Archives : all posts by Sean

Jim Guthrie - "Who Needs What". Toronto's Jim Guthrie may be best known as a member of Royal City, but he's a successful musician in his own right. He's got several albums under his belt - from dusty baroque pop to PlayStation-produced indie rock, - and his newest one came out earlier this winter. (Note: none of his albums have been entirely amazing.) "Who Nees What," however, is Guthrie's very best song, taken from the good-but-not-as-ambitious-as-the-title-implies A Thousand Songs. It's pretty simple stuff - stringy guitar, man muttering gently, - but it shines in the way it does little things well. The chorus hook doesn't push for attention, and yet it's quietly excellent, catchy as heck. I love how Guthrie shoves a bunch of words into one awkward lyrical stretch: it's not just eager, it's embarassed and funny and self-aware. Guthrie's loathe to be the mopey-guy-with-a-guitar - "Shit yeah, I can dance!" he yells, just before an electric guitar hazy-blares out, drums bumble noisily in.

The Zoobombs - "Mo' Funky [pt 1]". There was a time in the late 90s when the Zoombombs seemed to be everywhere: they signed to Emperor Norton, they toured with the Flaming Lips and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Now, though - poof pop zip nada - gone. If they've dropped out of the collective unconscious I'm going to do my best to drag them back: 1999's Let It Bomb is a staple of my party set-lists, and "Mo' Funky [pt 1]" regularly appears on my mix cds. When talking about bands from Japan, it's difficult not to compare them to each other, but in the case of the Zoobombs, such analogies aren't very fruitful (uh... Pizzicato Five meets Melt Banana?). They're dance-punks, basically, but bongos and organs take the place of DFA's synths and squelches. The Rolling Stones in a Tokyo disco. "Mo' Funky" showcases a mellow funky rhythm that drifts headlong into a manic Japanese free-for-all, made all the more absurd when they shout English lyrics as if they have marbles in their mouths. Not only does it make me want to boogie; it makes me want to be one of those people who boogies regularly.

I've been monitoring the boom of new mp3 blogs linked at fluxblog, tofuhut and elsewhere, but I've been pretty preoccupied, and haven't had the time to hit up each one. If any of the new mp3 blogs strike you as particularly great, or if you own one and want to pimp it, please do draw it to my attention in the comments. After all, we're the next big thing.

Running late, so this will (sadly) be a little brief:

Broken Social Scene - "Marketfresh". From BSS's upcoming Bee Sides b-sides record, which arrived in the mail today. This song hardly breaks new territory for the band, but it's got that same cutting vocal texture that touched me so deeply on You Forgot It In People. The simply sung lyrics brush by the folds of ambient hiss, the blooms of guitar and keys, and the drums punch and shuffle in the background, like a boxer practicing moves under a red sunset. Gently beautiful.

Daniel Lemma - "If I Used to Love You". The most instantly memorable song from Lemma's soundtrack to Morning Train, and the one which made some radio headway. Lemma is sort of a more continental Van Morrison, minus the crazy. This song is simple, adoring fun: a smiling, twinkling statement of love, with the blush of soulful organ, electric guitar, horns. [thanks anne!]

DJ Jazzy Jeff f/ Eminem and Parl Yams - "When To Stand Up". Poorly ripped from a 12" which isn't mine, here's Eminem circa 1999, rapping atop a horn-and-scratch heavy track from Jazzy Jeff. This isn't exactly Eminem at the top of his game, but it's interesting to hear Em's snark on a track that features something other than sneaky organ-lines.

Pedro the Lion - "Keep Swinging". Taken from the new Pedro the Lion LP, Achilles Heel. The record's all right - the same sort of territory as Control (ie, electric guitars) - but neither the stories (lyrics) nor the songs (music) are very compelling. I'm beginning to think that It's Hard to Find a Friend is where Bazan's artistic career peaked. Anyway - what I like about "Keep Swinging" is that it actually seems concerned with being a pop song, at least to the degree that Pedro the Lion is capable. There's a shaker and a meandering pop bassline, not to mention some close vocal harmonies. To my great surprise, it sounds a lot like something that Sloan could have recorded circa Navy Blues, albeit after a medium dose of downers.

Saw a bunch of terrific films with Dan this weekend (thanks, dan):

All the Real Girls - A really beautiful love-story, more concerned with truth than with comfortable cliche. Beautifully shot, beautifully written, beautifully acted (although Zooey Deschanel is considerably better than Paul Schneider). I loved the languorous pace of this, the way that David Gordon Greene uses cuts like a good poet uses punctuation - ie, doing more than simply separating throughlines of meaning. The scene with the lovers standing in the bowling-alley seems imprinted on my mind... Oh, and special kudos for opening with a Bonnie Prince Billy song.

Man Bites Dog - A viciously funny French mockumentary about a serial killer. Benoit was a fascinatingly realistic character study - and much of his performance felt improvised, brilliantly so. The subject-matter was horrific, and yet I'm fascinated by the way that the movie made me self-conscious about how inured I was to seeing such violence. Like I said to Dan, I was glad (and disappointed) that the inevitable/expected ending was the one that the filmmakers followed: I would have been very unsettled to see something more open-ended.

