Said the Gramophone - image by Ella Plevin

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then again...
by Sean

on the plus side, Modest Mouse will be playing with Wolf Parade at a cool Montreal venue on August 6th. (For less than $20, at that.)

2:01 AM on Jun 6, 2004.
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!@#$!#
by Sean

You have got to be kidding me. After five years of waiting, including a failed roadtrip to Cambridge MA which ended with an exploded engine in rural Vermont and a scramble to sell a car to one of the dozen residents of scenic Waterbury, Songs:Ohia is coming to Montreal, but exactly one week after I leave the freakin' continent! For ages and ages I've waited, willing to go the extra mile to witness one of my favourite musicians in action... But now, just as he decides to grace Canada with his presence, he resolves to take a month off between his St Louis and Detroit dates, leaving enough room for me to hop a plane for London and likely lose the opportunity to ever hear him perform. My life is cursed! Argh x 6 million.

(i hate because i love.)

[via chromewaves]

12:23 PM on Jun 5, 2004.
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the black-eyed dog, he called for more
by Sean

Nick Drake - "Black Eyed Dog" [remastered]. I toyed with posting "Tow the Line," the heretofore unreleased song from Made to Love Magic, the newest Nick Drake comp. But although "Tow" was the loudest touted track on the album, it's nothing very special. No, if there's a reason to buy Made to Love Magic, it's that you don't own Time of No Reply and want a slightly better version, or if you have enough love of and familiarity with Nick Drake that the little changes make a difference. That a new arrangement can furl things open, that a remastering can deepen the meaning.

With those technicalities out of the way, what say we talk about "Black Eyed Dog"? This is an absolutely terrific remaster - the ring of strings makes a huge difference for me, puts a new strain into Nick's voice. This was always a troubling song, made more troubling by Nick Drake's death. But now the song itself feels more troubled. I always found it hard to explain the sprightly guitar-picking set against the matte black call of Nick's vocals. Now, however, things slip into focus. The desperation/excitement of the lyrics is heard in the guitar work: desperation in that quick-fading thrum (deeply audible for the first time), excitement in the let's-go fingerpicking. Life and death, wrestling. Oblivion in the not-quite-silences. (Thanks, Ian!) [buy]

Dirty on Purpose - "Mind Blindness". Vibrant shoegaze pop from a NYC band that knows to blend haze with clarity, summer somnolescence with a young autumn's skip-run-and-fly. (cf. my jeans feel a bit tight, think i washed them a bit too high. i was gonna be late, so i picked up my pace to run.) There are sighs and interlaced vocals, dream guitars, a touch of Yo La Tengo earnesty, but then the brilliant bristling sprint of Doves or "Where The Streets Have No Name". Lots of bands strain to reach this kind of place - Torrez, Tiger Saw, heck, Mercury Rev, - but here's a group that not only has the mood, it's got the soaring, spaceship hook. Marvellous. (To top it off - I'm told they like Os Mutantes.) From the sleekly-packaged Sleep Late For A Better Tomorrow EP. [buy]

For the Canadians in the crowd -- this is brilliance: blocquebecois.ca.

1:56 AM on Jun 4, 2004.
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the brightest scream
by Sean

Hi everyone - thanks for all the feedback, the kind words, and the various statements in support of, and opposition against, the Scots. It's wonderful to know that you're reading - whether or not you liked the new Mase track. Sorry about the holiday, but I now have the right to wear a mortarboard hat in public.

As promised, today's music comes mostly from the tour-only split EP that Okkervil River and Shearwater have been carrying with them on their trip across the USA. It's called Hoax Funeral/Sham Wedding. Some of us (like me) live in cities not not lucky enough to be on the bands' itinerary. And yet some of us (like me) have friends (like Ian James) who will still pass things our way, even when the band refuses to sell the CD by mail-order.

As I've said before, Okkervil River is one of the very best bands in America today. Don't Fall in Love With Everyone You See is a marvel of noisy, riverside folk - macabre love-songs and blasted murder ballads. "Okkervil River Song" is one of the very finest alt.folk songs ever recorded - I'd share it with you but, uh, I already did. Last year's album Down the River of Golden Dreams is good too - rushing chamber folk with grey-eyed lyrics. You should buy them.

