Archives : all posts by Sean

Adam & the Amethysts - "The Return". Time works differently in the lake. On the surface it's all silver-flash, fish-fast, slap and splash and light-on-drops. But underneath - everything's slow, lunar, with weeds & shadows & long white legs. "The Return" isn't a song about swimming but it's a song about all those other things: dip, slip, gleam, flash, hide & find, rise & dive, love and ache, belly-flop, cannonball, swan's flight. It's like The Microphones as produced by The Neptunes (or like a wedding ring in a trout's belly). Adam's found a way to fold butterflies in half.

It's one of the most richly Canadian albums in years & years, and I haven't yet found all the right words.

But - do you like pennies? Do you like polaroids? Do you like going swimming? You'll like Amethyst Amulet. Order it here. Dan wrote about "Bumble Bee" yesterday, I wrote about "Stupid Ocean" for the National Post last month, and there are yet more songs at the Adam & the Amethysts MySpace page. The album will be released in June on The Luyas' Pome Records. It's the kind of thing people are going to be whispering about.

Are you a promoter? I think Adam's trying to book shows.

[photograph by Elina Virtanen]

Ariel Kitch wrote to us. Sometimes people write and they seem like they're writing from across an enormous divide, that they're so far away that they can't even see what we look like, what the hell we're doing. Ariel - she had a pair of binoculars. She held up some of her drawings and Dan, Jordan and I peered through our telescope (we have just the one), and what we saw in those lines and curls was in a lot of ways a manifestation of just the stuff we find ourselves up to. Finding pictures for music, the right ones, even if it means lying a little bit. Ariel is gifted, insightful and gentle with her pen. She tells the rightest stories. We couldn't be more happy to be sharing with you her interpretation of a favourite song - and we hope to work some more with her in the future. Please leave her your comments below! - Sean

Astronautalis - "Short Term Memory Loss".

[Ariel Kitch works in radio and lives in Washington, D.C. You can write to her at ariel [dot] kitch [at] gmail [dot] com.]

(Previous guest-blogs: 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.)

Shearwater - "Leviathan, Bound". The new record by Shearwater, Rook, is one of the best albums of the year. It takes their last LP's great leap forward and adds patience, confidence, daring. They are a band who recall Mark Hollis/late Talk Talk, Final Fantasy, Silver Mt. Zion and Radiohead's Amnesiac. Since Rook arrived in the mail a week ago, I've scarcely listened to anything else. "Leviathan, Bound" is a song with dulcimer instead of drums, glockenspiel instead of rainfall, strings instead of thunder. It's beautiful and terrifying. Like when the waters begin to rise; like when the ground begins to shake; like then the clouds come barrelling & black; like when the trees begin to weep; like when the light flashes in her eyes; like when a shout comes from her chest; like when you're at your piano, scared, and every key turns to grey. The apocalypses Shearwater sing are the kinds we already dream of, the ones we already hold in our hands. [buy]

Calico Horse - "Idioteque". A song can have the heart taken out of it, singing it slow & strange. But not here. Calico Horse keep Radiohead's disquiet, sip the same cups of nightshade. There's something even more sinister in "Idioteque" turned lullaby - what are you doing to me, as I fall asleep? what promises are you weaving into my lashes? [info]

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My May column in the National Post features songs by Sister Suvi, Au, Frightened Rabbit, Colourbook, Wolf Parade and Snailhouse.

[image source]

Frightened Rabbit - "Keep Yourself Warm". Frightened Rabbit's new one, The Midnight Organ Fight, is terrific and absolutely unrevelatory. The band aren't doing anything new - this is just same-old melancholy indie-rock, folk-inflected, full of wistful harmonies, booming choruses and bombastic dynamics, - but Frightened Rabbit do it so. very. well. Even Scott Hutchison's (pretty terrible) lyrics aren't an obstacle: his singing is still the band's greatest strength, turning turgid poetry into heartache, want, will. In my National Post column tomorrow I compare the band to the Constantines, Okkervil River and the Foo Fighters, and I like that there's a band somewhere integrating those three sounds into a single, simple pleasure. A song with the stupid-euphemistic lyrics "you won't find love in a hole" is nevertheless one of my favourites of the year. [buy]

Mr Gnome - "Pirates". On the night at the loft party, five stories up the concrete block, you spun and shook to dance music, and then the vodka you had drunk began to sour, and your friends were just blurs, and so you decided to go, brushed by everyone, slipped on your coat and ran a hand over your face. And you put on yr ipod (this song), closed yr eyes as you washed away the before and dove headfirst into the after; you pretended like the night had a crescendo all the same, listened to yr one night stand in your earbuds; yeah, yeah, yeahs; and when you fell down the concrete, heels over head, smashed and bloody, you didn't open your eyes or stop listening, you just fell, and heard the sound of your falling. [album out tomorrow]

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Saw Robyn last night. Had a really, really, really wonderful time.

