Archives : all posts by Sean

Eef Barzelay is the maestro of Clem Snide, a band of folksy pop, alt.country rock, and wry suburban want. I'm an enormous fan of the band, particularly of Your Favourite Music and the more recent End of Love. The musicians are sensitive, skillful, and have scraped knuckles. They're prone to sudden bolts of joy, twangs that carry all the way down telephone wires. Eef's lyrics, meanwhile, like those of The Weakerthans' John K Samson or The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, can be the sorts of things you'd want engraved over your door, or stitched into a welcome mat. Bitter, beautiful, cracked as black pepper.

So here is Clem Snide's Eef Barzelay on the subject of two tunes he loves. Plus: indie guilt! Dr Dre! irony! race! Bush! Jesus! Teenage girls! All we need now is some saxophones.     --Sean

Ben Folds - "Bitches Ain't Shit". I think there is much that us white people can learn about ourselves if we reflect on this song and why Ben Folds is generally dismissed and sometimes loathed by the indie rock illuminati.

What makes someone’s music more meaningful than someone elses? Or more to the point what is the aesthetic/philosophical value system that informs most music journalists?

In the same way that the neo-cons are reacting to the failed liberal dream of the 1960’s, today’s critics and taste-makers seem to have rejected humanist expressionism as the foundation for rock and roll credibility. I can understand the seductive power of this post-modernist frame of mind. To view one’s self as beyond or above history, like some self-assured librarian who’s mastered the Dewey decimal system of culture. Yet this promise of soulfulness without the sorrow is a hollow promise and, I propose, a more subtle reaction to that age-old white guilt and shame. A shame which stems from a life of comfort and privilege and has drawn several generations of white people to seek redemption in American black music.

In taking the hard gangsta rap of Dr. Dre and lovingly wrapping it in a sweet mournful melody Ben Folds offers a humble tribute to an oppressed people and their co-opted culture. To dismiss this song as cheap irony is to miss the larger implications and proves that most rock critics are no different than Joan Rivers on the red carpet, interested only in what’s on the surface, and afraid or unable to confront the complicated and conflicted heart of the matter.

[buy]

The Louvin Brothers - "The Christian Life". I can’t think of a more beautiful expression of spirit vs. flesh than this song by the Louvin Brothers from their landmark record Satan is Real. Charlie and Ira’s perfectly matched voices seem to me the very incarnation of this timeless duality. In their bold and clear eyed evocation of this conflict they do succeed in easing the burden of our forever chattering consciousness. This song offers any listener who can embrace it without prejudice, a more than fleeting wisp of the transcendent. Certainly as much, if not more so, than the contrived clatter of Dionysian rock n roll, which only ever really worked for pre-teen girls suffering from what was then known as the vapors.

It’s exciting to consider this song in the present day whereby Caesar i.e. Bush is aligned with Christ. The defiant hopefulness of Charlie in the face of "buddies who shun me since I turned to Jesus" seems quaint in today’s climate of jihads and global crusades. But ultimately it’s the (albeit, slightly bitter) humility that permeates the song that is its true lesson. And one that all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, would be wise to soon learn.

[buy Satan Is Real for $7.99]

[Eef Barzelay is the principal songwriter for the band Clem Snide. This is his MySpace page. This (mp3) is "All Green", a love song by Clem Snide that Sean loves very much.

10/11 - Hoboken, NJ (Maxwells)
10/12 - North Hampton, MA (Iron Horse)
10/13 - Montreal, QC (Club Lambi)
10/14 - Toronto, ON (Rancho Relaxo)
10/16 - Chicago, IL (Schubas)
10/17 - Madison, WI (High Noon)
10/18 - Columbia, MO (Mojos)
10/19 - St Louis, MO (Duck Room)
10/20 - Nashville, TN (The Basement)
11/01 - Seattle, WA (Crocodile Cafe)
11/02 - Portland, OR (Doug Fir)
11/03 - Eugene, OR (Sam Bonds Garage)
11/05 - San Francisco, CA (Cafe du Nord)
11/07 - Los Angeles, CA (Hotel Cafe)
11/16 - NYC, NY (Irving Plaza - Daily Show concert with Mountain Goats and Superchunk)Check local listings as these dates are with various other kick-ass acts: Casey Dienel here, Jon-Rae and the River there. I can happily report that when I saw Clem Snide play Le Petit Cafe Campus a few years ago, it was a brilliant, noisily moving show.]

