Archives : all posts by Sean

Some love them, others hate them, but at the end of the year I'm always compelled to make lists. Lists of good music and bad, disappointments and pleasant surprises. I realize I'm late to the party, and that this makes my lists even greater exercises in meaninglessness - but here I am all the same, because I'd regret it if I didn't record things for posterity.

Some heavy caveats: This list is being compiled in a tuscan village called Pari, atop a hill, and I'm many many miles from Canada. What is here, then, is pulled from memory and the little I can browse on my iPod.

Because I went a-travellin', I didn't hear most of the last quarter's releases - neither U2, REM, Annie, Ted Leo, the Bad Plus, Eminem, Stars, Okkervil River, Mase, Estelle or d12. And as I was stooping in Slovakia, hungerin' in Hungary, I didn't catch some of those innumerable things I might have discovered these months, were I at home. Instead, I found Hungarian folk-metal, Slovakian garage rock. Which I'm still sorting through.

All right - on with it.

The Best Albums of 2004

I've read several peoples' year-end lists, and I feel like I might be in the minority when I say that 2004 was a poor year for albums. Exceptional music was recorded and released this year, but I'm not sure it coalesced into too many exceptional full-lengths. On the Best Songs list, below, my cup runneth over; but when it comes to enumerating the year's best LPs, I had to stop at three.

But a few words on the honourable mentions; sparkling and listenable, - even moving, - yet ultimately flawed. Some were too long, others too plain, some too short on singles or just a little bit boring. And yet they're all fine things, worthy of purchase, just not the stuff of end-of-decade compilations, of halls of fame.

They are: The Frames - Burn the Maps, Julie Doiron - Goodnight Nobody, Jolie Holland - Escondida, Kanye West - College Drop-Out, The Killers - Hot Fuss, Wilco - A Ghost is Born, Devendra Banhart - Nino Rojo, The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free, the Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat.

And the best records of 2004, doubtless no surprises here, are -

03. The Go Team! - Thunder Lightning Strike

Thunder Lightning Strike kicked me open like a surprise party. No album this year was been so unexpectedly wonderful, so familiar and original at once. The Go Team are like those childhood daydreams, those fantasies of jetpacks and tree-houses. They're the gang I never had, the brood of hooligans that smiles and laughs, with finger-snaps and ball-games and little sleights of hand. It's unclassifiable and mile-a-minute, dance music and pop-music and indie rock and hip-hop. Chalk-lines on a playground, double-dutch rocket launch. [more thoughts]

02. Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender

When I die, if a song is to be sung about me, I would like for it to be written by Joanna Newsom. Not because she plays a harp, a big one, nor because she sings in a borrowed voice, something sharp and spurred and sometimes gobsmackingly beautiful. No, the finest thing about Milk-Eyed Mender is the words, the play of language on a tongue, the images that bound out from her wild melodic turns. She's better than Dylan, better than Waits, better that Sheff. She builds sculptures out of twine, stories out of beetle-shells; she makes me giddy, glad and indeed sometimes sad. But most of all she sings true things that I had never imagined, in a voice too ballsy to lie.

01. The Arcade Fire - Funeral

And the Arcade Fire, well, what can I say that I haven't already. Funeral is splendid and brave and every week I have a new favourite track. This is a band I've loved for a long, long time, and here's an album that will never go away, that I can always turn back to, that will shimmer and flash even years from now. It'll bring memories of dark, hot or flush days; not of childhood but of the time after, of when everything loomed big, when my heart beat big, when I wasn't scared of death, only of life. These are songs whose lyrics flash behind my mind's eye, realer than other scenes; they're songs that are meant, made blazing with feeling, and yet, for all this earnesty and wisdom and narrative, so too are they songs for dancing, for singing, for loving and listening to. These are pop-songs for the end of the world or the beginning of it, for Wendy remembering Peter, for broken, whole and beating hearts. And I thank them. [more thoughts]

Best Production on an Album
David Newfeld's amazing work on The Apostle of Hustle's Folkloric Feel, which goes a heck of a long way towards making this superficial, repetitive record a thing of majesty. Synthesizers, strings and electric guitars; voices, whispers, bursts of noise. It falls together and falls apart, drums tumbling in and out. So much to hear, so well-knitted, so carefully and capably assembled. Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People suggested it, but this confirms Newfeld as the best producer in alternative music today.

