Said the Gramophone - image by Danny Zabbal

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Oopsy daisy
by Sean

Hi folks.

Unfortunately my weekend of cottage-dwelling relaxation came to an abrupt end when I had an undesired canoe-tipping/cutting episode. I am okay, but it looks like I will be in hospital until the end of the week, while they look after an infected wound. Hopefully I'll be in tip-top shape ASAP. In the meantime browse the side bar and listen to good music!

I'll get my sister to post another updated when there is more news.

(The doctors do think I will be okay, but the antibiotics need a few days)

9:26 PM on Aug 3, 2004.
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with you
by Sean

I've been attending bits of the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival and it's been lovely. Hot, but lovely. If you live here, go.

Shocking Blue - "Hot Sand". This song stands at the edge of a roof, doing acrobatics, risking death. The distorted guitar bends and twists, the drums smack, Mariska Veres throws her hair back with a sensuous toss. Best of all is Robbie Van Leeuwen's sitar - which he played regularly on Shocking Blue releases. This was the b-side with 1969's "Venus," the band's big US smash. The track is scorching, almost burnt, and it sizzles under direct sunlight. "Hot sand / I'm walking in the hot sand / making love on the hot sand." Forceful, sexy, but with those little details - the backing oohs, the streak of sitar, - which make it much more than an intimidating flirt. [buy]

Mitch and Mickey - "When You're Next To Me". Sometimes the best kind of love song is the goofy kind, cheery head-swaying sing-alongs. And it's easy to get enthusiastic when the performers are fictional. Mitch and Mickey are bad poets, sure, but they sing with such overwhelming eagerness, such contagious pleasure. Yes, the rhymes are trite, but bo oh boy are they in love! Acoustic guitar bounce, twining voices, and the biggrinning singsong of a bulging heart: "When I'm lying next to you / I feel moonbeams burn / I see rainbows turn / into gold." [buy]

And, to follow up the William Shatner/"Common People" track, here's another bit of total weirdness - courtesy of FP/benny. "The Chipmunk Song [slowed down]". Yes, hear Simon, Theodore and Alvin at their true speed, sounding respectively like an accountant, a hot-dog vendor, and a lunatic. Put it on repeat and you'll drift gradually into madness - it's like an acid flashback to fetal languor, the surreal sounds that filtered through the uterine wall.

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I'm off to a cottage for the (Canadian, non-quebec) long-weekend, so I'll see you all again on Tuesday.

ps: funeral is the album of the year so far. will say more later.

12:54 AM on Jul 30, 2004.
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like the weather
by Sean

Nina Simone - "Little Girl Blue". Yesterday people were talking about her version of "Who Knows Where the Time Goes," so I felt I ought to pull out my own favourite Nina Simone recording. It was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Heart, and it's one of the very saddest things I love. "Good King Wenceslas" tapped out on piano, a romantic twilit jingle that bursts into triumphant noise at the end. Despite this gaiety, however, Nina's slow song exists in a different world; its lachrymose lyrics are the wrenching opposite of the piano-player's ball. In the song's last half, the two meet half-way. She composes herself, lets him play his cabaret blues, and out of her flows a long, trembling melisma, a poised final statement, the sound of a woman who knows she must smile. [buy]

Little Wings - "Random Lee". Little Wings continues to rival Phil Elvrum as the most prolific act on K. Magic Wand is his most collected record yet, with full-band numbers that are almost raucous. Closer to Royal City's Alone at the Microphone, certainly, than Julie Doiron's Desormais. And yet if you ask me, it's the soft-and-sentimental he ought to stick to - light green leaves, worlds of wonder, breezy surf-folk. "Random Lee" is my favourite track on the album, and it reflects my predilections. Kyle duets with Genevieve Elvrum (aka Woelv), just whispering drums, meandering guitar, and the drift of their voices. They fall in and out of harmony, two animals crossing in a wood. (But of course they're singing about driving, "the glamour that is golden in your smile," a radio slowplaying, the windows are down and the light's almost tangible as it hangs in the air.) [buy]

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Pinback's Blameless in Abaddon is one heckuva disappointment. Gone are the ruby melodies, replaced with trimmer, emo'er rock songs. Count me out.

