Archives : all posts by Sean

Valley Maker - "The First". A song of beginnings, the first track in Austin Crane's album about Genesis. But Valley Maker's story ex nihilo does not evoke cosmic dust, electron fizz, even the slow crawl of algae into orchards. Instead his call & answer speaks to apartments half-lit, faces half-lit, entrances and exits of a different kind. It is desolate, wanting; the singer is not content with the fact that things are; he wants to know why.

[Valley Maker's debut album is hot, exquisite; it's an enormous leap forward from Crane's prior work; you can buy it now for $10 or whatever price you name]

Kath Bloom - "Is This Called Living?". I had the privilege to see Kath Bloom play a few weeks ago. She played new songs, like this one. And although it's been 32 years since the release of her first album, it's difficult to imagine that Kath's voice was ever better than it is now. She sings with a beautiful tone, great warmth, but more than that - there's a remarkable bareness to her music. "Bareness" is a clumsy word, but it feels righter than the alternatives: transparency, honesty, rawness, sincerity. Her heart is laid bare. She disguises nothing. She shows us how much certain phrases are true, how thirsty she is, how lost and craving. Sometimes, how happy. Because of the albums I love, it can't help but evoke Julie Doiron. But Julie sings as though she knows others are listening, as if she must make herself clear. Kath sings as if she doesn't give a fuck; as if she just has to.

All this to say, buy her newish album (released by Mark Kozelek), and if you can see her & her band on tour - Shambala Festival! Madrid! Penryn! London! Newcastle! Manchester! End of the Road! - please do.

(midnight baseball photo source)

Spacemen 3 - "So Hot (Wash Away All Of My Tears)".
Eric Chenaux - "Rest Your Daylights".

Perspiration on your skin like your skin is a leaf and you are in a rainforest, and the air is steam, and the birds of paradise are quietly trilling.

Condensation on a leaf like the leaf is your skin and you are sitting in a room of wood and drywall, and the cars are roving, and the electric fan is quietly turning.

Jennifer came out of her apartment and into the street and as the heat crept over her with its perfect velocity she realised that all around the city, all across the northeast, other people were coming out of their apartments and into the streets and feeling the same fahrenheit melt. Temperature is a universal law, she thought. She walked across the bright white sidewalk. She tried to think of other universal laws. Gravity. Loudness. Speed. In her left back pocket a magnet was slowly turning into a dime.

(Icelandic volcano photo source)

Blue Hawaii - "Blue Gowns". The milk curdled, after it happened. It had been just two days. The air was motionless and sharp. On the stereo, voices sneered. J, sad, angry, eyes rimmed red, went to the fridge. Sludge sloughed from the carton. In the two days since it happened, everything had soured. Sour milk, sour voices, sour air, sour dreams. J kept trying to imagine a melody, a hook, a song that would carry J out of these grey and yellow rooms. A song could do it. The right song could break through all of this, give J's heart a chance to uncurl. The right song, sung. But it would have to be the right one. Soon it would be evening. [buy, from Montreal]

Maps & Atlases - "Pigeon". Larry Twin's first draft was his best draft. The first draft of the first thing he ever wrote. He was 22 when he wrote it, straight out of college. His whole apartment was packed up, ready to move back to Denton. Only his desk was left, and a pad of paper. He thought, Oh what the hell, I'll start being a writer right now. It took him fifteen minutes, the short story. "Pretty good," he thought. He went out for a beer with Lula. When he moved back to Denton he started tinkering with the story. He changed the sequence, the ending, the main character's gender. Then he changed the title. That first draft was lost. Eleven years later, he had never written anything as good. He knew this. For eleven years, he had published dregs, remnants. He had chased something he'd already forgotten. He had never been as close as on that first night. Larry Twin wished he had brought it to the bar; showed it to Lula. He wished he had showed it to everyone. He wished it had stayed. [buy Perch Patchwork]

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Any Said the Gramophone readers in Dawson City, Yukon?

