Archives : all posts by Sean

I went to see The Arcade Fire tonight at Petit Cafe Campus. They're breaking up - finishing up the last of their scheduled shows, then splitting. I won't go into the details, but I can't help but feel that this is a huge mistake: the magic of the group (and there is magic - they are one of the greatest bands I have ever heard) comes not just from the songwriting-in-the-strictest-sense... Dane and Brendan on drums make the pop songs so much more sublime.

anyway.

I bring this up because, although the songs all sounded pretty good (the crowd certainly enjoyed them), it all just felt somehow bleak to me. Somewhere in the music was this encroaching feeling of dread, of it-doesn't-matter... I felt like I was watching a sinking ship. This is much the same sensation I had when I saw Radiohead perform in Barrie - I wrote about it then - and those predictions/observations turned out wholly false. Hopefully, this too is a projected illusion. Hopefully these musicians' music will soar again, be it in their current configuration or no.

Ok, enough with the scenester musings.

The last few nights, I've done a lot of walking in the cold and quiet - nights, afternoons - and each time I've happened to be listening to stripped-down acoustic bluegrass. The lovely Jolie Holland record (which I'll be reviewing for TM soon) on Friday/Saturday, and The Boggs today. There's something oh-so fulfilling about this simple, acheing music when the sky hangs heavy above you, when the streets are silent or empty. The music is so simply true... none of this rock'n'roll nonsense and posturing.

About a month ago, I was at a party chez Dan's, and he threw on this wonderful classic rock album, with Beach Boy "ba ba bas" and cracked-voice lovesongs and guitar-solos that work. It's pretty and gritty, lush and raw...

"What is this?" I asked.

"The Velvet Underground," he said.

He had to be joking. I thought I knew the Velvets. I had heard The Velvet Underground & Nico, dismissed it, returned to it, tried harder, and gained some modest appreciation. I understood the appeal of the band's grey-and-yellow melancholy, but couldn't love it. (Apart from "Pale Blue Eyes," that is, discovered in a show by Montreal post-rock film-scorers Les Angles Morts. This was one of those songs that was just waiting for me to pay attention to, but that went ignored due to lazy listening. After the LAM show, though, I returned home to hear the original - and found myself thrown into a cloudlazy crush haze.)

Anyway - I had heard The Velvet Underground & Nico, and not been impressed enough to explore the VU's catalogue any further. I assumed that this was all that they did - the messy drug-mussed protopunk.

But what Dan put on was Loaded.

I told him I wanted to borrow it, and then yesterday he remembered to bring it over.

Jesus Christ!

What a great record! Why the hell did no one tell me that the Velvets' later record explored new territory? Why didn't they tell me that they were the missing link between The Beatles and The Who? There's sunkissed love-songs and outright rock'n'roll - the brokendown lyrics (and Lou Reed's delivery) are genius, here. I was at another Les Angles Morts show last night, for the Unicorns' CD release, and all I could think about was how this afternoon was going to be wonderful because I could put on Loaded. And listen to it. More than once.

rock'n'roll epiphany! and they've got another album or two, right?

Current Best Song in the World: "We Suck Young Blood" - Radiohead

It's the handclaps that sell it - the relentless move deathward, the flatness of it. The bass flops like a dark joke. Thom Yorke is absolutely broken: the bravado of "You and Whose Army" has been crushed by "Life in a Glass House." The daring was shown to be foolishness - there's no one left to laugh at (to taunt) but himself. It's an inevitable move towards oblivion, now: Yorke's hope was fully, grotesquely, hilariously wrong. "Pyramid Song"'s black angels now swarm - they're everywhere - singing sweetly, lulling, staring with whiteless onyx eyes... The piano breakdown in the last third - feverish, a desperate assertion of life - suggests the horn-led revolution of "National Anthem," but here it is oh-so-quickly halted by the malachim. The blue stained-glass windows rise into an infinite night: "young blood" plummets from the heavens, fast asleep, falling into the angel's open mouths, onto their moonwhite teeth.

The record, as I said, is good, but it is not astonishing. I have quite a lot of faith, however, that the finished, mastered version (which this is not) may be possessed of that missing secret.

It is indeed a dubious title for a record, but the cuts off Radiohead's new record have begun to leak.

And it's good.

Nude as the News interviews Sigur Ròs:

NATN:I hear you have some famous fans.

OPD: Lars Ulrich sent us a letter once. You know, the drummer in Metallica. He came to our show in San Francisco and then sent us a letter. We have it up on our "wall of shame" in our studio. We have Tom Cruise. A picture with him and us. And a wonderful picture of Courtney Love and [lead singer] Jonsi [Birgisson]. That?s a good one. We laugh at that one all the time.

My faves from this killer 'summarize-a-band in one sentence' thread on ILM:

Belle & Sebastian: "Och, the pencil sharpener's snapped the lead again. I guess I'll just have to colour her blouse in green instead.

Springsteen: in the heart of the cold steel city with nothing but a bag of dreams.

The best of all is the ode to Jeff Magnum (we kid because we love):

Neutral Milk Hotel: "Jesus cum sister two-chords"

I wish I was feeling witty enough to contribute, but my attempt at Cat Power ended up reading like bad 16-yr-old-girl-poetry.

Some things I've been listening to lately:

Iron and Wine - "Such Great Heights": Iron and Wine does a lake-soft cover of the Postal Service track for the Such Great Heights EP. Suddenly, the song becomes astonishingly beautiful -- the chorus, excrutiatingly slow, is like an oyster that creaks open, the pearl revealed.

Kid Koala - Nufonia Must Fall: i haven't yet read the graphic novel for which this short CD was composed, but even on it's own, Nufonia Must Fall is special. Replacing Kid Koala's kooky sampling are slow pulses of wurlitzer, touches of piano, strings and trumpet. They are very short tracks, samey in their melancholy, but I think that Kid Koala may have recorded the single best record for falling asleep to, ever. this isn't a criticism but an enormous compliment - this music is a landscape for my dreams. Creatures coalesce out of the rain, wooden robots creak out from behind corners as Kid Koala throws in creaks, whirrs, and strange, abrupt noises. it's wonderful.

The Weakerthans - Left and Leaving: on my walkman, this record keeps oscillating from jesus-god-it's-brilliant (and I mean brilliant, as in the sounds are brilliant: distinct and golden, almost tangible beams that follow the lyrics, match guitarlines to the waving of newly-leafed trees, match drum patter with my footsteps) and boy-oh-boy-this-is-dull. when i first put it on at the end of last week, i thought i had found another record that my semi-swanky portapro headphones improved exponentially, but the next day everything i had heard that was extraordinary was no more. instead, blurred-together sounds and a voice that grated on my nerves. i don't know if i'm even up for another listen in the near future.

Montgolfier Brothers - The World is Flat: I've been trying to excavate the greatness that Alex heard in this record. When I first listened to it a year ago, I dismissed the album as boring. It's one that Alex writes about a lot, however - and the way he speaks about it, it sounds like it should match my love of good, sad music. So I'm listening again, working hard to find something more in it. And I have - but so far, only that it's good, not that it's great. The title track is wonderful - i'll try to write about it later - but the rest floats in a queer place that doesn't resonate for my in a big way. The World is Flat seems to speak to this strange purgatory following a relationship, after anguish and before resignation... and I just can't feel it right now.

Loo & Placido - "DJ Love Affair": My faith in mash-ups restored by this delight. Curtis Mayfield croons alongside bits of Daft Punk and a gleaming chorus intro by the Notwist. What's more, it sounds like a genuine song, not some hastily-glued-together mess. Guitar rock and soul ache. hooray! (download it)