Archives : all posts by Sean

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]

Orillia Opry - "I Lied"

Orillia Opry - "Shadow Shadow"

Orillia Opry isn't a person. It's two: Montreal's Daniel Noble and Emma Baxter. And Orillia Opry are releasing their second album, Lighthouse for the Stragglers' Eyes. And it's marvelous.

It's a record that seems modeled on one thing: on the harmony of Daniel and Emma's voices, on the smoke signals and sparks that their duets evoke. Sometimes their singing require a soft song, sometimes a loud one, often a little of each. And yet the result is not a glut of midtempo grey; it's a limber, supple thing, an album with moss on the north side and a hand on the east. Folk, and folk rock, that you could wear swinging on your neck as you bike down rue Bernard, screeching to a stop at the sight of your love's rosy face.

"I Lied" is the prettiest, and bitterest, break-up song that you'll hear this year. They sing their sadness with the plainest of adornment, with the evenest of tones. Such a fearsome, gentle chorus: "If you come back / come back with a heart attack". A heart attack! Like it's the easiest thing to sing, like there's nothing tightening in their chest as they stare you down. Like they're not going to go home and do the dishes, and put on a kettle, and forget to make the tea, and like they're not going to sit staring out the blank glass of the window reminiscing, and angry, and like they're not going to go in to the kitchen and see the cold kettle and boil some more water and like as the tap shushes at their fingertips they're not going to begin to cry like a dog, banging their fist against the sink in fury at themselves

"Shadow Shadow" is a rock song with a Neil Young poster on the wall, and it's a slow fade-in to the album, and it's more gold than silver. I want to own a small bell, a hand bell, and for that bell to rest on a shelf in my house. And inside the bell I'll hide "Shadow Shadow", and every time I ring it, the song will be there, ringing like a cathedral carillon, shaking all the burrs from my limbs, all the sand from my eyes, all the innocence from my blood, all the blood from my innocence. It's a song-title that ought to be written in all caps. "SHADOW SHADOW." An electric guitar solo that's already written in all caps. "RADADADA RARADADA DA OH DA DA OHOH fuck YES."

[ORILLIA OPRY have their album release on TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30th, at SALA in MONTREAL. You should GO. It will even end early enough to take the metro home, if that's your thing. In two weeks you can order the album but in the meantime buy their previous LP, Pandion Haliaetus.

And if you want to hear the rock song that will storm the Canadian indie charts just as soon as it gets the chance, visit the Orillia Opry MySpace and listen to the one called "Riverside 2". Oh lordy, let's have a bonfire by the train-tracks. (You're all invited.)]

[Photo of kudzu in the American south, of unknown origin.]

[Continuing the talk about Said the Gramophone's Pop Montreal series of concerts, and the artists thereof.]

Those who spent Friday, October 5th at the Ukrainian Federation were rewarded with a whole heatwave of song - enough sweat & steam & beauty to raise a crop of hothouse flowers. Yeasayer were as singular & special as I had dreamed: I watched the audience's eyes go wide. Who are these guys? they murmured, while the band loosed quadrupled hollers, redoubled chants, synth-pad drums and slip-knots of melody. The only thing I'm not sure of is the front-man's hand gestures. Then Plants and Animals warmed our fingers and toes, three guys making enough jam for a hundred sandwiches. And though it took a few songs to settle their feet into the soil, Grizzly Bear, o grizzly bear, let everything grow and curl and rise like ivy. They were as beautiful and stray as I had ever hoped, and this my first time seeing them. Owen Pallett guested on "Marla" in its first-ever live performance, "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)" hit harder and gleaminger than ever, and "Fix It" was like waking from headache into dream. The night had such a perfect crescendo; at the very end we were all so hot, and so at peace, and if our hearts were seeds our veins would have been filled up with leaves.

