Archives : all posts by Sean

Andreas Scholl - "Venus' Birds Whose Mournful Tunes". Countertenors are grown on farms. They are planted in fields of chamomile and sage, fed melted caramels. The most successful countertenors are grown on farms near the ocean, where the clouds will catch and carry some of the sea's salt, and the rain sprinkles it onto the growing countertenors' sand-blond hair. They are culled at the age of 18, evaluated for weight, colour, chest-, mouth- and throat-size. Those who are found suitable are sent to live in mansions atop Greek mountains, surrounded by holly and laurel, where they are trained by the eldest countertenors still living, men with lined faces and sand-blond hair. Good countertenors sing in voices the colour of spring. The best countertenors - well, they can whistle! [buy]

Twi The Humble Feather - "Finale". Listen If You Like: bicycling down canyons, drinking too much water, National Film Board soundtracks as composed by Philip Glass for Animal Collective, remembering that you're in love, little oranges. [buy]

[image source]

Eagleowl - "Sleeptide". It's ten days until Christmas, and besides - maybe you don't celebrate the thing. So what to do when snow is already blanketing everything like- like- like a blanket? What to do when the stars already sparkle like- like- like sparkles? What to do when you want a song like- like- like a carol? You close your eyes & you listen to this & you imagine yourself strung up with tinsel, ornaments, popcorn garlands. You're welcome in any house; you can stay the season; you have no enemies, just gifts at your toes. A pretty, pretty song, from the little Scottish label that brought you Meursault. [buy]

Land of Talk - "The Man Who Breaks Things (Dark Shuffle)". My favourite moment in this song comes at 1:17, when barely - just barely, - you hear Liz Powell say "Oh", or something like that. It's deep in the mix, down below the steel-stained, tea-stained, tear-stained guitars; down below the sound of the man who hits cymbals. It's a quiet thing, half-a-thing, but it's the thing that reminds me that there's life even in the moments when Powell's not singing anything. She hasn't left the studio; she isn't just standing watching other people strum guitar. She's living through every bar of this song, feeling every moment a clean drumstick hits a clean snare. [buy]

---

Together with my friends Amy, Julien and Kit, I've launched a new blog. It is called INSIDE THE FROZEN MAMMOTH, inspired by a quote by Leonard Cohen, and it is about visual arts in Montreal (and abroad!). It's way more about stuff that's great - artists, artworks, shows, things, - than about local events, so no matter where you live, I really hope you'll visit, read, bookmark and subscribe.

[source of grizzly chair photo]

Here are my 50 favourite songs of 2008: the ones I really, really, really, really like.

I decided not to include any artist twice, nor any songs from albums I heard last year.

I made similar lists in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

The best way to browse this list is to click the little arrow beside each song and then listen as you read. The things you like you can then download by right- or ctrl-clicking with your mouse. Please buy albums, singles and EPs by bands that you enjoy.

You can also download complete zips of the fifty songs here, via Mediafire.

See also: Dan's favourite albums of the year.

