Archives : all posts by Sean

Clear Tigers - "Boredom" My computer's been in the repair shop for almost three weeks now, and it's making me realise how vulnerable all parts of my life are. My bones could break as easily as my iBook did. My liquor cabinet could crash to the floor, my roommate could flee the city, my phonecalls could stop being returned. All my photographs could crack, tear and burn; all my drawings could smudge. I'd go to the bagel shop and every bagel would be burned. I'd go to the ice-cream shop and find that everything had melted. I'd say "Hey, Dan!" to my friend Dan and he'd reply with an icy stare, or he'd up and move to Toronto, or he'd be kissing the girl I'd like myself to be kissing.

Some would think on these things and feel a fear. They'd spend their lives risking nothing. But me, I have too much time on my hands to cower. I can't just hide under my covers with my computer, watching TV on YouTube and rereading the emails from better days. Like I said: my computer's in the shop. The only possible behaviour is to turn up "Boredom", to turn it so loud that it tears the fabric on my speakers, that the stereo's lasers burn right through the CD, and then once the grey Panasonic box is all aflame I can myself crash through my apartment - hurling dishes, cracking mirrors, plowing through walls. I can destroy every dear thing in my life, rip every single thing to shreds, tear the love-letters with my teeth. To the sound of good-natured piano and strummed gutiar, repeated "oh"s, I'll take my life apart. Basking in the dying, happy sound of the Clear Tigers, I'll ruin everything. I'll sing along even when all my words have been lost, I'll take leaves from outside and dump them on my floor, I'll laugh with blood on my face - and finally, finally, amid the wreckage and the last wondering piano notes of this song, I'll realise that I've still got something left. I've still got something left, even if everything goes away.

[buy]

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Elsewhere:

Comparing American presidential candidates to hip-hop stars. Ghostface in 2012!

Yeasayer - "Red Cave". Sometimes you can tell from the start. The winter's not even come yet, it's not here, and already we can tell. I saw a single snowflake, today, drift past the window on the seventeenth floor. But I know, all of us here already know: This is going to be an amazing season. It's going to be a season of thrust and parry, of joy and midnight, of frost and powder. It's going to be marvelous. Something about the smell in the air and the tenor of the clouds. Hearing Yeasayer for the first time, writing about them in May, I had the sense: they've not even arrived yet and I already know that they'll arrive. Not just that "2080" is an amazing song, likely my favourite of the year, but that this is a group that will amount to something. "PAY ATTENTION," I said. I saw them play live in Montreal and they hollered all at once and the drummer slapped his drumpads and I snapped my fingers like I was remembering something long forgotten. Even now, with All Hour Cymbals released, not quite the record I hoped it would be, I can still tell: this isn't a soundalike, a novelty, a flash in pan. The members of Yeasayer have never played in other bands and they won't ever have to. They are still learning but even now they see things in the air that most of us don't see; all they have to do is learn to seal these insights onto wax, onto tape, and to leave the lesser visions in the ether. Saying fewer things, but in just as many colours. "Red Cave" is five minutes of love, of friendship & family, of hearth and home. It's a procession to the safest place there is - to the sanctuary, the grotto, the den, where the chants hang like streamers and the drums beat like hearts. If you die in Graceland, you're reborn here, with new grass under your toes.

[buy]

[photo by merkley???]

Kyla D - "Tooth". My friend Kyla released a tape last year but tapes being tapes and miles being miles, I've only now had the pleasure to hear it. It's one of those moments when it's very easy to be both music critic and friend; because, well, her songs are amazing. We used to listen to Mirah's You Think It's Like This But Really It's Like That, and Kyla would look dolefully at her own acoustic guitar, and now here she is making something that recalls all of the same worry, thirst, play and heartthump, but which is in some ways even better (and not just because Kyla used to bake me naan). I love how the production flourishes sprout and then abruptly disappear, like moths found fluttering in the kitchen or roomies who up 'n move out. The lyrics are an over-extended analogy, 1:45 of mixed metaphor, but the tangle of wit, honesty & distraction seems just-right for the relationship described: "we fumbled awkward / did a gentle dance ... and we were happy".

[buy (I ordered the Ray Rumours debut and the Sleeping States split tape as well!)]