Best Idea
For the love of god, someone please take Howard Bilerman up on his offer and let him at those Leonard Cohen tapes.

Best Avant-Folk Record
Les Mouches - You're Worth More To Me Than 1000 Christians

Les Mouches did something this year that I can't quite understand, that I don't fully grok, and that didn't feel right next to Joanna and Jolie and the Killers. But listen - their debut LP was shockingly good, strange and noisy and hushed. There's a tremolo voice that recalls Xiu Xiu, but then there's the splay, bang and splat of percussion, the glimmer of chords, and we're somewhere else entirely, on the verge of something, lost, afraid and unsettled - and glad for it.

Punctuation Most Over-Used During Sean's Time at Said the Gramophone
The comma.

The Best Songs of 2004
I could go on and on, and on, about the songs that came out this year, how diverse and rich and transporting. But I shan't. I'll say simply that you should hear and know each one of these songs; that the list could span much longer; and that I feel proud that I shared so many of these songs with you, that Said the Gramophone lived up to its mission statement.

Because it would have drived me nuts, I have only ranked one song by each artist. If they released other songs which would 'rightfully' be in the top 40, I have included those songs in parentheses.

01. The Arcade Fire - "Tunnels" ("Power Out," "Crown of Love," "Haiti")
02. Modest Mouse - "Float On"
03. Britney Spears - "Toxic"
04. Wilco - "At Least That's What You Said"
05. Joanna Newsom - "Bridges and Balloons" ("Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie")
06. Eamon - "Fuck It"
07. Estelle - "1980"
08. The Mountain Goats - "Dance Music" [via TTIKTDA]
09. Jolie Holland - "Do You?"
10. The Go Team - "Bottle Rocket"
11. Wolf Parade - "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts"
12. The Streets - "Dry Your Eyes"
13. Kanye West - "Slow Jamz" ("Family Business," "Workout Plan," "Jesus Walks")
14. William Shatner - "Common People"
15. Natasha Bedningfield - "I Love You" [sic?]
16. The Divine Comedy - "Our Mutual Friend"
17. Janet Jackson - "Love Me For a Little While" [via The Rub]
18. Mase - "Welcome Back"
19. One-T and Cool-T - "The Magic Key" [via Fluxblog]
20. Sam Bisbee - "Miracle Car" [via TMN]
21. Adem - "Ringing in my Ear"
22. Old 97s - "Won't Be Home"
23. The Hidden Cameras - "Builds the Bone"
24. Royal City - "Jerusalem"
25. Bell XI - Alphabet Soup"
26. Avril Lavigne - "My Happy Ending"
27. Plastic Operator - "Folder" [via Fluxblog]
28. Counting Crows - "Accidentally in Love"
29. Rachel Stevens - "Sweet Dreams my L.A. Ex" [via Fluxblog]
30. Tom Waits - "Hoist that Rag"

Most Anticipated Albums of 2005
in descending order of interest...

Wolf Parade, Hood, Beck, Magnolia Electric Co, Sigur Ros, Greg Macpherson, Bishop Allen, The Clientele, LCD Soundsystem, Destroyer and Frog Eyes, Damien Jurado, Sun Kil Moon...

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The Sean update, for those who give a hoot:

It's my birthday on the fifth, but shortly after that I'll be returning to Canada for a few weeks; I'll try to return to the blog with at least a handful of posts on the music I've discovered on these travels.

And following visits to Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, this little writer will be flying to Edinburgh, to Scotland, where I will stay, work, and write for the foreseeable future.

And hopefully I'll be back to Gramophone, too.

Apologies to anyone who has written me but not heard back, recently; internet access has been extremely brief and intermittent. Things will improve when I leave Italy - and when I buy my new iBook.

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Happy New Year! I hope all of your 2005s will be full of laughter, reassurance, and yes some grand blooms of sound.

Well look what the wind blew in.