1. Antony & the Johnsons - "Another World" [buy]
   2008 did not have a "Hey Ya!", a "Crazy in Love", a "1 Thing" - a song so essential that it felt like a new page ought to be added to the calendar. (If anything, it had "Paper Planes".) So my favourite song of the year is not a dancefloor-filler, not an anthem; it is just my favourite. I don't know why "Another World" seems so essential to me, this December... Whether it's Antony's moth- and butterfly-wing voice, the piano like first snow. Whether it's a response to the Year of Obama. "Hope" and "Change" seem like true and important things, this year, things we crave and wish to put in our briefcases, but I sense how fragile they are, and how dreamed. Of course maybe it's just that this is a pretty, sad song. Maybe it's Antony's microphone, full of tears.
2. Lykke Li - "Dance Dance Dance" [buy]
   In February I wrote a premature valentine: Were you born in Sweden? Wait, what? A Portuguese mountaintop!? Was it cold? Sure, I'll hold on to it for you. What do you want me to do? Rattle it? And stamp my foot too? Are we recording a song? Who's that? That's a very large saxophone.
3. Rye Rye with MIA - "Tic Toc" [MySpace]
   There is no single component that makes this song sing. It is, yes, like a clock. Rye Rye slow-loping, MIA tick-tocking, Busy Signal hey-heying, zither-thing glittering, and all of us setting our time to its diamond-hard 6-jewel movement. (Previously.)
4. The Low Lows - "Modern Romance" [buy]
   There's no reason to put a cover-song so high on a list of the year's best except that the Low Lows' remaking of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is beautiful. Dan wrote about this song on New Year's Day. The Low Lows will shake me around in their cup, they'll keep me humble and working inside this sock-drawer winter apartment until something gives way, he wrote. I have to think that something gave way.
5. tUnE-YaRdS - "FIYA" [buy]
   The same way that someone might use every part of a deer, Montreal's Merrill Garbus uses every part of her ukulele. It's a toy and a weapon, a calendar and an engine. And she uses every part of her voice, too: the high part, the low part, the pretty part, the roar. It's four seasons in five minutes and too thrilling to call just lo-fi "pop". No -- this is "bang", it's "boom", it's "kablooey". (Previously.)
6. School of Seven Bells - "Half Asleep" [buy]
   Fly to Greenland in a twin-engine plane, your pockets filled with Jolly Ranchers and freshwater pearls. Set down on a flat of snow, like the back of some vast arctic hare. Leave the propeller going & dig. Put your back into it. Yes, the Northern Lights seethe, yes there's much to explore in Nuuk & Kangerlussuaq. But dig. After two long winters it's time to dig. The airplane's roaring beside you, the sky teeming above you, the sting of sweat in your eyes. But sooner or later you'll hit spring.

