Archives : all posts by Sean

October 3rd to 7th, this city will host Pop Montreal, one of the finest music, art, craft and film festivals that the world has ever known. Yes! The mountain, the plateau, the Mile End - all of it will be aswirl and ashake with sounds, sights, high-fiving artists and poutines galore. Everyone's comin' down and you should too. C'mon!

As part of Pop Montreal, Said the Gramophone's teamed up with Canadian megablogs Chromewaves and i (heart) music to present five nights of concerts known as the Bleating Heart Shows. We've invited some of our favourite artists from across North America to play for us, for you, for the whole damn community.

Seeing as we're local kids, Said the Gramophone curated three of the five evenings, and they are as follows:

Wednesday, October 3rd:
Lily Frost! Christine Fellows! Julie Doiron! Ola Podrida!
An evening at the intimate Main Hall with some of our favourite singer-songwritery things, largely with bands in tow. Winnipeg's Christine Fellows writes songs with a needle point, a knife edge, a fish flick. Julie Doiron is long-beloved and now Polaris Prize-nominated, with works at once tender and white hot. And Ola Podrida's folk-rock is one of the past year's great discoveries: songs about longing, driving, and foolin' around in photo-booths. Plus: Toronto chanteuse Lily Frost! And part of the kit'n'caboodle will be recorded by the CBC for future radio broadcast. [more info]

Friday, October 5th:
Yeasayer! Plants and Animals! Grizzly Bear!
Ye olde Ukrainian Federation becomes a site for whatever comes after bliss. Like, whatever's bigger than bliss. Because Yeasayer recorded maybe the best song of 2007, they've toured with Frog Eyes and Hanson, and their live show's supposed to lift the glaze from your eyes. Because Plants and Animals are one of Montreal's new hopes - cool, breezy, and apricot jam. And Grizzly Bear, well - we all know Grizzly Bear. Gramophone friends for years, now - come and join me as I hear them play for the very first time. [more info]

Sunday, October 7th:
Casey Dienel! Elfin Saddle! Horse Feathers! Clues!
And what's perhaps the most special of all, helping to close out the 2007 festival, two favourite bands that come from faraway and two more that are mostly secrets, nursed at home. This show is all ages, and hosted at the beautiful (small!) Birks Chapel. Casey Dienel's a morningstar songwriter, light and bright at the same time - part Malkmus, part Spektor, part honeycomb. Elfin Saddle are two artists that spin seashore rackets, forest anthems, on ukelele, broken accordion, saw, drumkit and holler. Horse Feathers topped the list of artists that Dan, Jordan and I wanted to bring to town - Portland's fiercest spirits, hot voices with banjo, celeste, cello. And Clues, well, you've not heard of Sunday's headliner. They're a new thing, scarcely heard, the work of three Montreal kids & the lines on their hands read: promise. Bethany Or (Shanghai Triad), Brendan Reed (Les Angles Morts), and Alden Penner (The Unicorns). Oh oh oh oh oh. [more info]

And so, and so, two tastes of some of the marvels on offer. And perhaps more to come in the next week and a half:

Plants and Animals - "Feedback in the Field". A homing pigeon loosed and then chased - 'cross rivers and overpasses and office buildings and indeed across fields. It starts with a whistle, someone's best imitation of the bird, but before the end of the song that plumed thing is way out of sight and all we got left is an electric guitar to sing the same tune. Breathless, gleeful, the stuff that gets drained away from these late summer days. Plants and Animals say they play "post-classic rock". I say they play dandelion smiles. [Plants and Animals' debut LP, Parc Avenue, is due on Secret City in early 2008.]

Elfin Saddle - "Gods/Sky". Until the song's solstice, it's a rubber band hymn. What's sought is imminent, immanent, a few steps away through the briar & rushes. You can sing it in words, in twinned voices. But after then, after the middle point, for the song's long autumn and winter, it's a song of something not yet known. An across-the-sea hope, a faraway longing, played with bells, pipe, half a drum kit. The parcel that's not yet arrived. [Elfin Saddle's debut is due later this year.]

