Archives : all posts by Sean

Amy Winehouse - "Me & Mr Jones". It would be the greatest cultural achievement of 2007 if we went from country to country, language to language, finding new Amy Winehouses to sing these songs in each place's native tongue. If Back to Black's subtle and amazing production - dusty, gleaming, retro and yet v v hot, - was put in the service of a thousand smouldering singers. You see it's almost the perfect music for a Montreal summer: a music that sounds perpetually like it's wafting from a neighbour's open window. A music of swinging hips and sailing clouds, of wide bright sun over vases of flowers, clear beer bottles, bare forearms. Of that moment when she laughs and leans her head on your shoulder. The only thing wrong is that it's in English. On St-Laurent or St-Viateur that just won't do, no, no matter what language we're speaking. This music it's gotta be en français. So we need a delegation of Winehouses. Montreal could have a homegrown queen or even an import for Louisiana. And England's Amy Winehouse would be welcome, sure, but mostly to coo "moi. et. monsier jones." just before the française sings the french word for "fuckery".

Amy Winehouse - "Love is a Losing Game (Acoustic)". And while it's the production, the arrangement, the style that raises Back to Black from good to pretty damn great, Winehouse herself is outstanding. It's a pity that this is more obvious on the acoustic version of "Love..." than on the one with pride of place on the record. She's joined by the bare minimum of guitar, and fills the room with a sorrow that's tragic, resigned, utterly musical. The prettiest blues. (And the saddest gambling puns.)

[buy]

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La Blogotheque has a marvelous description of Ola Podrida (in french), along with an Ola Podrida guestpost (in both english and french) where David Wingo talks about some favourite songs. Including Bedhead's "Rest of the Day", which is a fave song of mine too!

The Underpainting, an album I wrote about in February (the mp3's back online), is having its release party this Thursday in Somerville, MA. It's Brian Michael Roff's new project, and even has album art by Matthew Feyld. Highly recommended, and I also have it from a reliable source that Brian's an Amy Winehouse fan.

Sorry for the intermittent posting this week - our schedule got a bit mixed up and the situation's been exacerbated by a feverish Jordan Himelfarb.

Gooblar - "Twentieth Century". After fifty years of American bands that sound English, Gooblar's a London band that play a very USA pop-rock. Someone will need to grow some cornfields along Oxford Street, sell hotdogs at Picadilly Circus, and then invite Gooblar to rock out on a roof. "Twentieth Century" is about missing the 20th C. It has handclaps, "oohs", a singalong chorus, & an unstoppable sense of fun. Every rhyme's right-on, every guitar-riff like that little push when you jump on your bike. And before you start slagging off the 20th c in the comments ("A song about the century of Hitler? The century of Kraft Foods?!"), Gooblar's got you covered: "It's a case of dumb nostalgia / I should worship something wiser / than the century I'm defending / genocides and ethnic cleansing."

David Gooblar's a gramo-friend but there's no nepotism in this song's appearance here. It's pure apple-and-chrome hooray.

[Three other songs from Don't You Want Me, Gooblar? are available at the Gooblar website (including a re-recorded "Uh-oh"). The EP release party is in Shoreditch on May 15th: go!]

Neil Young - "On The Beach". This song was one of the highlights of the All Tomorrows Parties festival I attended a few weeks ago. Neil Young wasn't there; he didn't play it. But "On the Beach" had pride of place on the mix CD that cycled through the sound-system at every stage. And I listened to it in the dark and felt really good. It made me want to slow-dance. This is a desire I can't remember having since junior high, when I had never slow-danced before. Then, I wondered what it was like. Now, I knew what it was like. And I wanted to be with someone with the lights low, stepping from foot to foot, the leather of our shoes making small, soft sounds. We would listen to the smoky, spiced music and feel another body hot & close. It's a song about fear & confusion, about loneliness & existential angst. It's a song about fingers on drumskin, about a guitar solo, about grey dust under your nails. But if you dance to it; no. Then it's a song about lasting with the help of another person's heartbeat. Lasting, persisting, lingering. Another heart that beats for yours - and a warm breath at your ear.