(Previous guest-blogs, in and out of the Said the Guests series: Marcello Carlin, artist Johnnie Cluney, Beirut, Jonathan Lethem, Will Butler (Arcade Fire), Al Kratina, Eugene Mirman, artist Dave Bailey, Agent Simple, artist Keith Andrew Shore, Owen Ashworth (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), artist Kit Malo with Alden Penner (The Unicorns) 1 2, artist Rachell Sumpter, artist Katy Horan 1 2, David Barclay (The Diskettes), artist Drew Heffron, Carl Wilson, artist Tim Moore, Michael Nau (Page France), Devin Davis, Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Hello Saferide, Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi), Brian Michael Roff, Howard Bilerman (producer: Silver Mt. Zion, Arcade Fire, etc.). There are many more to come.)

3:00 AM on Oct 11, 2006.

Show comments (8) »

Comments:

Welcome to STG, Eef. I downloaded 'Bitches Ain't Shit' after seeing Ben in Leicester last year - cool version. Must confess that four of us only went to the BFF show to see your fine support slot, but he was really good, too, and judging from the fanatical fans who sold the show out, Ben's doing pretty well without our buying all of his discs. Looking forward to your second solo album. Come back to Nottingham soon.

by dymbel, Oct 11, 2006

To preface: I have absolutely no a priori opinion about Ben Folds or his music. In fact, I have never even heard anything he has done other than that song that was a radio hit about 10 years ago, "Brick."

With respect, I think you're way off base here, so much so that it's hard to tell if you're serious. Firstly, to sum up a love of American black music as the simple result of shame and guilt and privilege is just plain ole baffling. Leaving aside the various questions that need answers (which black music? funk? soul? hip hop? blues? jazz? all of it? and which white people are you talking about? and what about the contributions of whites and other races to the music that is typically considered "black music"? does that complicate things? it should.), what's missing from the equation is the possibility that people might just enjoy something because they like it. Because it adds something to their world that they haven't found elsewhere. Or maybe just because they really like the way Common flows. None of this, of course, denies what you're saying about guilt and shame, but to attribute everything to it is to oversimplify things.

As for the cover in question, I really don't hear a humble tribute to an oppressed people and their co-opted culture. Maybe that's just my ears, but it's not as if he's covering Curtis Mayfield or Marvin Gaye. Rap music (not all of it, but I think this at least holds for Dr. Dre and most of the artists who were prominent in the East Coast-West Coast feud of the early and mid-90's) is often time and place specific. You could get into a long discussion about the musicological origins of that element of the music, but let's just say that in the case of Dr. Dre it was largely for cred. He's from the streets, he's from Compton, he's hard, et cetera and so forth. Ben Folds, not so much. That's not exactly a problem in and of itself, except that knowing that he is not all of these things makes it difficult to take him seriously--and I would contend that this is not the problem of the listener but the problem of the artist. Listening to him sing about ho's and bitches and niggas and the streets makes me cringe. He might not be smiling as he's singing, and therefore thankfully not as obviously ironic (and stupid) as it could have been, but it's still somehow, well, gross. A more humble tribute might have been to engage the always amazing music behind Dre's work rather than the lyrics, which I do not think can be recreated sincerely, or at least not in this case. My reaction, I think, has less to do with obsessing over surfaces than it does with having a deep respect for where an artist--a person--comes from.

That said, it's a very pretty arrangement.

-Andy

by Andy, Oct 11, 2006

as a librarian, i'm bothered by the dewey decimal comment. i'm pretty sure that comment doesn't make sense, but still...

by b, Oct 11, 2006

Andy, you've missed the point of G-Funk in the first place. Something like Dr Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit" is a cartoon, a colourful exaggeration. Based on truth, maybe, evoking a particular time and place - read up on the crack cocaine epidemic that hit urban black areas in the late 80s/early 90s - but still a cartoon.

In Folds' hands, "Bitches Ain't Shit" is initially funny because of the juxtaposition between the black slang and the serious white boy ballad style Folds puts the lyrics in (see Jonathan Coulton's "Baby Got Back" for a similar trick). But what makes the version worth listening to more than once is that Folds' version focuses ones' attention on the songwriting aspects of "Bitches Ain't Shit", on the way the rhymes and rhythms flow together. In Folds' hands - someone who often clearly sings from the point of view of characters, Randy Newman-style - the artfulness of the song and the way the setting is built is clearer, at least to honky white ears like mine.

by Tim Byron, Oct 12, 2006

Though Dre might sound like a cartoon to honky white ears like yours, I can assure you that there were many, many people who took it much more seriously than you. I'm not thinking of myself here (honestly it had and has little effect on my life); specifically I'm just thinking back to what the hip-hop world was like before the deaths of Pac and Big. Divided, and with fatal consequences.