7. Carl Spidla - "Blackfly Rag" [MySpace]
   Too much to say about this track. "Blackfly Rag" is obviously one of the finest songs I've heard this year, and it's clearly the finest folk song. I mean here's just a dusty live recording of a guy with a guitar, mouthfuls of lyrics and a heart full of blackwing birds. Carl's not channelling Dylan so much as dream. He's planning a CD for next year.
8. Chairlift - "Bruises" [buy]
   A song whose beauty is in the singing - part "Close To Me", part yodel, part spring, part summer, part six-month anniversary. Pop music.
9. Baby Dee - "Safe Inside the Day (ft. Bonnie Prince Billy)" [buy]
   Eleven months ago I wrote, A song that is hurled with so much spirit that it could pin ... tomorrows to todays and wills to oughts. It's a manifesto and a prayer and an inflammatory writ ... the greatest utterance of the word "safe" that I've heard in my life. Dee's day will dim yours, cast yours into half-light and make you aspire to ... find a peace so gloriously hard-fought as this.
10. White Hinterland - "Vessels" [buy]
    "Vessels" is my favourite song on Phylactery Factory and I keep it in a small pouch attached to my belt. I use it when I am lost in a forest, trapped on a glacier, or longing for home. ... I use it when I'm not so sure about myself, and when there's not much light on the water. ... It's always seemed wrong, to me, speaking of "hope" unbordered. Better to speak of enough hope; to stop there. Well there is enough hope here for me.
11. Sister Suvi - "The Lot" [buy]
    People say: okay, Montreal, played out. You've indie-rocked yrself dry, right? Running on fumes? And then we say a lot of things back. We throw fruit; we whip bagels and lob pierogies; we have snowballs and ice-cream cones. We take you the fuck out, you mess with us. I could name a lot of bands, some of the reasons why this city keeps catching me by the throat. But tonight I will name just one: Sister Suvi. ... [Tune-Yards'] Merrill's got the big bad wolf in her gut, blow you down.
12. Kanye West - "Say You Will" [buy]
    His line about "your neck" is one of the creepy-crawliest this year, but still I'm mesmerised by this. "Say You Will" is the opening track on the new album by one of the biggest artists in the world. And its last three minutes are just empty synths, barren drum loop, silence. It's a stupid one-liner, calling 808s & Heartbreak Kanye's Nebraska; but the loneliness here, the desolation, is just as potent as any 4-track-slinging singer-songwriter. Heartbreak has rarely filled so many Walmart shelves.
13. Vampire Weekend - "Ottoman" [buy]
    Dan may not agree, but I love Vampire Weekend. I loved it last year, too, and so none of its tracks festoon this list. Happily, Vampire Weekend released a new one, and it's no less sweet; chamber pop with secret-weapon drums, a "Peter Gabriel" call-back, as wistful a fade-out as any I've heard.
14. Frightened Rabbit - "Keep Yourself Warm" [buy]
    Still think Scott Hutchison's lyrics are turgid, but Frightened Rabbit nonetheless turn it into one of the year's best rock songs - desperate, melancholy, awesome. Scotsmen finding the middle ground between the Constantines and the Foo Fighters.
15. Beyoncé - "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" [buy]
    A song with a thousand handclaps and a hundred bird-coo synth-squiggles. Oh, and some 8-carat "Whoa-oh oh oh oh ohh oh oh ohh oh oh oh." Never have I so wished to be a single lady. (As Tyler writes: It's fabulously easy, you just need to sing all the best notes in the best way.)
16. Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal" [buy]
    Not a fan of the album, but still love this song as a warm keep-cosy ski-lodge thing, as a beautiful sleigh-ride of a song, a mulberry jingle-bell snowflake of a song. In other words, I like it quite a bit.
17. Y'all is Fantasy Island - "With Handclaps" [buy]
    This song could be called "Mostly Without Handclaps", or "With Guitarline". The handclaps wait almost the entire song to appear, and it's the guitar-line that marks your brain, colours your day, sends you humming a scale to yourself while you wait in line at the fruit-stand. There are handclaps though, and a song worthy of carrying them.
18. The Tough Alliance - "Taken Too Young" (a remix of Taken By Trees' "Too Young") [buy other things]
    The Tough Alliance rediscover "Too Young", by Victoria Bergsmann's Taken By Trees project (& which I wrote about last July). They make it one of the songs of the year. And when I say rediscover I mean they found it in among diamonds, saffron and milkweed pods; in with childhood, sex and distant waters; in with the way you feel, your eyes laying on hers, when all that's green in you curls.
19. Forest Fire - "Slow Motion" [buy]
    I wrote a story about this song in July. It's a sort-of folk-song. "Sort-of" because there it is filled with slams, bangs, booms and howls; like a man falling down a lighthouse stairwell.
