Archives : all posts by Sean

For some reason I love: catchy British songs with sassy girls turning down pushy men.

viz.

Lily Allen - "Knock Em Out". She's the 2006 blogosphere-MySpace-BBC-musicbiz hype queen, someone with canny marketing and a dad who's a famous actor/singer. She's also someone with a hell of a song - "LDN" is one of my favourite singles of the year so far, and by far the year's most secretly cynical summer hit. And if her leaked demos are any indication, there's much more up her sleeve. So here is "Knock Em Out", a track with slippery piano and drums that keep stepping in and out of the pub. Lily sounds a bit like The Streets' Mike Skinner but she can sing, this clever lady lilt that scampers over horns, twinkles, interjections, scraps of sound. Whereas most popstars seem like bionic women, objects of lust or idolatry but never friends, Lily sounds almost approachable here. When she says, of a man, "Not in a million years!" I can almost imagine her turning to me, her trustworthy pal, so I can tumble over my barstool, make a distraction, and let her slip away.

Doctor and Davinche - "Gotta Man?". With grime breathlessness and tensing synth-strings, this is a much spikier track than "Knock Em Out" - but the goof and play is still there, steel-shiny in the darts Doctor and Davinche pass back and forth. He's confident as an aubergine (yes), she's strong-willed as a courgette (yes). So they bump into each-other grinning, each one as full of character as the other, each one more than up to the exchange of wits. Listen to the way Doctor introduces himself, like a Dickens character extending a hand - or Davinche's squeak of the lips in reply, her fake name, the hard intelligence in her eyes. Such humour hidden under the mile-a-minute flow, the rising military beats.

[buy Run the Road II]

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Eric at Marathonpacks has written a marvelous, marvelous post isolating his favourite tiny little moments from The Beatles' back catalog.

Lots of other blogs have been talking about it so I'm not making a special highlight of it, but this month's free & new Bishop Allen song, "Flight 180", is really great. Copping from the Arcade Fire instead of Bishop Allen's usual guitar-pop influences, the track is a moody, driving, soaring song - a dark car falling slow motion off a highway, into the crags or onto an invisible road.

I've been enjoying the new comp by Scandinavian musicblog It's A Trap, particularly tracks by Plain Fade, Hello Saferide, Moonbabies and Munck/Johnson. A great mix of indie pop, post-rock and a little bit of pop-punk. At $6 it's a bargain, and you can stream the whole thing by clicking 'Preview' here.

Rappers Delight Club - "Hum". The Rappers Delight Club is the "musical sideproject" of a young man who works with elementary high-school kids. Or rather, it's the musical sideproject of a bunch of kids who sometimes work with an enthusiastic adult. In short: this is four minutes of the looped Elmo themesong, but with kids laying it down. They rap like monsters, like beasts, like cheese-shop clerks. Like kids, really - and beyond the ceaseless sparkle of the song, there's the plain flact of their flow. "In terms of making money / I'm a gorilla / I rap so well / they call me rapzilla." Oh yes, yes yes. Minah is my favourite - she's a queenah. Or this: "I'll be sizzlin' / like the chicken noodle soup / I sold more cookies / than your whole girlscout troop." It's endlessly quotable - no, it transcends mere quotes. You want to be these kids, eight-nine-ten-eleven, strutting and whooping and rapping like it's as easy as tying your shoes. The beats are kinda lame but they stomp all over them, squeaky-sneakered. (And if you crave better beats, check the looped Wes Anderson sample on "Tick Tock".) This doesn't sound for a second like some PSA for literacy: it's just joy, friendship, play, immaturity, nonsense. It's all the things you want to stuff in your pockets with the jacks, yo-yos and that extra box of raisins.

[more info]

Okkervil River - "Happy Hearts (ft. Daniel Johnston)". Tonight, after more than four years of chasin', I will finally see Okkervil River for the first time. It will not be in the environs I would have imagined, four years ago. Not in a chandeliered Montreal hall nor by a muddy Russian river. Instead it will be in Glasgow, at a place called King Tut's Wah Wah Hut. But the band will play and me, I will watch. And hopefully I'll be able to take a moment to dance - or just to fall down in a heap, like a happy heap of coats.

