Archives : all posts by Sean

The Boggs - "Plant Me A Rose". White out. The world sends a blizzard and you wonder what the sky is trying to undo, what it's trying to blot with snow, what it'll write across the city after it has made everything disappear. I fire flares, put on my most brightly coloured clothes, I stand with my lover on a street-corner, touching red lips. You will not undo this, sky. Blizzards have their limits; their limits are right here.

Kris Ellestad - "Hour of the Rat". Coat of arms gets slipped through your mail-slot. Coat of arms arrives down your chimney. Girlfriend slaps a coat of arms on your cheek. You're finding coats of arms everywhere: pull back your bedspread, shake your fruit-tree, open your father's memoirs. A coat of arms is like a mirror. It's like a person's heart, subdivided, allegorized. Clumsier metaphors have never adorned flags. // And this sour keening racket is the work of Kris Ellestad, from Calgary, leading his shambles off a cliff. I can't figure out of it's a fanfare or a falling-down, Medieval England or post-hashtag Brooklyn. It's folk-music with the sense taken out, a garden turned into a face. [buy No Man Land / more by Kris]

---

Our friend Ilse, who was responsible (I think) for Shotgun Jimmie's torrid pipecleaner promo, has made a stop-motion video for an unreleased Ladyhawk track. Watch it here. It makes me think that when objects come alive, they simply want to do simple things, well. (That's what I want to do, too.)

Thank you to all those who entered our Withered Hand contest. I'm emailing the victors, and the runners-up have been listed. Fingers crossed that Withered Hand makes it past US visa folks and into the country - follow the drama here.

(thanks to patricia for the image - source)

Adam & the Amethysts - "Prophecy". With Flickering Flashlight, their upcoming second album, the Amethysts' Adam Waito has emerged from his home studio brandishing a treasure. It is a hunk of beautiful rock, granite studded with silver and mica and quartz-crystal, veins of feldspar, spurs of pyrite, amethyst filigree. It is heavy enough that you could take it in your hand and punch a hole in the wall. You could throw it at a bird and knock the whole tree drown. You could set it on a mantelpiece and make that house a home, heirloomed. You could use this hunk of rock to marry a girl, to start a campfire, to bankroll a locomotive.

There are people everywhere making folk music, making rock music, nursing nostalgias in low fidelity. Adam & the Amethysts' work is set apart, not just by geography - the Canadiana in these songs, the vast woods and great lakes, - but by its sound, weird and kind. It is some of the highest-fi lo-fi music I have ever heard - imagine dusty songs, the way a bar of sunlight turns this dust to gold. Yes, it evokes the ragged sincerity of Neil Young, Tim Hardin, Woods, Kurt Vile, but what sets it apart are the stranger influences, baroque and psychedelic, grinning and eldritch: the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Van Dyke Parks, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Jesus Christ Superstar. These are quarries not yet plumbed: the Amethysts' music is splendid, fertile, new.

And so "Prophecy", a song that recalls Brian Wilson, the Unicorns, "Auld Lang Syne", Macbeth. Drumsticks and acoustic guitar, pinned by whoops, hooks like arrows fired at the clouds. It's a tune that cuts through this winter like confetti through an empty room. It starts by telling you to chill out, ends by summoning witches (in three-part harmony), and you'll not hear a sweeter, catchier nonsense before the summertime swoon.

[Adam & the Amethysts are seeking a label / bandcamp / website / they are performing in Toronto on March 11, as part of Pop Montreal's CMW showcase]

---

You have until Wednesday night to enter our Withered Hand contest - peep the amazing hundred-plus entries so far. But just as importantly, Withered Hand is apparently having problems convincing US authorities that he is deserving of an artist visa for SXSW. This is ridiculous - please follow/retweet/spread the word.

(photo source unknown)

Withered Hand - "Hard On".

It's been 18 months since I first wrote about Withered Hand's debut LP, Good News, and this terrific track. But it's taken 18 months for North America to catch up with what my Scottish friends have been saying for yonks, in emails and crackly Skype calls: Withered Hand, aka Edinburgh's Dan Willson, is the realest of deals, a songwriter with a quiver full of arrows, a voice that, er, lunges for the throat.

"Hard On" is a cover of a song by Charles Latham. Ultimately, I wrote, it concerns erections, but mostly it's about the intersection between yearning and doing. Withered Hand has realised the sound of yearning: it's this, simple and splendid and fierce. It's a chant that keeps changing, with words like flashpaper. Listen to the way he sings man, good, could, knife, car, go, FM radio, guitars, Thin Lizzy, pen, John Updike, hard-on. Each one, carelessly cast, could start a housefire.

"Hard On" is scruffy and sincere, but neither banal nor precious. Willson sings it like he's learned some things on lonely roads and bathroom walls - he hasn't yet figured out how to live, but he's figured out the way living is gonna rhyme.

