Archives : all posts by Sean

Broken Social Scene - "Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Half)". Not since The Arcade Fire's "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" have I heard a song so triumphant, so boldly blazing. Certainly the best song Broken Social Scene have ever recorded and, if it weren't for Okkervil River's "For Real", a shoe-in for rock song of the year. The band's pedigree is perfectly manifested, from the blooms of post-rock sturm to the sinew of the melody; it's a wild stir of swirling noise, Leslie Feist calling from the very back, Kevin Drew's [?] voice stretched till it's windy, till it's a whipping Christo-canvas across the horizon. Their confidence is sick, their execution faultless. With all its psychedelic swirls, its battery of drums - not to mention the false ending and towering final climax, - "Ibi Dreams of Pavement" seems almost supersaturated with ideas, and it's a testament to the band (and to producer Dave Neufeld) that things knit so seamlessly together.

As for the subject matter, well, who knows! I've not heard any references to the band Pavement, but perhaps you'll better me. In the meantime I'll imagine the title as a reference to the pavement you meet when you're shot right in the fa-ace and no one's there. I hear Do Make Say Think, though, Sigur Ros and yeah The Arcade Fire. I hear hard psych and floppy-eared pop, I hear a blurring bundle of words that's there to declaim an absence and to long for a presence. I hear hope and excitement, an overture for the lifting of a curtain. I hear a song I want to hear again. I hear a song I want to hear again. I hear- Well, go on, listen! (Loud!)

(I've gotta say, too, that I can't really believe how excellent Broken Social Scene is. For some reason I thought it would be dull and jammy rehash of the last one, but lo and behold it's got so much zing and pow, so much forcefulness. "Ibi" leads right into "Shorelines", a doublepunch of pop, and things extend from here. Neufeld's done a remarkable job, again, sewing it all together, and despite the weaknesses of the respective Feist, Jason Collett, Metric and Apostle of Hustle records, this here is a cohesive gem. It joins Herman Dune, Final Fantasy, Okkervil River and Robyn as an album-of-the-year contender.)

[pre-order for the October 11 4 release (with bonus EP!)]




Thee More Shallows - "Walk of Shame". It's three years since I first heard Thee More Shallows. Back then, they had only recently gained the "Thee". Today, they're not just more comfortable with their own name - they seem much more comfortable with the music they're making, with their own voice. This confidence means that they can let plain things be plain, and they can let dazzling things dazzle. On "Walk of Shame" the plain thing is the song, the thump and brush of drums, the tender (late) Yo La Tengo tone. And the dazzle is in the final minute's swoop of viola. The song shimmers, it pitter-pats, but it doesn't move much - it seems frozen, paralyzed - until that viola at the end. Then there's the simplest of codas, the bringing together of disparate strands, a small knot, and there there, it's done.

[More Deep Cuts is out now -- buy (more mp3s at that link)]

Do tell me what you think of these - your opinions matter like crazy.

The Dirty Three - "Hope". It's like with faces, see? You look at a face and it's the saddest face in the world. And then the light changes and you look at your friend and you see that it's love, not sorrow, in their eyes.

So here's a sad song, a sad song till the light changes. Then it's dawn, hope, warmth, contentment. It's when you unlock the door to your home after a long trip away, setting the bags down on the floor, seeing your chair as it was left, by you, by your human hands. The sun's only just rising and the room is white, or blue, or- I don't know; the light keeps changing. Maybe there's a body in the bed, waiting for you. Maybe you lie down alone, hands above your head, and you stare at the ceiling. Maybe you listen as the city comes to life, maybe you sleep. Maybe it's sad, maybe it's really really not.

The Dirty Three play music with guitar, violin and drums. Maybe you've heard of them. (They have the best drummer in the world.) This is a song from Horse Stories, from 1995. (And it reminds me of Loren MazzaCane Connors.)

[buy]

The Dirty Three ft. Cat Power - "Great Waves". This isn't from Horse Stories. It's from Cinder, due out October 11th, one month after Arvo Pärt's birthday. It's perhaps the best Dirty Three song ever, which is kinda too bad because it's basically a Cat Power song. But I don't know if I've ever heard Cat Power this mystical, so urgent without being desperate, so in control of her talents. It's startling to hear Jim White play behind her, the rattle and blur that leaps against my heart. Even more startling is that she sings of hurricane and flood, yes you got it, and there are so many images fresh in our mind. "The world is gone." A violin sounds like a ukelele or else it's a plain old mandolin and I imagine the smallest stories, the individual bodies that are exploding when Chan sings "the bodies are exploding", the individual humans running for cover when Chan sings "humans running for cover", the cars "intersect[ing] in the middle of the sky".

