Archives : all posts by Sean

Pat Jordache - "O.M.O.". One of those nights where you think you might be vomiting out of happiness. Jetplane cuts the sky in two. Pavement crumpling under-foot. Fan stuck on high. The potted fern gets up and walks. Somewhere in the world, two people are playing tennis, alternating between love and hatred, love and hatred, thwack and thwack, in crisp clean whites. Sometimes my eyelids are too heavy to accommodate. Night sky like a polar fleece blanket, two bucks at the rummage sale, handsewn with fifty sequins. [bandcamp]

(photo source)

Zomes - "Loveful Heights". A roaring knowledge, charging sincerity. A jungle, lush with certainty. A green, gold rainforest, where the birds sing only true phrases. A car that drives down the silver street and stops at the crosswalk, glances trading between driver and pedestrian. We make our vows with handshakes, metal rings; why not with sound, why not with organ, or singing, or the sudden permanence of when a recording ends.

[Zomes is Swedish musician Hanna Olivegren and Lungfish guitarist Asa Osborne / buy]

Little Beaver - "Party Down". Last week was St-Jean-Baptiste, Quebec's fête nationale. Today is Canada Day. The difference between these two holidays is the difference between "Party Down" and a national anthem. Maybe that's not true. Maybe the difference is narrower than that. Maybe Canada Day and St-Jean are both a little "Party Down", both a little anthem. St-Jean is more belligerent. Canada Day is more sincere. Both mix virtue and languor - a little tipsy, a little righteous. Where does July 4 fall, I wonder? Is "Party Down" all-American? Or is it better suited for a cruise ship, moored in the middle of a warm sea...

[buy

(installation by Tomas Saraceno)

Brahja Waldman's Quartet - "My Heart is a Real Thing". He keeps sending her love-notes on pages of paper. Why paper? she thinks. Why not on balloons, on cakes, on the sides of yachts? Every letter is the same thing - Dear ----, then ballpointed words, his signature. Nothing more than handsome phrases, sincerely written. No gold or silver; no cash value; not even a wax seal. Is this all he has?

Later, after she has broken his heart, he will again write her letters. He'll say he feels like shit, that he's angry and sad. And once more she'll wonder, Why paper? Why not on old maps? Dried flowers? Those cute vintage luggage tags they sell on etsy?

[Brahja Waldman's Quartet have released a modest, beautiful double record. This track is from part one, Cosmic Brahjas, cosmic like photons; listen to Waldman's squawks and Daniel Gélinas' solemn drums, Shadrach Hankoff's decelerating piano. Martin Heslop plays bass, though I'm not sure if he's on this number. / bandcamp]

J Cole ft Kendrick Lamar - "Forbidden Fruit". My girl spilled a bottle of perfume on the floor. Glass cut up my Nikes. I got down on my knees and sopped it up, lavender jasmine everywhere, blotting with paper towels, photo albums. [buy]

(photo by Dave Rutledge)

Bobby "Blue" Bland - "Lovin' Blues". Bobby "Blue" Bland died yesterday. I saw him sing a few years ago, at the blues festival in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His voice was still astounding and free. Maybe not as supple as in his youth but it flowed over his songs with the same astounding swiftness, as if it were melted butter. Still, my clearest memory of the show was the interest Bobby "Blue" showed in a young woman sitting beside me, with her boyfriend, in the press pit. The woman was wearing a skirt. She sat with her legs straight ahead of her. Her ankles were not always crossed. And every now and then, as she shifted, Bobby "Blue" saw her underpants, I guess. He'd see them, and he'd stop a song right in the middle of a verse, holding his hand to his head as if he had a fever, swearing, saying, "Girl, you're gonna kill me right here." His tone of voice wasn't lecherous, predatory - it was this strange mixture of happiness and despair. "Girl, you're gonna kill me right here," he kept repeating, every time the girl uncrossed her legs. Then he'd lean forward to stare deep into the eyes of the woman's boyfriend. "You gotta keep your eyes on the merchandise," Bobby "Blue" advised him. He must have thought this was good advice. The boyfriend didn't know what to do. But the young woman was smiling; she liked causing spells. Bobby "Blue" kept singing his lovesongs and blues, mopping his head, threatening to die on the spot from the sight of a pretty girl.

