Archives : all posts by Sean

Yes, we're having some technical difficulties. Working on them. Mp3s should be back online soon, and I will be some dollars poorer. So it goes!

Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: Everything should be working again. let me know if you have any trouble or there's anything weird...

Sam Cooke - "Cupid [live at the Harlem Square Club]". The second of my two sons is named Intensity O'Clock, and every night he sneaks out to go to the Harlem Square Club. At first I had no idea. While me and the missus dozed, Intensity would tiptoe past our doorway, lift the window, and spring out into the night. As we dreamed, he would be shimmying down the poplar and going out into the street, running in his tomato-red sneakers. A friend would pull up in an old car - and they'd be off, smiling in the dark.

One night a few weeks ago, I happened to get up for a drink. I noticed the window open but thought simply that the wife must have wanted a breeze, an airing-out of the upper floor. Downstairs I poured myself a glass of water and stood in the dark by the front window. And there I saw Intensity O'Clock, all flying hair and shining eyes and red shoes, dashing through the garden and into a waiting Buick.

I set down my glass of water and folded my arms. When the car had driven away I went upstairs to make sure I had not dreamed the sight. There was Intensity's bed, neat but empty. I went through, kissed the missus on the cheek and then took the newspaper and went back into Intensity's room. I rubbed my eyes and I read the paper and I awaited his return.

Intensity didn't get back until close to 5 am. I admit I had fallen asleep but I heard the slam of the car door, heard a laugh, then soon enough heard the creak of the window shutting. Intensity came into his room and he saw me in the old wicker chair. His face suddenly went very grey.

"Dad," he said.

I stood up. "Good morning," I said. "Where were you?"

Intensity was still breathing heavily from the climb up the tree. "The Harlem," he said. "The Harlem Square Club."

"Girls?" I said.

Intensity shrugged. "Music," he said.

There was a look to Intensity's face that I wasn't use to seeing. There was a red in his cheeks and a lightness in the skin around his eyes. He looked at once very young and very old, dressed in black and white and red. I could feel the dawn rising behind me.

"Who?" I asked, and he knew what I meant.

"Sam Cooke," he said quietly. He took off his jacket. "And boy did he ever."

I let Intensity go to sleep. I went back into my room and sat up watching the windows lighten, lighten. I thought about my son's face, his breath, the tenderness with which he had said Mr Cooke's name.

The next morning I called into the office and told them I wouldn't be coming in. I explained everything to the missus and she nodded, amused with me. She was meeting Gloria and the girls for the day, so we shared breakfast and then she left. The kids were at school.

I went up to Intensity's room. He kept his records on one of the lower shelves of his bookshelf, where the fairytales had used to reside. I flipped through them. So many names I didn't know. And there: Sam Cooke.

I took the record downstairs and I put it on. I sat in my deep, familiar easychair and I listened. The house was big and still and soft.

Cooke's voice rattled me. It flew out of the hi-fi like a group of birds, like a flock of them. There was something in his voice that shook all over - in the feet, the hands, the head, the chest. It was almost too loose in his throat. It rattled and shook and went free through the house, bright as teeth, bright as laughter, like bracelets swinging on wrists. I wouldn't dance, alone in my house, but I sat there and saw clear as day Intensity in his red shoes and leather jacket, twisting on the carpet. His hair flew and his eyes lit up and there was a bliss there that was better than anything I had seen in him before. It wasn't a safe sort of happiness, not quite, but the recklessness was young and sure and I trusted my son in it. He was brave enough to come home, stars tucked into his pockets, music in the soles of his feet.

So when Intensity O'Clock arrived back from school that day I was again waiting for him in his room. I had put the Sam Cooke record away. I sat with a mug of coffee and a copy of the Times-Sentinel, as a father ought to. He went stiff when he came in and saw me but I told him to sit down and said "It's all right". I told him he could keep going out. I told him to be sensible and not to let school suffer. But I said it was all right, he could go, and that he should enjoy himself.