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And then there was Sunday. Dan wrote about it, precisely. Carl has now, too. It was in a church chapel, older than electricity, four bands running on a single flimsy breaker and all of our fingers crossed that the place would not go abruptly dark. The pews were made of wood and there was no booze. The first three bands offered hushes of varying degrees. Casey Dienel's new songs are autumnal and subtle and sensitive to light: a jazz of smiles, bicycle baskets and want. Her band's freer than you'd guess, worthy of its own name, and when their album is released next year you'll hear what I mean (from under all that snow). Elfin Saddle's lull and racket feels Montreal-born (even if it's not), the sort of stuff that can only grow near our particular train-tracks. And Horse Feathers - their performance was such that I could sense all of our internal candles flickering. So much fury, hurt and longing locked in a set of songs that seem so sweet, so heartbreakingly lovely. Like a hand stuck into a fire.

Okay but Clues.

This is the new band by Bethany Or (Liederwolfe), Alden Penner (The Unicorns), Brendan Reed (Letlowns, Les Angles Morts, etc), and at least on Sunday a fellow on bass who plays in Anemones and whose name I thought was Steven but about which I must have been mistaken. And they were fucking amazing. The most exciting rock band in Montreal right now, seems to me, and that was clear even a night after seeing Sunset Rubdown play Le National. There's been some controversy about between-song fucking around, about performance and acting out, but for me that was the stuff of a band trying on its mantle, of artists who have a lot to say and are in a rush to say it even before they've figured out all the words. Before they went on stage they were playing with the chapel's wireless priest-mic, trying to figure it out, and to those of us in the pews (or behind the sound-board) it sounded like the speakers were melting. When I went back to ask them what the hell was going on there was such a funny expression on their faces. Telling me "It's fine, Sean, sorry," with utter friendliness, but knowing I could see the glint in their eyes. (In the glint: an acknowledgment of the necessity of mischief.) When Alden later donned a "cape", I'm pretty certain it was the priest's cloak from backstage, and my grin was unholy in its breadth.

Clues - "[Unknown title - "Blues Clues"] (live)" (recording by "thewalrusnp")

But anyway these details are accessories to the fact of Clues' songs. They're wide and fierce and fun and reach very deep. Hysteria, certainty and pleasure tied up in the same old mail sack, tossed into a leaping sea.

There's an urgency to most great pop music - but it takes something else for a song to become beloved, for it to be a hero and not just well-respected. And it's there in Clues: in their gusto, bravado and play you get the feeling that they could hoist themselves out of the water by grabbing the napes of their own necks. Like Baron Munchausens in overlarge capes, carrying drumsticks, accordion, an eyeblue electric guitar.

Clues are gonna break hearts, and suture them.

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Eef Barzelay (once-of-Clem Snide) wrote me in reference to some recent posts here and wanted me to invite our British readers to definitely go see him when he plays London this month:

Eric makes a modest state-of-the-mp3blog-union address. Right on, my brilliant & eggheaded friend.

Last week, Said the Gramophone played host to its first ever concerts. If you were there, you know how splendid they were. If you weren't, imagine the most splendid thing you can, and then multiply by a dozen roses. Our thanks go out hard & hearty to all the bands; to Hil, Dan, Patricia and Lisa at Pop; to Andrew Rose; to Matthew and Frank; to other Matthew for graphics; to sound-guys Christian, Drew and especially Dan Lagacé; and to everyone who showed their face for short or long whiles.

Christine Fellows - "What Makes the Cherry Red". On Wednesday night some of us gathered at a room called Le Gymnase, a place of wood and concrete and gold banding, and amid lamps and lamplight listened. There was a performance by Julie Doiron + drummer, bashful stories interrupted by bouts of furious playing, gnashing at notes, the bitter & the sweet. There was a show by Ola Podrida, all the way from Brooklyn, who made their weariness insistent. (A reminder that some of our fiercest feelings happen at the end of long days, when hopes are worn threadbare.) And there was first, flush, an hour with Christine Fellows and her friends.