If there's going to be a song that makes me think of Katrina, me who was in Slovenia when the storm hit, me who doesn't have a TV, me who feels a million miles away and hasn't really been able to care, well then let it be a song that's a swamp, a morass, a thick soup of sound - and also a reservoir, a pool, a gift: every twig, leaf and raindrop, every brush of snare and thump of tom, everything unrehearsed and yet perfectly placed.

[pre-order Cinder] [donate to Modest Needs]

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Elsewhere:

You really ought to grab the Page France track at Fluxblog.

A small Sunday afternoon update.

The Arcade Fire - "Maps" (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover). This is an mp3 rip from the Arcade Fire's Friday performance on BBC radio. I remember Win and Regine talking over spaghetti about how much they liked this song, how it was just "one big looped chorus", and that it was the guitar-line that stuck your ears like glue. And now they've covered it and damn if it isn't one of the most potent things I've heard this year. (How I would love to hear it live.) The band's stripped away that central guitar line, stripped everything skeletal, and with the singers' trembling voices the vulnerability clangs between drumbeats. The harmonica, when it sounds, is so small and human - something you can take or leave. It's no longer just a song to hold in your heart - it's a song to cradle. As if the Arcade Fire decided to see what was left when all of the reassurance was cut away, musically and emotionally. "They don't love you like I love you" -- I can hear question marks at the end of that line, now, if I want.

(Substantiated) rumour has it that they're on Top of the Pops tonight. And they were on CBS earlier this weekend, with Bowie.

I've gotta say that I'm glad they didn't break up.

Akron/Family - "Dylan pt. 2". "Dylan", says the song title, but me I think of The Beatles' Abbey Road. Because this is an epic thuddering march, jousting electric guitars, a swinging swell of singing voices. "Something", "Because" or "The End". Repetition is one of this year's things. People are finding that a few lines, repeated, can be stronger than verses and verses and verses. See Micah P Hinson, Wolf Parade and Grizzly Bear. "You've found / what you're looking for," Akron/Family sing, and it's like Silver Mt Zion's Efrim, straining cry, but then it's a chorus, a choir. And I can't tell whether it's happy or desperate, taunting or elegiac. It's all of these. That's what the repetition's for. There are many meanings in the knit. And then the music: swirling blooming psychedelic rock, lonesome hearted, a clay man falling apart.

This is a marvellous band, and I can understand why Michael Gira is so excited about them. This track is from his upcoming Angels of Light & Akron/Family record, due October 31st. Their self-titled debut is out now (buy).

Softies - "Holiday in Rhode Island". It's raining in Scotland. I've already written about The Clientele, who I will see in concert tonight, so The Softies will have to fill in a rainyday song, a tune about Rhode Island, a song in watercolour, greys and pinks. A jangle guitar (the guitar sits by the fire at the end of the day and quietly glows, but no one notices except the mice). A xylophone or something (the xylophone is new, bought for this song, but then someone forgets it at a gig and they only get to use it those four times). And a band of friends, all of whom are in love (every one), not with each other. (Thanks to Kate.)

[buy]

Elsewhere:

A farewell to Carl's overtones column.

I am fascinated by Ramono Cordova, over at Songs Illinois, but they won't send the CD to the UK (nor is it available on iTunes UK), so I know nothing beyond what's there. What's there is magic, Joanna Newsom on a motorcycle.

I am counting the hours till the pre-orders are available for Catbird Records' first release (or would be if they had announced when that would be).

Kelly's conversation about his name with an employee of Lick's Homeburgers is one of the funniest, most human things I've read this year. Do read.

On holiday I read (or finished) several books. AFTER THE JUMP (will this work?), a few brief words, for the benefit of those who know them (and for some reason care about my opinion) rather than those who don't.

So I'm only freshly returned from a near-three week foray into Slovenia, with a late stop in Venice. In Slovenia: sladoled, nyoki, caves and Alps. In Venice: thunderstorms, a regatta, canals canals canals. They are both beautiful places, and you ought to visit. More than once.

In my absence, I missed all sorts of things. Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service) told Wired magazine that he liked our blog. (Hi Ben! Please drop me an email if you are reading, as I would love to talk.) Okkervil River's Will Sheff wrote beautifully here about Tim Hardin. Dan and Jordan said graceful things about nice songs. New Orleans drowned. And then there's lots more, I suspect, particularly on other blogs, which you will have to point me to in the comments. My earliest glances show that Tuwa, in particular, has had a very busy few weeks.

I'm still in that reeling travelling limbo space, even after two days of work, so I'll write about two opposite songs.