Hi there. I've missed you. But my travels are far from over, so it'll be a while till I'm making regular appearances. This epistle comes to you from Dublin, from the bank of the Liffey, from an internet cafe with bright orange signs and the maddening inability to let me rotate images (you will understand the significance of this later).

It's been about a month and a half since I last wrote. I've been on the road, in the air, over the water. England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Eire. Friday we leave for Finland.

Jordan's struggling with time and technology, but he's been doing wonderful, wonderful things here. I'm jealous of all of you: I don't get to play the mp3s. (Hi Jordan!)

But I did play Glenn Gould as I stood on Brighton beach at five a.m. I listened to Nick Drake as a bus pulled into Cambridge. John Coltrane in Edinburgh. The Arcade Fire on the northern irish coast.

I've bought some CDs (too many, too few), stuffed them into my backpack. Inexpensive surprises, immediate must-haves... records by Lou Reed and the Flaming Lips, the Go Team and The Frames. A Leslie Feist single. A compilation record benefitting a Leeds animal shelter. I heard Shostakovich's 8th string quartet in England's oldest music room. Bobby Watson gave a master-class. Bodhran and pipes in Doolin, then sitting on rocks by the sea.

It's a good thing, travelling. Clears the blood. You feel lighter, feel the wind stronger. You suddenly find that you can climb mountains, or get lost on them. That a familiar song sounds suddenly better, that Leonard Cohen goes with wine and cheese even miles away from Montreal.

I've met fine, kind people. Readers here (Hi Ross! Hi Matthew! Hi David and Adrian and James), and a few new friends.

On Halloween in Dublin there was fog and firework smoke. Around statues and the Spire you heard bangs, shouts, strange laughter.

Last Saturday was Julian's birthday, and we went to see Joanna Newsom at a red-lit place called the Sugar Club. It was a fine, fine thing. I'll answer some of your questions:

1) Yes, she does!
2) No, she speaks like a normal person. A west coast kinda drawl.
3) Actually, she's a babe.
4) I mean it!

Such superficialities aside, she was a little marvel. She sung and yowled her wise and complicated words, she grinned and bore it, she clapped her hands and played with pluck (ha). Her fingers bounced all over that big ole' harp, they pulled high notes from unexpected places. She sang a killer "Sadie" and an even better "Book of Right On". She sang a new one about "kith and kin," where at least fifteen times she sang her chorus and broke things in our chests: "OH DON'T I MISS YOUR PRECIOUS HEART!?"

She sang the b-side from her new Europe-single (which I couldn't find). She said it was about the USA, and the election, and an impending "crisis". I think she might have cried a bit (and I'm sure she cried a bit more today). It was a song about porpoises in their "snatch of sea".

And then, in encore, there was the following exchange of beautiful absurdity:

Joanna: Oh, I don't know... Any requests?
Random heckler: Play some Zeppelin!
(I expect he was not requesting a spangled, whimsical song about giant balloon-boats.)
Joanna: Ooh. I'll do you one better... (Pause) How many of you have seen the movie The Last Unicorn? Or read the book by Peter S. Beagle?
My own weak, solitary voice: Woo.
Joanna: Well it's a wonderful movie, and the band America did an absolutely beautiful soundtrack. So I'll play a song from that.

She then, in an act most definitely advanced, played the song "A Man's Road," from the animated Last Unicorn movie, which is terrible.

But you know what? Her version was pretty good.

Here is a picture of her, sideways. See how she swooshes.

And so, awkwardly, we're brought to Tuesday.

Ireland is five hours behind central Canada and the american east coast, so we bought biscuits and crisps and stayed up till six a.m., watching the u.s.a. presidental election.

Four more years?

I'm not angry, I'm not even surprised, I'm just disappointed. Disappointed in America, I guess, but really disappointed in humanity. Bush could have been elected anywhere - in Britain, in Germany, in Japan, in India. He speaks the language of human beings in the twenty-first century - the language of surety, of confidence, of 'righteousness'. We invented human rights and the categorical imperative, responsible government and karma, but ultimately we're dazzled by the firmest handshake, the straightest stare, the biggest boom.