One thing is certain: this song will not be performed, at least not like this. I would hope that readers of this blog are already intimately familiar with Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See. It's one of my favourite records that have ever been made: an album of browns, greys, blacks and reds; of whites; an album that's yearning and loving and reckless with feeling. "Happy Hearts" is a duet between Okkervil River's Will Sheff and fellow Austin songwriter Daniel Johnston. In interviews, Sheff's talked about picking Johnston up from his parents' house, recording the track at the studio, then going together to buy comic books and hamburgers. Remember this, listening to a song about heartbreak.

My flatmate J dislikes "Happy Hearts": he can't warm to Johnston's crackling voice. But for me it is beautiful - a more human, less hidden counterpoint to Sheff's serious tone. And by the time the track reaches its climax, Sheff spelling out the letters of the thing he most wants in life*, Sheff's been converted to Johnston's mode. He's unable to hold back any more: he's alive, alive, feelings flush on his face, a smile as near to his lips as a frown. In the end is it a sad song? Johnston wraps everything up, the sorrowful refrain repeated yet again over play of banjo, pump of organ. Yet there's no darkness here. Instead, there's just footsteps near the door, a knock on the window, a long white night where you might fall in love with the trail of someone's skirt.

* unconditional love

[buy / see Okkervil River on tour across Europe]

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A fantastic post by Eric at Marathonpacks about prog-rock and a wise bathroom scrawler.

Bows + Arrows writes with flourish about Lily Allen's terrific "LDN", thereby saving me the trouble.

Congratulations to Matthew of Fluxblog on his new column for the Associated Press.

I have a short interview with Final Fantasy in this month's issue of The Skinny. Also some live reviews of Bettye Lavette (ok), Silver Jews/Alasdair Roberts (AMAZING - longer review forthcoming), The Balanescu Quartet (ok), and Akron/Family & Adem (excellent & lame).

And... Anyone attending All Tomorrow's Parties Weekend 2 - such as, perhaps, the residents of Said the Gramophone's two chalets - may want to look at this mp3 guide to all the artists at the weekend. (Oh and chalet people, I am sorry I have been out of touch - I will send an email this weekend.)

This reminds me: I've been really, really busy lately and if anyone's sent me an email and not had a reply, I do apologise. I've had sweet things on my mind.

Vashti Bunyan - "Diamond Day".

Carlos Sugar had never been as fast as his friends, but oh he loved to run. His father was an Olympic sprinter, a long lean man with a nose like an arrowhead. Carlos would watch him at the track, fast as poured water. And Carlos would imagine himself up there, sneakers white as seashells, pulled across the clay toward a ribbon.

But Carlos was a poor runner, one leg shorter than the other, something slightly off in his knee. He did not limp - but he ran slowly, the machinery of the act just a little crooked. For some children this would be a hard thing to cope with - always picked last at sports, always the easy catch in tag. However Carlos had a good father and a good mother and he had learned to be happy. He knew that he would be an archaeologist when he grew up, like Amanda. That he could hit a baseball clear over third base. That he could touchback anyone who tagged him.

At lunch-hour one day, Sandy and Paulo wanted to go off to the far corner of the field behind the school.

"Why?" said Christina.

"Because then," Paulo said, "we can go past the birches and down the ditch to where the grass is long."

"Why?" said Christina.

"Are you scared?" asked Sandy.

So everyone went running across the field, past where the bigger kids played soccer, past the last row of garbage cans, onward and onward. And Carlos lagged behind, too slow, and by the time his friends had reached the birches they were just specks in the distance. Carlos huffed, the grass whispering as his shoes passed over it. Come on, gestured Sandy, and then Carlos watched them slip away past the trees and out of sight.

Carlos ran for a little while longer but he was very tired and they were still very far away. He looked back towards the school - it was a small pile of beige blocks, two conifers. Carlos couldn't remember having been so far from school before, not during recess. He looked around at the clear field and the wide sky and wondered why the school had left so much room around it - why it hadn't used the space for classes, or fenced the field in and built more schools next door. Then there would be twice as many kids to play with, yelling jokes to each-other over the barrier. Oh well.

