Archives : all posts by Sean

Damien Jurado - "Unknown demo". And Now That I'm Your Shadow is a blog maintained by one of my favourite singer-songwriters, Damien Jurado. To date he has posted three "new, rare" songs, "done over the phone". This is one of these. It's a song about loneliness, yes, over almost as soon as it begins. It's lovely. Like the last coat, your coat, lying on the bed at the end of the party. All by itself.

Jurado's new album is due in October, but his first EP, Gathered in Song, has just been rereleased by Made in Mexico. Autographed copies are a mere $15.

Harry Nilsson - "Many Rivers to Cross". Nilsson's version of Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross" appears on Pussy Cats, recorded in 1974 with John Lennon. And the strain of the main guitar part is enough to carry me straight across a room, a city, a country, an ocean. It's such longing, friends, a longing as long as a man's heart. Violins and drums are there too, stretched-out cymbal shudders, a bassline - but it's only Nilsson who tries with his broken vocal cords to really sing the sound of that guitar; to say the same thing. "Maaaaaany rivers to croooooooss." The whole band takes a break, a breath, as they launch into each verse: they know how much this takes out of you. The bridge is strange, filled with bowed upright bass, almost bouncy, but then you see it's an introduction for the guitar solo the colour of a lover's token.

You could play this song in the rain but that might be a little much; play it when it's dry, everything so dry, too dry for words. You'll still find yourself washed-up, drowning - but, I hope, struggling to shore.

[buy]

---

Elsewhere:

Spanish musicblog Buffet Libre has an amazing contest going on - remix songs by Datarock, Spank Rock and others (with full multiple tracks available to download). Winners get prizes, attention, and pride of place on a special CD.

Best news of the day: an Exploding Hearts reissue on its way, along with a CD of rarities and some live footage! One such rare tracks available here... RIP.

And finally, there are still (somehow?!) prints available from Kit Malo's edition of 100 for Tiny Showcase. It's beautiful, beautiful, tender and beautiful - and $20. Don't be a fool.

Helvetia - "Gladness". Helvetia curl up with guitars. There are drums and voice but really it's the wrap of gold and silver that matters; the glimmer and warmth. It reminds me of Pinback - it's the same kind of cradle. If I had a conversation with this song it would probably go like this:

Me: Nice boat.
Helvetia - "Gladness": Thank you. Did you notice the gold and silver?
Me: I did.
Helvetia - "Gladness": The glimmer and warmth?
Me: I noted that too.
Helvetia - "Gladness": We can take you where you're going.
Me: Even though your boat is full of holes?
Helvetia - "Gladness": Even though.

[info / buy 2006's The Clever North Wind]

Pinback - "Hurley". Pinback curl up with guitars. There are drums and voice but really it's the wrap of black and indigo that matters; the blur and bloom. It reminds me of Helvetia - it's the same kind of cradle. If I had a conversation with this song it would probably go like this:

Me: Nice boat.
Pinback - "Hurley": I guess. Did you notice the black and indigo?
Me: I did.
Pinback - "Hurley": The blur and bloom?
Me: I noted that too.
Pinback - "Hurley": We can take you were you want to go.
Me: I'm not sure I dare.
Pinback - "Hurley": You should, you should, you should. Come. Come on, Sean. Come.

[buy the very-classic 1999 album, This is a Pinback CD]

---

Okay if that was too wanky for you, let me say this: there's something magic when electric guitars weave and interweave in modest ways. The glitter is a pretty sound, such a reassuring and sustaining one. Something that can point at once to certainty and to ambiguity. Musically, too, it's interesting - an in-between of post-punk angularity and that old Byrds jangle. Jordan loves the way The Wooden Stars do this; and I love the way Jordan's band, The Cay, knit these intricate/simple guitar repetitions. It's an uncomplicated mathematics that seems very human. Rock music stripped to the sound of sympathetic notes. Good vibes. And the chorus of "Hurley" makes my heart turn bright, bright blue.

---

I wish I could share with you a song from the upcoming Jason Molina recording. It is very, very beautiful and very, very sad. But Secretly Canadian would disapprove. Secretly Canadian, if you are reading this, please reconsider.

