramophone & the Silver Jews:

Dan on "Party Barge" and Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea.
Dec 11, 2008

Sean on "Strange Victory, Strange Defeat" and the Silver Jews live.
Sep 4, 2008

Dave Berman himself! On our blog! Answering questions!
Jun 12, 2008

Sean on "Frontier Index".
Nov 26, 2007

Dan on "Night Society".
Dec 29, 2006

Rachell Sumpter's painting for "Horse Leg Swastikas".
Jan 18, 2006

Dan on "How Can I Love You (If You Won't Lie Down)".
Jul 18, 2005

Dan on "How to Rent a Room".
Mar 7, 2005

Fever Ray - "Concrete Walls". "It wasn't scientists who discovered the fever ray; it was a woman. She was 23. On January 22, 2009, she returned home by public transportation. She wore a navy blue down jacket, jeans. She had a backpack with three notebooks, stories by Kelly Link, Milton's Paradise Lost. Disembarking from the 55 bus, she walked to the apartment she shared with a man. The apartment was full of sounds. The television was on, the radio was on. As the woman crossed the rooms she turned the devices off. She then heard the other sounds. At the end of the long hallway was their bedroom, and in their bedroom the man was with another woman. The woman stood in the doorway watching them. Finally she lifted her arm and pointed her open hand at the man. The ray was invisible and did not feel of anything. The man noticed her standing there, stopped what he was doing, said "Kay, I--". She turned and left the apartment. She waited for the 55 bus. One day later, the man developed a fever of 103°F. He developed nausea, fatigue, insomnia, chills, sweats, mild hallucination; there were effects of the fever ray. The man did not get better. Nor did the man get sicker. The man's fever persisted for 51 years, until he died of unrelated liver failure."

[buy Fever Ray, the tremendous solo album by The Knife's Karin Dreijer; and more important still, watch the music video for "If I Had A Heart".]

Aidan Moffat & the Best-Ofs - "Big Blonde". This is a song about seeing your love through a window and loving her, richly. And about her being the only one, even when you see one of your "heart's former keepers". I can confidently promise I could not give a fuck. Because you love the love you love, richly, with skip of heart and glitter of guitar and rhyme of rhyme.

[the music video for this one is fucking beautiful, too, in basically the opposite way from Fever Ray's; and it reminds me of the way Aidan Moffat bellowed "YES!" at this Herman Dune gig we were both at: because he meant it]

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I would vote for Jay.