Carlos knelt down and rubbed his fingers through a tuft of crabgrass. It prickled. With that prickling a strange sort of feeling came over Carlos. He sat down, feet straight out in front of him. He felt separate, suddenly. He could make out kids back near the school, playing jump-ball or tag, or just talking. And he could see the long row of birches behind him. But he was sitting there feeling prickles in his legs, under his palms, and the sun on his forehead. He was alone in the field and not even a bird.

Carlos was eight years old. He lay down and watched the blue and just didn't move.

Some time later, the bell rang. Carlos rolled onto his side and then stood up. He walked back to the school but he took his time. He felt the sun on his shins and the back of his neck.

The next day Sandy and Paulo again suggested that they all go off past the birches. "You should come," Christina said to Carlos. "It's fun."

Carlos said he would maybe come. He followed them as he had the day before but this time he ran even slower. It was on purpose. And eventually they had receded into the distance and again Carlos was alone in the field, just him, sky and earth, a little boy in the centre of the world. He lay down and watched the clear sky. Everything felt so balanced around him, like he was a spinning, spinning top.

From that day on, every sunny day, Carlos would run out to the middle of the field behind the school and spend his lunch-hour watching the clear, blue sky. When it was raining he would do other things - a wet game of tag or arts and crafts inside. When it was overcast, then too he would go with his friends and play something, or make up stories. But on the days when it was just land and sky - and days like this were still quite common, back then, - Carlos would go into the field.

Towards the end of the school-year, Carlos was lying on his back on the grass when suddenly a cloud appeared. It didn't appear like clouds usually do, blowing wispy with the wind. No - as Carlos stared into the sky a small white cloud just came up out from it, like a drop squeezed out of a cloth. It was not large or ungainly - it was just a round, soft, plain cloud, directly above Carlos' head. He watched it and maybe it watched him but it didn't do anything. It just floated there, high above.

When the bell rang Carlos got up and walked back toward the school. After a while he looked up. The cloud was still there. Not just still in the sky - but still just there, just above his head. Carlos did not really think about this. The cloud was high up and it was probably some sort of optical illusion, like his mother had shown him in her book. He arrived at the door and lined up with the other kids, then went inside.

After school Carlos came out and the cloud was waiting. It was still the only cloud in the sky - this one random puffball, hanging like a chandelier. Carlos squinted at it for a second but then he shrugged and started walking home. When he got home he looked up: it was still there.

The next morning it was again a clear day. When Carlos left the house in the morning he was surprised, but not too surprised, that the little cloud was hovering high in the sky above his house. Like it was waiting for him. Carlos walked to school, bookbag clumping against his back, and he watched the cloud as he went. Yes, it was moving. The cloud was moving. It was moving with him.

Now in the interests of brevity I will not describe to you each of the days and months that followed. What is important is these things: There was Carlos. And there was a cloud. And the cloud followed Carlos. Carlos would still go to the middle of the field; the cloud would bob along above him until he arrived and then it would settle into a comfortable position directly above his head. On cloudy days Carlos' cloud was still there, a little lower and a little softer and a little whiter than the other clouds. On rainy days it sort of glowed.

Carlos told his parents about the cloud on a Sunday afternoon. They looked up at it. "It's definitely a cloud," said Carlos' father. "Yes," said his mother. "You have your own private cloud."

Years passed. Carlos never really went back to his older ways. He did things with Paulo sometimes. In class, he partnered with Sasha for projects. But at recess, at lunch, Carlos would go off with his cloud. As he got older - leaving primary school, going to junior high and then high-school, - he spent very little of his free time with other young people. It's not that he disliked his classmates, but they were just so noisy, so unsettled. Carlos often felt that way too but instead of rolling around in the feeling, fighting or flirting or learning to smoke, he would just go out to an open space and look at the sky, look at his cloud.

At nineteen, Carlos was serene, and proudly so. He liked that he was deliberate, that he was calm. He liked that he noticed things before other people did, that he heard quieter sounds and sensed softer breezes. He was a good person, gentle and friendly, not more than a little weird. His parents were proud of him as they sat in the audience at his recorder recital, him playing light and deep melodies, hair always falling in front of his eyes. He would toss his head to see the sheet-music and then the hair would fall back. His fingers were long.

