Archives : all posts by Sean

Vic Chesnutt died on Christmas Day. He was a songwriter who lived in Athens, Georgia. He wrote one of my favourite songs of this year, a song about flirting with death, a song where he sang with forceful life: "No, I am not ready." I don't know what to do with the fact that now he is gone. I do not know whether to be sad. Maybe he was ready.

No, listen, I have to be honest: I'm so angry. I'm not sad. I'm angry. Angry at a healthcare system, yes, that betrays its citizens. Angry at Vic Chesnutt, for leaving us. But more than anything, angry at those black moments, those tiny fucking black moments, like cinders, that alight on your shoulders and cloak the stars and let life seem so easy to wink out. I don't believe in fate, or justice, or a natural order. Those black moments don't come because they're deserved. They happen because they fucking happen: the way 2:59pm happens, the way December 25th happens, the way one morning you wake up and you feel like shit. They're like the opposite of wonders. They are small, mundane dooms. And for all the loves, friendships, treatments, medications, songs and stories, there will always be some of these small dooms left, winging.

I am not as familiar with Vic Chesnutt as I wish I were. He recorded 16 albums in less than 20 years, four in the last two. His songs were so rich - wild and peppered. I listened to them one at a time. They made me feel ugly, sometimes; or very beautiful. They reminded me of the dooms. But also they reminded me of life, of perseverence and celebration (and also more modest things: petty grievances, urban folklore, girls in gingham dresses).

I do hope that maybe, somehow, somewhere, in some manner I am not quite able to believe in, Vic Chesnutt is at peace and dancing. These past days, I have been unable to listen to his music. I am unable to now, and so there is no dandy mp3 for you here. (Those who do not know Vic's work, look here, here, here, here.) But I suppose I have the rest of my life to listen to his songs. And I will try to chase away those black moments when I glimpse them. I will go into rooms and say: Get. I will light fires where fires have gone out. I will furiously try, for Vic and all the others.

Please donate to Vic Chesnutt's family.

Ryan Driver - "When Were You In Mexico?". He and Antonia had stood in the doorway and kissed. The mistletoe hung over their heads, gently conspicuous. They kissed & they kissed. In the living-room window, the stars were turning on a disc. The Christmas tree was plugged-in and blinking. He and Antonia kissed, peppery from gingersnaps. She was long and he was tall and their hands were the same size. // It was six years later when he stood in the same doorway, opening the same box of plastic mistletoe, and remembered this moment. Clara was in the next room, wrapping presents. Their hands had been the same size. [buy / thanks, Nathan]

the1shanti - "I ♥ Olivia Munn". In Nathan Laskar's quest to produce a record for Olivia Munn (I am not familiar, but Google tells me she is talented), he has done a wise thing: he has made a killer track. It's not an ode to Munn - he only mentions her in the hook, nervously - it's instead a show of bravado, skills, of rhyme & dance & tip-of-tongue. No flattery, just backflips; the tang of novelty-rap, sure, but the1shanti evokes the mincemeat chaw of MF Doom, or even MIA's elastic flow. When he tells the story of the Bean, his little clone, it's as if he knows he's getting distracted, knows he's digressing, yet it doesn't matter. He's having too much fun. He'll wriggle through the seaweed, gather nonsense, "put everything I ever want in the chorus". He'll make her fall for him. [website/open-source hip-hop]

(photo source)

Woodpigeon - "Music Belongs To Those Who Make It". This is, I presume, a song about the music business's empty suits. (And not, I hope, the biz's bloggers.) But Mark Hamilton's artistic license, his sticking guns, aren't represented in roaring shouts or a steely stare. Instead, he executes one of the most precise songs of his career: something carved out of piano, voice, clarinet and strings. Everything is perfectly measured; nothing is to excess. And yet the song is not timid. It is merely quiet, baroque, sturdy as a man with a notebook full of marvels.
[buy Die Stadt Muzikanten and get all of Balladeer, from which this is taken, for free.]