That's not to say that there isn't a cartoonish element to such inflated self-hyping and misogyny, but I disagree with your assessment on the whole. I have nothing to back up my opinion--no books written or special degrees from hip-hop U.--except for the fact that I've been loving hip-hop through good times and bad for almost twenty years.

-Andy

by Andy, Oct 12, 2006

god i hate that ben folds song. satire/parody? eh

by dave, Oct 12, 2006

Hi Andy,

I don't deny that a lot of people took that stuff seriously - obviously shit hit the fan like you mention. Maybe cartoon was the wrong word. I just meant that there's a theatrical aspect to something like The Chronic, that it's artfully constructed storytelling and songwriting. I was just trying to argue that Folds' version emphasises that aspect of the song, especially to white ears assuming that anything with a prominent beat is not art but dance music.

tim.

by Tim Byron, Oct 12, 2006

I love that Folds' cover. I think there's a huge difference here between Folds' reinterpretation then, say, Dynamite Hack's cover of "Boyz N' the Hood". Where DH played it up all casual and silly, as if to say we're white suburban kids taking another song and singing it in the laziest, most laid-back style to send it up; I've often felt that Folds took this one completely seriously. Instead of focusing on playing up the "hilarity" of a white boy saying "bitches" and "niggas", his focus is on the heartbreak of the situation, especially in the verse about him going to jail and coming out finding his girl's been unfaithful. To me, the whole point of Folds' cover seemed to be that heartbreak is universal, whether it's white/black, rich/poor, indie rock piano player/dope MC.

by caley, Oct 20, 2006

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Of Montreal - "The Past is a Grotesque Animal". These days we at Gramophone are very nervous about posting songs without permission ahead of album releases. Labels v often collaborate and collude with blogs when it comes to promoting releases, but advance leaks are still a touchy subject. So we're cautious; we try to do it only when we're really, really excited, and can't help but share that excitement with you. (See, most recently, Joanna Newsom.)

(Can I also say that two more of my favourite albums of the year aren't going to be out, I don't think, until 2007? And although they're unknowns and the artists are in touch with me, the labels don't want anything leaked early? So I won't? And how one of these artists was told explicitly not to send me anything, because I am a sneaky criminal music pirate, but they did anyway? And yet still I can't tell you about it? Just sometimes maybe drop hints? Argh.)

Ok ok ok but I'm getting distracted by talk of piracy (arr) from the matter at hand. The matter at hand is a set of synth scales that have been built like an Escher staircase, rising over-and-over-and-over-and-over. If I knew my music theory I'd be able to tell you how Of Montreal do this, the name of the cheap Godpseed You! Black Emperor trick they're using. (Anyone out there want to help?) But since I don't know music theory I just have to listen slack-jawed, feeling the song reformulate my spinal fluid.

Because seriously, this is a twelve minute Of Montreal song that leaves me feeling something close to awe. Until Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? leaked to the internet (it's due out on Polyvinyl in late winter 2007), I was only the most ambivalent of Of Montreal listeners. I liked that depressing, uncharacteristic song actually about Montreal. I liked to hear their stuff, occasionally, at indie dance clubs. I liked to hear of them from a friend who talks about this one line about wizards, and I kept meaning to listen again. But yeah - largely ambivalent. And now? Like I said: awe.

Hissing Fauna has many excellent tracks, but "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" is what forced my hand and made me write about the record tonight, months too early, risking fines and jail-time and being added to some indie-rock No Fly list. I do this not for your sake, not for Of Montreal's sake; just because there's some stuff I need to get down:

• I always think of grooves like this as being krautrock-like. But I only pretend to know very much about Can or Neu. Can it be said to be krautrock-like? Is this a motorik? Probably not. I hope it is, because then I will buy every Neu and Can record.
  
• I think I'd be willing to dance so hard to this that it makes me sick.
  
• The song hooks me, like, gets me to swallow the hook, right at the moment where Mr Barnes sings: "Standing at a Swedish festival". That's the moment. You can hear me gulp, if you listen close enough.
  
