Archives : all posts by Sean

The Essex Green - "Don't Know Why (You Stay)".Cars drink gasoline. Old men drink gin. Turntables drink electricity. Young men drink beer. Trees drink sunlight, drink rain. We drink songs. We drink like fishes. (Fishes drink saltwater.) On a hot day I'll drink a hundred songs. On a lonely day I'll drink myself sick. And the thing with songs, the thing that makes them better than booze, hooch, moonshine, is that you can drink the same song a hundred times & get just as drunk with every listen. You can listen to the same song a thousand times and on every instance lose yourself, talk to the girl, get a tattoo, dance on the table, admit you're sad, find you're glad, black out, get married to the road. You can find a song like "Don't Know Why", go on a three-day bender, and emerge from the other side no worse for wear: with guitar and organ and drums gone metronome in yr heart, Essex Green's voices as persistent as your pulse. (Thanks oh thanks, Toby.) [buy]

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - "I'll Be Glad". I think maybe this is what it's like to believe in God. You sing a beautiful song, sing it in your own crooked way, leave room for other peoples' pauses and backing vocals and organ solos. And then if you're lucky, before the end, a beautiful and unexpected chorus appears - at least one holy moment that is utterly undeniable, as clear & certain as the voices that appear here at 2:17. [buy]

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Montrealers - three things:

• Adam & the Amethysts and Tune-Yards are launching their new CDs together at Casa on Saturday. I will be there with bells on, maybe literally.
• This weekend is the Pomme-Pomme Craft Fair, what will be a marvellous, heavily curated shindig at La Sala Rossa, organised by folks from Woodenapples and comic-bookers Drawn & Quarterly. Don't miss it - and there's also a recommended Pomme-Pomme closing concert on Sunday, with Shapes & Sizes, Brave Radar and Elfin Saddle. A quiet & forceful way to end yr weekend!
• Finally, it has come to my attention that Bilboquet ice-cream is celebrating its 25th birthday this weekend. From 2pm-4pm, Saturday and Sunday, there are free tastings. And all weekend a "généreux" is the price of a "raisonnable". I felt it was my duty to pass these wonders on to any of my fellow ice-cream eaters. (There must be at least a few of you out there.)

Forest Fire - "Slow Motion".

Dear Sofia,

I think we can make this work. I've had dreams of knocking on your door. When I'm awake now I still hear the knocking. I hear the knocking everywhere. I went to your house and I stood on the front walk and I thought about knocking. I almost knocked. But the knocking is so loud in my mind, bang and bang and bang, that I decided that was enough. I let my head's, my heart's, my dreams' knocking be enough. Did you hear me out there? I walked away down the street to the diner. I'm sitting here now, iced tea. Writing you this letter. Sofia, I think we can make this work. We just need to go slow. Don't worry about the knocking - I don't mean anything by it. We'll go slow. Snail-slow. Tar-slow. As I'm writing to you I keep getting flashes of other things, of visions. The visions aren't of you they're of your house. I'm tearing up flowers and throwing them at your door. I'm tearing up clouds and leaving bits of lightning all over your lawn. I've just knocked my iced tea onto the floor. I just want to yell. Sofia, I think we can make this work. There are whole gardens in my chest, whole storms. There's noise and fury and knocking. You're my sweetheart and I want to literally burn bridges with you. Together we'll burn bridges. Literally. We'll light the fuses and watch them burn. We'll kiss in smoke. We'll take it slow, Sofia. Write me back. To the diner I guess.

Love,

v. l.

PS: Here is a secret: One night you turned to me in bed - you were still asleep, - and you said "I have nevers in my mouth." But it sounded like bullshit.

[buy. This album is $5. You can also buy it from iTunes, eMusic, Amazon MP3, Napster, Rhapsody, Lala or Amie St. You can also download it for free, at that link, in the form of 320 kbps MP3s. You can also stream or download it from iLike, Facebook, Last.FM, iMeem, Muxtape, Myspace, VIRB, Bebo or Fuzz. All of the links are at that link above. I suggest you listen to it and then buy it for $5 because it is really good.]

[photo source]

Snailhouse - "Superstitious". Is this the catchiest double-negative in songwriting history? Snailhouse has spent years feeling, writing, but here it's like he found an old mail-order catalogue, something from the Hudson's Bay Company, and redecorated the whole alleyway. He ordered wool blankets, brass plaques, spruce-trees, strings; he got lap steel and organ, flashlights, Scotch, and quick, impulsive kisses that only half-land on the cheek. This is a handsome song, an elegant song, but there's a wilderness in its murmurs and a wistfulness in its rhymes. Sometimes you watch a strolling cat and it reminds you how lonely you are; sometimes you watch two lovers dance and it reminds you how capably you can light a fire. Sometimes, in other words, one kind of moment is hidden inside the other.

On Lies on the Prize, Snailhouse's songs hit harder, shine fiercer, than any that came before. It's due in large part to the production by Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara. I love the affection in each track, the richness of sound, the amethysts & seashells & uppercuts they found. Snailhouse is Mike Feuerstack, who also plays in the Wooden Stars and Bell Orchestre. Sappy Records released a Snailhouse tribute album last year.

Oh, and Lies for the Prize - go get it. (With artwork by Kit Malo!)