CSS - "Knife (Grizzly Bear cover)". I'm surprisingly easy to confuse. If a lover were to backstab me, I'm not sure I'd understand. "What?" I'd say. I'd leave messages on their answering machine, asking the wrong questions - befuddled monologues ending with "Yeah... Ok so call me?" Here's another thing that confuses me: how this cover of a song called "Knife" sounds a lot like the band The Knife. But it isn't by The Knife. CSS are Brazilians, not Swedes, and the lead singer's called Lovefoxxx. It makes me wonder if there's a Grizzly Bear song called "CSS" which The Knife cover in the style of, uh, CSS. Okay okay but regardless of what the hell is going on, CSS's "Knife" is great, by far the best cover that's appeared in the past two years of "Knife"-covering and -remixing. It's got heart-attack zap, shimmer and shake, the faintest tremble of loss under the steely-sung chorus: "Do you think it's all right. Do you think it's all right." Like if the inflection let it be a question Ms Lovefoxxx might find her voice cracking. "Can you feel the knife;" she sings, again barely asking: a semicolon not a question mark. Because it's a rhetorical question. The betrayer thinks it's all right. And Lovefoxxx can feel the knife. Sharp. Even as she grits her teeth and slips like tongue-in-mouth all over the dance floor.

[Grizzly Bear's terrific, heaving new 11-track Friend EP is now available for purchase.]

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The full text of Sheila Heti's Believer interview with Dave Hickey is online, and it's fucking great. I was not smart enough to have heard of Mr Hickey, but he's an art/cultural critic and english prof who more than anything comes across as the sort of person you call a Thinker. And his ideas are full of spontaneous insight and a very ripe, live sense of humour.

With the artists, I don't teach, I coach. I can't tell them how to make art. I tell them to make more art. I tell them to get up early and stay up late. I tell them not to quit. I tell them if somebody else is already making their work. My job is to be current with the discourse and not be an asshole.

Rachel Ries - "Here We Lie In Wait". A little over a month ago, I think, we biked around Mile End looking for bonfires and then when we failed, some time near 3 a.m., some friends came back to my place. We played quiet songs and talked and opened a bottle of champagne and a little bit of whiskey, and some of us lay on the floor as the night stretched on, like cloth, like good strong cloth, and dawn was unthinkable even at 4 or 5 a.m. I was a little in love and my tiredness felt just like a silver lining on my heart, so that if you rapped it with your knuckles it would make a long, low ring. Rachel Ries has written a song about quitting drinking and finding God, but it's telling that I can put it in my own pocket, wear it as I wander through my own memories, use it as wax-paper to trace and retrace the shadowplay of that evening. The sun will shake us down, she sings, and she's right. It will, it did. If Rachel's voice were a tree branch, a ripe russet apple would hang at its end: a gift, there to take. Linger too long, and the song is over. Sooner or later, everyone goes home to their own beds.

[buy Without a Bird at her MySpace - the vinyl comes with a CD. / Rachel previously at StG.]

Aerosmith - "Cryin'". The first song I ever loved was Paul Owen Owen Paul's "My Favourite Waste of Time". I would toddle down the mewses of Stirling singing "Miiiiiiiii-ine" in a four-year old's Scottish brogue, not just ignorant of the rest of the lyrics but utterly ambivalent to them. But this is the stuff of family anecdote, of when-Sean-was-a-very-very-little-boy, and not a personal recollection. I don't think I've heard "My Favourite Waste of Time" in twenty years - if anyone has the mp3, I'd love to revisit my childhood crush.

Other than the Paul Owen Owen Paul hit, the first song I ever loved which was not introduced to me by my parents, and was not by The Beatles, Monty Python, or part of the Lion King soundtrack, was Aerosmith's "Cryin'". I was eleven or twelve. I didn't understand the words, I suspect, at least not the words "Do what you do down on me". But I loved the song so much, and just like I do now with the songs I love - I would stand in my room, feet on carpet, eyes closed and head back, listening loud & feeling all that feeling washing over me.

Can you predict 25 year-old Sean in the melody and meter of "Cryin'"? Can you see me sketched in any of the solos, in the key or the climax or the way Steve Tyler rhymes cryin', tryin' and dyin'? Can you hear me in the sax or the harmonica or the piano? What about in the yells?