20. Adam & the Amethysts - "Bumble Bee" [buy/MySpace]
    Civil and shaking, Dan wrote. It's true. Anchored by drummer-boy snare and a battered guitar riff, "Bumble Bee" pretends everything's cool as cuke, locked up in old diaries. But there under it all - under the friendly fanfare, the slacker doo d'doo, - there's something trembling, buzzing, shaking with black-&-ochre resolve.
21. Elbow - "Starlings" [buy]
    FANFARE.
22. Karl Blau - "Before Telling Dragons" [buy]
    Karl Blau's Nature's Got Away is a weird album, with teeth and feathers and amplifiers. Bits of Harry Nilsson, the Zombies, Spoon, Smog. "Before Telling Dragons" is a forest anthem, recorded in a basement. Girl-group drums buried six feet under and ... words of wisdom from a man who has eaten seventeen wild, unidentified red berries.
23. Styx Tyger - "String Strikes" [MySpace]
    A pop-song from Sweden - but whereas usually that means shyness and shimmy, here it's gold, glitter, croon, and a copy of the Cure's Disintegration. (Previously.)
24. Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire - "Voice in Headphones" [buy]
    This is my favourite song from Lost Wisdom, probably my favourite album of the year. It is Phil Elverum singing with Julie Doiron, one of my favourite singers. That is a lot of favourites, all together. "Voice in Headphones" is about how recorded music - particularly a song called "Undo", by Bjork, - makes Mount Eerie cry. Which is, all snarkiness aside, a good question. (Previously.)
25. Shearwater - "Leviathan, Bound" [buy]
    Like when you're at your piano, scared, and every key turns to grey. Jonathan Meiburg sings about apocalypse, hard and loud, joined by dulcimer, strings and glockenspiel.
26. Withered Hand - "New Dawn" [buy]
    You know how some people, especially old-fashioned people, hang their carpets on clotheslines and then beat all the dust out of them? Or how some people knock their snowy boots against the side of the car before getting in? Here's Edinburgh's Withered Hand using mandolin, guitar, cello and his voice to shake all the dust from him, all the stray feelings, all the loose longings; so that at end of song he'll be just a body and the light in his eyes.
27. Ponytail - "Beg Waves" [buy]
    Ponytail get it exactly right in the opening track to Ice Cream Spiritual: electrically live and still marvellously composed, like a Duke Ellington suite for hoarse throats, scraped knees, joy. It's The Fall, not Deerhoof, I hear clearest in their song - but with fewer regrets, fewer chips-on-shoulder ... beautiful and squalid.
28. Final Fantasy - "Blue Imelda" [buy]
    Final Fantasy released two albums this year. One was recorded at a CBC studio, and one - from which this song is taken, - was recorded at a forest in the fictional country of Spectrum. It was recorded in the 14th century. If this sounds far-fetched, you are not a student of history. "Blue Imelda" has all the hallmarks of Spectrum ca. 1360 - steel drums, tuba blasts, a melancholy to puff seafaring sails.
29. Ne-Yo - "Mad" [buy]
    It's only in my twenties that I came to appreciate the slow-jam - the perfect catchy yes yes yes r&b form, the perfect thing for slow-dances and lip-sync and romantic montages. Though this one I mostly listen to as I tramp in the snow on the way to get some work done. (thank-you s1utsky)
30. Meursault - "The Furnace" [buy]
    BREAKING NEWS: CYBERMAN 3000-D HAD HIS HEART BROKEN THIS WEEKEND. HAS GONE ON RAMPAGE THROUGH COUNTRYSIDE. VALLEYS OF CLOVER BEING BURNED BY CYBERMAN 3000-D'S ROCKET-BOOTS. BARNS SMASHED APART AND LEFT SMOULDERING. TWO SHEPHERDS DEAD. DOGS HOWLING. CYBERMAN 3000-D HAS BEFRIENDED A SWALLOW WHOM HE IS CARRYING ON HIS SHOULDER-MOUNTED ELECTRO-BAZOOKA.
31. Sigur Rós - "Gobbledigook" [buy]
    A pity the Sigur Rós-meets-Animal Collective vibe didn't carry over to the rest of the album, but this is still great. Breathless dashing flashing dancing strum coo dive jump dive jump jump jump go go nightfall fire and dawn.
32. Lord Dog Bird - "The Gift of Song in the Lion's Den" [buy]
    Here's a song for the day the river turned to wine, the city turned to chalk, your heart turned to tin. The same way that a lantern reminds me of a campfire, this reminds me of early Wolf Parade. And from a woefully ignored album!
33. François Virot - "Say Fiesta" [buy]
    François Virot's songs are both simple and crooked - like gnarled hooks you can hang your coat on. The way he sings radio on "Say Fiesta" - well it's silly, endearing and French but it lets the song's emotional oomph come out of nowhere, like an alleycat with violets in its mouth.
34. John Maus - "Do Your Best" [buy]
    You swing through the hills with headlights silver, alone & the forests darkly. Dreams of stags and music-boxes. Down below are a thousand black Mercedes, men with watches, women in sequin dresses. A satellite passes over your head. The motels lie docile as you pass them, singing in low voices, trying to make sure you're ok.