Life of a Spuckle is a nascent musicblog with links to small and noteworthy legal downloads. Gordon's just getting started, but I think he dreams of big things.

3:25 AM on Jul 29, 2004.
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bell x1 introduces itself to fairport convention
by Sean

Fairport Convention - "Who Knows Where the Time Goes". Yesterday was Estelle, with a UK Top Ten from 2004. Today, Fairport Convention with their hit from 1969. Although intimately familiar to anyone who lived through the time (or so I assume), songs like this get buried in subsequent decades, especially when one is all the way across the Atlantic. But "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" was Fairport Convention's most successful track, a folkpop ballad that stands amid tumbling cherry-blossoms. Sandy Denny's voice is the whinsome flip-side of Van Morrison on Astral Weeks, sad but steadfast. Martin Lamble is indispensable on drums, touching the pavement with spots of silver puddle, sending down a sudden bird. And Richard Thompson - well, his guitar aches and thinks and hopes and smiles and then withdraws again. The song is a perfect articulation of its own message, that sad/glad push/pull of staying/leaving. It shimmers and then locks into a clear, steady image: a gate. [buy]

Bell X1 - "Next To You". Liz continues to send me the very best of the still-shining Irish folkrock movement (thanks, Liz!), and the artists continue to impress me with their understated earnesty, their ear for an interesting sound. While John Mayer would sing every note of this track, milking it over plain electric guitar, Bell X 1 makes it a lazy rolling tune, drums nudging aside bushes, synths chiming and then ring-a-roseying with horns. There are demure handclaps, flashfade cymbals, the deep (faux casual) longing for a slipslide back: "I'm not over you / can I get back under?" So many loose truths, so much glorious sound - and all in this compact little trifle, three minutes and fifty-five seconds of song. (Like Snow Patrol but better.) "Alphabet Soup" is also really really good. If people are curious to hear their more rocking side, I'll share it. [buy]

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My iPod Mini came in the mail today. Hoo-ha is it a nice little somethin'. Anyone have tips for supplementary software/applescripts/etc worth downloading? (I'm on OS X.)

4:32 AM on Jul 28, 2004.
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the day is done
by Sean

Things might be a little foggy tonight; it's 4:30 am. On the other hand - today I offer some incredibly good music.

Nina Nastasia - "The Long Walk". Finally got my hands on Nina Nastasia's debut album, just rereleased on Touch and Go. It is really, truly great - lighter on its feet than The Blackened Air or Run to Ruin. There's more glint in its eye; it's seen fewer skeletons. "The Long Walk" is a song I want to crawl inside. "Take it slow / it's only me." She sings like that closest of old friends, the comfort that sits at your feet and loves. It's grandiose and humble. Jim White (Dirty Three) drops mallets onto toms and out of the chimney flows a blue plume of electric guitar. A song to keep you breathing, a chorus that calls for the lighting of candles, of hearths, of bonfires. Let's light everything bright and relish the sights. Yet another reason that Nina Nastasia is one of my most favourite contemporary acts. [buy]

Estelle - "1980". English garage chartpop, overwhelming and uplifting. It's an explicit nostalgia trip, Estelle leading us back through her life, strings soaring and soaring with four-story ambitions. Like The Streets with a bit of Beyonce, she's totally charming, self-deprecating, utterly without pretention. She plays Connect 4, her "weird neighbours set their own house on fire." She learns to cook, "wishing we were Cosby kids," ever striding forward, voices blooming in the back. Forget Kanye West - this is the year's biggest, boldest, catchiest inspirational, a marvellous song that shines, flashes, throws sparks. [buy]

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download mgm endings, the remix album of John Vanderslice's Cellar Door (via catbirdseat)

You must check out Jay's mash-up (from May) of Kanye West ("Encore"), Public Enemy ("Bring the Noise") and John Coltrane ("Ascension"). Totally brilliant.