[buy]

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Every two weeks, Yann Martel (Life of Pi) is sending Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper a novel and a letter, in support of arts funding.

(image cropped from a photo by inmyhead)

Bill Cosby - "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".
Charles Wright - "Express Yourself".

Let's see if you can follow this:

I aspire to dance like Bill Cosby.
Bill Cosby dances like he sings.
Bill Cosby aspires to sing like Charles Wright.
Charles Wright sings like so.

If you're able to follow this chain, you'll have learned that I aspire to dance like so. That is, like Charles Wright singing "Express Yourself". The secret to understanding how he sings this song - and to how I aspire to dance, - is in observing the way he drops the "uh". He doesn't so much drop it as set it down, plant it, make sure it's good-to-grow. He drops it like something dropped into Archimedes' bath, a moment before Eureka. He drops it like it's nothing special (& it isn't, it's just an uh, and a dance is just a dance), and like it's something special (& it is, it's a motherfucking uh, and a dance is never just a dance).

On dark afternoons it's possible to doubt the power that music can have. You imagine an inert dead body. You think of foreign wars. You watch the stars come out in silence. And at these times it's important to put on a song like "Express Yourself", one of the most potent human works ever created, a thing that says more in bass and horns and uh than I expect I'll manage to say in my whole unmusical life. Something more splendid than we, sinning and muddled, have any right to.

Bill Cosby's "Sgt Pepper" doesn't fill me with the same awe. But when he says "Boys", and is answered, well - it's really really funny.

(I've written about "Express Yourself" twice before, but I've still never ever been able to say it right. I'll keep trying.)

Bishop Allen - "Rain (2005 demo)". Bishop Allen's second album, Bishop Allen and The Broken String, will be released on July 24. The album will include new versions of songs from last year's twelve EPs, as well as some other things. "Rain" is one of the other things, a heretofore unreleased song, and at You Ain't No Picasso you can hear the version that will be released this summer.

But the demo of "Rain" is better, much better, and it's that which I share with you.

It's a pop song about desperate unhappiness. A joyous, kinetic, catchy, beautiful song about desperate unhappiness. "Now it's really pouring / it's crawling up the shore / and I walked and never heard / and umbrella does no good / and I guess it's in my blood / and I couldn't stop the flood." Justin Rice's voice is morning-muddled, cracking like it's the first time he's used it. I see a man on his fire-escape, glum, wiped, soaked to the skin. And then he stands and stamps so hard that the fire-escape collapses around him, with him, falling with the sound of cymbals. "Rain" isn't even a song about surmounting unhappiness: it's a song about sorrow's necessity, the need to taste tears so that you can later taste sweetness. "Oh!! Let the rain fall down! And wash this world away! Oh, let the sky be grey." Those Ohs, those lovely, brave, boisterous ohs. A sound that flies from the heart through a wide-open throat, the blues sung fast and jubilant into a glittering silver mike.

I climbed mountains to this song.

("Rain 2.0" thumps harder, but it's clean, too clean, the lyrics' fog already long-cleared. The electric guitar's up front, dopily cheerful. All desperation's evaporated, like vanished puddles on sunny streets. Singing about a melancholy long after that melancholy has passed.)

[MySpace / website]

Scout Niblett - "Just What I Needed". With perfect patience, Scout Niblett sings two sides of a relationship. The lying in bed and hating, hair bent under her head, talking to the ceiling & sneering. Her partner saying nothing. And then the both of them on either side of a doorway, smiles shining, "i don't want you coming here" transformed into "yeah! yeah! woo hoo hoo hoo hoo!" Strange how the fiercest feelings can appear at the wrongest times. Strange how you can ache when there's no reason to, none at all. Strange how loving can turn to loathing, and back, as you stand under the same incandescent bulb.