And deep down, Carlos was also very lonely.

One Saturday, Carlos decided to go for a walk outside of town. He would walk along the main road and down the path by the lake, but then he would turn off and just wander in the low hills, just see where it led him. The light was dry and soft but the sky was clear - almost. Carlos walked, feeling the wind around his arms, and above him followed his small, familiar cloud.

After almost two hours, Carlos was in the middle of a wide valley, everywhere tall stalks of a waxy green-leafed plant. He stretched. The plants were swaying in the breeze like a clumsy sort of sea. Carlos sat down among them and took off his backpack. He rummaged inside for a granola bar and his bottle of water. He ate, he drank. And when he raised his head, the cloud was gone.

Carlos noticed this immediately. The cloud had become so familiar that he took it for granted, yes, but on days like this with low foliage and high skies there was nothing more certain than the cloud above his head - and there it wasn't. It wasn't there. Carlos stood up, startled, heart thumping. He tried to balance himself. How was he feeling? He was feeling hurt, he realised.

Then Carlos noticed that his cloud was still in the sky. It had just drifted a little away. And now it was hovering there, unmoving. Carlos looked at the cloud and looked at the plants in the valley. He looked at his shoes. He tightened his shoelaces. Then he picked up his backpack and went over toward the cloud. As he neared it, it again began to move. Away from him.

Carlos was perplexed. He didn't know what was happening or what he was doing. He had never understood the cloud but he had been able to pretend he had. And now it was moving. Did it want him to leave?

But then the cloud stopped again, hanging still until Carlos got too close and then bobbing away, light as vapour.

So Carlos followed the cloud. It would move, it would still, he would approach, it would move again. And so they moved through the valley and up a summit and down, then across a footbridge and through a wood and up over a rocky knoll. Carlos was getting quite tired but by now the cloud was not lingering for very long - it pressed on, as if trusting Carlos to follow. Carlos followed.

Carlos had just reached the peak of a small hill, dusk coming down slow, when there - directly ahead - he could see another pearly cloud, like his own, round and soft and perfect. Carlos' cloud started to move toward the other cloud and Carlos smiled. "Oh," he said, out loud. "I see," he said to his cloud. He smiled.

To follow his cloud, Carlos had to scamper down a steep incline of gravel and sand. His heels threw up dust and small flakes of mica flashed in the sunset. "We'll need to get home soon," he said. He jumped from a bigger rock down and almost tripped as he landed. He descended, he descended. When he reached the floor of the valley he raised his eyes and he saw his cloud, he saw the destination cloud, and under that second cloud - there was a person.

Carlos walked towards her, but slowly. He didn't know it was a her at first; it was just a person. Someone in white and grey, standing in the dust and reading a book. But as he and his cloud got closer, he made her out more clearly. And then he was within shouting distance. And then within speaking distance. And she looked up.

"Oh," she said. "Sorry, I didn't hear you there."

"Hi," said Carlos. "I'm sorry I didn't want to bother you."

"You're not bothering me," she said. "I was just reading."

And then they both lifted their heads to look at their clouds. The woman seemed surprised to see Carlos'. "Is that yours?" she asked. "Your cloud?"

"Yes," said Carlos.

"I didn't realise other people had clouds."

"Neither did I," said Carlos.

Their clouds were just hanging out, one next to the other, directly above their heads.

"Are they kissing?" said the woman.

"No," said Carlos. "I don't think so. Do clouds kiss?"

She gave him a look.

Carlos blushed.

It was getting dark.

"I should go," said Carlos. "I need to get back to town."

"Okay," said the woman. "I'm going to go pretty soon as well. I just want to uh finish this chapter."

Carlos nodded. It was much too dark for the woman to read, but he nodded. He hefted his backpack and started walking back up the hill. But his cloud wasn't following him. "Cloud," he said. "Come on."

Nothing happened.

Carlos went back down, back towards the woman and his cloud. "Cloud?" he said.

