Archives : all posts by Sean

Orchestre Afizam - "Kenga". A walking man came across a small box. Inside the box was a bird. It circled him, cheering, and flew away. The man continued walking. He came to another box. Inside this box was a cricket. It cricked, hopped, and disappeared into the grass. The man walked on. He found another box. Inside this box was a beautiful song. The man heard the song and said to himself: One day I will play this song on my electric guitar, in a solo, softly. The song disappeared into the sky.

Five years later, the man's lover gave him a box. He opened it. A bird flew out, cheering, and flew away. A cricked hopped out, cricking, and disappeared into the grass. The man waited. "Is there no song?" he asked the woman. "Songs are for lonelies," she said. One year later, she broke his heart.

[this is a song from the Democratic Republic of Congo. it comes to me, and i am grateful, via the blog Goldkicks, which is regularly and unexpectedly exceptional.]

Neil Young - "Transformer Man". When Dr Anderson stepped out of the Experimental Chamber, Vida was immediately at his side. "Oh Michael," she said, "I'm so relieved." He took a deep breath. He said: "Thank God, everything seems back to normal." The first procedure had gone terribly wrong, as Dr Anderson was shrunk to 20% his normal size. But now he was back, standing on the Institute's linoleum floor, sipping water from a paper cone. "I love you," she said, for the first time. He reached for her, his assistant of four years. "I love you too."

It wasn't until later in the day that a scan revealed the condition of Dr Anderson's heart. It had not been affected by the expansion ray. He did not know why. Veda and Dr Anderson looked at the readout. "Your heart is still at 20%," she said. "Yes," he replied. She was so still beside him. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Veda! It doesn't matter!" [buy]

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Elsewhere:

A lovely video of My People Sleeping's Ruby Kato Attwood, singing a love-song called "Sparrow".

Listen to "All Around", a great new song by Twin Sister, as part of Shark Attack Records' charity comp.

& thanks to all those who have left such lovely comments lately. It means a lot to Dan and I to hear from you.

Malcolm Sailor Quartet - "Looking for Something to Say, Anything to Say". The piano is doing the looking: ceaseless, inquisitive, moored. All this song's other sounds are false leads, fool's gold, lights lifting off of wing-mirrors. The Quartet stumbles into a love-affair, into melody, and Adam Kinner's sax follows that glinting route. It blossoms and fades. Other loves end more abruptly. When the Quartet grasps finally for a climax, it is the recollection of a theme: like a lost thing they pretend has been found. [MySpace / album launch at L'Envers, Fri Feb 12 - 9:30pm, Fred Bazil Quartet opens!]

Surfer Blood - "Swim". A few weeks ago, I wrote on Twitter that this band was tickling me under the chin. Weezer crossed with Vampire Weekend, I said, which is a comparison I largely maintain. But in spite of listening to Astrocoast on repeat, mostly as I build, defend and demolish gargantuan 30" snow forts, I had not yet written about this song, "Swim". I have been too busy repelling invaders and repairing avalanche-flattened sunglasses. I have been too busy in the corner of my fort, high in the Laurentian mountains, where I rest sweaty in my snowsuit and write a log of my adventures. The log is based on an elaborate metaphor: I am not a man with a snow fort; I am a surfer with a longterm career-path and two marvellous shiny revolvers. [buy]

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Montreal's Constellation Records has composed a wonderful little podcast for Scotland's Skinny magazine.

London-based Plan B magazine, perhaps my favourite music publication of the 2000s, folded last year. But they have now put all of their old issues online. Cover stories on Joanna Newsom, Arcade Fire, MIA - generally before they hit mass consciousness. My articles for Plan B over the years included a couple of features and 40-something reviews. My favourite was a review of a Silver Jews concert in 2006.

