Archives : all posts by Sean

Harmony Trowbridge - "Covers Up (demo)". A song about appearances and disappearances, the kind that come between blinks of heavy eyes. And it's sung in a red wine voice, with afternoon in the curtains, last night's dishes gathering moths. Harmony's sorrow still has some wonder in it; she so clearly remembers the coming, the arrival, the beginning when the door clicked shut. It's hard, lying here, to understand the leaving. To look past yr shadow, fainting toward the exit, and see the consequences of what came next. [Harmony's MySpace]

Roommate - "Night (Rhombus cover)". If we rolled credits here, the credits would be a simple font, white on black, all-caps with just the slightest serif curls, like Spring had begun to flower (which it has), like today had begun to tomorrow (which it has), like our lovers all sing in birdsong (which they do), like our whistles are small hymns (which they are), like a gathering of friends, all singing together, is equal to a climax, is all you need in a life to make it a story, to make it have mattered & rung, rung, rung. [buy]

[photo source]

Au - "RR vs. D". Lo! A parade! It's too hot for us to just stand on street-corners, too hot to just clink our bike helmets like beer-bottles. No we need something grander, something to capture the rat-a-tat beat-in-chest wonder of oh these days, oh these days!, yes we need a parade. I didn't build a float, I can't build a float, but I fell in ♥ with Au and a song that's part Steve Reich and part Dodos, that uses handclaps like they're currency, like they're ducats, like they could buy all the palaces in the world. I can never restrain my grammar at a parade. I can never put my clauses in the right order; I get too distracted by majorettes and marching bands and jugglers on stilts. I get too distracted by the foots on pavement and the parents waving their babies like flags, and the horns, the horns that bust out of the crowd like sneezes, and the thing that all parades are celebrating, every single one, from Christmas to Rose Bowl, is just the fact of the parade. Every parade is a parade in honour of itself, like a smile you just no oh oh oh no just you can't help. [i am indebted, as ever, to Chryde] [info/buy earlier album]

Enur ft. Natasja - "Calabria 2007". No biases here - we love the songs we love. I do not love the cymbals on "Calabria 2007" but I love most other parts, especially the unapologetic honks, the way these have snuck into an otherwise sultry song. It's like a chocolate cake on a table of svelte melon-slices. I'm just warning you - if you dance to this song you have to take off your shoes and your socks. [buy]

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It's Record Store Day on Saturday - go to your local independent record shop where fun things might be a-happening. In Montreal a terrific free show is going down at eetle-beetle Phonopolis: Born Ruffians, The Luyas, and Adam & the Amethysts (much more on them later), free, 3pm-5:30pm.

Artists and crafties: submit to Montreal's Pomme Pomme art/craft fair.

Said the Gramophone has another new banner image, this one by English illustrator Ella Plevin. It's in the random mix but to have a direct look click here. If you are an artist and would like to submit a banner for consideration, you may always email us.

Gramophone friends: Maryam started a Facebook group. I'm too bashful to join but maybe you'd like to.

[photo source unknown]

Sun Kil Moon - "Heron Blue". This is a list of predators: vultures, panthers, elephant seals; wolves, jellyfish, asps; sharks, hornets, hawks; winters, springs, summers; doubts, clouds, years; no-signal, ice-cubes, knots; pinpricks, splinters, frays; mouths, and rows; and loss; and cold kitchen floors. [buy]

Nick Drake - "Place To Be". If you are in the habit of reading horticultural handbooks, you will know that some plants grow only in certain places. (Sometimes this fact is disclosed in botanical guides, too.) You're not going to grow a moontree in northern Ontario, nor a glimmer-bush in Papua New Guinea. Maple trees are for here, Quebec, and places nearby. Paprika is for Hungary, snow-roses for central Russia, and murmur-rushes grow only along the Mississippi. Human beings are different. If you are in the habit of reading anatomical handbooks, you will know that people grow almost everywhere. (Sometimes this fact is disclosed in anthropological dissertations, too) A person can be born in Bethlehem and dwell in Kansas City; she can get lost in Seville and grow old in Liverpool. People are hardy, they are adaptable. They are of every place, yes? Yes? I am asking because I am not sure, in the end. Nick Drake makes me wonder, a kiss makes me wonder. We bob and weave, we feint and journey and strive. We go everywhere, we ivy everywhere. & yet &y &y &y &y &y &y, well, what if? What if there is indeed a somewhere where we belong. A somewhere or a side-by-side. A gaze in which we truly flourish, a room in which we flower. Or a touch under which we, trembling, grow. [buy/really buy]

Sister Suvi - "The Lot". I leave you with this, for the weekend. 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. You don't know them. Their debut album's not even recorded yet. Merrill's got the big bad wolf in her gut, blow you down.

Here's a song about a city, a city like the place you live - torn up, ripped out, scraped and bleeding and with such a thrill still in it. It's a fervour cooked in subway sparks, in arson, in the heat of kiss on kiss. Sister Suvi use ukelele, drum-sticks and three part-harmony; they use amplifiers and microphones and determination. The song is breathless, brilliant, and magnificently composed. They've listened to the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane", to Yeasayer, Akron/Family, Deerhoof, and Islands (with whom they share a member). And then they carried their turntable through the streets, raised on poles, to see if they could catch starlight in their records' grooves.

Now all they need to do is make an album like this.

