Archives : all posts by Sean

Modest Mouse on Carson Daly (thanks, Elliott). Given that pre-"Float On" I'd never have defined myself as a big Modest Mouse fan (although I really enjoy Moon and Antarctica), the jury's still out on this one. Passionate and punchy, but seems a bit po-faced. On record, might be v. good, might be a bore: April 6 can't come soon enough.

Sufjan Stevens - "Seven Swans". By far the best track on Sufjan's upcoming album of the same name. So much of Seven Swans is merely pretty - the instrumentation is much simpler than on Michigan, the lyrics even more abstract. The stakes feel low, the ambition reined. But this! I don't really care what this song is about (God, presumably), but what gets me is the danger in it, the beauty-fear, the premonition of the sublime, the awesome, that cues in with the bare guitar at 3:32 (and then is followed through with the tremble-excitement-terror in Sufjan's voice). It doesn't hurt, of course, that "Seven Swans" finishes up with an epic, straining, march of the valkyries finale. "Seven swans, seven swans," he calls, a small, resigned voice amid the stormwash of piano, choir, drums. I admire that he takes his time to get there: Stevens sets the stage, and then blows through it, a torrential (beautiful) transformation.

On second thought, this big thing won't be ready today, so some songs for fun:

Jimmy Soul - "If You Wanna Be Happy". I'm a great fan of this 1963 classic: it's slim, carefree, and the greatest celebration of ugly women that I've ever heard. I dance to it, I sing along, and I enjoy very much when the falsetto kid comes in at the end, like a googly-eyed squid in a Little Mermaid musical number. (q: Is the conversation that starts "I saw your wife the other day" the '63 equivalent of The Streets' "are you paranoid? / yes I'm paranoooid"?)

Four Tet - "She Moves She". My favourite single of 2003 that didn't make Pazz & Jop's top 100. (In fact, only one voting critic - dear, sweet, mysterious Stacy Osbaum - picked it.) I said in my Fave Songs piece:

The gilded tickle of a mandolin, the ringing of bells, a drumbeat for slow-motion dancing. There's a pop melody there, too: the crunch of electric guitar, the frustrated alt.rock noise. And yet that pop song has been cut apart, split up, strung out across beautiful organic sounds, like lanterns on Four Tet's silver clothesline.

What I say now? This song is like a really good kiss, like a broken jukebox kiss, like a kiss that sends you hurtling back past all the bittersweet moments of life, past frozenmemory snapshots of your life, each of them sparking into dust.

other points:
Just spotted Keith's fine mp3 blog, Teaching the Indie Kids to Dance Again, where I heard TV on the Radio for the first time, and verily, I was much intrigued.

Janet Jackson's not-quite-released "Love Me For A Little While" is fabulous. Sort of "Hey Ya!" but without the indie irony (or the all-out epic dance-party genius). I found it on a blog-that-wishes-to-not-be-named (since all of his February bandwidth was swallowed by Ms Jackson alone), and will not be putting it online for similar reasons, but you should all seek it out on P2P tout suite. I like it when Janet says "you-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo," and you probably will too, even if Andrea doesn't.

Oh yes - like matthew at fluxblog says, clapclap's post on a "Pop" dichotomy is terrific analysis, and I think it will even prove useful. kudos.

talk to you later!

So yes - the results for Pazz and Jop 2003 are in. Critics have responded in droves and democratically declared the best of the year to be...

ALBUMS
1 OutKast Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (Arista)

This is cool if only because it's, uh, not by white rockers. (This is relevant only because most critics I've met do happen to be white rockers. And, tokenism or not, this result suggests OutKast=Wilco (2002's #1 album), in the eyes of the critical commons. That is, prog hip-hop is as well-received as prog country-pop. And that's interesting.) It's also cool because I think it's a very, very good (double-)album. (Andrew will not be pleased.)