Dalek - "Asylum (Permanent Underclass)". I saw Dalek live in Zagreb, last year, with my friends Oto, Tomislav and Petra. Oto's email seems broken, so I haven't talked to him since that week. There was snow on the ground, Croatians packed into KSET, and up on stage these American men with laptops, tattoos and a microphone. It was a swirling heave of noise - louder than anything I can remember, - a headache churn that you wanted to fall forward into. Dalek play gas giant hip-hop, iron dust hip-hop, haze and weight and an MC with nimble toes. His flow turns sideways and slips through the grit. He nods, points and spits at the sun.

"Asylum (Permanent Underclass)" is from this year's album, Absence. It's a song about imprisonment. There's drone and scream, cement clap drums, a bassline like a breadcrumb trail to livable life. There's also Dalek's voice, angry and totally certain. Amid the sonic squall it's Dalek who anchors us; whenever he speaks, we can breathe, we can listen. (It's scary when he gets diced and chopped, and when he goes away entirely.)

This isn't post-apocalyptic music. This is music from a time when we can still scream rage, demolish buildings, when we can still "combat". Words still have meaning.

[buy]

The Diskettes - "How Bizarre". I scoffed then, but today I regret that I didn't go to the Electric Circus on the Rideau Canal ca. 1997, that I didn't do a teenaged dance on the ice. Who cares about intimidating twentysomethings in gelled hair and vinyl trousers. Who cares? OMC was playing and I would bet money, real money, that they played "How Bizarre". (What else would they play?) And even then, in secret, I loved that song.

So imagine my pleasant surprise that The Diskettes love it too. There's more than enough room for a bossanova version for "How Bizarre". This cover feels like it ought to precede, not follow, OMC's version. Paul Fuemana's lying on a beach in New Zealand, pissed off with his band, wishing for a hit, and in the bluesky sunshine he has dream. When he wakes, Maggie's percussion's in his ear, water on rocks, and there's a vague memory of Emily & Dave's harmonies. His dream was chaste, it was kind and very friendly, it promised kisses but did not kiss. So Fuemana sits on the sand and thinks of this sweetness, he thinks of the letter he just got from his friend in Melbourne, his friend who wrote "I miss you a lot" at the end, before the signature, he thinks about lyrics, and he laughs because he can only think of nonsense. But that's quite okay. "Freshly-pasted poster" almost feels like poetry. "How bizarre," he says to himself, giving it a drawl. (These are words he remembers.) He laughs again. "How bizaw / how bizaw." He nods.

[buy lots of Diskettes stuff by clicking the x on their website. "How Bizarre" is from a 90s tribute comp at Blod Records -- only $3 ppd!!]

North American Hallowe'en Prevention, Inc. (NAHPI) - "Do They Know It's Halloween"

This is an mp3-rip of the lofi stream available here.

So here it is! Ballyhoo'ed, speculated about, an oddity of the highest degree, the NAHPI has now launched with pictures, lyrics, press release, full details, and even a stream of the tune itself. Out October 11th, with all proceeds going to UNICEF, "Do They Know It's Halloween" features the likes of Beck, Feist, Karen O, Devendra Banhart, Sum 41, Sparks, Malcolm McLaren, Buck 65, The Arcade Fire, an Inuit throat singer... man the list just goes on. Masterminded by Nicolas Diamonds (formerly of The Unicorns, now of Islands), it's astoundingly absurd, slightly unmusical, but above all gleeful. It is the sound of many people having a great deal of fun (albeit in separate cities, corresponding by post). What I like most about it is the total lack of irony - this is goofy as heck, but there's no snickering, no sarcasm, just happy hamming. Listen to that chorale chorus, like A Silver Mt Zion crossed with Scooby Doo.

It's hilarious how some of these people - Buck 65, Wolf Parade's Dan and Spencer, David Cross, Beck, - are inimitably themselves, unmistakable voices sticking their heads in the door to murmur a few spooky words. Others, however, (check Win Butler's ghoulish deadpan at 3:00,) have submerged themselves into other characters, Rocky & Bullwinkle villains. I imagine the corresponding Halloween party, everyone in mummy-wraps and black mascara, some unrecognisable (and not just because I have no idea what Roky Erickson looks like), some still inescapably themselves. Even in full Frankenstein duds, Narduwar wouldn't be able to hide (but I suspect he would be able to break-dance).

Like I said before, it's too bad that some of the non-hipsters didn't make it out of the rumours stage (Clay Aiken, I'm looking at you!), but when Elvira is duetting with Leslie Feist, it's very hard to complain.

Good on you, Nick.

[full info here / full lyrical breakdown / definitely go out and buy this in October!]

Okay so this looks like it might be the best thing in the world, ever. Maybe. I kinda wish a few more of the early rumours (Clay Aiken/Spike Jonze/Wayne Coyne) had been proved correct, but the mad cackle of this single looks set for pure awesome.

Am I right or am I right?