Archives : all posts by Sean

[image source]

Videotape - "Night Lights".
Videotape - "He The Moon".

After Lola broke his heart, Hugh drove up to St-Sauveur and started building a house. He took measurements & drew up blueprints & drove his pick-up to the Rona loading dock, buying every kind of lumber. He had a holster for his hammer and his nails. He had a sawhorse and saws. He built. For two seasons, Hugh was the most skillful builder in all the world. His measurements & blueprints were perfect. Everything was going according to plan. And then he decided to build a room where he hadn't planned a room, just off the study. And then to build a room just off that room. And then to build a staircase & an archway & a dip & a balcony & a room & a room & a room, and then another floor, and two staircases, and before long his house had become a knot & maze, windows leading to doorways and staircases to gardens. He entered every room on hands and knees, nailing boards into place. He built windows but did not look through them. He ate sawdust and handfuls of nuts. Squirrels chittered in the walls or under the floor. In the ballrooms, black birds wheeled. And Hugh kept building, board after board, doorframe after doorframe, hoping as he passed into each new room that that's where his true love would be, still wearing her dress with the honeysuckle blooms.

[MySpace / buy]

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DFW¹
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[1] RIP

Michael Webster - "The German's Song".

Viewed one way, this is not so much a love-song as a whisper, something murmured to a lover as they slumber. They lay beside you, warmly, and you lay beside them, warmly; and as they listen to dreaming's kalimba you too whisper dreams, gently, by the curl of their ear.

Viewed another way, it's the nightmare that comes creeping on starlight.

[buy Michael Webster's strange, raying wonder, Report]

The Clientele - "George Says He Has Lost His Way In This World".

The main thing this song is trying to say is that, well, George says he has lost his way in this world. The Clientele draw attention to this fact by repeating it over and over, by singing it over an instantly insistent guitar riff, by making the final "ba-da-ba" chorus (and accompanying guitar solo) feel so eminently genius that you'd think it had to be cooked up in a Brill Building penthouse, a Motown throne-room, some place where only songwriting PhDs can lay their pen. [buy]

[photo source]

Alina Simone - "Half My Kingdom". A Brooklyn singer born in the Ukraine, singing a song by the Russian folk-punk Yanka Dyagileva - the title translated but the rest still Russian. But this is not as impenetrable as it sounds. Simone finds the song's heart and with absolute single-mindedness, she sings it. It doesn't matter that we don't understand the words, that we never knew Dyagileva before she died - of apparent suicide - at age 24. There's no mistaking the single, bright trumpet amid a mud of guitars, or Simone's hard strum against the fade of her voice. This is a song about sacrifice, yearning, and what's already spent. It's a song about hope, and about the currents that carried Dyagileva away. [buy/website]

Vancouver - "Penalty Box". An Italian band named after a Canadian city, singing in an English accent that somehow still recalls the Decemberists' Colin Meloy. But it's not the nasal hoi-meloy that makes this worthwhile; no it's the Orange Juicey vim of it, the Hefner heartache, the grasping for Weakerthans lyrics - the absolutely contagious love that Vancouver have for their influences. If Vancouver's house burned down, you better believe they'd be weeping for their mix CDs. [MySpace]

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Elsewhere:

Gotham Acme weighed in on "Half My Kingdom" earlier this week, along with an Alina Simone b-side. She dropped into Daytrotter, too.

Congratulations to Matt Perpetua, who has finished his Pop Songs project (blogging about every REM song ever [!]). I recommend exploring via his Greatest Hits tumblr post.

I really love Park(ing) Day NYC, where citizens reclaim parking spots and turn them into one-day parks, etc. (via Why^5)

Zoilus highlights a coherent, powerful, much less superfluous-than-it-seems letter from playwright Wajdi Mouawad to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, about the awful recent run of arts cuts in Canada.

Okay, oh man, the year's dopest over-long, official CERN-sponsored rap video is, well, obviously this one: "Large Hadron Rap". Antimatter is sort of like matter's evil twin / because except for charge and handedness of spin, / they're the same for a particle / and it's anti-self. Word! (also...)

and finally,

"Atchoo!" is a very short film.

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My short story "Bluebirds" will appear in The Art of Trespassing, an upcoming anthology by Invisible Publishing, edited by Anna Leventhal. Yay! You can buy a copy here or here. There's also a tiny book tour happening - I'll be reading at the Montreal launch this Saturday, 09/13 (at the Redbird studio, 8pm), and again in Ottawa on Sunday, 09/21, at Octobus Books.

The Lord Dog Bird - "The Gift of Song in the Lion's Den". 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 camptire, this reminds me of early Wolf Parade. Shout on, friend. [buy]

Do Make Say Think - "THofR Part Three". A Japanese EP version of this track, which appears elsewhere in different form - like a snake in a new skin. It's the easiest demolition you've ever heard. [buy]

Silver Jews - "Strange Victory, Strange Defeat". Saw the Silver Jews with Dan last night. What an amazing, beautiful show. David Berman up there like a kid and a teenager and a wise-man, all at once. He and Cassie having conversations with their eyes, there for us all to see. The band playing their instruments with a fierceness I'd not heard before; the Silver Jews' live sound is more fearsome, sparking, wild than on record. And still Berman's lyrics cutting right through, mouth close to the mic, words slipped into our ears like hands into pockets. Sweat was pouring off his face like from the spout of a teapot.