On March 15, Absolutely Kosher - the label which helped along the Wrens, the Mountain Goats, Frog Eyes and more - is reissuing Good News in the United States and Canada. To celebrate, they've given us some Withered Hand goodies for a contest. Inevitably, we have one copy of the vinyl LP up for grabs, but also a second, grand prize: Absolutely Kosher's deluxe Good News box set, which includes the CD album, another disc with Withered Hand's preceding EPs and unreleased material, buttons, stickers, and a signed note and drawing by Mr Willson himself. All this, in a hand-numbered and decorated box. There are only 200 of these things, and, um, one of them is for one of you.

To enter our Withered Hand contest, leave a comment on this post with an imagined headline, all in caps. This headline should be the headline for the best-ever piece of good news. Good News, get it? Here are some examples:

Enter as many times as you like, with separate comments. Contest closes at 11:59pm on Wednesday, March 9, and we'll pick our two favourites.

UPDATE: CONTEST WINNERS!

There were 175 extraordinary entries for this contest - view them all. Such amazing, hilarious, poignant, ridiculous headlines. I wish we could have given out twenty prizes, but alas there are just two. Here were my favourites:

LOTS OF DANCING (Bries)
SEANCE ELICITS NEW COLLABORATION FROM GEORGE HARRISON/GRAM PARSONS/ALEX CHILTON AND ANYONE ELSE YOU'D EVER WANT IN AN AFTERLIFE SUPERGROUP; B/W NEW MITCH HEDBERG ROUTINE (glg)
IT ALL LASTS AS LONG AS YOU LIKE (Ronnie)
A HARD ON DOES MEAN YOU'RE IN LOVE (Julian)
TODAY IS BETTER THAN YESTERDAY (karpe)
SHE'S DOING JUST FINE (Billy)
GROUCHO MARX SHOOTS ELEPHANT IN HIS PAJAMAS (john governale)
FARM OUT IN THE COUNTRY FOUND, ALL PETS RETURNED TO THEIR OWNERS (matt)
YOU WERE RIGHT! (Nicola)
SAD MAN WINS GRAND PRIZE (noone)
GOD ACCEPTS YOUR RACQUETBALL CHALLENGE, WANTS TO "MAKE IT INTERESTING" (Freezerburn)
SECOND PLACE: PRESIDENT DECLARES BONUS LEVEL (ryan)
FIRST PLACE: YOUR PARENTS WILL LIVE FOREVER (josh)

If you missed the contest, never fear: buy Good News or the box set. Listen in full on Bandcamp. Withered Hand is playing SXSW and a couple of west coast US dates. Visit his website. Thanks to Shaker Maker PR and Absolutely Kosher for this invitation.

Timothy Bloom - "'Til the End of Time (ft V. Bozeman)".

     Kirk Baxter, co-editor of David Fincher's 2010 film The Social Network, winner of the 83rd Academy Awards' Oscar for best film editing, arrives home at 3:03 am on Monday, February 28, 2011. He notices the time while he is pouring himself a glass of cold water from the cold water device on the front of his fridge. "Katie!" he calls. "Katie, it's 3:03!"
     Katie is standing in the hall, taking off her earrings. "It's 3:03?" she says.
     "It's another one," he says. He takes another sip of water. "Just like when it was 7:07. And 12:12. Remember?"
     Katie is standing clutching her earrings in her palm and looking at herself in the mirror. She is glowing. Kirk tells her so. He appears beside her with a glass of cold water and he kisses the back of her neck.
     "Lucky night," she says. There is still champagne in her voice.
     "A lucky night, a lucky sight," he says, and laughs. He puts his mouth to her shoulder. "A lucky bite." Katie rolls her eyes at the mirror. She is blushing. She thinks she has been blushing for six or seven hours. It wasn't just when Kirk won: it was the way he dragged her along the red carpet, and the way he clutched her thigh during the opening overture, and the way Annette Bening told her she looked lovely as they were waiting to be seated at the Gallery. Later, standing with Dave Fincher and Mike De Luca near the bar, Angelina Jolie strode by; and it was her ear, not Mike's, not Dave's, that Kirk had leaned into to say, "I feel like I'm in Atlantis."
     "Tonight was fun," she says.
     "Yes?"
     "Yes."
     "For me, too."
     "More fun than last time," she says.
     "Because I won?"
     "Because everything," she says.
     "Because everything," he agrees. "Because everything, everything." Kirk touches her hip and she turns and she is wearing her gown and he is wearing his tux and he kisses her lips. She kisses him back. She strokes his hair with one hand and the other hand is closed at the nape of his neck. It is holding two earrings.
     He breaks away, shaking his head happily. "We could have stayed up all night."
     "Let's stay up all night," she says.
     "Oh?"
     They are both grinning now, even larger. "Oh," she says, slipping her fingers under his jacket and squeezing his cummerbund.
     He leans his head back. "I just want to ride motorcycles and learn to surf and edit films and go to faraway places and love you for the rest of my life."
     "Where do you want to go?"
     "To China," he says.
     "How about to the moon," she says.
     "To the fucking moon."
     She arches an eyebrow. "To the what?"
     "The," he says. "Fucking. Moon."
     She steps out of her first heel. Her foot is bare on the maple floor. "Oscar-winner Kirk Baxter, please lead the way."