35. Kasai Allstars - "Quick as White" [buy]
    Thumb-pianos like light in lamps; bells, sticks, shakes, slips, a hundred kinds of glimmers. Though the Kasai Allstars are from Kinshasa, Congo, and this is the third in Crammed's Congotronics series, the Kasai Allstars are not some mere Konono no. 2. They are sorcerers, wonder-workers, enchanters pulling hopes from throats and making me wonder, here in Montreal sun, if maybe one day I will touch a magic sword.
36. The Dodos - "Fools" [buy]
    This is what the Dodos do: strum hard at acoustic guitars, beat methodically at drumkits. But a little bit of horns, a little bit of shouting - they go a long way. Before you know it, you've signed on the dotted line.
37. Weezer - "Pork and Beans" [buy]
    It doesn't matter that I am tired of Weezer, nor that Weezer (2008) is a piece of ess. It doesn't matter that "Pork and Beans"' lyrics are effing stultifying. What matters is that, well, [bass riff] this song is dumbly dee oh pee ee.
38. Kleerup - "Until We Bleed (ft. Lykke Li)" [buy]
    Part dance track, part pop song; a soundtrack for dial-tone, brrrrrrr, Hello?, click. (Previously.)
39. Lil' Wayne - "Mrs Officer (ft. Bobby Valentino" [buy]
    It's not so much Lil' Wayne's rhymes, nor even the Wee-oo-wee-oo-wee, that do it. It's the spectacular supple sing of his raps, the way he does whatever the hell he wants with his voice, whatever as old leather. (thanks, liz.)
40. We/Or/Me - "Tell Sarah" [buy]
    This is a very careful song. "Tell Sarah" glows, just of itself, like fireflies in a jar.
41. Pretend You're Happy - "The Other Side of the Earth" [buy]
    One of the last additions to this list - sprawling, messy and brilliant, like Handel's Requiem rearranged for lo-fi drums, whining violins, bullshit and whistles. Takes decades of practice to fuck-up this good. (Previously.)
42. Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit - "Dinosaur on the Ark (ft. Ben Brewer)" [free album download]
    Mwamwaya is everything I used to love about "World Music", before my world got shaken by a thousand other sounds, before I learned that "World Music" is a fucking stupid term. But that's just to say he sounds eminent and good and warm, not unlike Phil Collins, the sort of man I would follow into a desert arena. Plus: it's the best song this year to feature MIA's fiancé! (Previously.)
43. Beck - "Walls" [buy]
    Perhaps the best production of Danger Mouse's life, and one of the finest Beck tracks in years, this song has several interesting bits: Beck's half-a-melody, the drums that clatter like collapsing drywall, the way Cat Power's backing vocals have been sucked as thin as cassette-tape.
44. Jib Kidder - "Windowdipper" [buy]
    Cyber-booty baby-crunk glimmer-bump ghetto-DOS. And genius. (Previously, in short story form.)
45. ((Sounder)) - "Daily I Will Calculate the Distance" [buy]
    Another hardly-muttered-about band made one of the best indie rock albums of the year. It's ambitious, dusty, rumblingly rock - but not an album of singles. "Daily I Will Calculate the Distance" is as close as ((Sounder)) come. Brazen, yearning, crack-lipped, welcome.
46. Ratatat - "Mirando" [buy]
    No idea what this song is for. It's not for dancing, moshing, kissing or meditating. It's not even for riding the bus. Maybe if you have a piano-playing robot to assemble, this is the splendid, somersaulting ticket. I envy you.
47. Young Coyotes - "Momentary Drowning" [MySpace]
    A song that's yell and thump but is still brilliantly slow - relaxed as it booms, as it dings and claps and bobs. Young Coyotes play this music like they've figured it out, like they've solved it.
48. Hologram - "Ghosties" [buy other things]
    Said the Gramophone loves this burgeoning band. One day Hologram are going to be a gigantic baby-blue chrysanthemum and everyone is going to stick their nose in, but in the meantime here we are with a ceramic chrysanthemum pinned to our lapels, the image of what we're dreaming, and we listen to the clanging, beautiful, clamoured song called "Ghosties", and we lug a busted amp waiting for a lover to hand it to.
49. Helvetia - "Old New Bicycle" [buy]
    A ramshackle conversation between drumkit and electric guitar. Sure, vocals chime in at some point - slurring and murmurs, - but it's the guitar + drums that matter. They're the ones that'll figure this shit out, that'll solve all the ills that ail ya. (Previously.)
50. Johnny Foreigner - "Cranes And Cranes And Cranes And Cranes" [buy]
    it'ssort of like Los Campesinos meets Avril Lavigne, but i mean tht in a totally gd way. call+answer+yells, but bttr dynamics, bttr places to sing alng, like instd of thnkng of witty twee songtitls they focusd on BEING AWSOME.

