Archives : all posts by Sean

Mt. Eerie - "The Dead of Night".

On Your Blues, Destroyer built his songs on a platform of straw and straws, strips of satin - casio synths, drum machine, fake strings and electric piano. This fakeness? he seemed to be saying, It was always this fake - you just didn't hear it before. As he told his skewed stories, sang happily and sadly and obliquely, as he swam in those sleek waters, this is what I heard: Art's always been fake. It's made by people. Beauty's fake too. But that's okay (I think) -- art's still art. Beauty's still beauty. And booty's still booty.

With Eleven Old Songs, which is available now at Mt Eerie shows, Phil Elvrum revisits eleven of his old songs, and he does so with casio synths, drum machine, straw and straws. And in Elvrum's hands, these materials say something different than they did with Dan Bejar: Beauty's not fake -- "fake" is beautiful.

Bejar might say that he means that too, only sideways. But I think Phil would say that's too complicated.

I'm not sure who's right.

As a sample from the record, "The Dead of Night" is a bit of a cheat - for two reasons. First, the track was only previously released on the limited Live in Copenhagen triple-LP. Second, there isn't much of that casio.

I love this song, though, because I love the trick of it. Phil sings with his usual wistful seriousness, words like pebbles skipped onto a lake, and it's anchored by this repeated sample of a singing crowd. The sample goes round and round, the rhythm not quite right, like a wheel with bad balance. It begins to come apart - and you begin to get sick of it. And then something changes - at two and a half minutes, Elverum dies. (Spoiler: he doesn't.) And the sample changes, it twists and stretches and fades in and out, human voices that cease and restart, and if you hear it right it stops you in your tracks, the wheel is suddenly perfectly weighted, but it's not taking you anywhere. You hang... -- and yes there is that casio, sounding like the most vivacious and ebbulient thing, living itself, the skipping realworld plantlife heartbeat.

On his recordings, Elvrum's greatest strength is his ear for song-texture. It's why the unflashy No Flashlight (2005) kinda sucks. But it's why a song like this can leave you gaping, at least a little bit.

The Harvey Girls - "Mountain".

The terrific mp3blog Spoilt Victorian Child has launched a record label. Mike Seed's Songs For The Wintering Show Troupe is quivering and wintry - like the end of winter, though: the onset of spring, the moments after you turn off that M. Ward CD, when there's heat in your fingers. There are samples here (I highly recommend "William In A Trance").

The Harvey Girls are another beast entirely. They're a duo who play avant pop, indie folk, eclectic and soft-hearted weirdness.

And clearly they can also play a kind of bluegrass.

"Mountain" is a song where the engineer's done half the work for you. Listen to that mandolin. Listen! My gosh - listen to it! It's the sound of everything I love in my life. Listen! It's the cat with the fiddle, the silver spoon, the man in the moon. Hiram Lucke is singing something, but I need to listen so hard to hear it - the mandolins are dazzling, brilliant, the only things I want to concentrate on. Listen to them!

All right, all right. I'll pay attention to the lyrics... "Fold your hands to listen now." Okay! Will do! Mandolins!

(Final note: Lucke's lyrics are of course very good, but "Mountain" sure don't need rely on 'em.)

[All SVC Releases come as high-quality mp3s with full artwork. And they are extraordinarily good value -- The Harvey Girls' Wild Farewell costs £4 (or $10-$15 on CD), while Mike Seed's album is a mere £3.50. Twittering electronica is also available from The Palace Lido, for £3.50. -- so do BUY.]

The White Foliage - "Drug Song". The White Foliage used to be just "Foliage". I can understand why they changed their name. If this music were a tree it would be a single birch in a grove of spruce; if it were a fish it would be from deep deep deep; if it were in a wardrobe it would be a ghost, and not a fur coat.

The band is two people, a boy and a girl. They're not brother and sister but I like to imagine that they are. If the Fiery Furnaces hadn't been weaned on The Who, epic poetry and sugar-bombs - if they'd grown up listening to Richard Youngs and Born Heller, watching 2001 and collecting perfumes. If if if - if Bruce Springsteen was raised in an 18th Century court, this is how he would play piano, circa Nebraska. But he wouldn't have played it with all the rest of this rattling racket: it's as if someone dumped him out on the prairie, asked him to play his song, listen to his muse, even with a storm moving in from the west.