2 The White Stripes Elephant (V2)
3 Fountains of Wayne Welcome Interstate Managers (S-Curve)
4 Radiohead Hail to the Thief (Capitol)

Three okay albums that just make the list feel depressing. I guess it's how lots of other people felt about Wilco's win last year - these are picks without energy, vim, sparkle. Yes, the White Stripes do the white stripes thing well: but can you still get excited about Elephant? Yes, the Fountains of Wayne are catchy (I do like "Stacy's Mom"), but aren't they also really plain? Yes, Radiohead did record some fine songs. But songs; an ILMer put it best: what would Radiohead have to do to not crack the P&J Top Ten? Should these albums really consist of #2, #3, and #4?

5 Yeah Yeah Yeahs Fever to Tell (Interscope)
6 The Shins Chutes Too Narrow (Sub Pop)

Argh. The Shins!? What a boring, dumb-witted, donut-hole of a record. And it didn't even have "New Slang" to redeem it!

7 New Pornographers Electric Version (Matador)
8 Basement Jaxx Kish Kash (Astralwerks)

I'm surprised (why did so many indie kids - YYY, FoW, Shins, New Pornos - rank so high?), but I can live with these...

9 Drive-By Truckers Decoration Day (New West)

Who?

10 Dizzee Rascal Boy in Da Corner (XL import)

! Wow Dizzee! I don't think this album had even been released in the States in 2003...

SINGLES
1 OutKast "Hey Ya!" (Arista)
2 Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z "Crazy in Love" (Columbia)
3 The White Stripes "Seven Nation Army" (Third Man/V2)
4 Kelis "Milkshake" (Star Trak/Arista)
5 50 Cent "In Da Club" (G-Unit/Shady/Aftermath/Interscope)
6 Johnny Cash "Hurt" (Universal)
7 Fountains of Wayne "Stacy's Mom" (S-Curve/Virgin)
8 R. Kelly "Ignition-Remix" (Jive)
9 Junior Senior "Move Your Feet" (Atlantic)
10 Panjabi MC featuring Jay-Z "Beware of the Boys (Mundian To Bach Ke)"
(Sequence)

But this list I like very much. The only one that wasn't among my favourite songs of 2003 was the Kelis track. I seem to be the only human being in the planet who isn't thrilled-to-pieces with "Milkshake" (well, apart from those cymbal things in the chorus).

Sorry for the lack of updates - I had a friend in from out-of-town, and I'm working on a v. large post about my pop and hip-hop trajectory. (MP3s will accompany it.)

Sorry about the dirth of updates - between Modest Mouse and (I think) Christopher O'Riley, two of my six 1&1 mp3 hosting accounts have kicked the bucket from bandwidth over-use. Reluctantly, then, I gotta ask again: if anyone's got a server, high-bandwidth account, .mac account, etc., that they'd be interested in sharing with Said the gramophone, our gratitude would know no bounds. (email me at iwillforeverbeyourslave@shakeitlikeapolaroidpicture.com.)

Oh, by the way, elvithprethley.com now points here, if the full URL is tiring your fingers and you have bookmarkaphobia.

All my whingeing about hosting aside, I will continue posting mp3s until I can't - and there's still four more accounts to burn through.

[post snip because i feel displeased with it]

The Wrens? Good god do they want to be where they are right now. After fourteen years, they've finally arrived, and they're relishing every second. Their set sounded like Meadowlands, basically, only with twice as much energy and roar, and half the sound-quality. They're not really my thing - I left early - but damn if "Happy" isn't a great song.

The Divine Comedy - "Our Mutual Friend". My favourite thing off their new one, Absent Friends. It's the stabs of strings that make it work, the orchestral drum-tambourine thump, the loose and smilingly unhappy vocals. It's sort of like an Evelyn Waugh "Norwegian Wood." The band's perhaps a little too grandiose for their own good - North America doesn't usually embrace such pompadour affectations - but if someone were to make a Rough Guide to the Divine Comedy, I'd buy it tout suite.

Oh - Dan Beirne, the fine tangmonkey writer will be appearing with his dry-and-true-witted sketch comedy troupe, Better Than Shakespeare, at Montreal's Comedyworks on Sunday. Furthermore, they will be accompanied by Montreal's finest blizzard bossanova group, The Diskettes. It will be a very, very good time.