Nord Express - "Tripleplay". I've spent this week sick, but happy. In the wee hours, as I write these posts, I cough like a crazy man. Like a crazy man who coughs. Last night I tried to go to sleep at 10:30 and kept being woken by my own somnolescent groans. Wednesday morning, talking, I sounded like a piece of charcoal that had learned to hiss. But I've been so happy in spite of it all. Walking around fatigued, hunched-over, droop-nosed, and yet smiling at high-fives and good lies and blue eyes. Smiling with that mintleaf sharpness that means it's really real.

This song seems to be the opposite. It has all the buoyant blush of an early Belle & Sebastian song, the sun-tan of the Go-Betweens, the sweetness of Yo La Tengo and the gentleness of Bedhead. And yet & yet & yet, over that smiling scamper, dig: "You may wish but it won't come true / it doesn't mean I love you." Nord Express punches its lover in the gut and then has the gall to murmur: "Ba ba ba ba ba."

[buy]

Jonquil - "Sudden Sun". Let's imagine this song as a kiss. This beautiful, flickerflashing work of folk-pop, part Akron/Family and part Grizzly Bear, hot with the full heat of a fierce talent. Let's imagine it as a kiss.

First of all: The kiss don't get started until things really kick in at 1:25. Until then it's the slow coming together of mouths and hands. You know what I mean. Eyes fluttering closed, hands don't know where to go. The sudden recognition of a new gravity. Your lips are going to meet. It's a very pleasant falling.

And then things really kick in and the song's really going, and it's just simply so sweet. It's sweet and sustained and if this were a kiss it would not be a thing to leave you speechless and gasping - no, it's a thing that you'd do all fucking afternoon, like little tonguetouches of honey, just so easy. If this were a kiss I'd leave it on my turntable till dawn.

If you want to kiss someone, and you're waiting and waiting, and it's fall or spring (a season where waiting is okay), be patient. Take it slow. Count the leaves falling just right and at the precise moment when lips meet lip and fingertips meet cheek, nose meets nose (soft, soft), the song will kick in, there thumping in your heartmost hearts, and you'll want to put the kiss on the turntable till the sun comes up.

[this splendid LP is out in a couple weeks!]

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This is so sad: RIP Megan, mother, writer, Moistworks contributor. My condolences to all who knew her.

Clem Snide - "Find Love (live)". One evening I was sitting at home late with the lamp on, listening to starlight through the window. At a diner the night before, L asked me to rate my happiness. "Between one and ten," L said, and I said, after a while, "Seven." It's not that I was sad - I think I just wasn't happy. This story happens later, when I was sitting and listening to starlight. In the city it's too bright to see the stars but you can hear them, if you're lucky. Usually I'm not lucky. It was twelve fifty one. The apartment buzzer buzzed and I shuffled through the kitchen and pushed the button to let whoever-it-was inside. I waited by the door and heard Iris's footsteps before I saw her. She was carrying her shoes in her hand. I remember once sitting on the roof of Iris's parents' boathouse; under a pink sky I looked at her hand and thought about how good a ring would look on her slim finger.

Now Iris was drunk and coming into my apartment and waving aside offers of a glass of water, of a piece of bread, of cookies or mint tea or sweets that my roommate M had brought back from Iran. She led me into my own living-room. She turned on the overhead light and turned off my lamp. She drew the blinds. She sat smack down on a chair and put her shoes in her lap. "Sit," she said to me. She smelled like peach schnappes, which is a nice smell, a strong smell.

"In the old days," I asked her, "do you think that the sailors who carried peach schnappes, who spent ten months in a schnappes-filled schooner, smelled like peaches for the rest of their days?"

"Sean?" she said. "Listen up. Shut up and listen up. I'm here to explain some stuff to you. We can have conversations another time. I was at Ravi's and I was thinking about stuff and I need to explain something to you so you don't ruin your life."

"Ruin my life?"

"I think you could totally ruin your life. You could, Sean. You could just keep dicking around for the rest of your days. Wandering and blabbing and saying too much to the wrong people."

"What?"