Democrats aren't categorically different. They'll be complaining that Kerry was a poor candidate, that he didn't show enough resolve. They wanted him to out-bullshit the president, to repeat the same empty rhetoric. They wanted him not to flip-flop.

But I want a leader who flip-flops. I want someone who changes their mind, who adapts to circumstance, and isn't afraid to revise their thinking. This isn't a quality of Democrat or Republican, Right or Left - it's the quality of those who consider compromise, indeterminacy, the world's smear of greys. Kerry couldn't project W's unwavering assurance -- well, good on him.

Now the Republican White House will go back to its smirks and bargains, its pigeonholes and xenophobia. The Democrats will pull out the tapes, put them up on their screens, and work on mimicking Bush's straight strong stare -- for next time. And America (like the rest of the world) will return to the economics of daily life, of work, of worrying about family; they'll sleep and eat and shop and type, vaguely disquieted, not quite content, and turn to their leaders - their bosses, wives, presidents, - turn to them for that blank and confident look. They'll be reassured that all will be ok, that the scary bits can be eviscerated, that the cancers aren't complicated. And we'll go on, stumbling into sudden hatreds, avoiding eye contact with the people in the street.

I woke up on Wednesday with tight springs in my shoulders. I had slept fitfully, dreaming of red maps. I went out and walked. There were knots of cloud over the Dublin skyline, the newspaper vendors were closed. I had my headphones on and I put the iPod on random. I waited to be distracted from Bush, from my molasses pessimism. I wanted to forget that stuff. I went into Tesco. I bought yoghurt and carrots, put them under my arm. And then outside in the sunlight I was listening to the song "Astral Weeks" by Van Morrison, and even though I was in Dublin not Belfast, the shaker set something loose in my joints, the rhodes lit up in the back of my skull. As I waited to cross the road, waited for the pedestrian light that makes a sound like a laser-gun, I noticed my foot tapping, the birds in my eyes, the guitar that had creaked open my heart and let all that sleepy nonsense sadness out. I noticed I wanted to dance, to dance as I walked, to smile and let the strings throw me, catch me. I swayed a little.

Forget protest songs, I thought. Forget funeral songs. Forget that Van is singing about love or laughter or reincarnation. Maybe if I just played this song for people they'd see the birds and hear the bass, they'd stop voting against gay marriage and start clapping their hands, they'd do good things and not worry about the best things. Maybe they'd open their windows and sing, or break them and run, or stain them, or make them, or stare right through them. Maybe they'd listen, and think, and love, and lean back on the cool glass, the blue sky glass, and use it as a cool and blue sky pillow. Maybe things would change a little, one brave kindness at a time.

There's a song in which a xylophone rings and an electric guitar makes mountains. Win Butler sings, in a big brave voice, that "I GUESS WE'LL JUST HAVE TO ADJUST."

Let's.

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Tomorrow I leave with Julian for Finland. We will be visiting Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Italy. I am trying to buy a CD in every country I visit... If any of you want to recommend Truly Great Albums from any of these places, national classics or should-be-classics, I would appreciate it very much. Folk, singer-songwriter, pop, jazz - you name it. Who is the Leonard Cohen of Zagreb? The Amalia Rodriguez of Slovenia?

I'll try to say hello again before Christmas. Happy winter.

Love,
Sean

This is a special weekend edition of Said the Gramophone. It's long, but there are four whole songs to be heard.

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So here we are. About eighteen months ago, I started writing StG. In my second post I insulted Pitchfork and talked about Purim. In my fifth I mentioned the Arcade Fire. Barroso's "Brazil" comes up in post number nine. Said the Gramophone's not been a mirror for me, but it's certainly been a portrait - there's a lot of me in the writing, and more still in the music I've been posting since we "went mp3" in November 2003.

Now, I'm off for a four-month European galavant. If all goes according to plan, that will become an indefinite-length European residency. I'll be away from here for a while, but if I can, I intend to return. So please don't go away.

Furthermore, as I've said, Said the Gramophone is not going off the air. Replacing me during my trip is the wise Jordan Himelfarb - musician, philosopher, wit. I will let him introduce himself, but I promise you that you will not be disappointed.