When I sat down to write this tonight I was going to tell you that I have no idea why I ever liked this piece of shit. From the blood-curdling opening to the whine of the Hammond, from the cheeseball brass to the ham-handed guitar hooks, it seems like a procession of things I don't like. I was never a head-banger, never wore a leather jacket, didn't booze & fuck, and I've never played an air guitar in my life. I didn't even have (much of) a crush on Liv Tyler. But as I sit here with "Cryin'" on a loop, ringin' in All Saints Day with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, I begin to remember the thing that made me fall so fast and firm in love. "Cryin'" isn't just a sad song: it's the celebration of a sad song. It's an acceptance and recognition of the blues that crows so hard it falls all the way into caricature. When Steve Tyler sings the chorus, - "I was cryin' when I met you / now I'm tryin' to forget ya / your love is sweet misery," - there's an ecstasy to it, an openhearted longing, that recalls everyone from the Velvet Underground to Wolf Parade to Van Morrison to Shearwater. The cradle of a sad line sung as loud and as hoarse as it can be sung.

[buy]

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The results of I Heart Music's Hottest Canadian Bands of 2007 poll are in. Dan and I both voted. The results are... not particularly to my taste. My full ballot, and comments, are below the fold.

[Photo source here (photographer unknown). It's a sculpture by Nathan Coley.]

Whistle Jacket - "Say Hello". Your room's a mess and your hair's a mess and you're looking forward to talking to your friend on the phone, ready to be charming and kind and fascinating and witty as all hell, just as soon as they call you, any second now, and you're pacing over your dirty socks, and you're yelping to yourself, like for practice, and you're waiting for the piano-scales that will be your cue, and I WILL BE THERE, ba ba ba, c'mon already.

[for a limited time, the Stop Start Skip & Jump EP is absolutely free.]

The Baptist Generals - "Diminished". (previously) [buy]

Dear C.H.,

I wish I had something more to give you. I could write you a story, I could bake you a cake, I could take you to the movies. I could give you a call on the telephone. I could enter you in a raffle, I could take you apple picking, I could tell you a little about my own willowing sorrows. I could - I do - give you a song. But I wish I had something more to give you. And yet I know the only more you want, deep down, is the thing that's gone, that's not just disappeared but fled, and I have no place in that. I'm the distant stranger. I'm the sun, beaming down. I can't rescue love, or avert loss, or explain things. I can listen. I can answer. I can give you a sad song and make you the promise that somewhere far away, someone else is singing along with you, whispering the words you don't know how badly, and hearing the high, lost keening of the accordion, like a circling albatross.

And I can say: patience. And I can say: life. And I can say listen to the kindness in basslines and remember that even sad songs end.

And to all the brokenhearted out there, to all the bereft and shattered, to the travellers and the lonelyhearts - let's form a club. There is no membership fee, no newsletter, no clubhouse. There isn't an annual convention, or a hotel discount. But when we're in the same bar, we'll play foosball together. When we're in the same apartment, we'll play records for each other. We'll hold the door for each other, and share taxis, and pass the ball, and tell you when you've dropped your gloves on the bus. We'll teach you magic tricks and catch your spilled cutlery. And we'll introduce you to our friends, who are beautiful and funny and kind and smart and good, and with one of whom you will one day, I promise, fall redpetal and blushcheeked in love, because this is the way things will go. And your love will linger and last.

And I ask you to take care, while you wait.

And I say, for everything it's worth:

Sincerely,

Sean

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update: moseying around the web, it looks like the long-promised new Baptist Generals album might actually be on its way (!!!!!!!). It's called Jackleg Devotional to the Heart. At their myspace there's an instrumental that seems more like premonition than preview... the best place for news is probably this blog.

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Dan wrote about Bad Flirt, the band beloved of Mary-Kate and Ashley, at Ajisignal.

Radiohead - "Reckoner". Instead of heartbeat, I've got heartbeats. Instead of tomorrows, I've got tambourine. Every bang and scatter of drums is another movement of hands. That's what we do, us. We wander & wander, we get lost and try to get found, and we move our hands. From windowglass to desk-top to kitchen table; from handle bars to steering wheels; from bus-poles to tree-trunks. Clasp your hands at your chest, clasp them behind your back. Then in hush you'll move your hands from fumbling to touch, from shoulder, to hand. to hip, to fingers against her cheek. Clasp her hands and keep them clasped with yours. Don't tremble, don't blink. Instead of heartbeat, you've got heartbeats. Instead of tomorrows, you've got tambourines. "In rainbows," Thom Yorke sings, lingeringly, with his hundred reflections; and you can hear what it sounds like to come back to life.

[Photo by the marvelous lilie-melo]

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Also: Dan wrote a piece on his friend N's band Bad Flirt at ajisignal.com. They have a show on Sunday at La Sala Rossa.