Take the Money and Run - Woody Allen's second film. Good-natured and most hilarious for the way that it is at odds with Allen's contemporary reputation. Much closer to Airplane! than Annie Hall, it seems like something that sounded funny on paper ("a crook who is an incompetent loser!") but which falls flat on screen. All the same, Take the Money and Run is funny for the way that it falls flat - so totally and unashamedly, as if it has no idea.

In the Company of Men - A mean, maddeningly well-acted film about men, business, and something approaching evil. Two colleagues decide to target a "vulnerable" woman, lavish her with attention, seduce her, and then pull the rug from under her. Their selected target - Christine, a beautiful deaf receptionist - falls hook, line and sinker. I was too drawn into the action to like this movie, but I admired it as a film - and I think that the distance afforded by future viewings would allow me to appreciate its construction/effect, without being so wholly affronted by the subject-matter.

Woman Under the Influence - My first exposure to John Cassavetes. This is a brilliant piece of filmmaking, with a restrained directorial hand (esp. w/r/t the genius use of music), and arresting, astonishing performances. Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk and the children who play their kids are breathtaking in their realistic depictions of a family strained by mental illness, but the movie goes farther than that, exploring the characters and relationships in such a way that we feel we're standing right beside them, understanding the joys alongside the strife, experiencing the tension in a first-person way. Exhausting, uplifting... and it feels so true.

Fluxblog posts a fantastic cut by UK hip-hopper Ty. In the comments for that track, jeb identified the main organ sample from an Os Mutantes track. Suddenly, all I could think about was the Sao Paolo pop outfit (well, them and The Bees) - and hence today's mp3s. The songs I had planned (new Pedro the Lion, an old Eminem/Jazzy Jeff track) have been displaced into next week. Sincere apologies to those who intend to die over the weekend and had hoped to hear some more Dave Bazan before you passed on.

Os Mutantes - "A Minha Menina". Not only were Os Mutantes the definitive Brazilian psych-pop band, they were one of the world's very finest experimental pop acts. Blending electric pop with tropicalia, lofi fuzz and musique concrete, the group swung to prominence in 1968 with their self-titled debut, from which this track is culled. Os Mutantes borrow music and lyrics from many of the South American greats - Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and on this track, Jorge Ben. What we find on "A Minha Menina" is a rearing, big-hearted pop number, with doo-wop and vocal harmonies cheering above a rippling latin rhythm. For its opening few bars, the song sounds like a charming brazilian cliche - until a sopping wet guitar slides in from the rear of the soundstage, raspberrying like the favourite drunken pal. Then it dances like Bill Cosby in red suede, grooving till it falls asleep amidst the streamers.

The (Band of) Bees - "A Minha Menina". This pair from the Isle of Wight released one of the great unappreciated albums of 2002: Sunshine Hit Me is like Pet Sounds with dust in the speakers, Beck and Marvin Gaye working with The Zombies and, yes, Os Mutantes. While The Bees picked up a Mercury Prize nomination for their debut, it didn't make much of a splash. When they tried crossing the Atlantic as The Band of Bees, Paul Butler and Aaron Fletcher met a similar ambivalence.

Regardless its Pazz & Jop rankings of 415 (2002) and 948 (2003), Sunshine Hit Me is pretty fantastic, and case in point is their cover of "A Minha Menina." The Bees don't quite reimagine the song, but nor do they simply rehash the Os Mutantes version. Instead, they inflate the original's giddiness, bind tighter the loose harmonic threads, and replace the sopping guitar with a fat-and-puff-cheeked electric cello. The song is beyond lovable - it's love itself - it tramps through fields, stands on fence-posts, and yells (sidekicks harmonizing from behind): "Tell everybody in the world that I love her-oh-ooh-ooh!"

Oh yes - I'm desperately trying to find the new Cee-Lo album. I loved his first one, but my sources for newly-leaked stuff are being frustratingly indie-rock-o-centric. If anyone's got some mp3s they want to point me to, my gratitude would know few bounds... (translation: pleeease, please please please!)

Okay, so everyone's already heard that Lit song. Fine. But is it not amazing!?

Anyway, today I'm offering up two tracks from bands that appear to be reinventing themselves. Reinvention's a very tricky thing: although groups are often slagged for a lack of "evolution," said evolution can easily ruin a perfectly good act. One of my old roommates once bitched me out for criticizing an Orchestre Baobab album as "just the same thing" as their earlier work. And her criticism was apt - in retrospect, I wouldn't want those crazy Senegalese fellows to change. Still, there's a lot to be said for pushing yourself and exploring as an artist - see Radiohead, the Velvet Underground, the Beatles, the Stones...

But ultimately I don't really have any point to this rant, and I'm certainly not telling you anything you don't already know, so I'll simply stop.