Her new album, Nevertheless, is front-parlour and porcelain duck. That is to say it's a record about an elderly protagonist, or of her, or for her; an old woman called Betty who's still deeply alive, eyes wide open. Christine sings the woman's songs with deference, affection, and even a certain glee - a lightness that is often absent from this subject-matter.

But "What Makes the Cherry Red", set in the centre of Nevertheless, is not a song lodged in narrative. Instead it is a caesura, an interruption, a little breath. It is a moment where Christine takes us aside to say something vital and generous. She makes a string of assertions I desperately wish to be true, and makes them from a fabric of sound that is so beautiful it verges on the sublime; the sort of bloom and rise that'll shake you as you sit there, that'll prick tears in your eyes, that'll make you uncertain of where pretty becomes beautiful; that'll make you wonder again if perhaps a sunset can redeem a day.

Someone said that lately my posts here have been diary-like. And there's some truth to this; I've been talking to myself, writing things out loud. I've been wondering about love - love fierce, fickle, falling, flying, failing. I've been inspired and disappointed by it. It's Friday and in Montreal this week I feel a little jaded, a little grey; a little less than I was. So what I want is to sew "What Makes the Cherry Red" onto my every sleeve, to find it written on every mirror, to see it in clouds and on the bellies of birds, in a girl's eyes, in the bottom of a cup of coffee. I want to see and feel this song in places other than a recording; I want to see it in places where its promises become incontrovertible truths. I want to know it to be true, what Christine sings. That one day what makes the cherry red will tie a knot in me, and forgive us our decay.

[Christine's MySpace / Nevertheless is released in early November on Six Shooter Records, and is available from her on tour.]

[This is too long, already. I will write about the other two concerts on Monday.]

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As previously stated, our own Dan Beirne appears in the play Legend of the Barbarian, presently mounted at the Theatre Ste-Catherine in Montreal. I saw the play on Thursday night and it's just about the most fun you can have in a room with a concubine, a goblin, a blind seer, and a bunch of people wearing furs. It's ridiculous but even more absurdly it's fraught - all these barbarians and mercenaries caught up in genuine internal struggle, melodrama painted on the insides of peoples' kohl-rimmed eyes. It runs until the 20th, and includes one decapitation, two eye-gougings, and a generous quantity of loincloths. Go on!

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[You can buy the cherries in the photograph above.]

I'm going to try to find some words about Pop Montreal, and the Bleating Heart Shows, a little later this week. Dan did a really fine job yesterday.

I will say: go, go, go see Horse Feathers, playing this week in New York, Ridgewood, and Denver.

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The Limes - "Beyond Blue". The Limes finally altogether, literally in one room, a long-distance band making a song when they're at last close enough to high-five, shake hands, kiss lips, bang heads, jitterbug; whatever's appropriate. I can imagine them shy, tentative, playing their cherry-red and mint-green parts, standing at a distance. But the drums won't stand for this hesitation. People are shoved, coerced, cajoled. They're rumbled & tumbled. It's like what they sing, deep in their wall of sound: Loving until you're blue, til you're beyond blue, til you've been shaken & stirred to a place where you ache and show a crisp, bright, hard-sky glow.

[MySpace]

Minus Story - "We Are Both Dead". [buy]
Billy Bragg - "Walk Away Renee". [buy]

Every time you stop loving someone, your heart loses some of its blush. It vanishes. It's cancelled. You're a little colder, a little older, a little harder. You're a footstep closer to death. Both of you are. & you wonder which of your feelings you'll no longer have the capacity to feel again. How much less am I, today, than I was yesterday?

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Said the Gramophone has two more amazing banner graphics added to its rotation. Click reload a few times to see the work of Danny Zabbal and/or Matthew Feyld.