Finally - 50 is an arbitrary cut-off. There were way more great tracks in 2008. Said the Gramophone has written about 500 of them over the course of this year. If you're new to the site, please come again (or subscribe)! We update every weekday, writing about the songs we love. Thanks for reading.

Young Marble Giants - "Brand - New - Life"
the thing i started noticing the week you left was the way the red light lifted right off the glass when i passed an item over it. i would stand at work for eight hours at a time and listen to the tick of my watch and the clucking of a hundred people buying frozen macaroni pie and porkchops and pepsi and i would watch the red light, the laser, lifting right off the glass. every time i passed through a tin of peas or a marsbar it was there like a lighthouse light or the gleam of a jewel. it lifted right off. i wondered if it flashed over my face, a red mask for a second. i imagined jackie coming down here in her skirtsuit saying something about my hair and me lifting right off the linoleum and flickering over your face, a lighthouse light, wherever you were, whether you were happy or sad, me suddenly there over your features the colour of rust and roses and rubies. [buy]

Hologram - "Goodnight pt 1".
Some nights, you fall asleep before me. I listen to the stereo with my head on the pillow and I try not to stare at you. You move in your sleep and every time it makes me smile. But I try not to stare at you. I rest my head on the pillow and I look out past your face to the wall and the curtains and the window. I imagine the stars in the sky, out past the corona of the city. Sometimes a song will come on and the song is so great, and I imagine how much you would love to be hearing this song right now, how much you would like to be here awake listening with me to this song, our eyes full of starlight. In bed I smile at the thought of how much you would love this song. But instead I let you rest and I close my eyes and I try to go to sleep and in my last moments before dreaming I squeeze my fists and I try to remember the song so that in the morning I can find it for you or maybe, if I'm feeling brave, sing it. A little.
[MySpace / buy]

---

I'm almost finished compiling my favourite songs of the year, and once again I regret how little I listen to the radio. But maybe you do. Are there any chartpop or hip-hop songs that you loved-loved-loved this year and want to pass on? Please email them to me! (I've already got Kanye and Ne-Yo covered.) Thanks!

(photo above is by eden veaudry)

Arthur Russell - "Close My Eyes". When I think about the special light of human beings, the angels' kiss-on-the-lips, the soul or spirit that probably-doesn't-but-maybe-does hide in our chests, I think of this. The way these modest parts - a song sung plainly, a strummed guitar, - can feel as lovely as dawn, as beautiful as night, as sensuous as laying in the fields with a lover, listening to the corn grow. Why are we so blessed that this unsophisticated, basic thing is able to touch us? I can think of no answer except that perhaps we were given a gift.

Arthur Russell - "What It's Like". And okay so let's fast-forward to the thousandth day that they lay in the fields. Let's fast-forward to a decade after they first rested in the tall grass. He calls her into the sanctuary. "Kate, I've been touched by the Lord," he says. "I don't need you anymore." This sounds like a horror but really it's just honesty. It's just the truth, grasped at. What follows is sloppy country blues, anguish and confusion, the Reverend rending his clothes and crying, "I didn't know that love would strike me blind". But I think Kate, his lover - she leaves long before the sax solo. She leaves before he begins to weep. Kate, she learned long ago. This is what it's like.

[buy Love Is Overtaking Me, a remarkable collection of songs by Arthur Russell]

---

Elsewhere:

Jez Burrows is now shipping screenprints of his beautiful Destroyer's Rubies "information graphic". But more beautiful still - and I'm very belated in writing about it, - is his and Lizzy Stewart's I Am The Friction. They are stories inspired by drawings & drawings inspired by stories, and while the works are funny and weird and melancholy, more than anything it feels like a love-letter from friend to friend, a shared smile, the kind of collaboration that comes from many hours by the same lamps. It's a handsome thing to hold in your hand, to read and enjoy, but it also makes you long to slip into the moments of its making; eyeglints, gifts, ink on fingers.

Rest in peace, Odetta.

I'm happy to announce the launch of MBV, a new website bringing together Said the Gramophone, Fluxblog, Large Hearted Boy, Catbirdseat and Chromewaves - ie, five of the eldest, creakiest and most consistent musicblogs. All of our sites are syndicated there, but there will be additional content - including contributions from Matt LeMay. We're not entirely sure where MBV is headed, but we hope you'll head over there and help us turn it into a site for intelligent & passionate discussion.

---

It was nice to visit Edinburgh a few weeks ago and find that at last, hooray, a community has formed there that makes great, wild music. I'm still trying to learn all the groups' names, but alongside Withered Hand there's certainly Meursault - who despite a few middling acoustic jams have made one of my favourite albums this year.

I'm gonna get metaphorical in a sec but just to get two one-liners out of the way:

"The Furnace": It's M83 meets Phosphorescent!

"Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues": They borrowed the melody from Neutral Milk Hotel's "Song Against Sex"!