I saw the Silver Jews two years ago, in Edinburgh. It was their eighteenth-ever gig. Last night was their sixty-ninth. Though in 2006 there was a more innocent joy to the show - a clean country jubilance just in singing the songs, - last night's freer, louder stuff shook the heart even more. Now is when you should go see the Silver Jews. They're at a threshold - still new enough at this that every night's a discovery, a shambles, a treasure; but comfortable enough in their touring shows that the songs, well, they kick ass. The balance won't stay this way forever.

But some of what I wrote for Plan B two years ago is still true. Not the earring -- the gist:

We’re not losing ourselves in the crowd – eyes rolling back in our heads as we cheer. No. I watch the earring on Berman’s ear, like a tattoo brought back from sea. I watch the way Cassie looks at David, sometimes, when he doesn’t look back. I watch the way he glares at his monitor or stumbles over a lyric. And I feel a mortal kind of joy – the stuff of human beings and human lives. The sterling wonder of a gift that’s made by fallible human hands, by creatures with hearts more silver than gold.

The Swingers - "Counting the Beat". It's Labour Day and here's a song for the labourers. Or rather for the labourers who aren't labouring. The ones lifting crates or typing memos who get distracted mid-crate, mid-memo, staring off into space. There's a girl or a boy in the glaze of their eyes, a skip in their heart, a tap in their toes. Can't get anything done, no, they're too much in love; fire the bosses, go on strike; call in sick, smash the timeclock; scamper dancing all through the warehouse, all over the office, til' the weekend. (Thanks Jessica!) [out of print]

Langhorne Slim - "Spinning Compass". And then something a little more Monday. "Spinning Compass" sounds like an overture, an introduction, a first date. Like a first & a beginning. Then again, here's the thing - it ain't. Listen to the lyrics. So here's a song for turning not-beginnings into beginnings, turning dead ends into open roads. Turning cello and accordion into a crop for your horse. [buy]

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Elsewhere:

Montrealers, take note! Silver Jews play Sala on Wednesday night!

Owen Pallett pointed me to the weirdoness of this synthesiser blog.

A beautifully presented mixtape of Tim Hardin covers.

A bizarre, luminous, sci-fi music video for Jay Bharadia's marvelous "Snowy Day".

The Record of the Week Club is a terrific project out of Winnipeg where all sorts of local musicians get together on a Wednesday night and then have to record a song before they can leave. Many fascinating things! Though of course I am most partial to "Keewatin Arctic", featuring the Weakerthans' John K Samson, Inuit throat-singer Nikki Komakslutiksak and electronico Blunderspublik.

And at the Lifted Brow, Christopher Currie is writing stories inspired by titles or prompts from other folks. They've now published "The Flannerys", his response to my challenge: A story that talks about one hundred and twenty women, all individually named, and never more than 10 named at one time (ie, in reference to the same thing/in sequence). Or is that too complicated?

12:16 PM on Sep 1, 2008.

Show comments (2) »

Comments:

If I was working somewhere that sounded like Counting The Beat, I'd be too nervous to gaze off into space mid-task, girl or boy or no - the song's got an achingly mean la-da-de-la riff and the boss is probably watching us all from behind that one-way-glass window of his, a splintered baseball bat in his hand.

Wouldn't be surprised if he calls it Out Of Print, too...

by Ryan, Sep 1, 2008

Thanks for mentioning the Record of the Week Club! The Winnipeg music happenings rarely get mention on blogs from the larger of the provinces.

One of the participating artists, the but recently recorded Demetra Penner, has some tunes I think you might like, particularly "Arctic Sea". She is at present more known for her visual than her aural art, but she's got a fantastic, haunting voice. Listen here: http://www.myspace.com/tidessweetlyrolling. If you like.

by Julia T, Sep 4, 2008

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Veda Hille - "Luckyluck". A devotional for destiny, faith and the way that truth is veiled. But done with glee, see? The flickering oh oh oh of a child lighting a candle or seeing it lit. The wide-smile awe of standing in a church or temple or forest, a gull circling above, something not-quite-clear through the canopy. And the thrill of realising that when you take a step, you are merely trusting it will land.

(Carl Wilson weighs in on Veda Hille - one of the country's finest songwriters, I agree, - and encourages you to vote for her in the Echo Songwriting Prize competition. Sandro Perri and the Weakerthans are also excellent choices.)

[buy This Riot Life]

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Elsewhere:

Our friend Matt Forsythe launched his new graphic novel, Ojingogo on Wednesday and it's bee-yoo-ti-ful. Explore his website and pick up the real thing from Drawn & Quarterly some time soon. Oh yes - and we might just have something Forsythey in StG's own pipeline...

My new column has debuted. I will be writing every six weeks or so for the McSweeney's website. The first piece is now online: REFLECTIONS ON SEEING LEONARD COHEN PERFORM IN MONTREAL ON JUNE 23, 2008. I hope you like it. (Oh and in the end I settled on a very boring column title.)