[info - you can buy the Colour EP there but this is one of two songs from the upcoming debut LP, issued on a 5" CD called Mandala of Power]

The Airwaves - "Gems". Diamonds, jades, sapphires, amethysts, rubies, ambers, opals, sunstones, garnets, pearls, topazes, agates, starlights, twilights, daylights, hands, necks, eyes, lips, touches, clinks, glints, glimmers, swerves, tremors, songs, sweats, sights, softs, laughs, hopes, wants, haves, and a lace of journeys that take me to one place, to one tonight, to you.

[buy ze limited edition EP from Catbird Records]

The Endless Bummer - "Ride On". Our dear friend Dave Barclay, of the Parka 3, the Diskettes, La Guerre des Tuques, Red Pony Clock, &c, the man who should one day chair the CBC, lover and songwriter, physicist and oceanographer, promoter and doter, has a new project called the Endless Bummer. It's jangle-shook pop, like always, hiding under the sheets or hiding in the berry-bushes. But its melodies are less ebullient than before, its hooks less hooked. The Bummer are wading in deeper waters, find more pleasure in singing together than in singing the catchiest catches. It's like an album about singing the other songs, a record about cheering the uncheered cheers. Finding new words to spell in keyboard, harmony, percussion and smile. And "Ride On" (first included as a Diskettes track on the Port City All Stars split tape) is about persisting, persisting, persisting, riding on & finding the thrill in it. "My U-lock will never be beat!" he calls. Take to the streets and go: the road doesn't ever end.

Do you live in Europe? The Endless Bummer are looking to book concerts, house-parties, beach-parties, fun-times, hang-outs, yays, especially in France and the UK. I can vouch for Mr Barclay. Write them!

[info / email to buy! / buy Diskettes]

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ok so double-booked nights are double-booked nights and sunday night i had to hoof it from Divan Orange before Sandro Perri had even finished his set (and :( long before ye Luyas hit the mammothine stage), bbbbut wow-jeez Receivers played probably the best set i had ever heard, shooting for stars, and as a monk would say "holy f'n s" Throw Me The Statue outlived their name and with double-drummer goodtime almost Cars/Weezer pummel played their hearts out with wow-zoom, and if you live in the USA you should see them on tour this month. (tonight: cambridge, MA.) hiiiighly recommended.

oh and hey if you live in montreal you can vote for SAID THE GRAMOPHONE as "best mtl blog" on yr Mirror best-of-city ballot. then again, you can also vote for someone else.

[photo by Ryan O'Sullivan]

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - "the mic checking song/godzilla (live on Fair Game)". "You're a natural, kid. I mean it. You could sell ice to Eskimos. You could sell floodwater to New Orleanians. I'm not joking. I'm not exaggerating. You got it. You got it. You could sing the phonebook and they'd clap along. It's in the swagger of your vowels, the lope of your tongue. Something magic in the syllables you select and the way they roll outta your mouth. It's like hearing a ball through a basketball hoop, a shirt getting pulled up over a girl's head. You tell a stupid story and it sounds like a parable, you knock-knock-joke and we laugh & laugh. It's like you're the rock'n'roll son of fuckin' god. Walk on water - go on. And I damn well promise I'd follow."

[via fluxtumblr, natch]

Drew Danburry - "Lynette I Love You". Let's say you're in the habit of writing love-songs. You're a musician and this is the sort of thing you do. After a decade of this, of love-songs and break-up songs, good choices and bad, flush faces and broken hearts, verses and choruses and bridges and yes water under bridges, - well you meet someone different. You meet the flamingest flame you've ever known, the hottest heart. You meet a someone that feels like she might be, well, you know. And you've known her for days, weeks, months, and you know you ought to write a song about it but man you need to get it right. You need the song to be as perfect as yr feelings, to say it all just as sweet. To write a lesser song about this love, this one, would somehow diminish what you have. Imagine if the song of a previous love were a better song than the song about yr greatest love! What would that mean? It would mean something terrifying, maybe.

Well Drew Danburry pulled it off.

[Drew Danburry is touring like crazy across the USA. / buy things]

[photo source]

[Click here to see what this entry looked like on April 1, 2008.]

Hi. Welcome to the new and improved Said the Gramophone. If you're reading this in an RSS reader I recommend you come visit the site to see some of the small and to be honest pretty obvious changes that we've made. Give the day and age, it's not really going to surprise anyone. Thank you to the donors who have made the site possible thus far.

Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal". I read someone's description of the Fleet Foxes, calling them "Grizzly Bear crossed with the Shins", and this seems to me very apt. I don't like the Shins very much but of course I am very fond of Grizzly Bear, so all that this really means is that on the Fleet Foxes' best songs there's an unabashed warmth, not a heat but a warmth, a keep-cosy ski-lodge thing, the taste of mulled wine in your throat. And "White Winter Hymnal" is a beautiful sleigh-ride of a song, a mulberry jingle-bell snowflake of a song, a carol for first things. Like: "First things first, get out of bed." "First things first, put on your boots." "First things first, go on to work, go on, go on." The thing about first things, the thing that makes them okay, is that they lead to second things, and to third. And that ahead of every footstep there might be someone waiting.

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My second column for the National Post appears today. I write about Hologram, Mixylodian, the Dodos, Port O'Brien, Phosphorescent, and that funny Ivan Ives/Arcade Fire track. From now on I think it's the first Tuesday of every month.

Vincent Moon shot a Takeaway Show with REM. Just as they describe, the magic moment is the laughter at the end of "Living Well".

Seven-year-old Alice has written a song for Brenda Martin, a Canadian woman who has been held in Mexican jail for the past two years.