I don't know how they made this track work so well, what thread they used. It must have been gold thread, or silver thread - a rare substance plumbed from some rare place. I wouldn't know, see, how to make a blanket from these things, let alone a warm one: homeless synths, gale-caught vocals, a filligree of electric guitar.

[buy the White Foliage's debut EP (and grab the new Page France while you are there) | listen to more White Foliage]

The Rollercoaster Project - "If the Man Says Burn". We last heard the Rollercoaster Project in the form of a remix of The Cribs' "Another Number", the song made all bent-around and lanky. Johnny White's first album, however, is another story: forget goofs, forget awkwardness, forget play. Wait, wait - don't forget them. No. Put them where they came from and then remember them. The Rollercoaster Project make electronic music that sounds like memory. Not like memories -- like memory. Synth drones overlap and bleed, sounds and voices intercut and get confused, revelation's there - it's there, - but it's also just out of reach. This is a song about loss (of childhood, of spirit, of inspiration), but it's also about how easy it is to hang onto these things, how they remain caught up in the warm white ice of remembrance. When William Basinski's riding a Ferris Wheel, he can still remember that DJ Shadow song from last night, he can still remember his best friend's steady serious gaze.

[buy Hatefield | listen to more]

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Happy New Year to those for whom it is a new year. Happy Year to everyone else.

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Odds 'n ends:

This piece by Eppy starts off talking about freakfolk (Wooden Wand: blech), but really it's about kindness in music and musicians, about the danger in it, about the knife-edge that is compromise. And it didn't get nearly the attention it deserved.

Daring Fireball, the best written mac-nerd blog in the world, is once again holding a renewal drive. Consider investing in John Gruber's strong, sage prose.

Robin writes in with word of Kangaroo Alliance's excellent animated video for a mediocre Of Montreal song. (Click "Work".)

Catbird Records is a new label launched by the inimitable Catbird Seat. Their first release, a hand-made split CD with SSLYBY and Michael Holt, is now available for ordering. Holt plays summer-sighing folk-pop while SSLYBY flash their gums and do a rockin' shimmy. (I've ordered my copy.)

The second song to leak from the upcoming Strokes record, "You Only Live Once", is (as opposed to "Juicebox") extremely awesome. My friends' early reaction has been mixed, but me I love the sloppy vocals and stubborn guitar riff, the Rolling Stones at a roller-rink, and I can't wait to hear this all winter long. I've put up a YouSendIt download for those of you who are quick-and-interested.

Late to the party: The first half of Amir Nezar's review of Spoon's Gimme Fiction is some of the best music writing I have read this year. Outstanding (and it made me laugh).

I was astonished to discover in a mass email last night that Greg Macpherson, seriously one of Canada's most potent musical artists, is on a quick euro tour. He's even visiting Edinburgh in a couple of weeks (venue TBA). Although he's coming off of a rather weak record, please please please please do yourself a favour and go out and see him in person. The live show's incendiary. Tour dates here. (I last wrote about Greg here.)

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And finally --

This week comes the news that Paul Ford, author of ftrain and one of my favourite writers in the world (he is deft and good and sure), has published his first novel.

The surprising part is not that he has done so - it was a happy inevitability, to be honest, something I've been awaiting for years. What's unexpected is the subject matter. It seems, you see, that Paul Ford was the nom behind the nom-de-plume of The Morning News' "Gary Benchley" series.

If you missed it, "Gary Benchley" is "a callow, indie-rocking youth who must find a way to live--and rock out--in the hipster neighborhoods of the East Village and Williamsburg, Brooklyn". In a series of missives to TMN, he wrote of band drama and girlfriend trouble, dodgy managers and the Arcade Fire. It was snarky, silly, human - and whipcrack funny. Then Gary announced he had a book deal, and he disappeared.

He reappeared, of course, as Paul Ford.

Gary Benchley, Rock Star, by Paul Ford, is now out on Plume, and in your bookshop if you live in the USA (or maybe Canada?). I am ordering a copy across the ocean. I suggest - with unwavering conviction - that you do the same.

