Archives : all posts by Sean

PUP - "Reservoir". A song that's made of two even things: anger and celebration. It's not an equal split - "Reservoir" is gladder than mad - but each aspect informs the other. PUP do not celebrate safely. They do not rage unkindly. They mosh and gnash, crest and crash, bare smiles and heft fists. Splashes of roaring guitar intro a chorus that's a kingdom, a victorious realm, pogo-ing in place until the peril of another verse. For all the volume and feedback, there's no mess, not really: this is exact & expert, precisely unbridled, tight as a good knot.

And "Reservoir"'s got a great video, directed by Chandler Levack, a Gramo-friend and past contributor to Said the Gramophone, and Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux. It's thrillingly shot, perfectly framed: a punk rock show falling mid-way between Jem Cohen's Fugazi doc and Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. If this were a real gig, PUP would never outlive it: the night they played through catastrophe, died and came back to life, made everyone's hearts grow two times larger.

[PUP at Bandcamp]

Her Royal Harness - "Mercenary Man". Forgive my summer lassitude; too much happening these days. Sometimes the sunsets feel like quickly-clicking closings, calendar days streaming, a life that's galloping over dunes. Things are getting away from you but you hope they're headed to a handsome place, somewhere inherently orderly, and not that everything's going to shit. Her Royal Harness's "Mercenary Man" seems pertinent here: charging, bloody, moderately complex. There's something mechanical in the shape of the beat, but the singing is emotive and flushed. It's demanding. Keyboard blips keep it from being too martial, gregorian synths provide a cave-like depth. It's either in the process of a triumph or it's quickly, quickly headed for defeat. [buy]

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Montrealers: In 2008, me and a gang of friends founded a tiny, silly movie festival. Almost six years later, M60: the Montreal 60 Second Film Festival has become what is perhaps Canada's largest community film festival. Join us at one of our four 2013 screenings - Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week. 96 one-minute films, by Montrealers of all shapes and sizes, for just $8.

I'm stuck on a train, barred by wifi gods from uploading MP3s. And so I will do as every other mp3blog seems to do - share two streaming songs, with the ludicrous hope that after one or two plays, you'll buy them for real.

Yes, it may seem ludicrous; but still - do!

Young Galaxy - "Crying My Heart Out (edit)".

One of Young Galaxy's best-ever singles, which is saying something. While the radio edit might fit more neatly on a mix-tape, the original mix has room to sprawl. (To sprawl like glittering midnight.) Like Robyn's singles, like the Knife's pop peaks, "Crying My Heart Out" balances bitter and sweet, crispness and swoon, mechanical disco with watercolour blush. This is a band that has always known how to write a hook - here it has such a simple, beautiful architecture. Scattering beats, warm synths, a nod to Joy Division, Catherine McCandless's climbing voice. You put it on repeat you put it on repeat. It's not often that regrets can turn so precious.

Cass McCombs - "There Can Be Only One".

Cass, singing lazier than I've ever heard him, singing a song about love. He's made something I would wrap around my finger like a ring, that I'd wear up into the street or down into the forest, that I'd slip into one of this traincar's empty seat-pockets, for a stranger to find, one day, lucky.

DEBT - "Already Gone". A doleful heart's ring. Noising, shearing, rocking like a crib. I don't mean a backhanded compliment when I say that the wisest thing is the way it's so short. These guitars have just enough time to hook in yr chest, to sweep like searchlights over memory. "Gone, already gone." And then gone. [Montreal's DEBT, already departed, featured members of Wind-Up People / bandcamp]

(photo by Thomas Prior)

Sam Amidon - "He's Taken My Feet". "I have trying to cultivate a new practice: I deliberately lose things. Deliberately as possible - slowly, carefully, with clear senses and vivid attention - I cast a thing away, where it is difficult to find. This is not a practice of abandonment - the act is more complicated than leaving something behind. Everything I lose I will try to find; I am only successful in losing if I am unable to find the thing, after. So far I have used seas, sewers, accomplices. I have not yet worked out what I expect to learn." [buy]

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Still one day left for our CBC Radio Q contest, with tickets on the line for Q's live taping in Montreal, ft Sugar Sammy, Braids, Patrick Watson and more.

(image source)

Silverkeys - "The Lamb in the Garden". Our first new taste of sound from Adam Waito's young project, Silverkeys. The former Adam & the Amethysts leader now honey-dipping, hummingbird-skimming, this music like a lost link between Roy Orbison and the Go! Team. "The Lamb in the Garden" is all sparkle and flash, clipped vox loops, earthworming club bass; Waito's still singing about spirits and blue-jays, dreams and wilderness, the kind of hallucinated Canadiana that comes from one too many hours spent baking by a lake. Rarely does a dancing pop song feel so hand-drawn, so splendidly inked. [bandcamp / Silverkeys' live debut will take place at Pop Montreal]

Yuna - "Falling". A series of swoons, upward and downward ones, near and far ones, long and close. Rhye's Robin Hannibal chops up Yuna's scampering sighs, layers synths like they're a mbira, gives weight to the upbeats, lift to the downbeats. It's a song about falling and accordingly the song never quite crests, never quite gets airbound. Its toes keep grazing the gloss of the ground. [pre-order / thank you Eoin]

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Contest, contest!

As part of late September's Pop Montreal, CBC Radio's premier arts showcase is hosting a live taping in Montreal. CBC Q - Live in Montreal will descend upon L'Olympia with a gaggle of guests, including comedian Sugar Sammy and two musical acts: Said the Gramophone favourites Braids (whose new record I still haven't heard), and Polaris Prize winner Patrick Watson, whom we've been writing about since 2006. Watson will be introducing a version of his new Cinema L'Amour orchestral project.

Tickets are still on sale for the September 26 event, but we also have a pair of tickets to give away.

To enter the contest: Email me or tweet with the hashtag #qpop. Your email or tweet should contain an anagram of: Patrick Watson and Braids united on Q with Jian. For example: "I'd twin-snowboard past antiquarian DJ kitchen." Yours will hopefully be better. We'll pick our favourite entry between now and next Tuesday night, September 3. Tip: here's a useful online anagram builder. Good luck! Contest is now closed! Thanks for the incredible entries. The winner, who came up with this incredible sensical opus, has been contacted: Join abundant words and win this: a Q ticket pair!

(photo source unknown)

Devon Sproule and Mike O'Neill - "You Can Come Home". A kindly song that's still like a rising tide. Not the tide of most metaphors - immediate, cataclysmic, flooding-over. No; the tide rises slowly. Slowly, in dull blues, persistent and persistent, indomitable, full of salt crystals and cockles, seaglass and weeds. It sweeps around your ankles, swallows your shoes. It's got your heart. You're soaking wet. [pre-order]