The Beta Band - "Assessment". The debut single from the Betas' new record, Heroes to Zeroes (check out the art!). Everyone's yelling that the fumbling stoner experimentalists have gone U2. I'm not really familiar with those Irish fellas' oeuvre, but I'm told that the guitar riff is the same as in U2's "I Will Follow." U2 seems to me like an unlikely Beta Band influence, though - I think it's much more likely that the band's been listening to Interpol.

Trouble is, although upbeat-mellow vocals from Steve Mason, an upbeat-mellow bassline, and Interpol (ie, souped-up Joy Division) guitars, sound like they could be cool, the track is pretty mediocre. I'm always a sucker for slammed bass drums and a horn section (hello Gomez's "In Our Gun"), but even that noisy finale isn't enough to sell me on the 'new' Beta Band. I much prefer the dusty shrugging of "Dry the Rain" and "Dr Baker."

The Cardigans - "Communication". On the other hand, here's the much-ballyhoo'd single from the Cardigans' 2003 turn to alt.country. And it's wonderful - one of the best songs of the year. Nina Persson's voice is cream, and the song itself is sunset: catchy and careful and so casually proficient. They do this much better than they do alt.pop, "Love Fool"'s sassy hook aside. The only woeful bit is the drowsy solo at the three-minute mark, but it's soon washed away by the song's dusk-sun spread, its muted mona lisa smile. (And yes, I know that many of you have probably heard this: hear it again!)

Finally, a necessary shout-out to the video of Alberta Slim's "She Taught Me To Yodel". He's the most ancient, emaciated Canadian yodeller you'll ever see, but if there was ever to be a superhero battle between Johnny Cash and a same-genre antithesis, Slim would be it. (via chris)

Lately I haven't actually been listening to much. That is, I'm listening to a lot of music, but it's basically been the same handful of records: Susanna & the Magical Orchestra (bjork meets julie doiron, not really that good), the new Bonnie Prince Billy, King Creosote's "Lavender Moon" (available at badger minor... whinsome acoustic folk that reminds me of Dick Gaughn; I downloaded the record, which is good, but this is definitely the best song), and Sufjan Stevens' Seven Swans. Seven Swans has grown on me a lot: Stevens' incessant repetition becomes much more of a strength with Michigan's prog-folk arrangements stripped away. The key to loving the album, I've found, is to play it loud.

I overplayed G Unit in my Norah Jones/G Unit playlist, so now I'm tired of that, and although the Kanye album continues to be great, I get a little annoyed whenever I think about it (ie, the anti-college schtick gets me down), so it's been off the turntable.

Consequently, a couple of old, very disparate tracks for your consumption:

Bert Jansch and John Renbourne - "East Wind". I realize these fellows are very well known, but for the uninitiated-- Bert Jansch was an acoustic guitar marvel, amazingly skillful but never showy; always sincere. He and Renbourne were the twin princes of acoustic folk in the mid 60s, mostly due to their instrumental prowess. This short track is like a brief sparkling demo of what they have to offer, taken from the 1966 Bert and John LP. Like John Fahey's British uncles. (John Renbourne went on to do some much more boring neo-folk stuff with Pentangle, which you should avoid, but almost all of Jasnch's stuff is worthy.)

Lit - "My Own Worse Enemy". A complete change of pace from the instrumental track above; I have no idea if Lit blazed US radio like it did the rock radio in Canada circa 1999, but if they didn't - they should have. A dark green pop-punk melody, gleeful but serious, guitars that stomp through bracken, stride through flaming brown carpet. I love so much about this song - the queasy vocoder/pitch-correction before the chorus, the brazen and proud teenage lyrics, the self-conscious self-loathing, the final chorus with "aah-oohs" and an epic arena feel (even though it's not an epic, arena song). This was one of my biggest "guilty pleasures" in the 90s, and one of the breakthrough tracks that got me to reevaluate how I thought about (ie, dismissed) pop music. The pleasure's not guilty any more.

Two tracks from the upcoming Mirah album, C'mon Miracle, due in May. I don't have the track names, so they're going to have to be mysterious and untitled. The record is more sedate than Advisory Committee, more humble and reflective. It feels less performed, for better or for worse. Although I like these songs, they don't come close to the outright majesty of Mirah's best cut, "Cold Cold Water," and nor does the album-as-a-whole reach the carefree, small-and-wild heights of You Think It's Like This But Really It's Like This.

Oh, and for those unfamiliar with her, Mirah does dusty, sexy, cherub-faced indie folk. She is also very sweet in person.

Mirah - "Track 1". Lulling, serious, plucked strings, and then long bolts of cello. A dark, Grimm's Fairy Tale of a song, not quite sold on its message of love: "Stars will kiss your pretty face / Come away with me today / Everything should be okay."

Mirah - "Track 7". This one's probably called something like "Argentina Sky." Drums patter behind a friendly acoustic guitar and Mirah's savvy, winking voice. Great use of cymbal tinkles and a big-bosomed accordion -- extra points for the smattering of Portuguese in the middle, backed by a wussy Microphones chorus of harbour "lai la lai"s.