Archives : all posts by Sean

The Mittenstrings - "Rochester Said".
The Mittenstrings are a young band making folk music that's earnest, whispered, tender. Naturally, they decided to present it through a sardonic, stop-motion video sitcom. The videos are beautifully handmade, drily hilarious - the closest aesthetic equivalent I can think of right now is a 25-year-old Charles Schultz oil-painting a zine. But the songs are something so different. Yes, they could soundtrack Charlie Brown's pensive walkthrough the snow - but these hushed voices feel private, intimate, murmurs from the far side of a window. Organ, acoustic guitar, synths, occasional glockenspiel or recorder - it's gauzy stuff, self-recorded in Montreal, and yet even in this form it captures something essential about heartache, about winter & summer and the particular melancholy of we who live in cities.

[Watch the complete Mittenstrings "sitcom" here, and order CDs/DVD through MySpace or Facebook]

Sister Suvi - "Longlegs" [rough mix, unmastered].
Sister Suvi are one of Montreal's greatest new bands, authors of one of Said the Gramophone's favourite songs of 2008, and you are going to be hearing a lot more about Now I Am Champion, their debut album. For now all I can offer is an unmastered track called "Longlegs"; a track that's fireworks in a paper bag; a track that's strings, asphalt, tropical fish, oak casks; a track that's track & field, a reason to get up 'n run; because Sister Suvi will play at Casa del Popolo on Saturday night, Jan 17, their first gig in ages, together with 514 hotstuffs Parlovr and Mixylodian. I'll be there - so should you be.

[homepage/MySpace]

(image by nick howard)

Freur - "Doot Doot". When we finished high school, Luce, we knew less than a hummingbird-wing's amount of anything. We knew less than nothing about nothing. We slow-danced, felt all moon & magnolia, all hip on hip and hot on skin, but we were kids who ate the tinned soup our parents' simmered, who spent our summers just- just- hanging out. I can't count the things we didn't know. Things about working - about the persistence of working, the way it never stops. About really being alone out there. About how you can pack up and leave. Or come back. About what it means to be poor, Luce. Or as well, what it's like having money - what it's like to order drinks and appetizers and desserts and just do it. Lucy, we didn't know. We knew cricket-wing, moth-wing, less than paper. We knew zero. So how the fuck, Luce, did we find each other? That's what I want to know. Lucy, I love you and that's what I want to know. [buy] (thanks, steven.)

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities - "Calico (Outside)". Oh hey! What's going on, Carl? I'm good, I'm good. Totally - yeah. It's crazy! I spent almost all week indoors but I had to get out. Totally, totally. How's Erin? Really? Good for her. And your, your- yeah. Sometimes it's slow I guess. But I remember how sweet those photos at that show a few years ago- yeah. Yeah. Me? Oh, not much. Work. Still living there, yup. Oh! One interesting thing I guess. My cat cast a spell on me. My cat. Cleo? Yeah, white with a brown stripe. You met her when you and Em- yeah. She cast a spell on me. A spell. A magic spell, yeah. No I'm serious! I walked into my bedroom and there was this circle that she had painted on the ground in milk, just with her little paws. Milk. And she was miaowing in this weird voice. And now I'm in her thrall. I'm her servant. I have to do whatever she says. She just kind of thinks it, and I find myself doing it. Usually giving her more food, yeah. She's got so fat. She sleeps in my room now, on the big bed. I usually just chill in the kitchen. Yeah, I have wi-fi, so it's okay. Streaming movies or whatever. Not so much BitTorrent - usually I stream. It kinda depends, but alluc.org? All You See. A L L U C. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah, totally man - ok see you. Stay warm, right? Haha, yeah. [buy]

(drawing by Nick Howard)

Nicolas Jaar - "John the Revelator". More than a year since Nicolas Jaar first wrote me, then a 17-year-old with a remarkable track - "Little Stone" - and pockets full of promise. Now he's grown up a little; got lost in Istanbul's fog, had his shoes shined, bought old blues & new dubstep records at the bazaar, drank water from a fountain, met a girl, lost her, bought a square of lace, climbed a hill, left a mark in the dirt with the heel of his shoe. Nicolas Jaar doesn't record as Nico any more - he's given up his claim. But he's not taken one step back from the sounds rattling in his head, in his yesterdays, all those skip- and slip-ping songs. [more]

Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power and the Amorphous Strums - "Teddy Bear". Veteran songwriter Vic Chesnutt follows up his collaboration with A Silver Mt. Zion by teaming up with the psychedelic jamsters called Elf Power. The result is hot and fuzzy, American Gothic in the manner of a red & black wool sweater. On "Teddy Bear", Elf Power lend him a reggae backbeat, a bona fide bassline, but Chesnutt doesn't exactly know what to do with them. The song is like a recurring dream, different at every instance but with the same line repeating; here some whispers, here a spacey synth. Can't tell if it's a song about getting sick or about getting well. [buy]

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Montrealers: Great show at Il Motore tonight (Thursday). Micro-sets by Julie Doiron, Handsome Furs, the Luyas, Adam & the Amethysts, Miracle Fortress, Shapes & Sizes, Elfin Saddle, Snailhouse, Nut Brown and Patrick Gregoire (Sister Suvi/Islands), in celebration of Phonopolis and Pome Records' 1st birthdays. $8!