[buy]

Typhoon - "So Passes Away the Glory of the World". I spent the past week in the isles of Orkney, with sea-birds and sea-waves and sky. And as I walked in the tufted hills one of the things I listened to was this, Typhoon's self-titled LP. A record drawn from the stuff of Okkervil River, Mogwai and A Silver Mt. Zion -- a record that's got sea-birds and sea-waves and sky. And also twilight, desolation, shipwrecks. It's really fine. "So Passes Away the Glory of the World" is I think the first song we have ever posted that is in Latin. But that's okay - don't worry. I've provided a translation of the lyrics. The track has monastery vocals, kettle drums, staccato strings. It has a cut off at the end which is to convince you to buy the whole thing. It has size, my friends, size - like glimpsing a mountain through the fog, like a tall ship coming out of the mist, like cresting a hill and seeing a field laid out in front of you, black with bracken. There's death here, but also the first sparks of life - the baby blinking, gasping for air; lifted into hands.

[buy for a mere $8!]

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The new Contrast Podcast is up, without any contributions by me, but with lots of good things.

Unpop is a new mp3blog, careful and gutsy at the same time, based out of Brighton's "pop gone wrong" DJ night of the same name.

And this is a series of comics drawn on the same sheet of paper, then rubbed out. Until things get a little desperate near the end, there are moments that are really frightfully funny. For fans of Pokey the Penguin and Buttercup Festival.

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Finally, not two weeks after paying (thanks to you) for a whole year of mp3 filehosting with Apple, they've gone and changed their terms & conditions, drastically reducing the amount of traffic their accounts allow. There is thus a distinct possibility that our songs may be knocked offline some time... If this happens, please leave a note in the comments. We will (sigh) be looking into other solutions. Thanks.

[My name is David and i live in Manchester. My friend Lucy Jones and I call ourselves Mount Pleasant and we have the drawing fever. I like making (intense) posters, (extreme) record covers and thinking about making (funny) books. I'd like to do more of all these things. I do some work for magazines, most regularly Plan B and NME.

I recently painted an eye on a mountain and some maggots coming out of a skull. I also like drawing 3D letters, splurging tubes and hairy arms. There might very possibly maybe be some Mount Pleasant exhibitions in Manchester and London in May/June but keeping a watchful eye on our site is the best way to sift the fact from the fiction. You can buy posters from the site, they're £3 each or 4 for £10 plus a little p&p, e-mail me yo. You should also go out and snort up all the Land Ahoy! (RIP) and Former Bullies you possibly can.]

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

The Pendulums - "Brand New Song". This song is a memo. It is a debriefing. It makes things known. It is a song about having things. These are the things that are had and the people who have them:

I'm not making that up or being metaphorical. The song is a memo, it's a debriefing, it makes the above known. In plain english. And also with la-la-la, taddle-um, violin, guitar, bass, and with a trombone that will come right up to you and shake your hand. Who's got the trombone? James.

Okay, but don't you hate memos? Don't you wish memos were soft-boiled eggs, with bacon and root beer? Maybe some mushrooms on the side? Don't you wish "memo" was code for jumping from fencepost to fencepost? Well The Pendulums are from Glasgow and Edinburgh, they like Gong and Pentangle and the Incredible String Band, and the Bonzo Dog Band too. They are that and they like those bands and they have the things mentioned above. And to them a memo's a song; a song's a breakfast; a breakfast's a hop, a skip and a jump. It's the funnest thing in the creek.

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Catbirdseat introduces us to a remarkably great artist called Beirut. Balkan strut and lake-buzzy trumpet, but wearing the Magnetic Fields' suits.

Volume II of the Contrast podcast features songs selected and introduced by various mp3bloggers from around the world. Tunes by Ween, Wilco, Cursive, McLusky and many more. Also featuring a song selected by me, by a band called Sexual Harassment (posted here more than two years ago). And yes, you can hear my silly, creaky, crinkly voice.

And (inevitably) a great (happy) piece by Marcello Carlin on Ornette Coleman and (!) The Constantines.