"What is it?" said the woman.

"It's not coming," said Carlos.

"Would you leave it?" asked the woman.

"I don't know," said Carlos.

His cloud started to move. And so did hers. They were moving together, towards the hill, back the way that Carlos had come.

"We should go," said the woman.

Carlos paused. "I suppose," he said.

They followed their clouds, walking side by side.

"Do you think they're trying to tell us something?" said the woman.

To make a long story shorter: They were.

["Diamond Day" is an old song by Vashti Bunyan. It is quite famous lately so maybe you have heard it. But have you really listened to it? Because I hadn't, not till I saw her sing on Sunday. So, now, do. And then buy.]

I've only seen Eugene Mirman once. It was in Scotland, at the Fringe Festival, in a room of nimrods with crossed arms. I meanwhile was collapsing like a marionette whose pins and strings had been removed: just a pile of wood for Eugene to tiptoe over to, giggling, and light on fire. Eugene Mirman is a comedian who doesn't rely on cheap gags. Oh he uses cheap gags, sure, when he can. He's no fool. (NB: He is a fool.) But no what Eugene relies on are knife-tricks and cloud-shapes; dreams; the gentle, the offensive, and the absurd. He's a wonder, a laughbomb, a "friend".

Do say hello. (Thanks Eugene. And hi!) -- Sean

I would like to say that I can’t play any instruments or sing or anything. I don’t know how to talk about music in much of a way outside of saying something is pretty or annoying, lyrically pleasing, maybe energetic, etc. With that in mind here are some pretty songs with pleasing lyrics and some energetic ones.

Robyn Hitchcock - "She Doesn't Exist"

I love this song. Some of my favorite things are sad and pretty (like you! — let’s meet up.) When I was a teenager I heard Robyn Hitchcock and loved him, at first for his somewhat goofy songs like My Wife And My Dead Wife, and then eventually for perceptive, obtuse/ sincere love songs and abstract analogies. Plus I like beautiful melodies (sorry, John Cage.) At some point I began a tradition of listening to this song every time I broke up with someone. Also, you can start your own tradition. For instance, every time you have sex with someone give them a thumbs up and say, “Good job buddy.” [buy]

Jonathan Richman - "Velvet Underground"

This song combines a lot of what I like — fifties sounding music and the Velvet Underground. I love the Velvet Underground (as everybody does, but why tell you to go and buy the newest re-re-re-issue of Loaded with extra photos? You should though, it’s great.) I guess you probably have Jonathan Richman too. I don’t know what to tell you. Should I suggest you get the Diamond Nights EP? It’s like the Cars but modern and sexy.

White Hassle - "Star Position"

Guess what? I like White Hassle a lot. I first saw them at a small one day music festival in New England like 8 years ago. Unlike countless assholes, they have finally figured out how to blend country, rock, turntables (this song doesn’t use them), and pretty melodies with charming lyrics. They often have pots and pans and things as part of their percussion. [buy]

The Essex Green - "The Late Great Cassiopia"

This is a great indie-pop song. I don’t know what else to say exactly. I’m right. It is. Listen to it.

In conclusion, I have a comedy album coming out May 9th on Sub Pop called En, Garde Society! Feel free to buy it. It’ll have a DVD with it as well. Two discs? Yes.

[This is Eugene Mirman's website, with audio and video and more. This is his blog. And this is where you can pre-order his new double-disc album. You can buy his previous album (which is awesome) here.]

(Previous guest-blogs, in and out of the Said the Guests series: 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.)

Brendan Reed (Noh Cars Go) - "Unknown title". Brendan Reed has always traded on a mixture of madness and gentleness, at least when I knew him in Montreal. Kind as a kitten, happily weird, with work that goes suddenly violent, abruptly monstrous. I remember him swinging around, inside a school bus that had been transformed into a tour-bus, weaving a story. A smileyface in the evening: redhaired, gentle, unfathomable. I like him, I'm a little scared of him, and he's one of the best drummers I've ever heard. A former member of the Arcade Fire, a current member of Les Angles Morts, The Letlowns, Noh Cars Go, so many more, unstoppable in his music-making. He had a series of experiments, experiments where he had to do things like create whole, finished songs - lyrics, melodies, harmonies, drums, guitars, bass, everything, - in sixteen, or twenty-four, or thirty minutes. Then he went out to a park and collected a few hundred objects, cataloguing rubbish for a dvd, intending to write a song for each. Brendan's never had one sound, one look - he digs in the dirt and sees what he finds. He finds a lot of dirt - dark, thick soil. Soil that tastes like soil. And while others get distracted by the 'treasures' - bells, whistles, old boots, - Brendan remains focused on his hole and his dirt. The work of excavating brown-black song from brown-black mud.