Do go and dig the major site redesign at Arcade Fire dot com. Flash as heck and thus frustratingly unlinkable, but so, so beautiful. Vincent Morisset and Dominic Turmel - I salute you.

The photos-in-the-photo-gallery are great, too.

The Winks - "Abalone". Crooked is as crooked does. What does that mean? It means that if a song is crooked, it will do crooked - it will make crooked things seem straight, make straight seem crooked. It'll make a lawn seem like a crunched piece of paper; it'll make a flute and a giggle sound like a tugboat. The Winks are from Vancouver but they ought to be from the secret Cloud Level on Super Mario. You know the one -- it's got crackles and pops, mandolin and cello, pipes you can walk into, question marks that sprout into forests. This is chamber pop with its strings cut: P:ano's lilt, The Unicorns' ADD and Sufjan Stevens' sweet smile.

The band is signed to Swim Slowly (see also: The Robot Ate Me, Doveman), and have an LP out, but this track is from their new split EP with Tights, out today on the Ozzie label Drip Audio. The Winks are touring Canada. (montrealers: you have yr mission.)

Hello Saferide - "Get Sick Soon". Awwwww... Seriously. Here's a love song to make all the curmudgeons (Hi!) throw up their hands, cute as a bouquet of flowers and a cough in the face. It's a song about loving someone so much that they are allowed to be sick of all you. "I'm such a Florence / a real Florence Nightingale / I'll fluff your pillows / I'll buy you a Spider-Man comic and read to you til you fall asleep." It's sharp as a needle, funny as a raspberry, and the closing lines are lovely enough to make my heart go ping.

Hello Saferide's new album is kind, catchy and yes thank goodness silly. She's a fine songwriter; she has muddy hands; she has butterflies in her stomach, chest and coming out her mouth. Catch up with "High School Stalker" (if you missed it the first time,) here, and you'd do well to tune back in to that page when the mp3 for "San Francisco" goes live - it's a galloping handclapping cracker.

Introducing... Hello Saferide is out tomorrow and you can [pre-]order by clicking the link at the bottom of this page.

[Previously: Hello Saferide's Said the Gramophone guestpost / "Teen Line"]

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Happy Birthday, Avril Lavigne!

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Elsewhere:

I (Heart) Music is fairly new to the musiczine biz but has already won my (heart) by featuring Wolf Parade this week, and holding a contest to win their new record.

At the Architectural Dance Society you can still read Jeff's ruminations on Tommy James & the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover". He writes about the long version of the track, which he's in fact tweaked to match his vinyl recollections, about the way little musical choices can transform a song's feeling. And you can of course download the mp3. Jordan wrote here about the song in December.

Any of you who have missed a gig on the Zoobombs' current tour should be finding a way to kick yourselves in the head. I say this not because I caught their show (um, come to Edinburgh please), but because the fact is obvious. Keith was there in Montreal has got the Zoobombs' live disc, and he's even got a live (mp3) recording of my fave Zoobombs track, "Mo' Funky" (heard at Gramophone here). Bluzzy, rotoring Japanese fun(k)-rock. (There's still time -- Athens tonight, Columbus on Thursday, then back to Montreal on Saturday night.)

Todd clatters onto the scene with a new mp3blog called MERE PSEUD, starting with a neat shot of Guided by Voices and, inevitably, The Fall's "Mere Pseud".

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Special Gramophone request: My little sister lives in Toronto and has discovered that Saturday's Architecture in Helsinki show is sold out. She is stricken - and understandably. If there's anyone out there in blogland who has a ticket for sale or something, please drop me a line.

Eek! I completely forgot that today was Tuesday... My post will be up in five hours or so. Until then, do have a look at Coke Machine Glow's excellent interview with Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown. It's honest, insightful and - most surprisingly - funny. I look forward to Part 2.

