Said the Gramophone - image by Keith Shore

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by Sean
Wu Lyf

WU LYF - "SUCH A SAD PUPPY DOG"
WU LYF - "Heavy Pop"
WU LYF - "Lucifer Calling (Demo)"
Vagina Wolf - "Nic Cave"
Vagina Wolf - "Scissors for your Hair"
WU LYF - "ALL THE SILLY CATS KEEP TALKING, SPITTING FLOWERS, SPITTING BLOOD"
WU LYF - "SPITTING IT CONCRETE LIKE THE GOLDEN SUN GOD"
WU LYF - "Lung Songs"

Setting aside the band's elusive debut EP, released in a hand-made edition of 14 (and sold for a hilarious £50 each), this is, as far as I can tell, the complete online catalogue of the band known (usually) as WU LYF. I collected it gradually. The most recent track, a collage called "Lung Songs", was revealed in late March.

They are from Manchester. They boast many members. The band-name is an acronym. It stands for World Unite/Lucifer Youth Foundation. It is also a reference to the Wu-Tang Clan; WU LYF have been known to call themselves the TU-WANG GANG. Other monikers include Wu Lf Wu Lf, Wu Def, WE BROS, and Vagina Wolf (possibly a separate, earlier band).

At this stage, WU LYF consist mostly of mystique. Their website is a beautiful, bewildering Tumblr site, with mysterious icons, photographic pastiche, fragments of sloganeering poetry. Their MySpace page is the most useless I have ever seen. But these are not mere bumblers. If nothing else, the £50 demo should tell you something. They have a Facebook group. Their manager - or, as they put it, "war god" - is Warren Bramley, sterling-minted creative director of the Four23 ad agency. Most of WU LYF's concerts take place at An Outlet, the venue owned by Four23.

Furthermore, WU LYF's mystery is gorgeous, evocative, haunting. Though photos reveal they are just a band, the group's imagery and writings make the rest of us, faraway, imagine more. It's part Crowley, part Eliot, part Thom Yorke. References to Godspeed You! Black Emperor's skinny fists, visual nods to rebellion and apocalypse. Any suits wanna come? WU LYF asked in a recent concert announcement. Some wild cats in clean clothes? wanna make-see some hype? fuck you, this aint for you, this is for kids, kids who have the courage to remain kids, not peddle their ass for the dreams of mountains peak. me and my boy tommy gun been sharpening our fists, come get cut up.

"Even in this overlit environment [WU LYF] are proving difficult to decipher, to get a fix on, which makes us very happy indeed," Paul Lester wrote for the Guardian. "They're baffling. ... There is a sense here of quasi-spiritual fervour, of revolutionary intent, of myths being made. Meanwhile, the idiosyncratic deployment or disfigurement of language and semantics continues with their list of song titles. ... Tantalising as hell."

Secrets are very cool, right now. Hidden scenes are burning untraceable CD-Rs, loosing 7"s. Basement collectives are making cassette-tapes, resistant to ripping. Partly it's nostalgia, sure - chillwave's analogue fetish, our dreams of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pyjamas. But we also took for granted that we could google any band, download any song. WU LYF, and others, wish to prove that you can hide. By hiding, in time, they wish to become famous.

It's WU LYF's branding that makes us hear their music as bewildering "heavy pop", and not just in terms of Wolf Parade, early Gomez and mash-ups. (Some of their tracks are good, others not.) But this branding does more than mask the band's influences. It also helps us listen. The best way to discover something is with heart wide open, like the door to a wardrobe. To be alert, curious, seeking. Context can dull this appetite. We see a band at a show - we know their deal. We buy an album after reading a review - we understand what we will be hearing. There is no helping the fact that we engage with art in a negotiated way.

With WU LYF, what we bring to the music is the excitement of not-knowing. All signs point to treasure. We want this to be a treasure. We put on our headphones and pan for gold.

by Sean
Government Bureau, 1956 , George Tooker

Nicolas Jaar - "Time For Us". Nico has grown up. Do you remember Nico? Now he makes music likes this, for vast & eerie nightclubs, and he comes to Montreal to play festivals. But when I say he has "grown up", I do not mean to condescend. My point is not that time has passed, nor that Nicolas has finally shed his childish skin. No, "Time For Us" suggests that Nicolas Jaar has experienced long months, slow seasons, the kinds of days and nights that taught us the little we know about being adults. The nights you go home with silvers in your pocket, a shake in your skull, and cannot tell if you are happy or sad. What reason in the world do you have to be sad? The beat's still in your veins. And yet.

[website/buy]

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The Well Montreal, a new local promoter, is holding one of their first events, one week tomorrow. The "bring-your-own-blanket gig will feature intimate, acoustic sets by Sean Nicholas Savage, Braids' INDEINSOCI (whatever that means), the Crown Vandals, and the Pop Winds' Devon Welsh.

[Painting is Government Bureau, 1956 , George Tooker]

by Sean
Organ Screen, UA Theater, Detroit

Laura Marling - "Alpha Shallows". "I should have left when M did. I don't know why I didn't. That's not true. I stayed because it was easier. I knew the cupboards, the doorways. I could write there. The day they announced the change, I was finishing the third chapter. It had been the easiest chapter. On the news they said they were changing everything, changing the way things worked, changing it so we were not paid on sunny days. We would only be paid if it rained. It didn't seem so bad. It seemed different. We all wanted difference. So on clear days we'd be poor; on rainy days, we'd be rich. I didn't think it'd matter. I worked in my room. I squinted at the sun. I watched the streets fill with people, praying for storms. I wrote you letters. I wrote, I hope we all drown." [buy]

Clogs - "Last Song". "Last Song" does not sound like a last song. "Last Song" is too slow. (The lastest songs come fast.) Rather, this is a song that sounds like it's trying to postpone an ending. The National's Matt Berninger decelerates with every syllable he sings. Momentum dissipates with every phrase, every pause. Perhaps he can bring the song to a dead stop. Perhaps he can keep it from quite ending. [buy]

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Elsewhere: A dawny, simple video for one of my favourite songs of last year, Cains & Abels' "My Life Is Easy".