Tap Tap - "Way To Go, Boy". Out of the success of The Unicorns, Franz Ferdinand and "Float On" came a hundred and one squawkin' dance-beat indie rock bands. You know the type - they are everywhere. Especially on mp3blogs. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! were the first big breakthrough - and with their ridiculous name, massive hype and horrible live show, it's not surprising the backlash is what it is. Still, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is the only album of this 2005-2006 genre that gives me any measure of satisfaction. I have no love whatever for Tapes 'n Tapes, Oh No Oh My, Cold War Kids, Birdmonster, and on and on. No love. Why? I don't dig the songs. If you do, ok ok, fine, ok - cool. That's cool. But when I hear them I don't feel my heart beating faster, I don't feel my feet tapping. I just wait for the track to be over so I can put on something better, like, uh, a Unicorns album.

With all this lead-in, I suspect you're going to know what I'm going to say. But I'll say it anyway. Tap Tap sound like these bands. No getting away with it, even if they are from England. But here's why I'm posting them on Said the Gramophone: because "Way to Go, Boy" is an awesome song! An awesome one! It's got a disco sort of beat, with bass-drum up front. It's got a lead singer who strains and yelps like Robert Smith and Spencer Krug. It's got a chorus that's silly and electric guitar. And it has an accordion, guys! An accordion! A squeezebox! You remember? The kind of instrument that appears in those dreams where the tablecloths are red-and-white check, the candles are flickering, and MEN COME OUT OF THE BUSHES, WEARING THE BUSHES. Yes they were in camouflage! The men! The bushes were really just men, hiding! And the men storm the cafe, they grab the baguettes, they steal the pepper-grinders, they smash the clocks. They dance and thieve and eat and crash around in their outfits while you and the rest of the diners wait in motionless awe, hoping they have a bush costume in your size.

[buy! get the bee-yootiful Limited Edition while you still can! and give the band a tip, too! yeah!]

Camille - "Jolie bruine". Jolie, you know. Right? It's a beautiful word. Say it: "jolie". It doesn't sound like "jolly". The j is softer. The o is more hushed. The emphasis falls later in the word. Jolie. And it means cute, lovely, pretty. It doesn't really mean anything in English. It means pretty girls when the sun is out; it means your 5-year-old cousin in her new sunglasses; it means sun-dresses and daffodils in your windowsill. And bruine? That's a tougher one. I had to look it up. But I'll tell you: it means drizzle. Rain. Soft rain. "Je suis un cactus sur une terre aride," Camille sings. "I am a cactus in dry earth." And then she introduces the jolie bruine. The reason I spent so much time on meaning and pronunciation is that the bruine is mouth sounds and gibberish. It's beatbox and raindrop. It's the noises that drip twinkle fall from Camille's mouth, like The Books, Psapp or Bjork's Medulla. It's jolie, guys. It's really jolie. It's crazed enough not to be dull, kind enough to plant in your garden.

[buy US / UK]

---

Elsewhere...

As part of the 2006 Charity Blogathon, I will be making a (very very minor) contribution to Clever Titles Are So Last Summer's 24-hour posting marathon, this weekend. We're raising money for the Global Fund for Women. Please consider sponsoring Bethanne and the other guest contributors.

An excellent, carefully written piece about Spiritualized over at A Bark In The Dark.

Magnolia Electric Co's guitarist, Jason Groth, is filing tour diary posts at Marathonpacks. The first is surprisingly sensitive, meditative, and feels very true.

Destination: Out is a free-jazz mp3blog. (Hooray!) And they have an absolutely fantastic recent live recording of the Ornette Coleman Quartet doing Coleman's too-classic-for-words "Lonely Woman". Great, great writing, too.

Indieblockedapella is the weirdest thing I've seen in forever. Ever wanted to hear Wolf Parade's "You Are A Runner And I Am My Father’s Son" as an acapella? We're in luck!

And finally... Tuwa's written a modest and exceptional post that reminds me why I love mp3blogs. Yes.

Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Tom Waits - "Louise". Under this song's worn out sky, Tom Waits' is not the most compelling voice. Here the man feels like the old pair of shoes, the familiar feeling. It's Elliott's gentler, sharper, burred voicebox that carries the realer sorrow. He's the one whose eyes you're nervous about meeting. The old man whose cheeks are hollowed out by his story.