Post-script 4:35pm: Turns out my interpretation of the song is entirely misguided! Ivan emailed to tell me that it's a cover of a track by The Cars, and more than that the lyric I quote is actually "I don't mind you coming here". And he's right. So this isn't a song of ambiguity, of two sides: it's a song of love, the confusion of love, of playing a little hard to get when you're sick with how much you long for the person you're with. Thanks again Ivan.

[Scout tours Europe in May and early June. The Just Do It/Dinosaur Egg EP is released May 21, with a full-length to follow later this year.]

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You Ain't No Picasso also has a new, unrestrainable Final Fantasy track.

Heaven and Here is a thoughtful, copious blog on the subject of The Wire, the third television series I can say I love.

The biggest highlights of last weekend's All Tomorrows Parties festival were Felix Lajko, Einstürzende Neubauten, and Low. Low's European tour is ongoing, and I'd really so-strongly recommend attending.

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Said the Gramophone notes:

1) The image above is cropped from a photo by Steph.
2) We still haven't identified the "mystery song" from Tuesday.
3) The unplayable mp3 from Jordan's Wednesday post has been fixed.
4) So long, Europe, and thanks for everything. xxox

Unknown artist - "unknown title". Lyra emailed this to us, asking "Do you know who this is?" I don't. But within days the song had hooked itself in my ear, become a part of my ear's topography, like a little crystal sheep on a mantelpiece. Do you know who or what this is? Leave a comment and let us know. It's a Magnetic Fields baritone and a Jarvis Cocker monologue, an arrangement of hung-over violin and dying neon feedback. When you get back from a party and just sit on the edge of your bed with your big headphones on, the dark somehow streaming, hunched with your back to the window, muttering to yourself. Saying the things you didn't say, asking the questions you didn't ask. Imagining your friends' faces in portraits of smeared charcoal.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "Let's Start a Family (Blacks)". The pitter of rain against a window-screen, of eyelashes against cheek, of my kisses on your back. These sounds will help you to recover. Secrets go diffuse here. They fade. Doubts waver and are forgotten. Promises are made, easy as cups of tea, and sweet. In hushbreath morning voice we sing, just the easiest song: "do do-do do-do". We'll lay like flowers.

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As I've said before, May's issue of The Believer includes an interview I conducted with Okkervil River's Will Sheff last year. They've seen fit to publish the whole piece online here. I'm really delighted with how it turned out. And he talks about everything from the Sex Pistols to knife-fights to "literate" pop music.

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The Coudal Partners' Swap Meat is really cool.

The Henry Clay People - "The Man in the Riverbed". Yesterday at the Haagen-Dazs Cafe I exclaimed to a friend of mine "You won't be a virgin for long!", because we were talking about Rocky Horror, and then after that I got up and accidentally walked into a glass wall. This is life, kids: lurches, boo-boos, faceplants, the stares of strangers. And The Henry Clay People explode with their knowledge of this, of life loose, staggering and ripe. Blacklist the Kid with the Red Moustache is vigourous and dazzling, a rock'n'roll record that leaps from roof to roof, scattering tiles. There's the stamp of Pavement and The Replacements, but also just of ye olde American rawk, the way certain riffs bring out the hair on your arms. And yet it's not meat-head, it's not headbanging: it's flash-smilin' and up-down-jumpin'. It's boys and girls together in the crowd, seizing each other, listening to the trundle of a bass-drum and a fizzing red rocket of electric guitar.

(Recorded by producers who made Frog Eyes and Godspeed records, mixed by a dude who worked with Wolf Parade, and made mostly at a studio that was home to Sleater-Kinney. Also: they are from L.A.)

[Order the (great) CD from insound or cdbaby. They have a whole bunch of shows lined up in L.A., often at a bowling club. See the MySpace for more.]