[photo source]

by Sean
image by Christoph Niemann

Robyn - "Fembot". I cannot deny Robyn. There is cherry in her voice, in the flick and fling of her phrases. I hate this "fembot" conceit - the robot metaphors, the mecha-pop rehash of Robyn's "Robot Boy" &c. But I simply cannot deny Robyn, the cherry in her voice, that flick and fling. Pop music doesn't always ask permission. [from one of Robyn's three (!) upcoming albums / website]


Richard McGraw - "Hurting Heart". A song that only starts making its case at 0:41, when McGraw shows there's more to him than his frown. (He opens by declaring that he could never write a hit: this is not the best way to win my confidence.) But the thing I discover, finally, is that he has written a small & perfect chorus, with words like a bead on a string, matching and good. He sings it so well, especially at its quiet moments: steely, grassy, leathery, shades of Win Butler and Mike Feuerstack and ok creakier old dudes too. The production, by Fulton Lights' Andrew Spencer Goldman, is light but revitalising, sending new sprouts through these old chords. This is a great little tune. [buy Burying the Dead - and a quick word on the "limited edition" packaging... It's one of the most elaborate indie album packages I've seen. Signed and numbered, artwork in metallic copper by Kevin Prouls, temporary tattoos, a little magnifying "lyric enlarger". So handsome. Elsewhere on the album, covers of Leonard Cohen and Billy Joel. Listen at MySpace.]


(image by Christoph Niemann)

by Sean
Pearl Earring, deluxe edition

Cains & Abels - "Run Run Run (demo)".

You found a payphone. The quarter was already in your hand. You pushed inside and the payphone's door swung back and hit you square between the shoulder-blades. The asphalt was lit up like a football pitch. You slipped your coin into the machine and dialed, and the receiver's cord lay braided at your chest. The ringing was the sound a gentle animal makes. You closed your eyes and listened. A click crackled down the line. A voice crackled down the line. It said: "Hello?"

Your eyes were still closed. "It's me," you said. You found you were smiling.

Cars came and went, as you spoke. Headlights passed over in long arcs. A man and his dog loped across the tarmac. The man seemed weary. You changed your telephone hand, closed your eyes, tried to hear every burred detail of the voice in the wire.

When the conversation had ended, you replaced the receiver. You took the sapphire from the coin return. You pushed back past the phone-booth's swinging doors and into the open air. It was warm. The stars would soon come out. You loped across the tarmac. The sapphire was still in your hand. You got to your Toyota and dropped into the front seat. You leaned your head back and remembered things. You wiped your eyes with your sleeve and reached over to the glove-box, punched it open, threw that sapphire in there with the others. There were many sapphires. [buy previous albums/cains & abels on a short tour now: chicago, bloomington, akron, pittsburgh, philadelphia, brooklyn]

(image source unknown)

by Sean
Villagers find elephant

photos by David Chancellor


Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - "I Built Myself A Metal Bird". At a certain point you say "Enough." Watch: A sky clouds. A river freezes. A bough breaks. A black cat dreams of the night it will be skinned. A mother hears her child scream. Enough! Dayeynu! But these events are not limited by their observer's will. Devastation will not relent. Death is inert. Beat 'em or join 'em.

Sibylle Baier - "Let Us Know". Or you can reside in other places, for a long time or a little. Take this chipped glass; take this worn sweater; take this lamp. A million miles away, there is starlight; a thousand miles deep, there are fish. Rest a while. Listen to the tiniest.

[buy Silver Mt Zion's Kollaps Tradixionales - I suggest the beautiful 2x10". / vast touring / music video for this song, apparently SMZ's "first-ever" video, directed by Peepers' Seth W. Owen. It's a beautiful video, showing the warm real human life that is at the heart of SMZ's music, like sap in trees. // See also, terribly, Jem Cohen's video of Vic Chesnutt. Go softly.]

[the first Sibylle Baier song in 35 years was made available in the spring of 2008. I am still waiting for more. / buy Colour Green]

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This week in Montreal:

There's an extraordinary all-day (10am-midnight) concert event at Cagibi on Tuesday, as les Mardis Spaghetti stage an anniversary celebration of adventurous music. Full line-up here.

Nadia Moss, among my favourite Montreal artist, opens a new show at Galerie Push on Thursday. (more images)

Grab Mushpot's Future Magic mix CD via Said the Gramophone while you still can.

by Sean

Hippo

Maison Neuve - "Demo (Piste 1)". Andrew found that when he cupped his hand and then hit his right ear, hard, he could see colours. He showed L. She gave him such a look. "I know I know but try," he said. She stared at him for a long moment. She had hair as golden as witchhazel. She cupped her hand and hit her left ear, hard.

"Huh," she said.

They sat side by side, socking themselves, in splendour.

[MySpace / more to buy - pick up the Limes' lovely album while you're there]

Family Trees - "Dream Dream". A song in leaf-greens, cherry reds, gauzy shades of baby-blue. An Archie comic bleaching in the sun.

[Family Trees is the solo project by Hologram's Ryan Trott / download his album at MySpace]

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(photo source)

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