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I've made a few muxtapes lately: 1 2 3

[sharkmeat photo by John Isaacs]

Minus Story - "Battle Of Our Lives". This song isn't about the beginning of love. It is, I think, a goodbye. It is a whisper through a windowpane, a hand on your own heart. It is sharp and rough and noisy and full. But a goodbye can still be a love-song, and a love-letter can still be a goodbye. I love you but... And later, when the words no longer contain all those evers, when the full-stops are just dots of ink, when the skies have fallen & risen, aglow, sundrenched, highing & oh, well then melt down those old love-letters, lose the old goodbyes, take the wood dust, nickel shavings, chips of ruby, and make yrself a new song. One that begins Dear, and means that word, fully; one that says darling, and knows that heat, hotly. [buy]

Fleetwood Mac/Gwen Stefani - "Everywhere (Paul Devro blend)". It's not that Gwen Stefani has anything to teach Stevie Nicks about love. It's that her band has something to say about boom boom boom. About-- what? About-- boom boom boom i'm boom sorry my heart is boom boom beating too hard boom to tell yoboom boom the full extent of my boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom feelings' flush.

(thanks, doug.)

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I was a guest this week at Nothing But Green Lights (whose lovely redesign underlines how they're one of the best musicblogs out there, yes.)

Don't miss Jordan's 10pm post from yesterday; it's lovely.

[photo is of Edinburgh ca. 1920 - source]

Ponytail - "Beg Waves". 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, just thrills & fears & squawk. Let's say you were arriving overnight from California, muscle-tired and underslept, but you have a whole day in front of you; let's imagine there's a million reasons to fall asleep but one big one to stay awake; let's imagine you have to go on and on and on; let's imagine you need a new reason to pump yr fist in the air. Well: here. Beautiful and squalid.

[Ponytail's Ice Cream Spiritual is out June 17. Get as excited as you like: album teaser here. From the ears that brought you Yeasayer.]

The Orchards - "Gemini". I remember we were in the basement. I had drunk a beer or two. I was in my late teens, unaccustomed to booze. My friends were talking beside me, two of them playing ping-pong. I had been sitting for a while, and then I stood up. And suddenly ALL AROUND ME the world was SPARKLING, was effervescent and fizzing, lights and glints and shines. And I was terrified and excited and panicked, thought maybe I was dying (though it was just oxygen & brain &c). Anyway, this is what is great about The Orchards' "Gemini" - the way at 1 minute 40 his strum & melancholy gets all streaked in zing, cobwebbed with shock, something splintering out- and in-side him in the brittle way that small epiphanies do.

[myspace/buy]

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You are a damn fool if you live in Montreal and do not go to see Stars Of The Lid on Tuesday night at the Masonic Temple. Just sayin'. (Bonus tip: Clues on Saturday, Robyn on Sunday. Yes it's a busy week.)

[photo source unknown - from the Leuven mentos + coke world record attempt]

Constantines - "Time Can Be Overcome". Somewhere on the 33rd floor of a 51-storey apartment bloc in South Korea there is a man called Yes. He has dwelled on the 33rd floor for the past fourteen years, since he left his parents' home and went to work at the software company. Every day he has the Korean equivalent of a tuna sandwich for lunch, the Korean equivalent of chicken soup for dinner. Every night he looks out over the entire city, a city turned the colour of oyster-shell, and imagines how one day it will be nothing but dust. Yes has one friend, a violinist called Fei. Sometimes they go together to watch concerts. The best-ever concert was one on the beach, a viola-player standing on the sand and playing so hard that the strings fell out of its neck. At any second it looked like a wave could come and swallow the viola-player, take him away in a blink. The wave didn't come but at any moment it could have come. Yes bought an electric guitar thirteen years ago and every night since then he has spent learning a single song. He does not feel this is slow or fast; it is just right. One day he will play the song, play the whole thing. Meteorites will hammer the city and tsunamis will rise and his heart will come to life in his chest. [buy]

Withered Hand - "I Am Nothing". 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. It's a song beautiful and full. [buy for a song]

[photo by AFP, of the Congolese plane crash in October 08 07]