• Kevin Barnes reminds me of LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, in places. The way his voice creaks open at 3:19. Or how he sings silly-manic with himself; bipolar excited and lacrimose.
  
• I just want to dance till I'm sick.
  
• What is this? Psychdance? Synthpop? Psychedelic indie dancepop? I guess? Is there even a real bassline? Really there's just that overandover synthline, Kevin Barnes' singing, a bass-snare beat, and then random swirly noises. Ok and occasional organ solos. It doesn't seem complicated enough to even bear writing about. What's complicated is how it's making my blood flow backwards, turning my red bloodcells white. That's right: red bloodcells suddenly turned into fighters, getting into sweaty dancefloor shoving-matches with the mitochondria. And did I mention this reformulating-my-spinal-fluid thing? Crazy.
  
• I read someone complain that the song doesn't go anywhere. They were frustrated because they said that so much tension was built up that even tiny changes could feel amazing, and yet instead the track just repeats all static. ARE YOU CRAZY? This is like one of those optical illusions where everything swirls. You know? Where you look deeper and deeper and then realise you're in the World of the Elder Gods and there are tentacles everywhere and you're dancing so hard you're sick?
  
• I wish the last Flaming Lips album was this good.
  
• The lyrics are great! What they are like is a relationship breakdown, an existential crisis, a new love-affair, but all communicated only in semafore. Sentences that need to stand alone as you wait for your flag-waves to be transmitted from hill to hill. "The mousy girl screams 'Violence, violence!'" / "The cruelty's so predictable." / "Somehow you've Red-Rover'ed the gestapo circling my heart!" / "Sometimes I wonder / if you're mythologizing me / like I do you." / "None of our secrets are physical." Wisdom tied with string to nuggets of nonsense.
  
• This song makes me suspect that if the messiah is ever (finally) born, s/he will live exactly 11 minutes and 53 seconds.
  
• And then what?

[see them on tour! / buy other Of Montreal things and maybe lobby Polyvinyl to release Hissing Fauna ahead of next February, so you do not turn blue holding yr breath]

---

Death Vessel - "Later in Life Lift". Recipe for finding friends:

1. Obtain one (1) wagon.
   
2. Place this song in wagon.
   
3. Go for a walk. (Take the wagon.)

[buy Stay Close]

---

I noticed a few days ago that you can buy a print of the image that Keith Andrew Shore did for Said the Gramophone (illustrating Leonard Cohen's "The Old Revolution"). Only $35 - and it looks beautiful. Many months ago Keith also did a new banner for this here site, which we're implementing just as soon as Neale figures out the code.

At Giant Robot there is also an array of astonishing new works by another of our guestbloggers, artist Rachell Sumpter. It's honestly among the most exciting stuff I've seen this year. I've already ordered the print, but if anyone wants to get me a present...

Arcade Fire - "My Heart is an Apple". People talk about their favourite songs. Tonight I feel more like asking this favourite song what it says about me. What's locked in those lyrics. What's behind the paper apple stuck to Win's guitar.

"My Heart is an Apple" starts with apology, homesickness, confusion. These twists of language that mean one thing and then the reverse. Just so much yearning.

And then Win goes outside.

The bridge of "My Heart is an Apple" is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I know. Here it's birds and trees, shoreline and splash, the darkening late afternoon. The band used to lower their eyes and move aside, fingers making gentle snaps. And you'd really see Regine for the first time, standing behind the organ wound with red lights. And her eyes would be lowered too as she considered the notes. So slow, so slow. So       slow. The audience silent as hopes. Stars coming out behind and over our eyes. They snapped their fingers and she sang (like a secret so excited to share): "Your mouth is full / my heart is an apple."

It's a wide song. The way it's written, it could be a tune about unrequited love: a mouth too full to take a bite of mine. But the way it sounds when the bridge comes - no. No it never was and couldn't be. For Regine's song is the slow, glimmering sound of the one certain thing: of the appleness of my heart. Love at its most beautiful, there for all your feasting.

[Order the Arcade Fire's self-titled EP, remastered earlier this year.]

---

Neutral Milk Hotel - "Where You'll Find Me Now". Okay I realise this is a typical blog/rock'n'roll request, but please do turn this loud. Not now, probably. No - when you are feeling like shit. Turn it loud on your speakers or your headphones and then the thing that you might find is that in all the lulling fuzz and mellotron, amid the accordion and acoustic guitar, well there's enough electricity to make lightning bolts. And your limbs will jerk and you will toss your head and you'll strain your mouth open to feed on all this muddy pretty psychrawk, and the only thing that you'll taste is no, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't a recipe for happiness, kids: this is a recipe for no, no, no, no, no, no. For giving yourself the hot shakes.