Since I'm at work and don't have access to my mp3s, I'll also take this opportunity to indulgently mention the albums that are leading the charge for me, this year. Said the Gramophone is all about fresh individual songs, so we don't often follow up and tell you which albums we're finding enduring. The following records are all jockeying, and hard, for my album of the year. (There may yet be more contenders.) As I draft lists in my head, each one has held the top spot:

Broken Social Scene - s/t (Arts & Crafts) [what i said]
Final Fantasy - Has A Good Home (Blocks/Tomlab) [what i said]
Herman Dune - Not on Top (Track and Field) [what i said]
Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy (Jagjaguwar) [what i said] (what OR's Will Sheff said about Tim Hardin)
Robyn - s/t (Konichiwa) [what i said]
Smog - A River Ain't Too Much To Love (Drag City) [what i said]

Others jostling in the rear: Sigur Ros, MIA, Antony & the Johnsons, Damian Marley, Phantom Buffalo, Page France, The Clientele, Jon-Rae and the River, and doubtless many more than I'm forgetting.

(blast from the past: my favourite music of 2004)

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addendum: OMG, "new" Bishop Allen song at You Ain't No Picasso!!!!one!1!

Page France - "Jesus". If someone were to ask me what kind of music I like, it would probably make a lot of sense to just say "THIS". I suspect that songwriter Michael Nau has precisely the same dreams as me. It's the only explanation for how his songs jolt straight to my brain's gladcentres. Last night he will have dreamed of a strange house with blue walls, where he lived with his parents, only they're not his parents. Who are they? Are they the parents from Buffalo 66? Maybe. And then the night before that he dreamt of math equations. And before that he dreamed of the brilliance of rising vocal lines and sudden thumps, glockenspiel and the harmonies that make one's spine Spring-tingle.

Page France are new to me. I owe Matthew and Cody some thanks. And Fall Records, too, because the CD is now in hand and it's such a joy. Such a joy. It's indie folky pop like a million cloudchanges condensed into minutes. It's great. "Chariot" is the marvellous opening song, and you can still download it at Fluxblog. It's great. (Did I mention that?) You can download the also-rad "Junkyard" here. And you can stream the whole rest of the album here.

"Jesus" is a song full of promise and zing. It's that greengrassy place where Ben Gibbard dances with Neutral Milk Hotel, both of them in flower-garland crowns. There are rings of melody and harmony - voice, acoustic guitar, electric, tambourine, - and one by one these rings are laid on top of each other. One by one until there's a stack of golden rings, which you can put on like a big bracelet. (You can then go propose to your love, or fly to the Fortress of Solitude, or make water spring from dry wells, whatever you want.)

It's also, admittedly, a song about Jesus. But it's a song about Jesus in the same way that "Mrs Robinson" is about Missus R. It's a song about the cool stuff Jesus might do, the ways he might surprise us. It's about the party he brings with him. When he appears he's like something dredged out of an Okkervil River or Royal City peat. In other words, he's a magic Jesus. "And Jesus will come through the ground so dirty / with worms in his hair and a hand so sturdy."

Lau is a remarkable lyricist. His rhymes are so good- Okay, imagine you have a twig, a good brown twig the breadth of your thumb. And you snap it in half. And you throw the two pieces of twig to either side of a forest. And then a lonely person comes along and picks up one of the pieces of twig. He thinks life's meaningless and lame. He wanders. At the other side of the wood he idly picks up the other piece of twig. And look! Lo! They fit together! Just. Like. That. And for a long moment he's in awe of the way the world can just make things come together in the rightest way.

Michael Lau's rhymes are like that.

"And the bears and bees and banana trees will play kazoos and tambourines. And Jesus will dance as we drink his wine / with soldiers and thieves and a sword in his side."

[buy for a mere $10 | more info]

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Damian 'Jr. Gong' Marley ft. Nas - "Road to Zion". Although "Welcome to Jamrock" may be scaling the worldwide charts, something tells me that the bulk of this site's readership hasn't been paying attention. So please do start. Welcome to Jamrock is almost certainly the best reggae album I've ever heard. This isn't saying much -- I'm woefully unschooled in reggae, familiar only with some Trojan box-sets and, well, Bob. Furthermore, there's not all that much reggae on this record: lots of hip-hop and r&b that leans in that direction, rocksteady and dancehall and yes Jamaican accents, but if you're looking exclusively for 2nd and 4th beat unhs, large chunks of Welcome to Jamrock will disappoint.

This is irrelevant, though. Fact is, Bob Marley's youngest son has made a CD of very consistent quality, of shining beats and perfumed melody, of bumpin' and wisdom. He's taken a card from - and made a better record than - Kanye West, bringing social conscience to the dance-floor. He lets himself get incensed (by politics and by women). He doesn't lecture: he sings.

