Archives : all posts by Sean

Fantasia ft. Cee-lo Green - "The Thrill is Gone". While the memesphere somersaults for Cee-lo's other song, I'm letting this one swing around the wooden frames of my apartment. The production's classic, hot, with uncowed drums; Cee-lo raps (and I've always preferred his rapping to his singing); and Fantasia sings with every confidence, every clear-eyed certainty (earlier this month, long after "Thrill" was recorded, all this had slipped). It's one of those rare songs where the verse is stronger than the chorus, gold-knuckled. With one glance over her shoulder, a knock-out. [buy]

Keri Hilson - "The Last Time". In these last singing weeks of Summer, r&b remains the thing (along with Smog's River Ain't Too Much To Love), and I'm loving the "1 Thing"/"Survivor" stop-stutter of this one, Hilson slipping sighing through picket-fences. It's a song pleasantly lacking in metaphor: she tells us it's the last time with her man, until the next time, and the song's fittingly ambivalent, part love-song, part dumping-song, trapped in the stretched-out impulsive right now. [website]

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I last wrote about the Luyas for McSweeney's (describing a show documented here). While they're playing with Twin Sister and Bear In Heaven early in Pop Montreal, the band are also raising money for some crazy installation thing later in the weekend. Donate here to help make it happen, replete with a dancers, artworks, and a film by Vincent Moon. But besides all that, it's a chance to get the Luyas' exquisite debut for almost nothing, plus original portraits, t-shirts, et cetera. (Their new album drops in January, I hear, with a bigtime label.)

Speaking of the Blogotheque kids, they just posted a new Adam & the Amethysts video, with Montreal cemetery and raccoon, shot two days after Adam and I almost died in a car-crash. There's something very true in this "Bumble Bee"'s sudden strangeness, the flat and post-traumatic sunset. (Another film from the session, including an eerie empty rue Ste-Catherine, went up earlier this summer.) [Why aren't these at the Blogotheque site yet? WTF, la gang?

this image is a t-shirt)

The Vaccines - "If You Wanna". A song of utter foolhardiness. The singer knows he is being foolhardy - not just fancy-free, reckless, but hardy as a fool. He knows he is singing a love-song to a lover who has not been loyal; he knows he is giving his catchiest chorus to someone who doesn't deserve it. But he doesn't mind. He just wants to get back to that place, running through the dry bright sunlight, with small fast plans, toward kisses with bumping teeth. His band-mates, the Vaccines, they are like: whatever. They are like: whatever, man. They are like: just tell us when we can start playing. They've got hooks ready, riffs stored up; they've got a tambourine beat they'll throw onto anything that moves. C'mon, they say, let's just become famous already. [The Vaccines are new / website / Facebook / thanks Ryan]

The Band in Heaven - "Dreams". The Cranberries' consummate classic, drenched in reverbbbbb. I do not know if it makes the song better, but this version of "Dreams" feels closer to what "Dreams" has become for me, these 17 years later. It is not something I can cleanly recall. I recall it only as a collection of dark shapes: a flicking melody, Dolores O'Riordan's voice. It is a submarine. It is shadowed, hidden. It rises suddenly, at ridiculous times, walking into a movie theatre or riding my bicycle - and I sing it under my breath, wordlessly, because I can't remember the words. "La la la?" The Band in Heaven get it right; they get it indistinct. [MySpace / get the record for free or almost nothing]

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The Skeletones Four - "Sexy Breakfast". This has nothing to do with a sexy breakfast. It has to do with swaggering as you read instruction manuals, slipping confidently into life-jackets, being handsome & prudent at the same time. The Skeletones Four aren't going to get tricked again. They're not gonna slip on any girls' shadows. Their band is tight as a new bicycle chain, as sunbeams through a plexiglass window. [MySpace/live video/Gravestone Rock is out soon.]

Curren$y - "Get it Ya Self (ft. Deelow)". Take a broken window, hold it over an open flame; it heals. This is true of everything. Broken hearts, crushed asphalt, earthquaked bridges - hold them over open flames, Bunsen burners and solar flares, and see the damage undone. There's nothing that a precise summer can't heal. [buy This Ain't No Mixtape, from which "Get It Ya Self" is taken / or buy his new album, Pilot Talk]

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Abbey Lincoln - "Left Alone". Abbey Lincoln exaggerates her loneliness. She is not as alone as this. But this is what we do: we sing our sorrows in whole melodies. We shade our unhappy moments with stricken colours. We do not moderate. Listen to the trumpet and sax, painting a darker picture than the one they go home to. Listen to your heart, beating an acknowledging yes. But it is not so bad. It's a beautiful day, of rainstorms. It's not so bad. Listen to a sad song. [buy Straight Ahead, and rest in peace, Abbey Lincoln.]