[Order Neutral Milk Hotel's underrated first album, On Avery Island]

---

Clem Snide's Eef Barzelay is about to dive into a solo North American tour. He sent us an exclusive, and outstanding, live recording of "Jews for Jesus Blues". It reminds me of the old Mountain Goats and the hesitating bits of Johnny Cash and inevitably of the new Clem Snide. And it reminds me of looking at a great piece of art and wondering how you'll ever be able to take with what you just learned. (Those occasional thumps are the sound of the other shoe dropping.) "Now that I'm found / I miss being lost."

More of Eef soon.

See Eef here:

10/7 - Vienna, VA (Jammin Java)
10/8 - Philadelphia, PA (World Cafe)
10/10 - NYC, NY (Mercury Lounge)
10/11 - Hoboken, NJ (Maxwells)
10/12 - North Hampton, MA (Iron Horse)
10/13 - Montreal, QC (Club Lambi)
10/14 - Toronto, ON (Rancho Relaxo)
10/16 - Chicago, IL (Schubas)
10/17 - Madison, WI (High Noon)
10/18 - Columbia, MO (Mojos)
10/19 - St Louis, MO (Duck Room)
10/20 - Nashville, TN (The Basement)
11/01 - Seattle, WA (Crocodile Cafe)
11/02 - Portland, OR (Doug Fir)
11/03 - Eugene, OR (Sam Bonds Garage)
11/05 - San Francisco, CA (Cafe du Nord)
11/07 - Los Angeles, CA (Hotel Cafe)
11/16 - NYC, NY (Irving Plaza - Daily Show concert with Mountain Goats and Superchunk)

The Radio Four - "How Much I Owe". The newest issue of the book-length journal known as Yeti has great drawings by Julianna Bright and Nicole J Georges, a collection of amazing pre-1950 photos (of Sydney, Australia crime-scenes and criminals), a conversation with Octavia Butler (rip), a suprisingly medicated tour-diary by Okkervil River's Will Sheff, and a hysterical, fascinating interview of Destroyer's Dan Bejar, by an 8 year old kid. It also has a free compilation CD with unreleased tracks by Page France, Okkervil River, We/Or/Me, The Blow -- and weirder things too. There's at least a couple of songs I'll probably end up sharing with you.

This is one of 'em.

As the liner-notes attest, these days "Radio 4" is likely to evoke either the BBC or a NY garage-rock band of the same name. But if we roll back to 1955, this was Radio Four: a "family quartet" about whom "not a whole heck of a lot" is known. I will infer what Mike McGonigal restrains himself from doing: if it was a family quartet, called the Radio Four, then clearly their last name must have been Radio. That's as far as I'm willing to extrapolate, so I'll turn to plain fiction as I name them, the Radio Four. Pop will be ole' Aloysius Radio, and maybe his younger brother Ishamael ("Ishkabibble") Radio. Aloysius' sons are both members of the Four: Marcus Radio later quits music to become an architect, specialising in steeples; Little Shelley Radio wins a trip to France when working as a refrigerator salesman and while there tries a truffle mushroom for the first time. He and his wife both decide that truffles are the truest signs of God they've ever seen, and devote the rest of their lives to the fungus.

And while Marcus' steeples still stand; while Ishkabibble's burbling laugh is still remembered by citizens of Cranberry, MS; while Aloysius' grave-stone sits in strange proximity to the oldest weeping willow in the United States; and while Michelin-starred chefs across the American south will tell you of the Mr Radio who taught them everything they know about the truffle... it's "How Much I Owe" that had the greatest lasting impression on the happiness of humanity. Because every time the song is played, a soul is saved, an angel born, a lame man lifted to his feet and a bird kissed by the gold hot sun.

[buy Yeti / try to buy the Radio Four on CD]

The Frames - "Bad Bone". This is a song laced with the full & terrible, wine-red and cocoa-black temptation of the downward spiral. When I listen to it: I sink.