Ornament - "Weeds". If you spent three weeks in the snow, and came home, here you would be. For three weeks in blizzard: you slipped on the iceberg's smooth skin, the ice cracked under your feet, your eyelashes froze. You saw so much whiteness that colour felt like a distant memory, like the time when you were held. For three weeks you were cold. For three weeks your mittens were insufficient. For three weeks your mouth breathed steam. For twenty-one days your life was a winter. And when you come home you collapse into an easy-chair, everything warm and glowing, and the world that you see behind your lids is one of green and viridian, of soft emerald, of leaves that fold and fan and twist, of ivy twirled around your wrists, of green lips at your ear and in the spaces between your fingers. Of beloved, rising weeds.

Ornament makes a folktronica of strum and thump and bee-sting kiss.

[MySpace]

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There's a great new series at The Tofu Hut, talking to kids about songs.

The Limes (featured earlier this week) have a great post at La Blogotheque, talking about some favourite songs (en francais). The Nara Leão track is really arresting: a kind of doomed portuguese longing, punctuated by bursts of open-mouthed choral hope.

(image by mute81)

The Limes - "Morning, Noon & Night". The Limes are an international affair: scraps of song sent in brown paper & string from France to America, and beyond, each player adding a touch, a flourish, a voice, a flowerpetal. And with "Morning, Noon & Night" there's something very right in this, or even in sharing it here with you. It feels like a song that's meant to be passed, that's meant to travel, that's meant to arrive at the lover's destination all stamped with visas and stuck-up with transit stickers. I like to imagine David Simonetta's voice, dreamily romantic, in an airplane over the ocean. I like to imagine the band in separate crates: the ethereal ooh-ers; the jovial organ-and-jingles; and dusky-throated Mina Tindle, like David's best friend, the one who carries his voice to the post-office in a little cloche hat (she, not the voice). Rarely has a song of longing moved with so much swing.

[more terrific stuff at their MySpace]

The Shaky Hands - "Summer's Life". It's my last day in Poland. In two months I've learned the singular of obwersanki, the best hot chocolate in Krakow, the strengths and weaknesses of every brand of pierogi. I have not learned how to speak Polish: yesterday I accidentally (and happily) ordered a 7-scoop ice-cream cone. But yes, I stand on another boundary: a beginning and an end, one of those places where your happiness depends on how you take it. Is it a glad thing or a sad thing, this end, this beginning? It's a glad thing, I've decided, and once you make a decision like this you must bolster it. Sunbathe, sing, eat accidental 7-scoop ice-creams. Listen to "Summer's Life" by The Shaky Hands, a track whose melancholy lyrics are stamped to diamond dust by bass-thump, hand-clap, the unlikely pairing of harmonica and trombone. Jordan probably has a Great Book of Chords somewhere, codifying the deployment of every guitar chord. The chords of "Summer's Life" are on a page titled Optimistic Chords. Or maybe C'mon! Chords. "C'mon", like, "C'mon, lifelong friend! We have places to get to!" That kind of "c'mon". "C'mon" like "Float On". I love that I can't figure out if the scrapey-voiced singer is singing he "loved it then" or he "loved ya then", or both. And I love that this glad & striding singer is aware that that there will be regrets, that there will always be regrets, and that he looks forward to those too. "And I loved it then / and I wonder what would have been / And may the hard times be gone! / And I'll learn what I've done wrong / and / it's you that I miss."

[buy]

Need a lift from London to All Tomorrows Parties this weekend? A couple of us are renting a car and splitting the cost. If you're interested in joining us, email me ASAP. (You can also drop me a note if you fancy sharing a drink or something!)

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Ola Podrida's outstanding debut album will be released by Plug Research this Tuesday. I've written more than once about David Wingo's folksong - and his "Pour Me Another" demo was my #6 song of last year, - so I strongly suggest you pick it up. If not yet convinced, listen to this mp3 mix of every song on the album.