The Cotton Jones Basket Ride - "Had Not a Body". Page France's Hello, Dear Wind is a beautiful, dear album, and Said the Gramophone was an early and vocal proponent of Michael Nau's violet & silver pop songs. You may however have noticed a lack of coverage here of this year's And the Family Telephone or the past twenty months' countless MySpace-leaked demos, side-projects, solo outings and whatnot. And that's because none of that work has held a candle, not a flickering flame, to Hello, Dear Wind. Nau's greatest strengths - the heartbreaking, skylarking melodies; the ring & bell; the enfolded rhymes; the ripe, sacred imagery, - were cast aside in favour of, I dunno, modest singer-songwriter pop songs. Narrative songs, clever songs... Nothing like the elegies & fanfares that populated the debut. I can't help but think that the dismissive remarks about the album's religious imagery - especially at Pitchfork - spooked Nau and steered him away from his muse. I've still not heard anything from him that speaks to the potential in "Feather" - not the best song on Hello..., but the one that suggested the scale of his promise.

But Nau's new project, the mouthful known as The Cotton Jones Basket Ride, might yet redeem things. "Had Not a Body" is far away, very far away, from the glockenspiel psalms of Hello, Dear Wind, but instead Nau shows a hot, salt-and-pepper affection for the work of Harry Nilsson or even VU-era Velvet Underground. It's kitchen-counter soul with a Sunday night guitar-line, voices hangin' with voices, the mice coming out from the mousehole to teach the cats all how to dance. It's something to rub on your arms and neck before you go out into the cold; something to keep you warm and smelling of home.

[Cotton Jones MySpace]
[buy Hello, Dear Wind]

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Of Montreal - "Voltaic Crusher/Undrum to Muted Da". Of Montreal already released perhaps the greatest album of 2007 and then they followed it up with an EP that's even better. Icons, Abstract Thee comprises five songs. One of these ("Du Og Meg") is a beautiful star-kissed love-story; one ("Miss Blonde, Your Papa Is Failing") is a tribute & apology & promise to a daughter; one ("Derailments In A Place Of Our Own") is a sad, confused, bitter plea; one ("No Conclusion") is no conclusion; and "Voltaic Crusher/Undrum To Muted Da" is a fond, self-deprecating (and even self-hating) prayer for an ex-girlfriend to find happiness. But what's extraordinary about all these is their joy: their sheer pop pop. Even "Derailments...", with its dark melodic monotone, feels like it could be the middle eight from a Beatles song. They are confessional, unvarnished, sincere, and yet resplendent, sonically dazzling, miles away from the singer-songwriter lope/mope the autobiographical lyrics might otherwise predicate.

"Voltaic Crusher/Undrum to Muted Da" is my favourite. It's two minutes long and expresses a feeling that's mixed-up and familiar and something I'm not sure I've ever in my life heard sung. Oh and it's hooky & catchy & fun as a thousand fucking circuses. The song starts by lamenting the death of a relationship, the way the singer has screwed things up. "If there's a god / he will repair your heart. / If there's a god / send her an angel." And we think we're headed to that expected conclusion - the boyo who hopes his girlo can fall back in love with him. But no, nay, nuh-uh. Kevin Barnes asks that the angel, essentially, be a hottie. "Someone to love her volcanically!"

Next we hit the from-all-sides-high-five hookapalooza the line: "AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GOD DON'T BE A BASTARD!" and Kevin's explaining how Kevin ought to be banished to memory, to oblivion, smiling and cheering as he explains this, telling his former lover to find happiness ASAP. In the hands of a guy with acoustic guitar and tape hiss, this would be a tiresome, cliched self-loathing. But Kevin's on the fuckin' moon, jamming with a joy and fierceness that seems altogether new to me; a new way of singing these feelings, a new model for heartbroken hunks of flesh. Something akin to dancing your worries away, to mourning the loss of a love by loving everything you can, to seeing through your tears the world's every beauty. Last night I biked happily down the night streets, waving to the falling leaves, hooting at the owls, singing wide-smiled that "You gave me your heart / I gave you my fist / please don't lose any sleep over me / baby / I hardly exist!" Of Montreal have got even the unheartbroken singing along to heartbreak.

[buy]

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Elsewhere: I love the Listening Party song at Shake Your Fist.

Jess Harvell writes an overdue, honest and thought-provoking article on the 2007 music hype-o-sphere. At Idolator, of all places.

And finally -- Ola Podrida's new music video is absolute lunatic genius. Like the Incredible Hulk crossed with a back-porch strummer.

[photo source unknown]