I'd like to thank all of my readers for their attention, their dedication, and their extraordinary kindness. I throw words at the blog like paint at a canvas, hoping that a likeness or two will stick; it's been endlessly rewarding to know that a few of these images have made an impression. I appreciate the comments and criticism, the songs you've sent, the little notes that say "this song does sound like rootbeer at a picnic after you break up with your girlfriend!" I thank the skies for the people I've met, and for the feeling that I am listening to music with friends. It's been a pleasure sharing things with you, knowing that because of Said the Gramophone CDs are being bought and shows are being attended. Please keep listening - to everything.

Special thanks to: Steve, John, Keith, Cody, Tuwa, Liz, Dave, Howard, Adrian, Annette, Mark, Benjamen, Brad, mr g, bmr, Gretchen, Chryde, Aaron, Adam, Dana, my real-life pals (especially andrea, dan, monica, andrew, miri, robin, and my dear mum & dad), and the cavalcades of others whose names will doubtless come to me a few days from now, while en route across the Atlantic.

If you'd like to keep in touch as I travel, you can write me at sean [dot] michaels [at] gmail [dot] com.

Jordan's Said the Gramophone starts this week. Please welcome him with wide arms; I suspect he's nervous. :)

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Some songs.

First, I will end by sharing some of that which which I began. The following are respectively the fifth and fourth songs posted to Said the Gramophone.

The Frames - "Lay Me Down". "II/XV" (below) is barren; "Lay Me Down" is luscious. Glen Hansard moves calmly toward death (toward love?), voice gliding between the shudder and thump of drums. A banjo flickers like soul in my veins, a fiddle dips and soars like a heart in my chest. Nothing "folksy" about this, though - it's almost baroque in its form, in its careful gestures. I love the way it ends: it doesn't explode or implode or burst... it just stops. Steve Albini's masterful production - from the blush of harmonica to the ting of a cymbal.

I like a lot of ugly songs, but "Lay Me Down" is one that's absolutely beautiful. It's such a pleasure as it fills my ears, so rich, flush and lovely. I'm a Canadian-Scot, but these Irishmen impress me to no end; there's only a bare handful of artists with three songs in my favourite hundred - people like The Beatles, Cat Power, Tom Waits and Radiohead, - but The Frames carry just such a crown. (The songs in question are "Lay Me Down," "Seven Day Mile," and "What Happens When the Heart Just Stops".) Their new album is out now. And when I visit Ireland, I will buy it. [buy 2001's For the Birds]

The Marquis de Tren and Bonnie Prince Billy - "II/XV". I don't usually feel odd talking about a song. Songs are sound - they're snatches of melody and harmony and words, ideas rattling in a pouch. Throw in another idea (a cockamamie expressionist analogy, say, or a "this makes me feel like...") and nothing's lost. There's simply another idea in there, knocking against the others. The song might change, but hopefully it's just another tone you hear, a new rhythm that you could follow to its completion.

I sort of feel different about "II/XV". I feel like a new rhythm might upset the old one, that it might make that first perfect thing harder to hear. Like static on a NASA radio, chopping up an astronaut's goodbye. So I'll be careful.

This is one of the most serious songs I own. It doesn't feel so serious - it lacks the gravitas of Cohen or Cave or Conor - but the lightness of Oldham's voice is misleading. He sings like these are casual observations, slow stoned thoughts.

If you listen, though (and this is a song where the lyrics must be listened to), they're not. They're not casual, they're not stoned. They're delicate, purposeful, invested with a whole heart. (I don't mean 'delicate' like filigree, or rosepetals. I mean 'delicate' like skin that could easily bruise.) A human being's bare hopes, awkward and simple and so important. Vulnerable, above all else. They're laid out with weird sounds, and at any time, someone could laugh. Someone could mock or snort or roll their eyes.

But the bravest thing, the most awful and wonderful thing, is that someone does roll their eyes. Someone does mock or snort, or turn away. And it's at the center of the song.