[buy]

The Knife - "We Share Our Mother's Health (Ratatat remix)". [Track removed at request of label.] It's certainly not the iceblock metropolis of the Trentemoller remix; Ratatat uses all the warmest bits of the song, lke a man panning for hot colours. Ratatat recycles some of his own pangs of synth but I like the way he puts this in service of Karin's distorted man-voice, like a regular angst-ridder rocker who too has become caught up in The Knife's electro forest. Ghosts in the student ghetto, shaking into Monday nights. (Thanks Peter.)

[more on the Knife]

Any Montrealers looking for something to do on Wednesday evening, please do yourself a favour and go see Basia Bulat, opening up for Vetiver.

Update (1:54pm EST): Pavement mp3 fixed.

Pavement - "Pueblo". (Part 2 of a continuing series in which I finally begin to get Pavement. And try to tell you what it is I'm getting.) There's so much inertia to this song - long spools of electric guitar, Malkmus lazy-singin'. Minutes of real-life languor, everyday languor, get-up-and-go-to-work languor, falling asleep on the bus as the dawn breaks through the window gloss. And so what's amazing is how easily Pavement shakes off this weight when it chooses to: the cut and crest of the choruses' guitars, the gold and silver streaks. Every time it happens - at 1:12 and again at (especially) at 2:50, - I want to stand up and sing the national anthem, any national anthem, something about land and freedom. They're fireworks, this song's choruses. They're copper salts, black powder, magnesium, tumbling & then scattered ashen in the sand.

[finally get around to buying Wowee Zowee]

OHM - "Spoon Me". Swedish electropop that pigeon-toes around the dancefloor, Jenny Barna casting panda-glances at nobody but her sweet baboo. And thank goodness. The world would be a much less dangerous place if lead singers restrained their glances to their sweet baboos. Still, this tune is only chaste inasmuch as a dancefloor can be chaste - there's certainly nothing stopping you from taking your own baboo (and let's hope (s)he's sweet) and pigeon-toeing around as well. Bend like a stork, shake like a swan. Barna's singing is a peculiar mix of The Knife's Karin Andersson and The Innocent Mission's Karen Paris, but Barna's the one of the three I think I'd rather take to a picnic. We'd each take our baboos. And the strobe lights.

[more info - album due in September]

---

After my talk of Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus a few days ago, some of you might be interested to see the great clip from the film that Goodie Bag has posted, with Johnny Dowd playing in a barber shop.

The Edinburgh band Amplifico is very gamely trying to raise money to record an album by releasing a series of videocasts and streaming gigs. They have a blog and all sorts of very lovable hijinks at their Webathon website. Best of luck.

Ed from Grizzly Bear has launched a (mp3!) blog. For those of you who didn't get enough of him when he guest-posted here last year, now Ed's back with holiday pics, tour-talk, Hot Chip & Vetiver & Beirut & DJ Jazzy Jeff. (And have I mentioned that their new album is great? It's great. I will probably talk more when it comes out.)

And finally... My favourite contemporary comic strip seems to have returned to form .

National Park - "The Only Stars". I spent most of my time in New Zealand in national parks. I think. You would have to ask my dear sister. I saw mountains and rainforest and flightless birds. I saw rainbows and greenstone and fjords. I saw sandfly bites. I saw stars.

National Park are a Glasgow group that shares a plot of ground with The Clientele, the Velvet Underground, Galaxie 500, and, in a funny way, Broken Social Scene. They know how to sway, run, whisper, holler. They know how to skinnydip. They know how to throw themselves down a grassy hill. They know how to doze. The group makes this sound so easy - a tune that glitters and glows, that shakes into loud crackle. And yet meanwhile there are a thousand bands achieving only half of this sound; groups that make mood but can't summon force, ever pretty but never fierce. The National Park have done something accomplished and distractingly rad. "The Only Stars" is a patch of sky in purples & yellows, in dusk-blacks & night-whites. Strange the way that a flutter can be the most violent feeling - that a flute can introduce an electric guitar.