---

Meursault - "The Furnace". BREAKING NEWS: CYBERMAN 3000-D HAD HIS HEART BROKEN THIS WEEKEND. HAS GONE ON RAMPAGE THROUGH COUNTRYSIDE. VALLEYS OF CLOVER BEING BURNED BY CYBERMAN 3000-D'S ROCKET-BOOTS. BARNS SMASHED APART AND LEFT SMOULDERING. TWO SHEPHERDS DEAD. DOGS HOWLING. CYBERMAN 3000-D HAS BEFRIENDED A SWALLOW WHOM HE IS CARRYING ON HIS SHOULDER-MOUNTED ELECTRO-BAZOOKA. THE SWALLOW IS TRYING TO CONSOLE THE CYBERMAN. THE SWALLOW IS SINGING A SWEET SONG. NOW CYBERMAN 3000-D IS SINGING TOO AS HE CONTINUES HIS RUN OF TERROR. UNDER STARLIGHT HE HAS ENTERED THE FOREST. HE WILL EITHER BUILD A NEW HOME OR BURN THE WHOLE WOOD DOWN. MORE LATER.

Meursault - "Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues". BREAKING NEWS: CYBERMAN 3000-D HAS BEEN SPOTTED. HIGH-POWERED TELESCOPES PICKED UP MOVEMENT IN THE BLACKENED WRECKAGE OF THE FOREST. CYBERMAN 3000-D HAD BEEN PRESUMED DEAD AFTER TRANSFORMING THE WOOD INTO AN INFERNO. BUT THERE HE IS, ALL STEEL AND TITANIUM, A GLITTER STILL IN HIS PRISMATIC EYES. HE STAMPS THROUGH ASH, SMOKE SWIRLS AROUND HIS ANKLES. HE MOVES WITH A CLUMSY & MECHANICAL REGRET. EXPERTS PEERING THROUGH TELESCOPE FEEL THAT PERHAPS HE IS BUILDING A HOME, BELATEDLY. BUILDING IT OUT OF CINDERS. HE LOOKS LIKE HE IS WAITING FOR SOMETHING - OR SOMEONE. NO ONE HAS SEEN ANY BIRDS. THE CYBERMAN GLITTERS IN THE SUN.

[buy]

I was sitting with Adam Waito several months ago, at a time when there was no ice on the ground and clear black night skies. He had probably just finished playing a killer set with his band, Adam & the Amethysts. Adam released one of our favourite albums of this year, a record that's handsewn folk and brash electric pop and with a faint psych corona skirting its choruses. You should buy it here (CD) or here (digitally).

And so I convinced him to write this, a Preliminary Guide to Vintage Canadian Psych Pop. The music is killer, the curatorship sublime. Most of these albums are out of print. If you dig the post, please leave a comment! (We'll try to convince him to come back.) -- Sean

My preoccupation with Canadiana and with finding new music has led me to discover some rather incredible Canadian acts from the '60s and '70s that range from completely obscure to relatively unknown. Now, I'm no authority on psychedelic music. These are just some bands that have managed to find me (mostly through the Internet) and I've tried to include some tidbits about them.

With reverence for the naturally majestic and decidedly fucked-up colony of Canada, I would like to share a few choice unsung heroes of psychedelic pop from the land North of America with you, the readers of Said the Gramophone. These are some songs that in some way compel or inspire me.

The Rabble - "Candy" (1969)

The Rabble formed in 1965 in Pointe-Claire on Montreal's West Island, and their big break came when, in '68, they got to replace Cream at the last minute at The Paul Sauve Arena in Montreal. "Candy" is playful and irreverent and to my ears anticipates some of the poppier early punk bands that would emerge a decade later. You can party to this song in Montreal quite easily today, let me tell you.

Jarvis Street Revue - "Mr. Oil Man" (1970)

This is sprawling heavy-psych epic that, I'm proud to say, hails from my hometown of Thunder Bay, Ontario. It's the flagship track from a rare environmentalist concept album of the same name, whose heavy-handed eco-message is only matched by its heavy-as-hell acid-guitar. Long before the corrupt oil industry was grim reaping the political consciousnesses of pretty much everyone, JSR was prophesying that there will be blood, and did so with creative, fuzzed-out - if a little long-winded - intensity. So damn cool. It's been bootlegged as well as officially reissued if you feel like grabbing it without paying close to a grand for a rare original LP on Ebay. Me, I've still got my fingers crossed for an original copy in a thrift store record bin when I'm home this Christmas holiday.