I'll never know why Will Oldham decided to do write and sing this song. Why he made it into something so beautiful, not a self-deprecating dirge. I'll never know what Mick Turner (of the Dirty Three, and aka The Marquis de Tren,) thought. Whether he was nervous in the studio, growing guitar sounds like soft green plants. Whether the two looked at each-other during the recording.

Everyone will have to deal with hurt. "II/XV" is the way I hope one day to be able to bear it. It's music of devastating loss and fragile serenity; music of pain and beauty, self and nothing. Like Gillian Welch's "I Dream a Highway," I imagine it as the sound or nirvana.

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Next, some things I've never shared, and which you doubtless know, but about which I thought, as part of this farewell, I ought to make sure.

Van Morrison - "Astral Weeks". Astral Weeks, released in 1968, is one of the greatest works of music ever recorded. I first heard it when we were crowded around my house's living-room, on one of those first nights in Montreal. We had a discman on the floor, two little computer speakers beside it. These were people I had only just met - sudden friends drawn from Ottawa and Italy and Montreal and Virginia. Every moment felt new, felt special. A hormone high ("home on high"?) as we played records for each other, trying to explain the stars we saw in our special songs, trying to describe the magic of Gomez's dock smoke, the majesty of a Puccini aria. Maya put on "Astral Weeks." None of us were thrilled at the idea of Van "Moon Dance" Morrison, nor by the CD's goofy 1960s cover. But it opened as it does, like we're coming into something a few seconds late, and as soon as the strings shivered to life - well, I was struck. My desperate desire to play more for my friends, to share more of my favourite songs, disappeared. All I wanted to hear was the rough lilt of Van Morrison's maniac voice, the other instruments' crazy swooning seriousness. Van sings like a maniac, like a poet who's so excited he can hardly talk - he can only sing. The spirit of it is big and bold and brave and loud, and good! "Standing in your sad arrest / trying to do my very best." Reading the finest bits of James Joyce, I think only of Astral Weeks - the "slipstream" of words and the breathless wonder of life, the yeses that close Ulysses and the epiphanies of Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. And the other musicians! I was in such awe when I learned J's step-dad is Warren Smith, percussionist. Listen to that jazz, the wistful humanity of it. The bass, violin, flute, guitar and percussion are separate but united, amazing talents, fluttering brilliant accidents that make you believe in god or humanity - marvels of coincidence and human fellowship. How can something like Astral Weeks happen? How can it just happen!? Who could compose this? Who could improvise it? It's like a sky that grabs you at that perfect moment, the synchronicity of senses that makes you catch your breath. A song that takes "the dust of familiarity off ... [that makes] it feel new, rich, full of possibility, like I could walk up it and do something different for a change". Most of the album is like this - beautiful words painted in smokeplumes across an enormous sky, messages you look up and notice and which make your day something different. "Astral Weeks" is a joy, "Madame George" is a wonder, and "Sweet Thing" is something so special you don't give it to just everyone. Astral Weeks is an album for when feeling conclusions become breathless beginnings, for when the world blinks and we're "born again" and all roads lie open. "And I'm pushin' on the door." [buy]

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Finally (it is finally, isn't it?)

Glenn Gould - "Aria da Capo," from the Goldberg Variations, by J.S. Bach. For the last ten nights, after turning off all the lights, I have sat in bed, stared into the dark, and listened to this piece. The "Aria" is not, like several of the other Variations, particularly complex or technically difficult. It's not that I need multiple listens to figure it out, or to follow the different melodic lines. No - what keeps me coming back is the grace of it. Bach and Gould present something unsettling, unhappy, and then work it through. The struggle is note-perfect, and so beautiful you might not notice it at all. But it's there: In the way some notes hold back, or the way Gould holds on to particular chords.

I was talking with Jordan once about love and happiness... That no matter what you want to feel, no matter what you think you should feel, all that matters is what you do feel. You'll twist yourself into psychic knots, pushing toward the truth you prefer. You'll twist, tear, and break.

But we tread these difficult paths all the same. We ask hard questions: How do you find beauty in the inevitable? How do you be good, and honest? How do you be happy, and true? How do you reconcile the desire to stay, and the need to go?