It starts so simply, so dully twilit, Glen Hansard singing his silly lines about a "bad bone inside of [him]". Please. And yeah then the violin comes in, the bass and drums - but still, no, there's nothing to trap you. A few lines catch your (my) ear, things that hook parts of your minds' eye - "You were naked on the balcony"... But no it's not until the closing minute and a half when you realise that all that came before was promise; the muddy moody indie rock just a path to a starry, sick sweet blur. "To die with you upon the vine," Hansard sings, and it is so fucking enticing. The guitars bloom like nightshade and the strings coax you all the way to where you break your own red beating heart.

The new album by Ireland's The Frames is out now in Ireland. (Anti will be releasing it abroad in 2007.)

[buy / The Frames' Glen Hansard is on a semi-solo tour in the USA in October]

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Elsewhere:

Tuwa's story about Shuggie Otis is absolutely one of my favourite posts of the year. Something that we struggle for on these very pages: a fiction about a song, saying more than the truth could. (If you like Said the Gramophone, I suspect you'll like this.)

---

By the by, I'm not in Montreal but these would be my Pop Montreal picks (oh, what a lineup!):

Wednesday, Oct 4. - Orillia Opry and Vashti Bunyan (Bunyan is really unexpectedly awesome, live); or else I'd do some hopping between Two Gallants, The Winks, and Damien Jurado

Thursday, Oct 5 - Under Byen and Joanna Newsom (obv, but seriously bust over to see Basia Bulat's set when it's done)

Friday, Oct 6 - Mocky and the Handsome Furs, but then def Islands in a hometown show

Saturday, Oct 6 - man! Beirut and Akron/Family!

Sunday, Oct 7 - Think it's possible to do The Acorn, Sunset Rubdown and The Constantines? Do try.

Oh, and you kids might also be into seeing our own Mr Dan Beirne in conversation with Matt Fluxblog, Carl Zoilus, Andrew Pop and some other luminaries at this panel at McGill on Thursday. I guarantee it will be better than the biggie. (Sorry, Frank!)

Beirut - "Elephant Gun". Zach Condon and his team of uke-, horn-, fiddle- and drum-players have been snapped by the catfish called 4AD Records and their fish-hook debut, Gulag Orkestar, is due to be reissued in the UK on 6 November. Since we wrote about Beirut a few months ago (and since he blogged here!), lots and lots of people have bought the record from Ba Da Bing, so why should you care? Well - because of a place called Lon Gisland. I can only assume it's a small Eastern European republic, some Balkan borough. And why is it relevant? Because Beirut have issued an EP of the same name. "Elephant Gun" is 3 new songs (one instrumental), and a new version of "Scenic World" with clattering percussion and sighing accordion. At least on my copy, they're packaged on the same disk.

"Elephant Gun" is totally terrific, and at a time where Beirut hype is already cliche, when backlash is heatin' up the manifestos, it's a reminder of just why Zach was exciting us in the first place. This isn't so much gypsy music so much as music to make us sedentary indie rock kids feel like tumbleweeds; to make us feel like we're shaking dust off our jackets, and into our shoes; to make us feel like yeah we're on our way somewhere, you and i; just take my hand.

The song takes the usual form: ukelele and Condon's wobbling, sugar-and-butter voice; then accordion, straight up-and-down; then the smash of a cymbal and thumb of a bass-drum; then the whole lot of them, squeezed into the pen. Horns and violin, and just as we might tire, Condon is singing with himself, slopes on top of slopes, the sunrises folding over each-other like so many watercolours. "Let the seasons begin / take the big gun down!" We hear no gunshots - just the lumber of our big, slow hearts.

[buy the original Gulag Orkestar]

Frida Hyvonen - "Djuna!". Jose Gonzalez's fame is due mostly to his cover of The Knife's "Heartbeats", and his reputation for softness only further underlined by the other covers he performs - notably Kylie's "Hand on my Heart". But listen to Jose's record (or his work with Junip) and there's a real darkness, a dread, that works its way through that pretty acoustic guitar. It's this aspect of Gonzalez that makes him a match for the fellow Swede Frida Hyvonen, whom he's taken on tour. "Djuna!" is a lovely song, with piano pumping and a melody that winds its way round the garden gate. But it's also the lightest song on Until Death Comes, an album that's more black lacquer than cotton balls. (Oh but don't get me wrong: it's great!) An icier Joni Mitchell, a fierier Victoria Bergsman. And yet here, well, she just makes me want to see violets on my midnight walk home. (...previously)

[buy]

---

As you can see, you can now listen to the mp3s on the site in-browser by clicking the little 'play' icons. May I suggest you do so while you read our nonsense prose?