Bruce Springsteen - "Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street". Taken from Springsteen's "first-ever radio station show and the earliest circulating 'live' material with the E Street Band", what I like best is that it doesn't feel like "Springsteen" or "The Boss" playing - it just sounds like a guy called Bruce, and his pals. Bruce is full of such joy; he's so happy to be there. Listen to the way he says "Yay!" at the end of the session. It's "Yay!" for chrissakes, but you can hear the smile. And before that, too - when Bruce droopy-slurs his way through "Rex said that lady left him limp"; when the accordion tips his head inside the door; when the saxophone shuffles carefully in, spinning and trying not to knock over the furniture; when Bruce gives two uhs and a "sock-it-to-me", as if he's trying the whoops on for size. These are the kinds of things I want to use to wallpaper my room.

On this recording, Bruce has a voice like Dylan or Van Morrison: a voice that strains into its lyrics; a man fitting into a suit that just barely, precisely fits. It's a singing that's suited to sudden jubilance, to exhortations, to whirls of feeling. He doesn't go overboard here, no, but you can hear the tremble in him - he's feeling like a real musician, a real singer, a real songwriter. Like someone who's finally caught in the current of his own career. Some lucky young matador.

The Desks - "We Will Rise, You Know, We Will". I think by this point we've established that I have a soft spot - nay, the softest of spots, just a hole in my heart, - for a certain kind of dusty murmured song. At least when said song is good. And "We Will Rise, You Know, We Will" is decidedly good, decidedly dusty and decidedly murmured. Like Julie Doiron, The Robot Ate Me, Doveman, Damien Jurado, Thanksgiving - oh, the whole boat of them. Here it's The Desks' electric and acoustic guitars, a creaky larynx, an organ and an electric harpsichord. And a song that's catchy, in its own tiny way. Like a big acheing ballad turned into a little train - a locomotive the size of an orange, puffpuffpuffing its way around your apartment.

[more songs/info] (thanks tim)

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P.S. There aren't any readers in the Orkney Islands, are there?

Handsome Furs - "[Unknown title]". The first times I saw Wolf Parade, I didn't know them as people so I had to imagine names for the members. Thus it was "Black Max" yowlin' away at his keyboards and "Nick Danger" herky-jerking with his guitar, always a little sickly. (I don't think I came up with a name for Arlen, and Dante hadn't joined yet. And Hadji's name I didn't need to make up because he was in my historiography class.) But yeah, Spencer Krug was Black Max and Dan Boeckner was Nick Danger. Nick Danger had veins in his arms and rings under his eyes.

Wolf Parade's got side-projects. Spencer has Sunset Rubdown (and now Swan Lake). Hadji has his Master's degree. Arlen produces the likes of AIDS Wolf. Dante has "Dante DeCaro". And now Dan has Handsome Furs.

This is a song from Dan Boeckner's upcoming solo record. I don't know its title. What I know is that it's not by Nick Danger. It's not by someone who panics. It's by someone with broken bottles and a whole lot of patience.

When it begins - just the tickle of guitar and Dan's crackly, clipping voice, - you think "okay". But then what happened to me is that out of this lofi soup came the HUGE fucking lurch of wheezy organ, the clomp of drums like workman boots. Listening to it on my computer speakers now I don't hear it the same way - but then it was on the stereo and I swear the bass hit me like a punch to the chest. I flew backward, right through the drywall, slamming into the bricks. Dust everywhere. And still the song coming through the wire - dark, persistent, fisted. A bluecollar song; a heartstarting song; something to resuscitate a man after a year on the road.

It ends much too soon, much too soon, before the track's taken on any of the mandolin's magic realism. While it's still just concrete and sugarwater and orange sodium light. While I'm still lying there, gasping.

[I have no idea when this record is being released. What I know is that it will probably be on Sub Pop, and that Handsome Furs is touring Scandinavia in May.]

Darondo - "Didn't I". Soul music that moves like an old loom, shuttling back and forth, knitting a pattern over your heartache - something made of thick and solid fibres, strong enough to heft that weight, strong enough to throw your heart up in the air and then catch it again. See your heart glinting as it's thrown? That's sunlight, and blood. That's life.