[buy on iTunes / see the scorcher of a music video (contains mild nudity)]

Shotgun Jimmie - "Bar's Closed". Dan wrote about "Late Last Year", from Shotgun Jimmie's Transistor Sister, about two weeks ago. But I am not convinced that everyone in all of the world has yet bought this album, Jimmie's third solo outing, and his first great triumph. Honestly friends, this record is generous and funny and it is possibly ludicrous how much I dig it. "Late Last Year" is the opener and "Bar's Closed" is the closer, and even though this is the record's denouement they do it in two verses and 1 minute 42. Throughout Transistor Sister, Jim channels all kinds of sloppy and beautiful rock'n'roll, words like lucky quarters and impromptu secret handshakes. It is 16 tracks in 30 minutes. It is a lake full of rainbow trout. "Bar's Closed" contains possibly my favourite lyric in years, silly & stupid & somehow encapsulating everything about a certain feeling. I wrote about it when I saw Jim play Sappyfest last year, when he played this song live with a bashful twinkle in his eyes:

Shotgun Jimmie plays songs about holding hands, running in packs, beers in pockets. He has an acoustic on his lap and a kick-drum at his feet. It is potato-chip-crisp guitar pop, and it is utterly outstanding. "They say that you are what you eat," he sings, "and I feel like I musta ate a king."

But Shotgun Jimmie, what about us? How do we feel? Here's how: We feel like each of us just got high-fived so hard that our finger-bones shattered. We're all nursing our poor hands, & grinning.

Transistor Sister is released by the homegrown You've Changed Records. Buy it now. If you own a major American indie label, if you like Kurt Vile and Stephen Malkmus and Neil Young, you should send this man a suitcase of money and release it down south. See Shotgun Jimmie on tour throughout Canada this spring. Read about him at his blog or Herohill (and hear another song). I know I've been crowing about a lot of music in these early months of 2011, but oh things are wonderful.

Destroyer - "Poor In Love". Destroyer sings, "Apocalypse, oh", or maybe he sings, "Apocalypso", a neologism formed by apocalypse and calypso. This ambiguity alone is enough to persuade me that we should put Dan Bejar's face on all of our currency. [buy, on vinyl preferably, with its crazy extra song]

(photo is of Ali vs. Williams, 1966)

Little Wings - "Mr Natural". Take it easy and then take it easier. Take it easier and then take it even easier. Gliding through the streets, coasting, downhill all the way; breeze and fireflies. Loose stars. Falling into lawns. Later, stretching in bed, a cracked egg on the stove, and the rooms are warm. Long eyelashes, the curve of your ear. Tilt, turn. The tarnished knives turning silver. And all those seashells at the bottom of the seas. [buy Black Grass, the new album by Little Wings]

Radiohead - "Give Up The Ghost". The carriage rolls through the streets, bumping over cobblestones. The carriage is gold and eggshell blue. The curtains are drawn. The people stare from the sidewalks, from doorways, from over their windowsill gardens. They wonder who is inside the carriage, drawn by its lone black horse. They wonder if it is one person or several. They wonder if the carriage is lined with velvets or silks or jerseys, and where it is going. They wonder what the light looks like, the light of sunbeams and gas lamps, as it passes into that secret roaming room. They cannot ask: the carriage is closed. They cannot eavesdrop. They cannot send a letter. They wait with their dry hearts and see the secret rattle past. [buy The King of Limbs]

(photo source)

The Luyas - "Cold Canada". In a week that saw successes by other precocious Canadians, I can only hope that the Luyas one day get their chance to climb up on a rooftop and play "Cold Canada" to their whole wild neighbourhood. It's a song that belongs to a rooftop,
that deserves to be there, noisy and triumphant and redemptively defeatist. The trumpet calls out to Mount Royal, the drums skim the skyline, and Jessie Stein sings her cheerful truth: WE'RE GONNA LOSE / WE'RE GONNA LOSE / WE'RE GONNA LOSE. Also, she sings, SNOW WILL ALWAYS WIN. You can imagine the cats and dogs in the streets, the businesswomen with attaché cases, the young men with toques and hockey-sticks. They'd squint at the rock band on the roof, pure and scattered, wondering if the organ sound is burbling up from the storm drains.

The Luyas' Too Beautiful To Work is burrs and gleams and ragged wishing. It is their second album, their first for Idée Fixe (CAN) and Dead Oceans (USA). They are one of Montreal's greatest acts, and I wrote about them most recently for McSweeney's. They launch the album in Montreal on Feb 24, and begin a major US tour. You can stream the entire album by clicking on Releases over here. OH BUY THE ALBUM YOU DAMN FOOL.

(photo from National Geographic)