Sexual Harassment - "If I Gave You A Party". Antique, ridiculous, tongue-and-cheek eighties electro: a squelching synth and the giddy interruption of a jet engine. My favourite bit is the high-pitched flutey synth introduced a minute and a half in. It's carefree and dumb, like a deer on amphetamines, but it frolics gayly as Sexual Harassment's house party gets underway, as they invite, seduce, nudge, dance, booze.

Rachel's - "Last Things Last". The only really great thing on 2003's Rachel's release, Systems/Layers, and, ironically, the track that diverges most from Rachel's house style. Gone is the indie classical composition, replaced with a fairly conventional, sad piano-bass-voice ballad. That it's conventional doesn't mean that it's anything less that wonderful, however - there's something really magical in the way that the regretful piano chords leap into whitebright hope, the way that Shannon Wright's bluesy alto leaves all this room for joy. Whenever I'm listening carefully, I get goosebumps at 1:40 - just as the tambourine stutters to life.

oh, and yes, it is very difficult to represent the complexity of intelligent political discourse in song. but that it's difficult doesn't mean that we should accept the alternative (ie, simplistic, idiotic political discourse).

I'm not at home, so some mp3s will be posted later tonight.

On Sunday, I went to see A Silver Mt. Zion at La Salla Rosa, for one of their two Montreal dates. I like seeing bands like ASMZ and Godspeed! here; it feels like I'm hearing them perform in their preferred environments, in the proper context. The room was filled with enthusiastic and approving spectators, with nary a wisp of cynicism to be felt. Even the openers - De La Caucase - who were abrasive and droning, with shouted eastern european vocals on top, were v. well received.

I say "no cynicism," but really there was some skepticism in the crowd - that is, from me. I enjoy ASMZ's music very much - I like the way that their orchestral rock is thoughtful, varied, profound. Much deeper than the shallow peaks and valleys of GY!BE. I like the way they'll move from flickers of mandolin and guitar through to terrifying cello/bass/violin strokes, and then up into the smash of drums and the squall of an electric guitar. Or not. I like the way they've started to explore appalachian choral techniques - medleys and rounds that weave in and out of the staccato strings or the organ pulse. And yet, as anyone will know who has read my review of the last Mt. Zion record, the band is suffering from one particularly woeful flaw. Efrim's vocals, once nearly irrelevant, are central to the bulk of the band's new material. And his vocals suck. He whines, he huffs, he whimpers like a witch whose larynx has withered. He's only very rarely on key, but more importantly, his voice sounds ugly, immature, cloying. Atop this beautiful and horrifying music, he'll whinge away, his whimpers repeated over and over, the skeleton of the song, and sometimes I can hardly stand it. Live, it was even worse: with his vocals in the fore, the inanity of his politics were foregrounded for me. He conjures some great images, yes, but Efrim's priority seems to be to erect a political dichotomy of the simplest, most naive kind. He sings constantly of revolution - a revolution of what is wholly and totally GOOD ("us," "earth," "human souls,") and what is wholly and totally BAD (cops ["pigs"], cities, machines, enterprise). Even as a leftist, this simple binary infuriates me - the problems of the world exist because we tend to represent our conflicts with such naive and ignorant oppositions. Police officers are not evil. Shop-owners (heck, corporations) are not evil. There's some evil behaviour, sure, but ditto among the paladins of social justice. Not only does Efrim's singing ruin whole songs, the message he transmits does more harm than good, applauding radical reductionism over compassion and responsible thought.

Sorry: I got carried away.

ASMZ's music is fine, the concert was even good, but the feelings/imaginings that the strange, dark music was evoking - the messianic push, idealism, self-determination, life, nature, hope - kept being undermined by the conceit of Efrim's vocal priority, the foolishness and immaturity of the political position that the band was privileging.

Friday -- The Arcade Fire w. The Wrens.