(photo is of a lemur)

Wingless Angels - "Keyman". We've written before about July 1. For most of this country, it is Canada Day, celebrating the 1867 Confederation. In Montreal, it is Moving Day. Most leases begin and end on this day. Across the city, people haul their books, beds, records and art to the side of the road; they drag their food to the side of the road; they apply miles of packing-tape to mountains of boxes. As I walk the four blocks to the café I see a half dozen moves splayed out before me. It's not very difficult to move a life. Make the decision; package your things; lift. Put it all in the truck and turn key in ignition. It is as easy, I think, to change a life. Apply will, elbow grease; put it all in the truck and turn key in ignition. This song, by the ad hoc Jamaican ensemble Wingless Angels, is about how hard things are easy. The Keyman does not strain or struggle. He goes where he pleases. When he does not want to go anywhere, he stays where he is. Not everyone moved today.

["Keyman" is from Wingless Angels' first album. Their second LP, again with Keith Richards and the late Justin Hinds, will be released September 23.]

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Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who donated to Said the Gramophone's very successful 2010 funding drive. As far as I can count, one hundred and twenty-one people contributed to the site. Dan and I met not long after the funding drive started, and already we were that wonderful combination of dumbfounded and very, very happy. We are so grateful for every gift, from the smallest to the most gigantic. And although I could go on and on, I will save these thoughts for the one hundred and twenty-one letters we will now begin sending; save energies for the photographs and mixes and short films we will give as thank-you presents. You've left us flabbergasted and glad. Thank you.

Our 2010 Funding Drive ends tonight. This is your last chance to donate to Said the Gramophone, for a whole whole whole year.

Tomorrow, it will be July. We will put our away our hats. We will quit askin' for your slivers of silver. & that'll be that.

Thank you to all who have donated so generously thus far. (More on that later.)

Omar Souleyman - "Li Raja Behawakom (I Beg You, Baby)". Tiny had worked up the nerve. With the stars still out, he borrowed Blacky's car and coasted the bumpy road into town. He stopped in front of Iufi's house. He watched the windows. The living-room light was on. He waited. The living-room light turned off. The bedroom light turned on, and then it turned off. In the car, Tiny waited. He stared at the empty windshield with a clarity of purpose he had not felt in many years. The street was empty. He looked back at the house. All was still dark. Tiny clicked his teeth and swung open the car's door.

He got the rake from the back. It caught the night's faint gleams. Tiny raked Iufi's front yard. This was always the first step, when courting. He cleared away the winter-wet old leaves. He pushed them toward the kerb and then packed them into paper bags. He put them aside for later. Next, he mowed the lawn. This was always the second step. He had to be quiet. He hoisted his hand-push mower from the trunk. It caught the night's faint gleams. He pushed it through the grass, through the overgrown winter grass. He felt like a man caring for an animal. The mower snicked and whispered in the night. When he had finished this, he raked the grass again. This was the third thing. Then he lifted the mower and the rake back into the trunk of Blacky's car.

Next, the pepper ivy. He had reels of this in the passenger seat. The ivy was light as cobweb, green with speckled leaves. He laid the reels against the front wall of Iufi's house. They began to come alive, unfurl, fronds lifting from the wreaths and climbing. Next, the lovers'-trees. Two of them. He set them in their pots on the centre of the lawn. He planted five firefly bushes, in the ceremonial V. He took out a blossom gun and fired this into the air. The seeds rose up like firework dust. They would not drift down for hours. It was dark now. In the gutter, Tiny lit the bags of leaves on fire. He stuck sticks of incense into the smoke. From the back seat he took his box of singing beetles. He placed them one by one at the base of the pepper ivy, on the trunks of the emerald trees, on leaves of the firefly bushes. The fireflies heard them and began to glow. The beetles were singing very softly. They would continue singing softly. Tiny knew this. He knew he would now go to sleep in the front seat of Black's car. He would doze until dawn woke him. Then, the lovers'-trees would be shaking and tilting. The gunblossoms would be falling. The fireflies would still be glowing, the leaves would still be burning, and the beetles would be singing more loudly. The sun would be a portent in the sky. Tiny would go to the door of Iufi's house and with all the strength in his heart he would push the button of her doorbell.

She would wake to a question on her lawn.