Sometimes, listening to Darondo, I think of a cartoon-strip wanderer. A man in rags who drags himself across the desert, dying of thirst. And even as he approaches an oasis he uses his last dry gasps to sing a soft and crooning song. Choosing a hot little tune instead of a few more steps and a gulp of springwater.

[buy]

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Former StG-guest Katy Horan now has an online shop!

I dunno. It was raining when I came home. And then it was night and we sat and ate pierogies and Maltesers, and now it's even nighter. I feel like opening the window; listening to these songs with the window open. Hearing the midnight whisper and playing songs back to it. Ones I think the night will like.

Hold on a sec, I'm gonna open the window.

The Robot Ate Me - "Hi, Love". Okay I'm back. I keep having to start this song again because it gets started and then I just sit and listen, then it's over and I haven't written anything yet. So over and over again.

Is this a sad song?

It's supposed to be a happy song, I think. There's something happy in the way it goes away and it comes back. Like Mr Robot's "Hi, Love" isn't some wisftul thing - it's a true greeting. "Hey there, you." I like that "you". The tenderness of the "you". Hey, you.

It's colder than I expected, with the window open.

There's a plant on the windowsill that our friend Ania has left with us, for a while. We were looking at it tonight and we realised that we should probably be taking care of it, even though she didn't ask. It's green and it looks okay. Maybe I'll water it in the morning. There's lots of sunlight in the window.

"Hi, Love" takes almost a minute to change from its acoustic guitar and voice to something greener and yellower, with more shades of shadow. Almost a minute. But then when the clarinets do appear, when the woman starts to sing, when the cello makes a sound from the corner - each of these things feel like gifts.

[buy Carousel Waltz / preview a new song]

Herman Dune - "You Stepped on Sticky Fingers".

Here are the words to this song:

I came to pick you up driving.
I tried to phone you to come down but you were online
and so I had to park by your house.
If there's time for a smoke then I should buy some fags,
and a ticket on the window when I come back.
I should have written the code to your door.
I should have had it as a tattoo on my hand.
I should have learned the numbers by heart and you would have let me in again.
You got into my little blue Japanese car
Your hair smelling good from the shower.
You looked at all the tapes around and on the floor
You even stepped on Sticky Fingers.
You took the white box of a Daniel Johnston tape, genuine from Austin, Texas,
in your hands
and said: WHAT['S] THAT. WELL IT LOOKS PRETTY COOL.
and I knew that even if for some reason you did not know
some of the most beautiful things in the world,
then you were one of them too.
And
there could be a lot of songs
there could be a lot of songs

there could be a lot of songs
there could be a lot of songs.

Some advice: (1) Don't play this song too many times in a row; (2) Don't wonder why the love-interest in this songs speaks with a deadpan non sequitur [Jack Lee] voice, like the Pavement-member who knows Geddy Lee; (3) Don't try to figure out what the last lyrics means; (4) Here's what they mean: I'm trying to say something about beautiful songs, and about you, and about how much I like you, but your hair smells good and I probably love you and my grammar is falling apart, I can't help it. But I'll finish the thought, repeating the final line over and over. Because if I do I think you'll get the gist. You'll get the gist from the way my words swing up-up-up, the way they're repeated four times. The way I use the word "could". Could. Like: "Could be." "Could happen." "Could we?"

[buy Mas Cambios]

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Winners of our Matthew Barney/Bjork Drawing Restraint 9 Contest

About a week ago, I announced a contest for the new Matthew Barney/Bjork art film, Drawing Restraint 9. The kind people at the film were offering an autographed poster, as well as copies of the soundtrack.

In order to enter, I asked Said the Gramophone readers to send me photographs to accompany the Bear Creek song "Without You (NYC)", which you can still listen to here:

Bear Creek - "Without You (NYC)" [buy / MySpace / full StG writeup]

Thank you all for your entries. They were amazing, and amazingly varied. Which is how it should be.

The ones I liked best were the ones that scratched the same part of my belly as the Bear Creek song, or that made me thirsty in the same way. They were not necessarily the prettiest, the most professional or the best composed. But they were the ones I liked best.

Here are the winners. Click on any photo to see a larger version.

I'm going to close the window now and go to bed. Remind me to water the plant in the morning.