Christmas - "Something Borrowed" (1970)

Speaking of Christmas, that's what this next Oshawa, Ontario band was called, and if I do say so, it's one of the best band names ever. Christmas features ex-members of another great '60s band Reign Ghost (formerly of The Christopher Columbus Discovery of New Lands Band, another mind-blowing band name). This is a pretty straight-ahead folky pop rock song from their album Heritage that will stick to your ribs right near your heart.

A Passing Fancy - "Island" (1968)

This song is beautiful and amazing with its organ, church bells, and sad pop melody. A Passing Fancy were a Toronto band that emerged from the '60s Yorkville scene. A career highlight was playing Expo '67 in Montreal. Formed in '65, they released a number of 45s and one LP before disbanding in 1969. One of the members is now the president of a hockey card company. I have to say, this song just really does something special for me."

Borealis - "Old Age" (1972)

Borealis were a psych-pop band from the Maritimes (Newfoundland I think). "Old Age" is a really simple and lovely song from their Sons of the Sea record, with its spinning-speaker guitar, restrained rhythm section, and delightfully amateurish vocals. It's a heartbreaking and cute ode to the singer's deteriorating grandfather. At a time when not a lot of rock albums were being recorded in the Atlantic provinces, the album apparently wasn't too successful, although they supposedly had a track on the St. John's top 10 for a couple weeks. The full title was Sons of the Sea/Professor Fuddle's Fantastic Fairy Tale Machine.

Brazda Brothers - "Lonely Time" (1973)

As recent migrants from Europe (I'm not sure where), they were supposedly inspired by the natural beauty of their new home of Galt, Ontario, and recorded this LP in only six hours in Toronto. It's a really beautiful record, made special by their odd accents and slightly-off vocals, as well as brilliant bursts of organ.

Elyse Weinberg - "Deed I Do" (1968) [buy]

Finally, Elyse Weinberg is an amazing woman whom I had the privilege of meeting during Pop Montreal this year (we sat on a songwriter's panel together at the Symposium). She played this song with members of the Saffron Sect playing sitar and tanpura at her show at the Casa. She was amazed that there were young folks who knew how to play a song from an obscure album she made 40 years ago. Anyway, the live rendition was magnificent and that album is called Elyse and is really heartbreakingly awesome. Hopefully she won't find this and be mad that I posted her song online. She's from Toronto and used to hang out with folks like Neil Young, but who really cares, because she's amazing.

If you want to hear some other great Canadian bands from the late '60s/early '70s, check out Plastic Cloud, The Plague, The Poppy Family, Reign Ghost, Terence, It's All Meat, and duh, the Guess Who. Most of these bands have been reissued or bootlegged or posted online, so have fun!

[Adam Waito is from Thunder Bay and lives in Montreal. He has played in bands such as Telefauna and Miracle Fortress but now leads Adam & the Amethysts, whose Amethyst Amulet is one of the great undiscovered albums of 2008. (BUY: CD/MP3)]

--

(Previous guest-blogs: The Whiskers, Silver Jews, artist Ariel Kitch, artist Aaron Sewards, artist Corinne Chaufour, "Jean Baudrillard", artist Danny Zabbal, artist Irina Troitskaya, artist Eleanor Meredith, artist Keith Greiman, artist Matthew Feyld, The Weakerthans, Parenthetical Girls, artist Daria Tessler, Clem Snide, Marcello Carlin, Beirut, Jonathan Lethem, Will Butler (Arcade Fire), Al Kratina, Eugene Mirman, artist Dave Bailey, Agent Simple, artist Keith Andrew Shore, Owen Ashworth (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), artist Kit Malo with Alden Penner (The Unicorns) 1 2, artist Rachell Sumpter, artist Katy Horan 1 2, David Barclay (The Diskettes), artist Drew Heffron, Carl Wilson, artist Tim Moore, Michael Nau (Page France), Devin Davis, Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Hello Saferide, Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi), Brian Michael Roff, Howard Bilerman (producer: Silver Mt. Zion, Arcade Fire, etc.). There are many more to come.)