[buy / back-catalogue]

(photo is a wire shot of the Argungu Fishing Festival)

The Instruments - "Papillon". On a hot day, butterflies begin to rust. I first noticed this on the day that Anabelle left me. I was sitting on the patio with a lemonade. The sky was grey, like a cat. I was thinking about what I would do, now that she was gone. I would have so much free time. I was wearing my red baseball cap, the one she hated. The lemonade had gin in it. I could feel it moving in slow motion down my throat and around my stomach. The cars had their windows rolled up. I couldn't remember what days of the week I was supposed to go to work. I couldn't remember where I kept my keys. I couldn't remember the phone numbers of any of my friends. The only thing I could remember was the deep tenor of her voice, the way she used to say my name, before she left me. I watched a butterfly waft up, flutter, settle on the railing. Then it didn't move. I noticed it must have rusted. That must have been what happened; rusted, on a hot day. I kept waiting to know for sure.

[buy/MySpace]

Babe, Terror - "Nasa, Goodbye". A "Glasgow kiss" is when you take a pint glass in one hand and them smash it into someone's mouth. A "French kiss" is when you kiss someone on the lips and then tongues become involved. And a "Brazilian kiss", well, I don't know. This is a song from Sao Paulo. Maybe it can teach me something. I take my notepad, like a student. I close my eyes. I imagine strolling down Teodoro Sampaio Street, sky the colour of roses. Cars rush by in glints. I meet someone. She smells of mint. I kiss her on the lips and then we become untethered, floating. Our lips separate. I'll never see her again. I am drawn upward - past hot trees, lampposts, into the rose sky. Past car-horns, yowling cats, the sounds of riots and love-making. I'm brought up past the smog, to where the satellites spin. We rush by in glints.

[Babe, Terror is from Sao Paulo. His first EP will be released later this year. Myspace.]

Diamonds - "The Waking". The first half of this pep talk is draped in felt. It's greys, browns, taupes, like the singer of the sermon thinks it has to be the blues to be taken seriously. "Are you finding what you're seeking?" he asks, "Or coming back with empty hands?" But the lesson here is one of go and now, of climb and cheer - of bright, good things, the stuff of golds, whites, reds, greens. Not of felt. The felt is just modestness. And before long Diamonds throw off their Little Wings-y guise and take up something closer to Jon Rae & the River: they toss off their cowls and show all the glitter round their eyes.

[Diamonds are the band of Popsheep's Jay. It's a great record and a free download.]

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Oh, ye of Montreal! Don't miss the Youjsh, free at Parc des Ameriques on Saturday (6pm); they're like Duke Ellington in Budapest. Adam & the Amethysts are playing at 8pm on Sunday. They need no more introduction from us - but this will be their formal Montreal debut.

Finally, there is a fantastic concert happening here on Wednesday, June 25, which may have gone unnoticed in all the summer rush. White Hinterland (formerly Casey Dienel), with Tuneyards (of Sister Suvi), and Little Scream. Little Scream debuted last night (at Fringe Pop), with a really terrific set of quietly noisy, phosphorescent songs; Tuneyards holler desires over loops of uke; and White Hinterland were one of Said the Gramophone's invited guests at Pop Montreal 2007. Not to miss. $10.

[photo is of a water tower in Clanton, Alabama]

The Secret Life of Sofia - "Nanda Devi". This song description is an abridged version of the Nanda Devi Wikipedia entry as of early on Tuesday, June 17, 2008.

Nanda Devi is the second and the highest. It is Bliss-Giving Goddess, two-peaked, east-west. Twin in myth and folklore. The interior is Sanctuary - Glacier, Glacier, Glacier, Glacier, Glacier. All of these glaciers are located within the Sanctuary. The arduous exploration of the Sanctuary is deep, very difficult to traverse. Hugh Ruttledge attempted three times in the 1930s and failed each time. In a letter to The Times he wrote that 'Nanda Devi imposes on her votaries an admission test as yet beyond their skill and endurance'. Attempts were made from 1965 to 1968 to listen [to] Nanda Devi, but an avalanche disappeared. Fragile firewood ... humankind.

[buy, with lovely limited edition artwork]

Coldplay - "Strawberry Swing". I met a girl this weekend who wore a cotton candy perfume. "I bought it in grade six," she said, "and it's still the only scent I ever get comments on. A two-dollar bottle of cotton candy." We expect the finest sweetnesses to be the sophisticated, expensive ones: the $400 bottle of Chanel, the Provence holiday, the lavender chocolate cake, the mountain-top necking, the euphoric moment at the end of the free-jazz show. When sometimes it's the Coldplay song, easy as anything, limply lyricked, beautifully recorded, with twists of raspberry guitar and the glimmer of strings, with clap and tumble and all the yes of that moment you were standing together and without saying anything she turned to you and put her lips to your cheek. [buy Coldplay's second-best album]

[photo source unknown]

Kasai Allstars - "Quick As White". I like magic. I have always liked magic. I like the magic of wardrobes, opals, old groves, secret passages. I remember the disappointment I felt one morning, age 7 or 8, realising I would never touch a magic sword. There's even some magic in the book I'm writing (and there's magic in most of the favourite books I've read). The magic of my childhood, the magic I still listen for at the trunks of willows or in the cries of birds, was a northerly magic. I was born in Scotland and came of age in Canada; of course it was a northerly magic. I did not dream of wizards in Africa, of their spells under stars. And yet, so strangely -- this is the sound of magic. This song, here: the most fiercely magic sound I have ever heard.

There are drums and voices, and electric guitars in shades of fizzy starlight; there are thumb-pianos like light in lamps; there are bells, sticks, shakes, slips, and 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.

"Quick as White" is from an album titled In the 7th moon, the chief turned into a swimming fish and ate the head of his enemy by magic.

[info/buy]

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My friend, hip-hop head Jay Smooth, will be talking in New York tomorrow along with Ze Frank and the Sound of Young America's Jesse Thorn. It would be a wonderful way to spend a late afternoon.

[photo source]