"Find love, Sean."

There was an awkward silence and I said "Okay..."

"No - shut up. I said shut up. No talking. Listen." Her shoes had fallen off her lap and onto the floor. "Don't be scared to connect the dots," she said. "Dig for gold in the parking lot. Find love. And then give it all away."

"Is that a song lyric?"

"God you're an asshole. Shut up. Seriously. Sean? I'm trying to tell you something important. I'm a dear friend who finally has the nerve to tell you something important. That you need to find love."

"With you?"

"Fuck you. No. Not with me. Jesus. No. But for real. Stop fucking around. FIND IT. Sean. Find it. Don't let hurricanes keep you back. Raging rivers, or shark attacks - or anything. Don't doubt. Don't hide. Don't run. Go, find it. Find it and give it everything. That's what matters. Wrestle bears, you know? You know this I think but sort of you don't know it too. I can tell. You sit in here just moping or whatever and then when there's a chance right there you're too busy measuring and evaluating and, like, it's not about finding sex or finding company, or finding friends - I'm not saying you should be finding friends. I'm saying find love. And then give it all away. Give all your love to her. Don't save it for your friends. We'll understand. Wrestle bears. Bring them to their knees."

"I do," I said. "I will."

"No you fucking don't," said Iris. "We think we do, but we don't. We should be finding love but instead we do all this other shit. We get dressed up and put on red nail polish and go out dancing or whatever but then nothing. Then another night, and another night. Listening to the sky for it to whisper something."

"I'll stop listening," I said.

She rolled her eyes at me. "You will not. But you should. You should tend to better things, Sean." Her face had taken on a greenish tinge. "I'm just saying."

I sat and let her look at me, shaking her head.

"Just go and find love," said Iris. "Give it all away."

It was quiet for a long time. She was watching me with a tenderness that I found intimidating.

"Okay see you tomorrow," she said, getting wobblily to her feet. She moved so fast.

"Okay," I said.

I walked her to the door and out. I went back to the living-room and stayed for a long while near where she had sat on the couch. You could see the indentation where she had laid her hand. I got up onto the cushion and stood there. I felt like the hour hand of a clock.

--

Happy birthday to a guy I like a lot but have never met, called Eric Harvey.

Bob Dylan - "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" ("bootleg" version). I still can't wrap my heart around this song. I get it, I get it, I read about it in a book and now in my head I get it - that this is a mean sort of song, a sarcastic song, a song for a girl after the relationship's bitterly caput. But I knew it for too long, young & foolish, thinking it was just-plain resigned, thinking it was sorry only for itself, thinking - essentially - that it was kind & sad. So now I hear the spur and barb but it doesn't make its way past the familiar kindness. Especially here with the guitar more nostalgically played, something a little softer in the timbre of Dylan's voice. The thing I wonder, in the end, is if Dylan's more forlorn than he lets on. That even if he sat at a desk and scribbled this pretty vitriol, and even if it's true, he wonders if maybe he ought to have stuck around. He calls it a "lonesome road", and it is; and when he says "I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul," I think maybe he wishes, for a fingerpick of a moment, that he had been able to give her what she was waiting for.

[buy]

Etoile de Dakar - "Xalis". If today was a new year's day, we'd all climb up the fire-escapes and set up our stereos on our roofs. We'd put "Xalis" on our turntables and point our speakers at each other. Youssou N'Dour would sing in Wolof and we'd dance in bird-steps and fox-steps and zebra-steps on the gravel, stucco, tile; we'd wave our cupped hands at our friends across the street, and across the alley, and down the block above the bagel shop; someone would pop a bottle of champagne at 12 noon and we'd all applaud, gracefully, at her ambition; and we'd keep dancing. If this were a new year's day, our lives would be ripe with possibility; if this were a new year's day, we'd be smiling from the joy of it; if this were a new year's day you could all be my friends one day, and join me breaking bread. If this were a new year's day the phased guitar solo at 2:12 would go: "holy crap it's new year's yeah! whoa! what happened to last year! where'd it go! jee-zus! we're already in the next one! whoa!"