This song sounds unmade. Its parts seem unassembled. A row of tools on a workbench; a series of smells; rock, paper, scissors. Charlie Brown piano and a meandering bassline. Fingersnaps and mumbles. A soup, a swamp, a back-room, a daydream. And yet this is why I come back to the song. All these disparate parts, jangling together, flowing along different currents, and then th-th-there... a moment of union (you'll hear it when it comes). "You're sick in the centre baby," he sings, like an opening (ugly) birthday card. Then more lyrics I can't make out, clouds, deterioration. What does it mean? I don't understand. And yet - It's such a right confusion, so absolutely fucking difficult and yet when you let it go, so simply right.

Do I sound like a fool?

See also the strange (and probably more lovable) 49-second marvel called "Gold July".

There is a plethora of Brendan Reed music (and friends' music) at whitewavewhitewave. He also presents new songs and opaque blog-thoughts at the main nocarsgo site. Email him to buy things - they come in magic boxes, cardboard chests of art and spirit. Do email him. He is kind.

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Jacob Faurholt & Sweetie Pie Wilbur - "Let Them Go". Faurholt is one of these singers that feels like he needs to sound like he's dying in order to express his unhappiness. Oh, how emo, how old-school Bright Eyes. But in spite of this drama there's a majesty in the plain acoustic guitar, here, the creaking folk plinks and strums. In the introduction of strings. In the Grizzly Bear squint and Sparklehorse scope. And more than anything, the reason I have posted this song is its ending. It's an ending that almost knocked me down, that made me lift my eyes to heaven when I first heard it.

At first I thought the sound was a hiss, a kiss, a whisper in my ear. I thought it was something someone was saying to me. And then kettle drums. But no, no! Haha, how mistaken. No the "sound", the ending, is a rocket. It's firecrackers. It's fireworks. It's explosions in the sky. It could go on for hours and I would be happy to hear it.

[buy / more info]

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It is suggested that Gramo-friends consider tuning in to Tiny Showcase at around 9pm EST tonight, for this week's print may be of particular interest to those who like the things we do. (And I have a feeling it will sell out.) Subscribe to their mailing list if you require more advance hints. :)

Things that are awesome: Tofu Hut with The Chips' "Rubber Biscuit"; Tuwa's pointer to an utterly fantastic Tom Waits b-side; Bruce Springsteen's version of "Mrs McGrath" from his new Seeger album; Kagan McLeod's poster of the history of rap.

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if you are reading this, snf: oh happy b.

Masta Ace - "Hold U (ft. Jean Grae)". Masta Ace and Jean Grae make the sentimental simple, simple, simple. Nothing cute or precocious: a story; an explanation; unostentatious honesty over a warm, looped sample. I am always struck by the way hip-hop cuts meat from bone. It's got a poetry that's often much more precise than folk, rock, pop, or even the blues. Like the way Fitzgerald or Salinger can explicate something, secular words painting a picture of grace. Here's a love song that strolls effortlessly through the body of a love affair, blossoms all around, never stopping to be cute. Because this song demonstrates that it's not cuteness that sits at the centre of love, nor even the absence of doubt. It's the agreement, whole and plain, that: you, me, we're in love. Ha, so simple! Good thing I've got it all figured out. (He rolls his eyes.)