"Road to Zion" is dry and sweet, terribly sad but not at all apathetic. Marley raps like it's the easiest thing in the world, sings like this is a song he's been singing for years. His voice is more ashen croak than croon, like an old soul singer sitting at the edge of his bed. Nas raps with equal earnestness - "Prostitutes stomp in high-heel boots / and badges scream at young black children / 'Stop or I will shoot.'" - and equal frustration. There's a resignation to the song - there's got to be! listen to that harp sample, the humming mother to the side, - but Marley and Nas aren't resigned to the awfulness of the world; instead they're resigned to the long long long fight.

It's reputedly been a very hard summer in Jamaica. Best wishes to the people there.

[buy (it's worth it)]

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Elsewhere:

A generous dose of remixes from the upcoming Grizzly Bear album, at TTIKTDA.

Handsomeboy Technique - "Season of Young Mouss". It was strange enough when the Go! Team exploded into my life last year, a joyous ragamuffin music I had never even conceived of before. But imagine my surprise when I discover that there's another band baking the cupcakes that the Go! Team have been selling, a rival team of Eighties bricoleurs and nostalgic twee-sters. And they're from Japan.

Yes, Handsomeboy Technique are gloriously doubledutching and furiously dancing, all of it garnished with a cherry-faced naivete, a childish pep. "Season of Young Mouss" has jazz flute breaks and spoken-word sampling, gamelan and rap and a "duh dit-dit doo" songline. It's fantastic, really, and Adelie Land deserves to be sitting on the top of cool-kid playlists across the land. There's a little more dance-music to "Season of Young Mouss" than on most Go! Team gunk, but surely that's a good thing when you feel like dancing. (Besides, tracks like "Adelie Coast Waltz" offer peachy-and-wistful alternatives.)

I can find almost nothing in English that has been written about Handsomeboy Technique. So honestly, we'd better get started.

[buy]

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King Creosote - "Grace". On October 3, Full Time Hobby release Dream Brother, a tribute to Jeff and Tim Buckley. The contributors are first-rate, from Sufjan to Micah P Hinson, Kathryn Williams to Adem, Matthew Herbert and the Magic Numbers. I'm not convinced that many of them achieve what they hoped - the Buckleys' originals shine a little too bright to be eclipsed (or even clouded), - but it's interesting to hear them try. I really enjoy Matthew Herbert & Dani Siciliano's take on "Everybody Here Wants You", and Sufjan is appropriately tender, but really it's King Creosote who steals the show.

This is unexpected. "Grace" is my favourite song by either Buckley, and it didn't seem likely I'd hear a cover which felt anything but redundant. Let alone a cover with accordion. But here we are.

King Creosote's made something dark as sea-water. His "Grace" has a Siren's eyes, her smile. The menace of the lyrics is plain, here; there's no missing the macabre promise that the narrator makes. No missing the way he sings of his love, his anaesthetised indifference to her sorrow. Creosote's had just enough wine for his voice to tilt with the demands of the song. His accordion's been polished. Carrion birds are circling. Oh aye, it will be a waltz - but a dead man's waltz, beautiful as a good drowning.

[buy]

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Also at StG -

I do hope you saw Dan's fantastic post yesterday, and I must also point you to the gorgeous Roy Harper track that Jordan posted on Friday.

Elsewhere -

At Tuwa's Shanty, listen to the powdered-sugar dumb-and-happy trot of "Sunday Morning", by Billy Preston.

"We, Emmanuel Light, Love Ocean", by the Inconsolable, is one of those instrumentals of such circular sadness that you could curl up with it and spend an afternoon of melancholy.

Calexico's Elliott Smith cover, at Chromewaves (look on the left sidebar), is surprisingly good [if a little traditional]. I am not usually a Calexico fan.

If you liked the Gareth Auden-Hole song I posted a month ago, he's got more up here. Rattle-creaking, flowering folk-pop.

Catch vids of the recent Arcade Fire appearances with Bowie on Fashion Rocks, and on Letterman, at Smudge of Ashen Fluff.

And a hearty, heartful, heartfelt first-time happy birthday to the lovely Svetlana Citta Bilerman. Welcome to the big ole' world.