I find some answers here.

I'm projecting, certainly, as I draw comfort from the notes, reverberations and silences. Some of me is casting a shadow over the song. I'm informing the way I hear Glenn Gould, hear his hums and murmurs in the background, his instant decisions to sound, hold or withdraw a note. But that will always be the way, and it's no use fighting it. The listener takes from songs, and so too does he give. I needn't be embarassed - only aware. And if I find serenity in this music, if my melancholy finds answer and rest, neither Gould nor Bach would resent me. No; I think they sought the same things. And I thank them.

Incidentally, thank you all, as well.

Glenn Gould recorded the Goldberg Variations twice. In 1955, when he was 23, and again in 1981. This is taken from the latter, recorded eighteen months before he died. [buy both]

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"And as you leave, the room is filled with music, laughing, music,
dancing, music all around the room
And all the little boys come around, walking away from it all
So cold
And as you're about to leave
She jumps up and says Hey love, you forgot your gloves."

a la prochaine.

Saturday Looks Good To Me - "Lift Me Up". Coffee-cup dance-in-socks bob-your-head-and-talk-to-the-kitten. SLGTM busts out the motown bassline and the cheer of an organ; listen as hands clap, as she sings at herself, as the guitar jangles in the right channel, as the trumpet waves like Belle & Sebastian from a window. Better yet, listen to the harp - seriously, it's killer! It's drizzled like honey over the end of the song, beautiful and giddy. The Lucksmiths in a big studio, The Diskettes on speed. Zip! [buy]

The Apostle of Hustle - "Sleepwalking Ballad". Andrew Whiteman is a big chunk of Broken Social Scene, and wouldn't ya know it, there's a big chunk of Broken Social Scene in his solo project, Apostle of Hustle. Which is fine by me, because Folkloric Feel took all the right bits: murmured vocals, breath and breadth, folkie earnesty and a rock'n'roll spirit. Better yet, there's something familiar in the broken blazes of guitar and drums - Whiteman enlisted Dave Newfeld to produce. Newfeld's the guy who did You Forgot It In People, and if you ask me, he deserves half the credit.

So "Sleepwalking Ballad" is big and wide, with canyons and rivers and cloudy peaks. It begins with Whiteman masked and vocoded, sipping a drink. Whirls build in the wings, guitars arrow in and then go away. "I went in to the wrong house last night / and I crawled in to the wrong bed." Things go quiet - one channel stumbles, falls back, shuffles forward. Noise clutters the soundstage, the corners building with artifacts (old wine glasses, new chandeliers, oversized bowler hats, blinking motherboards). Sounds are pulled out of trenches, cast over the tune like a grey tarpaulin. There are emotions you didn't know were there, hiding in the harmonics, waiting for openings to dive through and snap. There's a wheeze and a moan and a storm and then "dit dit dit" we're done. Utterly brilliant. [buy]

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Stay tuned for an extra post this weekend (with mp3s!) -- i will be bidding you all a temporary adieu. Nostalgia, tears and rambling are planned.

Systems Officer - "Hael". Ah - this is more like it. Since Pinback's new EP is all spread out and cool, Systems Officer will take the band's place; here are those reassuring curls of electric guitar, winding and weaving, the sigh-call-echo of voices. It's the project of "Armistead Burwell Smith IV (aka "Zach")", a Pinback member and former Three Mile Pilot guy. "Hael" spreads wings and then furls them again - it makes hesitation seem so sweet, makes purgatory sound so natural. Although the song opens with moody Coldplay piano, that's soon superseded. This is about warmth and reassurance; no dramatics. (thankee monica) [buy]

Declan O'Rourke - "Your World". This songwriter has a debut just around the bend, but "Your World" is taken Other Voices: Songs From a Room, a comp of up-and-coming irish talent. Declan's a guy-with-guitar, but this is big and loose, a fullhearted song that doesn't skulk in the bushes. It's so bold, so pushy; the lover who strides into the cafe, singing out his soul, nary a care for the strangers who titter - only for the one he wants to pay attention. The rhymes aren't trite, they're merely earnest. What's a boy to do!? [buy]