Okkervil River - "Moonshiner". One of several traditionals on the Hoax Funeral/Sham Wedding split, as heard on records by Uncle Tupelo and Cat Power. The song bumps and clatters, staggering on aching legs down a dirt road and into the brush. No need for dramatics from Will Sheff: the story's an old one, familiar to all, full of misguided hope and a tired enthusiasm. It's in the repeated squeezebox theme that the song shows this exhausted side, the worn creases at the sides of the moonshiner's smile, the wrinkles from decades of waiting.

Shearwater - "Mountain Laurel". Jonathan Meiburg sings high over mandolin and acoustic guitar, then the drums tumble in and - with the violin that sounds like electric guitar - a blackyellow bird darts out of the sky. Like chamber pop with a particularly serious Hawksley Workman, David Bowie in a Kentucky rainstorm. ("Trouble in Mind" is also a great track - Sheff with acoustic guitar, a simplesad thing.)

And then because I didn't feel I wanted to leave things quite so spare, here's a song I wrote about back before Said the Gramophone was full of mp3s, an Okkervil River rarity that's among the best things they've done.

Okkervil River - "The Blackest Coat" This song starts wrong. There's a monotonous back and forth between bass and high-hat, Will Sheff's voice a little sharp, or flat, or something. It's not quite right, even with the gentle picking of acoustic guitar, the big round images. When the wurlitzer appears at that first chorus, things still feel slightly off-center. Everything's a half-step away from beauty.

But the magical thing that the band does is that it stays there. It circles that beautiful nut, it eyes it, but it stays on its side of the veil, where things are not quite right. It catches glimpses of the beauty in shadow. We grow used to this.

Suddenly - at precisely 4:11, - the curtain lifts, the disco-ball begins to spin, stars dapple the walls, and there it is. The fiddle is playing on beams of light, on friends' long glances across the room, on snowfall in an open doorway. As I said last August, it's "a juddering opening-up," a musical place that elicits, for me, an almost physical reaction. Everything's standing on the edge of a precipice, imagining the downward hurtle, the wind-whipping and blood-rushing and bone-crashing. It's a "loud-yelling-crashing victory finale". And then it takes a breath, it shakes its head, and steps away (or through?). (From last year's split EP with Julie Doiron.) [buy]

1:41 AM on Jun 3, 2004.
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the names have all changed
by Sean

Apart from Malcolm's email, yesterday's post received 0 comments. Which suggests to me that you are all either a) extremely anti-french; b) extremely anti-scottish; or c) extremely good at making the most of your Memorial Day holidays. I'll hope it's the latter option, and that I've not alienated everyone. Welcome back?

Mase - "Welcome Back". I mentioned this song here, and first read about it here. Indeed, Mase is back - the story goes that he found God and gave up the thug-stuff... as he puts it here, he's a "bad boy gone clean." This might elicit indifference from some of you (or even uneasy memories of MC Hammer), but please understand: "Welcome Back" is easily the warmest, friendliest hip-hop track of the year, with cheers and hugs all round, and what Mark P rightly called a "loping, smily-faced beat." The crowd gathers close, yellow light glances from the walls, there's slow bump dancing and earnest pats on the back. A demure piano taps simply at the bottom, strings eke out a theme (from Welcome Back Kotter? Maybe. I've never seen Welcome Back Kotter.), and everyone else seems to be shouting hellos, singing the hook, setting the table. "I make my money, man, without the coca / livin la vida without the loca." Laid back but jubilant.