The Burning Hell - "Sentimentalists".

I can't remember this ever happening to me before. A song that makes me remember something I have completely forgotten. Not a song that evokes a distant memory, that makes vivid something faded; a piece of music that brings back something that was lost. A mosquito in amber, resurrecting a brontosaurus.

The memory's nothing remarkable: a wooden paddle-wheel, in the restaurant of a department store. A paddle-wheel at The Paddle Wheel. With modesty and grace, the Burning Hell tell you everything you need to know. The wheel lives (lived?) on the top floor of the Hudson Bay Company, in Toronto. The wheel slowly turns. Guests can lean over the rail, throw a penny in, make a wish.

I lived in Toronto for almost a year, when I was five years old. My parents and grandparents brought me to The Paddle Wheel. I loved The Paddle Wheel. It was one of those sites we have, as children - imbued, potent, utterly distinct from everywhere else we know. A dark room, a slowly spinning relic; like in the cell under Stirling's Thistle Centre, the Bat Cave at the Royal Ontario Museum, visiting the paddle-wheel was like slipping through a wardrobe into somewhere Else. Just like the Burning Hell's Mathias Kom, I would sometimes take a penny and cast it out, over the railing, onto the heaving timber. If I was lucky it would land on one of the wheel's paddles and be lifted up, around, clicking down on the other side. This was magic. This was magic. Magic at a time when magic was fully real.

Yet I had forgotten it, forgotten it all. I don't think I've thought about The Paddle Wheel's paddle-wheel in more than 20 years. The first time I heard this song, as I listened, I thought, He's singing about the Hudson's Bay? A restaurant at the Hudson's Bay? Really? I had never heard of The Paddle Wheel. But then, like a shipwreck being sucked upward through the mud, like a great elm uprooted by a bulldozer: there it was, my memory. Faded and unsure. Eroded. Barely legible. I don't remember the entrance to The Paddle Wheel, I don't remember the food, I scarcely remember that it was a restaurant. I remember only the colours in the room, black and brown and silver; the enchantment; and me, full of longing, holding a coin.

"Sentimentalists" is a humble song. It is a slide-show, a vignette, the slightest recollection. It is burnished and handsome, in guitars and drums and clarinet and horn. It is two minutes and thirteen seconds and it is one of the greatest gifts I have received this year.

[Bandcamp]

Sophie - "Bipp". (Removed at label request.) That weird thing where you dive off a diving-board and never hit the water. Twists in the air, somersaults, fanning limbs, cannonball -- but no splash. No landing. No clap and spray. Suspended spinning in the air, cascading glints, longing downward -- and nothing. Ready and waiting. [buy]

(photo source: Collectie SPAARNESTAD PHOTO/Het Leven)

Just a quick one today, before I run off to watch Owen Pallett unveil the 2013 Polaris Prize long-list.

Cem Karaca - "Niksar"

In solidarity with the protesters of Gezi Park. In solidarity with boldhearted gatherers everywhere, fighting for their neighbours. Especially if they are fighting without fighting. In solidarity with the family of Ethem Sarisuluk, struck by a tear-gas canister, now dead. Longings are utopian; manslaughter is not. Sarisuluk's death is a terrible tragedy, more than anything simply unjust. But protest is not as romantic as it seems. It is about persisting, persisting, tedium, courage, tedium, persisting, persisting. It is about trying to say true things, remaining wary of mobs. It is about persuasion, at its core - as much a serenade as a battle-cry. It's hard, and easier than it looks. [buy]

(photo by Emre Kasap)