[buy]

Wyrd Visions - "Bog Lord". Both Grizzly Bear and Final Fantasy have been speaking with wonder about their tourmate, Wyrd Visions. It was the first time I had heard the name, and to be honest I wasn't attracted. The phrase "Wyrd Visions" makes me think of the little occult/elf figurine shops in small-town New Jersey, places with big crystal balls in the window. Places that smell of incense and flash with mirrors. But I'm a fool, I'm a fool. I should know better; I should know to trust Ed Droste and Owen Pallett. While Wyrd Visions is certainly part of the, uh wyrd folk movement, there's a play in the music that keeps it skittering over the cloud-tops, never stuck in its mud. This song is ten minutes, eerie and also smiling, like the man in the corner at the all-night diner. It sucks you into its long landscapes and slowly-moving figures; organ, harmonium and crisscrossing guitar. It slows to match your breath. "Wyrd Visions only listens to hip-hop," says Owen. This is not hip-hop -- it reminds me more of Alexander Tucker than anything else, -- but oh it resists getting trapped in the old folk groove. It wanders, it skirts, it flows, it swings. It moves across the floor and whispers to your girl. It's a will'o the wisp in our Sunday night, murmuring through the grates.

[more info, album to be released on Blue Fog]

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Some recent pieces of mine in The Skinny (and I have my own Final Fantasy intvw that's not been published yet): Akron/Family interview, Scatter, McClusky, The Knife, Belle and Sebastian, The Hussy's, The Streets, Kepler, Spinto Band, Alexander Tucker, Craig Thompson's marvelous graphic novel Blankets. Oof.

For the one of you keeping track, these are my favourite albums of the year so far. Some of them are officially out, others are not.

Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies (StG) [buy]
Espers - Espers II (StG) [pre-order]
Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds (StG) [pre-order]
The Knife - Silent Shout (StG) [buy]

and

Beirut - Gulag Orkestar [buy]

Wait - Who? Beirut? Is that the guy you kinda mentioned in passing last week?

Yes.

Beirut - "The Gulag Orkestar"
Beirut - "The Canals of our City"

I give you two songs. There are already two more, loose and free. So now that's four from an album of eleven: it's a sample and a half. But I'm not worried, friends, about sharing this with you. Because of two things:

1) As mp3s, these songs do not nearly swing, soar, thump or boom as they do on the CD. It's an album of wide, gold and silver sounds, the sort of thing that comes alive when loud in a room. You should buy it to hear this.

2) The album is really, really great, and after these I think you will know this, and you will buy it.

"The Gulag Orkestar" is the opening track on Gulag Orkestar. It is a throaty, burnished introduction: wobbling 'n weaving horns, a pile of shoes, a night getting slowly to its feet. And then, almost like a reggae tune, the drums take some unsteady steps and fall into place. Jingle jingle thump, jingle jingle thump, horns in line behind. And out from the curtains: it's Beirut. A smiling Balkan troubadour - part-gypsy, part-Wainwright, with a caravan full of Neutral Milk Hotel records and maybe Gogol Bordello's sparkling shoes. (A voice nourished on schnapps.) And if it doesn't make you wonder what follows (a track called "Prenzlauerberg"), well go home to your Wonderbread and Miracle Whip.

"The Canals of our City" takes Beirut's voice and a chorus of trembling trumpet, the rattling strum of an old guitar, and it turns these things into a mirror. It's a backward glance that's forward-looking, all of your past telescoping back behind your shoulder. Remembrance - remember the sparkle? remember the stammer? - and nostalgia. Squeezebox and gathered voices, that strident song, brassy till it evaporates. Two minutes and twenty seconds that feel like the invocation of a whole beloved world.

The Gulag Orkestar is a feat because it is a folky record that is so much fun. That is so much fun without being about dancing. That just raises cup after cup of wine, pulls wind after wind out of its pockets (north! south! east! west!), gives you breadcrumbs and also the opportunity to get lost. It's an outstanding, endearing debut. It's when you're wandering in the dark in a pasture, in a country of cornfields and herbal liqueurs, and you come across a barn that's full of fire and dance and song. And you go in. It's like that. The truest kind of souvenir.

[buy ($10 incl. postage!)]

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Fantastic stop-motion music videos by Potions Made For Children (colour and trees and prints and rag-dolls and splendour!), and Wolf Parade (the new one is "Modern World").