Hedningarna - "Räven (Foxwoman)". And since I hate to be predictable, here's dark-weird nordic alt-folk to complement the goofy rap. It starts off with breathing, rapid and spooky, soon joined by a brute, drumming bass-line. Something like a didjeridoo drones in the background; a baritone voice begins to intone; then - glance to the side - and it's a lulling woman's voice, a lute playing alongside. Whip back to hear the saw of strange strings, overlapping wails. The Finnish language is perfectly suited to this between-worlds music, like the language of goblins, of elves, of foxes. Like a lot of the music from the neo-folk movement in northern Europe, Hedningarna has an incredible ability to set a scene, to evoke terrifying/wondrous imagery, scenes and faces and eyes that you'll never see. Early morning music to nightmare by - Rammstein at Odin's hoedown. [buy]

gmailswap update: was interviewed twice, Monday, for the BBC World Service.

a reminder: i'm taking tomorrow off as i go to montreal and graduate. huzzah. see you thursday!

12:35 AM on Jun 1, 2004.
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adieu my baby
by Sean

This is Canadian turf, here, so no Memorial Day holiday for me - I'll be taking a day off on Wednesday, as I zoom down to Montreal for university convocation. That said, best regards to our American neighbours who are on holiday, and to those men and women overseas who are trying to do the right thing for human beings everywhere. I wish them luck.

Jean Leloup - "I Lost My Baby". And since my Canadian-ness is on show today, here's a wonderful ditty from the 'hood, an ode to "une fille d'Ottawa" - a girl who fled monsieur Leloup for the greener pastures of Hawkesbury, a town downriver from the Capital. While this song's bilingual, it evades the pitfalls of a lot of such music - rather than using English and French together for some universal, harmony-and-rainbows appeal, it's a self-serving musical tactic that lets English reign for the American-style choruses ("I lost my baby / I lost my darlin'"), turning to the flow of French for its narrative verses. There's humour in the silly tale, the lightest touch of melancholy, a cheerful strum of guitar, a woman's giggle, boy-girl vocals. Jean Leloup is a familiar face from the Quebec alt music scene, till he announced in December that he was committing "musical suicide" and ending his career. A live album and DVD have just been released, but the story goes that Jean Leloup's recording and performing days are over. On the other hand, he will be continuing to work (in some form) under his real name, Jean Leclerc. I'm not really sure what this means. "I Lost My Baby" is from 1996's Le Dôme. [buy]

The Poozies - "All I Want". An astonishing reinterpretation of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," the fine song from Lerner/Lowew's My Fair Lady. Where the original is contemplative but rather bouncy, here it has been transformed into something slow, heartbreaking, and full of longing. Eilidh Shaw's got a soft, slightly throaty voice, like wind through rushes. The Scottish band is known for its energetic folk repertoire, but everything's been stripped away here - two voices in harmony (Shaw with Kate Rusby), sleepy keys, and a perfect, restrained bridge on some sort of squeezebox. (I realize that it is incongruous to speak of a "perfect" squeezebox solo, particularly within a song as hushed and wistful as this one. But it's true.) Somewhere between Sufjan Stevens' "Flint" and Xiu Xiu's "Fast Car" cover. From the band's latest record, Changed Days Same Roots. [buy]

I realize I'm way behind the times here, but for anyone (like me) who missed it, Tiny Mix Tapes interviewed the Arcade Fire in January, and if nothing else, it seems to have sewed the seeds for the title of their upcoming debut on Merge...

Win: I hope our music is uplifting in a really full sense. We don?t just wanna make people feel good. Being scared or confused can be uplifting too. Music has this rare potential to be creative and completely non-destructive at the same time, which is a really powerful idea, even though it is rarely seen. I know most people in the world would probably not get much from our music, but you can hope right? Funerals are a lot more important than records.

Régine: But there?s almost always music at funerals. I like to sing for funerals. I sang for my mom?s funeral, I sang for my grandma?s funeral.

Win: Can you imagine if there was a publication like Spin Magazine or Rolling Stone about funerals? There would be articles about hot new trends in funeral services, and profiles on hot up and coming funeral directors, as well as lots of stuff about people who have been in the business for years, and keep doing quality work. Then in the back there would be reviews of services. "The first 15 minutes were really meaningful, but then the brother stood up and said some really cliché played out stuff." Maybe there could even be a rating scale about how meaningful or useful the persons life had been. I hope I get 7.5 out of 10...