[buy / Omar Souleyman plays a free show in Montreal tonight.]

The-Dream - "Yamaha". If you could do this, you would. You would have to. It's like a kid skimmin' along on his bicycle, hops the sidewalk, finds himself on a ramp - and swish, swish, swish, he's done three 360s and a cherry-loop. That kid becomes a BMX star. That kid goes to the BMX Olympics. But The-Dream's not a kid with a bicycle. He's a man named Terius who can make songs like this, alone or (as here) with friends like Los Da Mystro. And when you can do this, you must. You must seduce as many people as you can. You must celebrate them. You must set their beauty to song, with glittering hooks, fluttering synths, undying drums. Terius sings, "I never seen a girl with an ass so fat". But do not be put off by the talk of bums. Terius is singing this to his ideal woman, his Beatrice, his love. Yes, she is callipygous. But this is a song of pure adoration, keen as light in eyes.

[buy, tomorrow; it's tremendous]

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Elsewhere:

I spent much of last year researching and writing a long non-fiction article about the Parisian secret society called UX. It is now, finally, in print - in the summer issue of Brick. Please pick it up, if you live in a place with a good bookshop - there's such treasures as Carl Wilson on Kate McGarrigle, poetry by Steven Heighton, and Gísli Sigurðsson's wonderful tale of being an Icelander on the Irish national handball team.

I've also got a piece in the new issue of Maisonneuve magazine, which is dedicated in part to THE MUSIC WE HATE. I've written an article putting the slam-down on Sufjan Stevens. I've not got my hands on the issue yet, but there's a bevy of critics tackling sacred cows (eg, Michael Barclay on Animal Collective, Carl Wilson on Radiohead), plus a new theatre column by Sheila Heti, et cetera. To launch the issue, Maisonneuve is holding a concert on July 8, with covers of "songs they can't stand" by three acts, including two Said the Gramophone favourites - Pat Jordache and Carlo Spidla.

Land of Talk's gorgeous Take-Away Show is now online, shot in Montreal about a month ago. Wonderful, stupid, platful, heartbreaking sessions - with tree-climbing, underpasses, a censored song with kids. And, in the second (better) video, yr first taste of one of the best albums I've heard this year. (I will share some of it with you as soon as I can.)

Finally, my friend the producer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, Silver Mt Zion, Basia Bulat) has written a fucking terrific piece for The Sound, It Resounds. He has written about one of his favourite albums, the Velvet Underground's Live at Max's Kansas City. But what makes it special is the elegance and poetry of his words, recalling his younger days bootlegging shows, the role of a producer, and just the hot sound of a band in a room. Definitely must-read. "From the ages of 15 to 17, I snuck a portable tape recorder into every show I went to, spending the following week eq-ing it and editing it to fit on a C-90. ... It was like the aural equivalent of going on safari, and bringing back an elephant tusk."

[photo source]

Nut Brown - "I Need A Love Like That". [free download]
David Dondero - "Wherever You Go". [pre-order]

Two great songs that sound as if they were written in bachelor apartments, perhaps a little too late at night. But these men bent over their pens & papers, guitars, keyboards, and in their stale clothes they stopped caring about bachelor apartments, stale clothes, advancing age. They had it. They had it. They knew better to call it "genius": they each called it "a song". One tune about wanting, one about having; messy and riffed, kicker, killer, hurled.

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I've gone to see a handful of shows in the past week, all completely excellent: Fiery Furnaces, the Youjsh and Tune-Yards, and then a raft of Suoni Per Il Popolo things, including William Basinski and Will Eizlini's marvellous arrangement of Judee Sill songs. Last night I heard Kath Bloom sing, yes that Kath Bloom, and at 56 her voice was better than ever, incredible, cutting to the quick. She and her band were hilarious, ridiculous, deeply feeling. She's visiting the UK soon: please go see her.

Basia Bulat plays three nights (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) at the MACM this weekend. Young Galaxy, Adam & the Amethysts and Little Scream - three of the city's very finest - play together at the Belmont on Saturday. And Omar Souleyman plays a free show at Place des Arts on Monday night. Montrealers, we are spoiled. Joyeuse Fête National.