Roberta Flack - "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". Roberta sings this so slow, so slow. She sings it slower than the string section even imagined she could. Even when she gets loud, and big, she sings it so slow. She is a wiser woman than I am a man. She savours it, she dwells in it - this first time ever she saw your face. Me I would sing the song so fast. I would try to go hoarse, singing it. I would try to get all the words out and into my lover's ears, as quickly as I could. I would want her so badly to know this. That: The first time ever I kissed your mouth / I felt the earth turn in my hand. But Roberta is wiser. It is not patience she shows; it is instead the sureness of her love. It is there at the beginning of the song, and it will be there at the end. She could kiss her love for a thousand years and still they would love each other at the end. It's a love measured in something longer than days, than months, than years, than decades. (It's measured in heartbeats.)

[buy]

Ravens &Amp; Chimes - "So Long, Marianne". My only Leonard Cohen trivium is that "Marianne", in this song, is the rue Marianne, in Montreal, near where I used to live. And so when he, and when Asher Lack, sing to "you", they are not singing to a girl called Marianne. Perhaps they are actually singing about you. Perhaps it's you that has left them in this state of disarray, wa-ah-oh-oh-oh-oh'ing. Ravens & Chimes have added to the song a ridiculous velocity, an outright hunger, an impatience that sends the bass drum thumping all through the tune. It's the opposite of Roberta Flack, above; they're tied in knots and want a solution pronto. They show none of Cohen, or Flack's patience. They've got the same nerves as me. C'mon.

[buy Reichenbach Falls]

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Tonight we are presenting a concert by Julie Doiron, Christine Fellows and Ola Podrida, here in Montreal. It's only ten dollars, which is a little crazy. If you live here, please, please, please do please come. I promise it will be a comfort to you on this Wednesday. And say hello!

If you follow that link you also have a chance to listen to a new song by Christine Fellows, from her upcoming record.

You can also learn about our other concerts - Friday, with Grizzly Bear & Yeasayer & Plants and Animals; and Sunday, with Casey Dienel & Elfin Saddle & Horse Feathers & Clues. There is now an mp3 available, offering a medley of songs from Clues' upcoming record. It will strike you dumb, friends, and full of awe.

Also recommended, Chromewaves' Thursday show and i(heart)music's Saturday presentation!

Froggystein - "The Flowers are Blooming!". This song might make you jump. It might make the flowerseeds in your eyes germinate. It's soft and yet it has a kind of pugilistic potency. It'll punch holes in walls. It's like falling, like falling in love, like falling dead. You're up and then suddenly you're down, or you're down and then suddenly you're up. You're stepping into the cradle someone's made with their hands and they're heaving you to lips-on-lips. "So flowers are blooming / and it's time to rise. / So get up to go on being you and me / you, me." This song has many sections, one for each time of day. You can wear it as a talisman as you swing your machete, cut through the jungle, wade through the lake, inflate your bike-tires, go inside, find her in the crowd, and kiss her on the mouth.

[MySpace - "Influences: jokes, xiu xiu, coffee, raymond carver"]

Eef Barzelay - "Lose Big". The narrator of this song - Eef himself? - is willing to stop his touring, to quit it all, just to linger with you. Only if: you really love him. "Do you really love me?" he asks, many times, and he never says "because I really love you". No, instead his love is in the rose and violet shades of the lyric at 1:09: "I told her all about you". I want someone to sing to me in those shades, but not with those words. Not quite with those electric guitars. I want more thunderclaps, more ivy. But the song's so good. It's Sunday afternoon as I write this and I'm feeling scattered all over the map.

[Clem Snide RIP. Eef's MySpace. (thanks, ross.)]

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There's an excerpt from Carl Wilson's upcoming Celine Dion book, over at 33 1/3. Great point about the opacity of the "quebecoise" as a cultural reference for most of the world.

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I am dumbstruck and baffled that so few of you had anything to say about our posts on Jay Bharadia or Ezra Furman.

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The Bleating Heart Shows are just a few days away! I hope we'll see all of you Montrealers there and with sparks in yr eyes. Did you know there's an exclusive track from the upcoming Christine Fellows album?