Kind readers, I invite you to choose the Monday morning that suits you best. Let me know which you pick.

The Wombats - "Moving to New York". New single by a British band of boys with guitars, but oh how it strikes me. This is a post-Bloc Party kingdom, where they've learned the value of doublespeed drums and a highkicking highflashing smoothsinging vocal line. The whole thing is so breathless and roughly beautiful, with noisy handclaps hidden in the corners; but mostly what you hear are that voice, those guitars, those drums, and some "ooh-ooh-ooh"; over well before it has worn out its welcome.

I wonder if somewhere out there there's a man who said "All right, lads, what if you play this twice as fast?" Maybe the man was just the drummer. But either way - golly, I want to buy that dude a coffee.

[info / Single out October 23]

Larkin Grimm - "The Jasy Tree". What's so often missing from contemporary folk recordings is a feeling of heat. Of something sharper than lulling warmth: something that will cut through the blood and muscle and sinew of you to leave that silver in your heart. That silver and that gold. There are different ways to heat a song, tactics sneaky and subtle. One of these is in the recording. Take the right kind of guitar, the right kind of voice, the right kind of microphone - and let it all be so lofi and close and buzzing that the sound seems to bounce around in the speakers, embers loosed, sparks flying. Providence's Larkin Grimm sings a soft song, a song with the spirit of Vashti Bunyan or Vetiver, but the sound of it makes it feel more sun than sunny. Stuff not just to tide you over; stuff to send out tides.

(Have you ever found a small flowering plant, near the beach? Just up from the ocean sand, something tufted and prickly and beautiful? Perhaps two small purple flowers? Three round yellow ones? Or a single, strange white blossom, ringed in rings of ringing orange? Yeah? Near the streaked pebbles and watercoloured mussel shells? Well I've not checked with Larkin Grimm, not checked Wikipedia nor even googled it, but still I will bet you more than a few quid(s) that this rough flower is a jasy tree.)

[New record out soon: release party in Providence on Wednesday. As for this song, it's taken from a limited edition Sloow Tapes cassette you can buy here or here.]

Okay - "Sing-Along". The man who calls himself Okay both is and isn't. Marvelously musical, with a voice like tin cans, but a rare illness makes it difficult for Marty Anderson to travel let alone tour. Is this why a song called "Sing-Along" is without any singing-along? Or is it a matter of choice? Is it ironic? Is he asking who would sing along with a chorus like this?

"I don't believe anything
that you say!"

[Get the combo of Okay's High Road and Low Road from Absolutely Kosher for a mere $20.]

Yo La Tengo - "Black Flowers". If you forget everything you know about Yo La Tengo and their albums, you're left just with the songs. Some are intimate, some are swirling, some stammer and others skree. But while Yo La Tengo does have a couple of signature sounds one of the most remarkable things about them is the breadth of their talent. Their annual covers fundraisers are the second-best evidence of this chameleonic side, but the proofest proof is simply the tunes. The effortless new pop of "Cherry Chapstick", the white-boy soul of "Mr Tough", or this, a song called "Black Flowers", which is (like "Mr Tough") off their inconsistent new record I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass. (For my money, the murmursoft And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out is the best of their albums.)

"Black Flowers" is one of my favourite songs of 2006 - this beautiful twist of melody and instrumentation, delivery and the undelivered. Ira's got a tawny melody, light as sparrow, but he puts it in a room with sounds of deep blues, reds, blacks. Piano, french horn, violin, and these brilliant clipped synth-strings, like sprouts. The song's sumptuous, a ballad worthy of the radio - it has all the gentle prettiness that attracts people to Sufjan Stevens, the cresting feeling that draws listeners, even, to Snow Patrol or Coldplay (listen to the Chris Martin-like "Oh-oh" at 3:09). This is in no way an insult. Yo La Tengo throw onto their album a single song like this, this one straight ode to loveliness and melancholy, with drums and Georgia oohs at just the right time; they throw it in like an afterthought. "Oh, by the way, we've also mastered this form." It's plain and unconflicted songcraft: it rubs my heart til it glows. No fucking around: just glassy, sweet song; dark petals blooming.

[buy]

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Elsewhere..

Carl has composed a beautiful post on the Mountain Goats, over at Zoilus.

Winners of the NYC Grizzly Bear contest are Ryan S and Nico R. (I'll be in touch.) Thanks for all the terrific entries. The most popular answer for what Grizzly Bear would eat in a forest seems to have been... smores.