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I was gonna post The Concretes' "Seems Fine", off the Heavy.com comp that came in the mail - but The Big Ticket beat me to it. It's a wonderful tune, and I'm so glad that he agrees. :)

Travis Morrison - "My Two Front Teeth, Parts 2 and 3". When I saw Dismemberment Plan in Montreal a couple of years ago, Travis Morrison was a maniac. He gnawed on his microphone, climbed the wall, spazzed and grimaced and then sang dead-serious choruses. Since the band's break-up last year, Morrison's attention-grabbing behaviour has continued - contrary to the stock indie rock position, he supported the Iraq war. To the horror of hipsters, he also recorded a cover of Ludacris's "What's Your Fantasy".

But on Travistan, which is due out on Barsuk at the end of September, Morrison's not exactly ca-ray-zee. Sure, he takes potshots at Che Guevara, but, uh, yawn. And where the Plan sounded lurching and kinda punk, Morrison solo is much more pop. Like John Vanderslice or maybe an american A.C. Newman. Heck, Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla produces (along with Don Zientara).

But even if Travistan's not Emergency & I redux, it's good! "My Two Front Teeth" is a full, happy-dark pop-rock tune - looping guitar that goes cosmic by the end. At fifty-three seconds there's terrific, crusty drums, and soon after things bustle up to full driving speed. A synth cowbell knocks at Travis's knees. When the piano comes in I think of Charlie Brown at age 17, Good-Griefing with patches on his surplus jacket. Travis gets beat up "in front of the Gap," he hunts for his teeth, he looks "like Gordie Howe." And then of course there's the last minutes' echoing jazzy sweep, crest after crest of vocals. "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth." Serious goofiness.

Abigail Lapell - "Waking up in Boston". A song like a freshly-healed wound: tender, strange, smooth to the touch. I've written about Abigail before -- she's a Montreal songwriter, and this is from her new CD (which doesn't seem to be available on the net). I like this song very, very much. The guitar is a nagging thought, simple and electric. She sings like a lilting dark line - beautiful, sad. "I want to be alone / all alone / in the town where I was born." A sombre plea, and yet a happy one - the lift of major chords, the subtle appearance of a smile. Two and a half minutes of transporting sound, a postcard photograph of pavement, smoke, a woman in black. [buy]

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I am so delighted that Tuwa has started his own mp3blog -- Tuwa's Shanty. He's passed me so many good songs over the past months - from Beyonce to bluegrass - and I've shared several of them on this blog. The best thing about Tuwa - and what makes his internet debut so great - is that when he hears a wonderful song, he recognizes its beauty. His taste is sharp as a chisel, and it could carve out a big ole' smiling face. Go get that Taj Mahal song immediately.

Tikun Olam has recently started musicblogging, adding downloadable mp3 and wma files to its profiles of folk and world-music icons.

Ed Harcourt - "Something to Live For". A song of tenderness and love, one that is scratchy sad and blooming glad. It's about the beating heart that terrifies and excites, the scary tremble of new love, the fear of a dawn after which it will all be over. Everything breaks, Harcourt knows, but maybe this won't! Maybe! His voice is worn out, but he tries his best as his organ breathes; as his organ dies. It's a sweet thing that he needs to sing now; he needs to pump the pedal and say the words while they're hanging so clear (like cut-out felt hearts) in his mind. From the upcoming Strangers, which is the best thing he's done.

Richard Thompson - "1952 Vincent Black Lightning". A (the?) classic Thompson track - his bleating full voice and the astounding play of fingers on acoustic guitar. They're vocals that shake you with every phrase, that demand to be loved or loathed, cheered on or rejected outright. He sings like a puppet preacher, an off-key shepherd who tells the best stories on the island. He sings with lilt and pride. The Mountain Goats before The Mountain Goats - a song of death, love and a motorcycle.

The Pitchfork review of the Arcade Fire's Funeral is not very good - disengaged, worked over, - but Moore's right when he writes that the album evokes "childlike mystification, but also the impending coldness of maturity." He's also right that it's a 9.7. You should buy it.