(photo source)

Vampire Weekend - "I Think Ur A Contra". You could tell me there is still snow on the mountaintop. You could say the birds were all jays. You could say, "Sean, there is a place in San Francisco where the street is pressed with seashells." Dear one, you could whisper such dreams in my ears; you could sketch symbols on postcards and chalk secrets on the cement. We could lay together, wishing, joined in fingertip. You could tilt your head toward mine, and your mouth, up. You could smile like so and shake like this and close & open those big small eyes. You could murmur, "Mmhm." And you know, I'd rest there softly, and I'd listen, and I'd be sheltered. But I think maybe I think maybe I think I maybe I too would be lying, love. [buy]

Oberhofer - "Away FRM U". It's funny you should say that Cynthia because Misty was actually my first hawk. She's the only one I didn't raise from birth. Yup straight from the egg - isn't that right Rusty? But not Misty. What's that? Oh, six years. Before that I was a superintendent. At a school, yes. Junior high-school. Oh, it's a funny story. Last day of school before the summer. I had just had my heart broken something awful. Aw, thanks Cynthia. She worked at the school. Ms Elly Anderson. Yup. She hurt me something awful. The hallways were grey and the lights were fluorescent and all these kids were so happy because it was the last day. And I didn't get out til after sundown. Everything felt dead, my feelings all straw, and who should come flying but Misty here. She crested the school and then dove down right in front of me. Stopped on the sidewalk. Stood there. I said, "Here girl". And she came. And I said, "Rip my heart right out of my fucking chest, girl." And she didn't, no ma'am. I been chasing her since. [MySpace]

Laura Gibson & Ethan Rose - "Knife". Richard was kneeling on the institutional carpet and, for the thousandth time in his life, showing his students how to plant new rhododendron in a plastic container. His shirt-cuffs were dusted with soil. One of the students said something witty and Richard took a little breath and said, "No kidding." I do not know why this was the thing to flick Richard's heart like a cricket breaking from the grass. He was leaning over the plastic container, his shirt-cuffs dusted with soil, and he realised that if he wished to run away with L. and spend the rest of his life with her all he had to do was to get up and tell them so. His car was filled with perennials.

[buy]

Bakers at Dawn - "Lester". L. watched Priya approach with her cup of tea. "Thanks," she said. They both took out their instrument-cases and opened the snaps with clacks and in that instant L. recalled the moment of last night, late, when in fatigue she had pulled apart her clarinet and chipped the cork all around the middle section. L. stared at the instrument swaddled in black velvet. "Fuck," she said. "What?" Priya asked. "The cork." "Oh," Priya said, "whatever." But L. spent the whole morning thinking about it.

[You Must Hide Your Love Forever is a free download.]

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Carl Wilson has written a short story (!) about a Charlie's Angels lunch box thermos. You can also bid on this item on eBay. All proceeds to 826 National.

(photo source unknown)

Abner Jay - "I'm So Depressed". After they took the furniture away, the house felt huge and lonely. Sam went outside to stand on the porch. Moths battered themselves against him. He felt stupid and without purpose. He went back indoors and to the pantry. There were lightbulbs, a broom, and one jar of his father's favourite brand of strawberry jam. Sam took out the broom. He swept the floors. He swept dust and crumbs into the cracks between the floorboards. He swept dust and crumbs out the back door. His father's plastic garbage bin was sitting in the back of a rattling Goodwill cube-truck. There were rectangles on the floor where the beds had laid, and the couch, and the recliner. The kitchen cupboards were lined with brown paper and there were grey circles on the brown paper. A box of dishes was at the bottom of the stairs, for Steph's kids. Two lamps were waiting for either Josie or Louie, whoever came first, in the middle of the living-room floor. There was still a bag of firewood. Sam found two nickels on the mantle, and the business card for Amigo's Resto-Bar. There was still a bottle of dish-soap, open, beside the sink. Sam poured cold water into his palms and drank from them. He opened the door to the cellar. He turned on the light and went down three steps. The cellar was filled with wine-corks. His father had drunk ten thousand bottles of wine, in his time. Now under this empty house there were ten thousand wine-corks. Sam didn't know what his father had done with the bottles. The cellar smelled of grapes, shoe leather, and life. [buy]

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Fine, heartbreaking stuff at Wattled Smoky Honey-Eater.