[info/available July 24]

The Handsome Family - "Eleanor Rigby". It wasn't until I saw the film Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus at All Tomorrows Parties that I understood the Handsome Family. Every now and then in the movie they'll cut to the inside of a barn, to a grey dead field, and the Handsome Family will be standing like an American gothic, autoharp or banjo in hands, moaning dryly into the evening. There was something so Southern about them. But also something so hot. Exhausted, drained, almost dead with heat. And for the first time I heard the moaning not as a foot-dragging blah - I heard it as the only sound that would carry through the summer steam.

This is a song by The Beatles. We have a man and a woman, a banjo and a steel guitar. An English melancholy that's been dragged through the greengrass swamp.

[more info]

---

I'd like to thank critic and blogger Carl Wilson for filling in for me (alongside my marvelous partners, Dan and Jordan) while I was gone. Carl, your work was perceptive and careful and mighty and personal and thank you thank you thank you. Everyone should have bookmarked Zoilus, be reading the Globe & Mail, and have pre-ordered his upcoming 33 1/3 book on Celine Dion.

Elsewhere:

Scots, join me at Mono's Get Off My Pavement! festival on Sunday, July 30. Who else will be there? ONLY HERMAN DUNE, ARAB STRAP, UNCLE JOHN & WHITELOCK AND MANY MORE THAT'S WHO.

Lovely Party is a wild new mp3blog that uses a big graph and stuff. The first song they posted was by The Diskettes.

There is a most-sweet preview videoclip for Bonnie Prince Billy's new record, in which Neil Hamburger gets harassed by a crooning Will Oldham while on holiday.

Bootlog has The Weakerthans singing a Sarah Harmer song, and Sarah Harmer singing The Weakerthans' "Left and Leaving". Yes.

And finally, Blogotheque's series of videos of musicians-playing-music-in-weird-places continues with a MARVELLOUS pair of clips of Grizzly Bear. Click the one on the right and revel in the band as it walks down the Parisian streets, doowop-ing "The Knife": I promise that your smile will glint like shopwindows. (thanks, alex)

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "The Signifying Wolf". In a month, Will Oldham will release the best record of his career. I can't get over it - while I am very fond of Master and Everyone and I See a Darkness, think warmly on earlier albums with Palace and so on, I had assumed Oldham was fading into a twilight period for me. I couldn't get excited about Superwolf or Sings Greatest Palace Music. I figured the old dog had no new tricks. But in July there is a three-song "single" being released, called Cursed Sleep. The title track will appear on Oldham's upcoming LP but the other songs will not. And each of these three tunes is fantastic, each utterly different. It's the most muscular, creatively realised music I've heard from him... maybe ever? And so far from the (successful) genre exercise Sings. Such wonders: from "Cursed Sleep"'s green country strings, to the hush & glimmer of "God's Small Song", to this - a woozy, post-Tom-Waits pop-song, handclaps and wolf-breaths, a Hansel and Gretel radio hit, thicket pop, a rabbit hole for your stereo. Then the Letting Go has suddenly leapt forward to one of my most anticipated albums of the year. And this is an EP you should definitely, definitely, seriously-I-mean-it pre-order. Fucking 'a.

[buy]

Pavement - "Gold Soundz". Strange when a song sounds like pure gold, like so many golds, like gold in strings across windows, in bands over eyes, as crowns on dear heads, as rain from clouds, as drops in puddles, as rocks in lakes, as flowers on stalks, as coins in pockets, as secrets in chests. Strange when so much gold comes springing out of a song I guess everyone's supposed to know, by a band I guess everyone's supposed to know - but a song you don't know, a song whose gold is a surprise that glints and glints, sparkles and sparkles; a song for when summer turns to winter and back, for when promises are exciting, for when you want someone (gold) to sing (gold) over guitars (gold) that "you're the kind of girl I like". I don't believe Malkmus for a second when he sings that he's "empty". Not any more.

[buy]
---

On Saturday I will be embarking to New Zealand for an almost-three-week holiday. Dan and Jordan will be minding the fort but I am also delighted to say that The Globe & Mail/Zoilus' Carl Wilson will be taking over my duties in our weekly rota, sharing some songs & words. Carl is one of the most thoughtful and feeling music critics in the world, and I feel really lucky to be able to welcome him here. Please make him feel at home.