Grab Peter Sellers' cracked, brilliant version of "She Loves You" over at spoilt victorian child.

whoa. (via sillytech)

4:43 AM on Jul 27, 2004.
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in search of kid serious
by Sean

Well, if it isn't already Monday. I passed a fine weekend with my friends Anne and J, up from Virginia/Montreal and NYC. We oohed at totem poles, watched a little english boy play catch, ate beaver-tails and poutine. You know, Canadian stuff.

Graeme Downes - "Hammers and Anvils". A song to fill sails, to blow ships across straits. Downes sings like Billy Bragg or Greg Macpherson; like someone who gives not a shit for discretion or noise pollution laws, like someone who simply wants to sing their fucking heart out. An electric guitar rumbles and rings, Downes opens his mouth wide. As frontman for NZ's The Verlaines, he learned to demand attention. And now he's stamping his foot on a bare black stage, his voice a blare: "I didn't do it, the moon did / but just for a minute or so / my head started raging / she was laughing with slaughter-house eyes." Does anyone hear his confession? Or is his only audience the stars, with their unwavering silver stare. (From Downes' 2001 solo debut. Clare = awesome.) [buy]

Kid Serious - "Armageddon Girls". Annette sent me this drowsy, mysterious song, but neither of us can ascertain where it really comes from. Google can't tell us anything about artist or track, at least as far as I can tell. It's possible the song is mislabelled - if anyone has insights, please do pass them on.

The tune's nebulous origins make it all the more appealing. A lonely, phased guitar repeats over and over, 80s-echoing drums like the nighttime flyby of telephone poles. The singer has a cigarette rasp, a voice of warning. It's like a movie's nighttime drive, gas-stations crumbling to dust. When the backup singers begin their chant, it's a memory quickly dismissed. "She got road-signs in her eyes / waiting for the lights to change." It's a song to get lost in - the compulsion of the glimmering guitar, of the headlong drift.

12:10 AM on Jul 26, 2004.
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indiemedia
by Sean

As we dive into the weekend, we've got bedroom pop.

Alden Ginger - "Refinance Your Mortgage". Lofi fun from Alden Ginger, one half of The Unicorns. It's like a kid playing in his basement, drums rattling while the organ swings. Imagine a Teddy-Bear Picnic where one of the bears is wearing a vintage T and Buddy Holly glasses. This is his band. And while it's messy and hissy, the whimsy in it is what makes the Unicorns so appealing - the play amidst musical hooks and fumbles. Dan ripped this mp3 from the stream that used to exist on a New Music Canada page [google cache]. Alden cites his influences as "Baudelaire, David Bowie, Caprice, the wurlitzer, [and] The Beatles".

Both of these songs can be grabbed from The Robot Ate Me homepage, but that's a coincidence:

The Robot Ate Me - "The Genocide Ball". On Vacation is a two CD set. The first half is the weaker record, strange scratchy jazz recordings and Ryland Bouchard making awkward comments against Hitler, Jesus, and the world's evil greedy governments. That said, "The Genocide Ball" is unoppressive wonderful, like Ben Gibbard singing along with Kid Koala. It's a breezy wheeling tune - a clarinet leading the way, Bouchard wielding a cane. Better still, the political barbs are subservient to the melody, sideshows for the main, toe-tapping attraction. [buy]

The Robot Ate Me - "On Vacation". The title track somersaults away from jazzbacked ditties and towards crumpled indiepop fun. CD 2 is full of peculiar, good-natured tunes - like The Unicorns without the sex, The Microphones with a marching band. A suntanned melodica wheezes between stamps of drum and cymbal, Bouchard singing out a hopeful yellow vacation day. "I can buy almost anything that I'll ever need!" It's a song for the first or last day of school, for long strides out of a building and into the grass, dandelions puffing into bloom. [buy]

Keith posted an absolutely amazing track from the upcoming William Shatner record. It's "the Shat" accompanied by Joe Jackson (and produced by Ben Folds), covering Pulp's "Common People." Shatner's speaking it all so honestly, with such a Cocker glint. The instrumental build is a cleaner, simpler version of the Pulp original, the tune reimagined for a 21st Century marketplace, M83 and Sum41. (I've put a low-fidelity mp3 rip of Keith's .mov here.)

See you Monday!

2:27 AM on Jul 23, 2004.
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