If you live in LA, later this month you can see Peepers, a gentle and ribald feature film that stars, among others, our own Dan Beirne.

(picture source)

Sharon Van Etten - "Love More". New music from the woman who recorded my favourite song of 2009. It's a hotter song than she's sung in the past, as if she collected the flaked red logs from a fire, set them glowing around a microphone. The harmonium wheezes happily, a tambourine rings, Sharon sings harmonies with her own voice. She sings of memory, love, and sex, but the steam that fills the room isn't the stuff of parked cars, saunas, breath on cold glass: it's a hothouse, summertime and spring, green things sprouting. It has none of the loneliness of ones and twos. "Love More" is undesolate and peopled. It's fertile. [shared via a new musicians' organisation called Weathervane / buy Sharon's album]

Beach House - "Zebra". The best song on a record called Teen Dream, but it's definitely not teenaged. Victoria Legrand gives even looks. She sings her metaphors as if they're landmarks on a map: the fact of them is more important than the awe. "Zebra"'s great strength is its guitar-line, the chords that rise and dip in unexpected grace. Each change is premature, unimagined, perfect. I have not yet learned it by heart. [buy]

Kate Maki - "Bloodshot & Blistered". The snow falls slower when you've just noticed it. It seems to hang there, in successive suspended stills. Kate Maki borrows this feeling, whispers the secret into her drummer's ear. "Bloodshot & Blistered" shifts, falls, bends forward to touch your cheek; but you never see it move. The piano, drums, organ and voices are like paintings of piano, drums, organ and voices - they don't change until you turn your back. [buy / playing in Toronto tonight]

(photograph is of Ubiquitous, by Naoko Ito)

Tindersticks - "Peanuts (with Mary Margaret O'Hara)". The waves were so small. They were so small you could hardly feel them. As if it were July and we were at the lake, freshwater at our toes; but it was February and we were at the coast. The Pacific rested against the beach like a sheet of mottled glass. The breeze slept through my shirt like a woman's breath. This thought made me raise my face, made me look at you, and you laughed. Something in the salty air made you laugh.

When it got dark we strolled through the sand to the boardwalk, trailing chutes. On your bare shoulder lay a fine, dry dust. I wiped it away with my thumb. You leaned your ear to my hand. The waves made a soft sound as we walked under the sodium lights. There were old men with ice-cream cones and little girls with toffee-apples. There were sections of shadow and sections of light, draped fronds of seaweed, tiny seashells balanced on garbage-bin rims. There were peanuts, roasted & salted & sugar-glazed & plain. The paper bags were perfect. We bought the sweet kind and they were still warm.

Our stride was the same. I ate a peanut and lowered my hand and the backs of our fingers brushed. I think I was probably in love. I ate another peanut and again the backs of our fingers brushed. There were boats on the horizon, invisible save for their lights. The sea, the sky and the whole night were invisible save for the boats' glimmering lights. We had three more nights together. We walked along the boardwalk, the whole length of that glimmering.

[buy]

Pill Wonder - "Restless". Tape loop, VHS blur, nostalgia & childhood & adolescence and all those things; but also steel drums, shopping mall radio, that pop song you can't quite sing. The melody's lush & full - the chorus so entire that it's almost an anthem. But it falls away so fast, slips like ice in a hot hand. And all you remember is the bass drum.

[while i'm generally a fan of Fluffy Lumbers, Real Estate, and the higher-profile Underwater Peoples dudes, it's this track that is the clear highlight of their Winter Review - download/buy]

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Boulder Pavement is a new & gorgeous web journal launched by the Banff Centre, where I spent time last summer. The design is gorgeous, but the content's the thing. Favourites from the first issue: Granzow's wood and glass ventriloquist dummies, Hartman's tentative conversations with icebergs, Davies's short poem, and Perrin's gentle, precise meditation on landscape and loss.