To all those for whom this is a new year, today: enjoy it.

[out of print]

Tokyo Police Club - "Good". Two best friends - we'll call one Samuel and the other Cornelius. Samuel has a mouth and Cornelius does not. Cornelius instead has an electric guitar buckled to his body. Samuel and Cornelius are best friends. Whenever Samuel says something to Cornelius, Cornelius answers by squawk-squealing through his guitar. Whenever Cornelius says something to Samson, Samson gives a little shrug and says something else. When they disagree nothing happens, but when they are in perfect, total, harmonious agreement, the tiles in the roof all say: "HEY HEY HEY HEY", because they're listening in, they're always listening in, the tiles on the roof with their ruddy complexions.

Tokyo Police Club are neither japanese nor police officers. But they have recorded the only song I have heard so far in 2007 that makes me want to crowd surf. (No - to become a professional crowd surfer, launching myself off of stages and high-fiving everyone single person who carries me aloft.) [buy other things]

The New Pornographers - "Adventures in Solitude". [Removed at "the Sheriff"'s request.] We know that the New Pornographers can make pop songs, songs as carefully engineered as the newest high-tech roman candles. But here they make a song that's tender, blushing, more first stars than fireworks. "We thought we lost you," they sing, and in the pauses between each line we don't raise our hands to the sky - we clasp our palms to our chests, remind our hearts to keep beating. The song has three or four parts and each one is amazing. There's slow and there's fast, there's chain-gang doowop, there's pizzicatto, and there's drum-a-tum pinprick happiness spun from the song's fine silver thread. [buy]

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Ravens & Chimes' debut, which I raved about a few months ago, is now available for pre-order at Better Looking Records. You can hear another couple tracks there, too

The Modern Lovers - "Girlfriend". You can't understand the having of a girlfriend except in having one. Jonathan Richman slurs this wisdom, misspelling the word "girlfriend", and yet still he's right.

well first I'd go to the room where they keep the Cézannes
but if I had by my side a girlfriend
then I could look through the paintings
I could look right through them
because I'd have found something that I understand

But look let me just give it a quick half-a-shot. (What's the bother, it's just a blog.) There's something indescribable about the having of a girlfriend, in the La and Hush and She of it. It's something like the particular sweetness of a slice of flush melon. There's something in the beauty and the motion of her, the closeness and the way she can move away. Richman catches some of it in not spelling the word, in leaving it as "g-i-r-l-f-r-e-n", as something casual and sexy and roll-off-the-tongue and familiar and cool and smiling. "Girlfren" is like the name of the last bird you spot on a birdwatching trip. It's like a certainty that you're a long way from being able to totally remember. I mean listen to that garage solo. Fuck.

I'm not sure the same truth is true when it comes to boyfriends, or wives. Perhaps some men or women in our audience can tell me their thoughts.

[buy the reissued Modern Lovers debut]

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Souled American - "Ringside Suite". It's not so much a medley as a quilt: handsewn patches stitched to the sound of a broken metronome, to melting clocks. "Come on / cheer / happy day!", he sings, like he's considering where the grass is greener. A dirge and reverie, "Paint It, Black" and a one-footed jig. I can't figure out if it's a summer sound, or the song you croak from under four feet of heavy white snow.

[buy the marvelous Yeti 4]

(my photo source...)

NICO/Nicolas Jaar - "Little Stone". From nothing, from nowhere, 2007 has brought me another favourite song. Sent to me by a boy who seems to maybe call himself NICO, who's 17 and from New York and definitely not the German femme fatale. It sounds like a song first dreamed, then made; like NICO spent two months in fields & attics & alleyways, trying to find the sounds he dreamed those weeks before, in black and white. Rattles, rolls, trembles and toms - the whispers of that "little stone", of the first foreshadowings of autumn. It's Hood, Liars, Amnesiac, Animal Collective, and a phone ringing down the wire. I'd give my heartbeat to this man and ask him to find the counterpoint. Wonderful.

[the only other traces?]

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Maryam and I wrote a silly list for McSweeneys.net, and it went online last week.