Edinburghers: Great (free!) show coming up at Cab Vol on January 29. The SL Records "Late Late Xmas Party", featuring performances by Withered Hand, Paul Vickers & The Leg and Greg Dodgson.

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Elsewhere:

Love this blog of a 15-or-maybe-16-year-old going alone for a $280 dinner. So much personality is squeezed into his prose - I can't help but imagine a particularly well-written character from a new indie film.

The Blogotheque has selected Forest Fire's Survival as their favourite album of 2008. As we have said before, it is a terrific album - with one of our favourite songs of the year. The limited edition CD is sold out, but you can get the whole thing from Catbird Records - as an absolutely free download.

The 2009 Bloggies are accepting nominations. Last year we (absolutely infeasibly) won the popularity contest for Best Music Weblog. The year before, we were nominated for Best Writing and then got demolished by Go Fug Yourself. Can't tell you whether we ought to be nominated for anything this year, but certainly you should vote for some of the wonderful blogs listed there ---->> on our sidebar. (It was a particularly good year for The Big Picture [source of today's photo], Five Whys, La Blogotheque, It's Nice That and My Love For You Is A Stampede Of Horses.)

Busta Rhymes - "Don't Touch Me (Throw Da Water On Em)" [buy]

When I blow out birthday candles later today I will wish for two things:

1. Wisdom; and
2. To be alive in the way that Busta Rhymes' words are alive in his throat & mouth; to be alive in the same way as those slipping, spinning, diving words, too fast to be pinned down in ink; to be too fast for painters, watercolourists, charcoalers, caricaturists, peeping typewriter-tappers; to be too fast for anyone to draw, sketch or name; no I'm loose, I'm alive, I'm 27 and wait until you get a load of this.

[photo is from Iraq, 1932; photographer unknown]

Gordon Downie - "Insomniacs of the World Good Night". And loving evenings falling down in piles, Downie sings. Amid these evenings, these mornings- and afternoons-after, let's imagine a year without restlessness. A world of peace and fulfillment, of sleep and dream. We'll eat lembas and drink white tea; we'll smell the blooms on flowering trees; we'll remember the feeling of when our lips touched our friends' cheeks, last night. We'll not forget the feeling, petalblush moment after its happening. We'll remember the feeling of our lips as they touched our friends' cheeks, the second when we meant it - so easily and so clearly - and no fireworks were needed, not a single one, to light the room. [buy]

Happy new year.

[photo from a sacrifice as part of this year's Eid al-Adha - not sure of the photographer]

Adrian Crowley - "Electric Eels" [MySpace/buy]

Nick Drake - "Fruit Tree" [buy]

Does Crowley steal from Drake? I am still thinking about it. Besides, I haven't seen the full liner notes. But probably this falls somewhere between reincarnation, hômage and déjà vu. One song is dusky gold, the other undersea grey. One is a prophecy, the other a warning. One promises fruit, the other - flooding. Experimental data: in my fireplace, both songs take as long to burn.

(Thanks, Davin.)

(photo source)

National Beekeepers Society - "Lazy". We don't call it lazy when a dune is all sanding in the sun, there, or when a tomato-plant bobs its furry leaves in the breeze. We don't call it lazy when oil slicks over the sea, when a cassette plays through in the Buick's tape-deck. So why does my mother call it lazy when I take the Greyhound for four days, cross-country; when I break into the art deco skyscraper and go down to the basement; when I plug in the fat cable of my amp & electric guitar; when I play with my rock band in the gold and steel; when I King Kong it to the top, dangle from the spire, and sand, bob, slick & play through. [buy this great fuzzy album here / MySpace]

Lake - "Heaven". Good morning, Montreal! It's a beautiful snow-soaked Monday in December. Looks good for a White Christmas, doesn't it folks? Later we're going to have local actor Dan Beirne in the studio talking about his new project but first we've got Billy Joel, the Divinyls and Mirah comin' up, not to mention the new track by Lake. Traffic's moving smoothly on the Decarie, the white stuff's getting cleared up, and you know that junk I said yesterday about wanting to kill myself? Well - forget about it. Thanks for all your letters. This morning I fell in love with the sticky handwriting of a girl called Katie, from Côte St-Luc. I gave her a call and we're meeting at 5:30 to have pretzels in the studio, listen to Laura, Buzz & the Shark - and then we're going for latkes. Yup, I feel things are a-changing. [buy]