Through most of June, the band is on a US tour with The Unicorns. You should go see them. If you live in Houston, they play on the 12th with The Unicorns and the Fiery Furnaces. Which is probably just about the show of the year. (Add Okkervil River to the bill and there would be no doubt.)

Later this week, fresh Okkervil River and 'new' Nick Drake.

gmail swap update: The Times (London) [l/p: laexaminer/laexaminer]

1:09 AM on May 31, 2004.
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Friday twangday
by Sean

Western music with a dark tone. Uncle Tupelo. Named after a janitor from Wyoming who spent his life savings on coke and prostitutes.

Richmond Fontaine - "Allison Johnson". I couldn't decide whether to post this or "The Janitor," also from Post To Wire, but ultimately decided "Allison Johnson" was a better match with Oh Susanna. This song staggers from bass-thump to bass-thump, a moribund waltz on a deserted street. Though Will Vlautin keeps singing of some domestic peace (hear the piano buried deep in the back), the song seems to trend inevitably downwards; it's like we're staring into a grave, moving toward an inevitable collapse. "Don't fade on me!" he sings. "Don't fade." But there seems little hope that Allison will return: those strokes of cello and electric guitar are too heavy, far too heavy. Uncle Tupelo, paralyzed with nostalgia; Clem Snide after too much heavy drinking. Thanks so much, David. [buy]

Oh Susanna - "All Eyes On Baby". From Oh Susanna's first EP (a short, rich thing from 1997). Suzie's finally getting some wider attention, with actual music videos and things like that, but I'm still very partial to this early, bare-bones work; I like the full, nimble vocals, the halting finger-picked acoustic guitar. Like Neko Case - who wasn't born in British Columbia, but who we pretend was, - Oh Susanna has a clear, powerful river of a voice, but it's pulled in, sent lilting over this rocky hillside. The bitterness is never too thick, simply sad; there's some Gillian Welch here, too. [buy]

Hard 'n Phirm - "Rodeohead". And just because I feel like it's going to be a silly weekend, here's a country/bluegrass/hillbilly medley of Radiohead songs, found here. They run the gamut from Pablo Honey to Hail to the Thief (I think), dashing madly from a banjo-led "Everything in Its Right Place" to a whistle-toothed bit of "Karma Police" and on and on. Even if the kitsch factor depresses you, be at least a little uplifted by the madcap energy and ambition of the thing. [via stx]

---

Sidewalker is a band that writes, records and releases a new song online every Monday. They show talent - golden notes, squiggly electronic bits, a warm and slippery voice. Radioheady, sure, but in the experimental-angst-pop kind of way, not the whiney artrockers sense. I like the long thrum of "Tiny Digits Missing Bones," as well as the liquid atmospherics of "Boxcar, Boxcar, Hopper, Flatcar."

An mp3blog that somehow dodged my attention, curated by Freaky Trigger's Tom Ewing, among others: A Million Love Songs.

Rob Grayson - "The Beatles, A to Z". Following the tragic assassination of John Lennon ... my station ... aired a memorial tribute. It aired on the weekend after the tragedy, and included a ten minute period of silence, followed by this piece. ... It is a montage of all The Beatles songs, edited from A to Z. The version here has been updated to include material from the Anthology series. It's certainly a collage (and not, say, a mash-up), but for we Beatles fans, any excuse to listen to these songs is a good one.

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Albums I am listening to a lot right now:

Sia - Color the Small One - it's new to me, and lovely.

The Killers - Hot Fuss - see.

The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free - i like the sparer production, but not the handful of dud-after-five-listens story tracks. All the sweeter stuff, though ("Blinded by the Lights," "Could Well Be In," "Dry Your Eyes," second half of "Empty Cans" etc) - wow wow wow!

Avril Lavigne - Under My Skin - so much better than Let Go because she doesn't let go of that electric guitar. Swooning pop punk. "My Happy Ending" = ace.

Magnetic Fields - i - good.

Bishop Allen - Charm School - I will write about this soon because it is absolutely fantastic.

12:09 AM on May 28, 2004.
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