Vijay Iyer - "Mystic Brew (Trixation Version)". "You're the Golden Boy, Cal. You catch every grounder, every fly ball, every bunt and near-homer. You lift more weights than any of the other guys. You bed all the girls. I seen you flip coins once - fifteen heads in a row. The light's always green, the sky's always blue, the elevator's always waiting when you get home. I know it's always been that way. Growin' up, you ran and jumped, you won, you ate red apples and drank clean white milk. You were never unrequited."

"But one day, Cal, you're going to wake up and you're not going to be the Golden Boy any more. You'll hit traffic. You'll miss your plane. You'll trip. And as the coin-flips stack up 50/50, as the balls slip out of your glove, it's gonna get hard. It's gonna get tough. You gotta bear it. You gotta persist. Keep the glints gathered in your eye. Because sooner or later, that gold is gonna be back. Princes become kings." [buy Historicity]

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The dearly departed Falkirk-born band Arab Strap are reissuing their first two albums, Philophobia and The Week Never Starts Round Here. In honour of this, I invite you to revisit my Arab Strap farewell post from 2006 - I've reposted all of the MP3s. Buy the double-disc reissues from Chemikal Underground.

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Plastic Bertrand - "Ça plane pour moi". Jerome was at Rainbow Records, looking for Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are", when a song came over the speakers that was so sharply curved and dazzling that it boiled his blood, boiled it in his shirt-sleeves, and he loosened his tie and summoned his courage and said to the pretty girl behind the counter, no more than a kid, "What is this?" She told him it was Plastic Bertrand. He brought the single home. He put it on the turntable. He waited. He waited all the way until after dinner. As Lorna was clearing up, Jerome swaggered to the stereo and lifted the record-player needle. "Listen to this," he said to Cal and Barbara. They looked at him strangely. Their father did not often play surprise songs. "Ça plane pour moi" began, and Jerome's eyebrows were raised as high as they could go, and he was grinning dumbly, and he said, "It's Plastic Bertrand and he's singing in a made up language." Barbara and Cal rolled their eyes. They got up. They started to dance on the carpet. "It's French, dad," they said. And they knew every word. [buy]

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. - "Simple Girl". A song as beautiful and vapid as its subject. I'm always looking for ... something more than this, they sing, even as they sing some more da da das; because, honestly, sometimes yr intentions, yr long-time wishes & wants, they don't matter. What matters is the pretty tune, with glockenspiel, whistling, long-limbed skipping choruses. That's what catches your eye. [website]

Half-handed Cloud - "Armstrong's Line". And here, the opposite - a parade of complicated glances, competing curves, a dozen confounding hooks. This isn't just one pretty girl; it's a dozen. And that's where the metaphor gives out. Because this ain't a song about pretty ladies. To tell the truth, I don't know what it's about. It's a swift rush of nouns and images, a tumble of syllables, organ wheezing over crooked electric guitar. And jubilant. [MySpace/out soon/buy other things]

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Cheyenne Marie Mize with Bonnie Prince Billy - "Beautiful Dreamer".

     "I don't understand."
     "Well as I was saying, I just want to be able to pay a monthly f-"
     "Yes, I understand that, but you want to remortgage your heart?"
     "It's an investment. I thought that since the interest rates are so low..."
     "But you can't mortgage, let alone remortgage your heart. It's not like a house. It's an, an organ."
     "I could mortgage a boat."
     "Yes..."
     "I could mortgage a plot of land."
     "Yes, but-"
     "A heart is like a boat. It's like a plot of land."
     "I mean but if you defaulted-"
     "Then you could have it."
     "How would we-?"
     "I won't default."

[listen to all of Among the Gold, a collection of 19th century parlour songs / MySpace]

Avec pas d'casque - "Si on change les équipes ce n'est plus une revanche". They sing, with ridiculous abandon, If we change the teams, it's no longer revenge. In an argument with Avec pas d'casque, their approach would be maddening: they strum & jangle their POV, smiling seriously, full of giddy authority. It's I told you so, and You'll see. But how do they knew this will all work out okay? How do they know they're right? How do they know they can safely look her in the eye, grinning, and give a condescending wave? I lack the band's certainty. So I will stumble along beside them in the ditch, dust billowing at my cuffs, coughing and cursing and wishing I were there on Avec pas d'casque's wagon, superior.

[buy Dans la nature jusqu'au cou]

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In other business: We need your help! After years of status quo, Dan and I have talked about adding a blurb to the StG sidebar - a sentence or maybe two, explaining more about what we do here every day. There's the text about our "daily sampler of favourite songs", blum-dee-blum, but we want to add something explaining what the text is all about. Giving context to our stories & lies that will help out confused visitors. (The confusion is ok, but feels selfish.)

Can you help? What is Said the Gramophone? We'd be very grateful for some ideas of what to write. Leave them in the comments!

(image from the Machine Project Gallery's summer vacation for plants)