Midlake - "Rulers Ruling All Things". As the press release says, Midlake's new music forsakes 70s soft-rock for the glens and valleys of British folk-rock. But Jason Upshaw can't play guitar like John Renbourn, Tim Smith can't sing like Bert Jansch (let alone Sandy Denny), and Midlake aren't as haunted as Espers. So what I've heard of the result isn't much like "Tamn Lin": it's American; it's lakes and canyons; it's eagles and dust. Midlake's melancholy is warm, gorgeous, untouched by rain; full of birches. [buy 12"]

(photo by Alison Scarpulla - source)

Sorry for all the technical troubles here this past week. It's unfortunate (and unusual). We're still trying to get all our troubles hammered out and apologize for any hiccups. Fingers crossed that everything will be better soon.

Moderat - "Rusty Nails". The dark treacle of these vocals is at first too sweet, but Sascha Ring's singing resolves itself into something that recalls Elbow's Guy Garvey. (This is good.) There's nothing else here to remind you of Elbow, however: it's dubstep skitter, looming synths, the wail of an empty city. It's not quite beautiful - and also not quite lost. [buy]

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Elsewhere:

I highly recommend the first MP3 from Shearwater's upcoming Golden Archipelago, "Castaways".

I'm also really smitten with Portishead's new song, "Chase the Tear". It's tense, upbeat and kraut - and I can't get enough of it. Alas, it's an Amnesty charity single, and Amnesty are wonderful, and so I won't post it here - but please don't hesitate to buy the song here.

Dañez vs Rifhes - "see u fallin". Sinead O'Connor as ice-sculpture, run through with a snowblower, scattered glittering into the street. This is a remix that's all shards - the pure chorus uttered only once, if that, and when it comes it's like a prayer that makes it through all that cloud; a love-letter that makes it through the slot. [thanks so much, Andrew - send more any time / free download / site]

Hop Along, Queen Ansleis - "Bay Area Baby". Hop Along's singer does everything with her voice: bends it, cradles it, throws it, tears it, strips it of bark, builds a lincoln-log house. It's the changes in her voice that push the song along, make it breathless. (Who needs the glockenspiel? The power's in that dusty roar.) I don't get what the song is about, don't get what the band name is about (though they've now abbreviated it to plain old Hop Along) - but there's an addictiveness to this complicated, peppery track, its slopes of changing tune. [thanks Luke / MySpace]

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Christina Courtin - "Rainy". [buy]

It snowed all day, Wednesday; things got buried.

I helped a Hasid in black push a car out of the snow. He was standing next to a telephone pole, bird chest heaving, holding a shovel. An older man was forcing the gas on a white Chevrolet, a car like my grandfather used to have, twisting the tires every which way. It skidded and slipped on the snow. I said, "Can I help push?" The younger looked at me. His eyes flashed from surprise to happiness to eagerness, like film passing in front of a projector. I lowered my hood. I kneeled into the curb. "Go," we said together. He had a yiddish accent; it made him sound German. He sounded so young. I thought: I'm young too. We pushed. It didn't work. The car slipped in the slush. We straightened. We tried again. We straightened. Before we strained a third time, two more people came over. They squinted in the flurries. One was a swaggery guy in a leather jacket, looked Greek or Turkish. He gave orders to the driver. The other was a girl, a young girl, French. She smiled at me like we had both stumbled across something, an amazing icicle maybe, in the woods. "One, two, three," we said together. We pushed. We straightened. "One, two, three," we said. The car moved, it moved and it was away, and the young Hasid said "Thanks; thanks so much," but we were away too, all of us with hoods raised, away from each other, down the white-packed street, bent into the blizzard. None of us said goodbye.

I know I should have said goodbye.

My People Sleeping - "Take Anything". [buy/MySpace]

I could rattle off some shit about stepping through mirrors and the steam of a kettle, but all I really want to say is: you wonder if all it takes is choice to make something easier. You decide: ok, and then it is; you shed your skin like you're just taking off a shirt.

Here's a song in shades of hope and loss. The organ and guitars are just struts for the singers to stand on, things to cast shadows upon their faces. They sing different kind of songs. They sing separate and together. But they are not singing for each other. (Unless they choose to be.)

Maybe if you step through the mirror, you can hold your face right up against the steam.

My People Sleeping do not sound anything like Fleetwood Mac, but this is the picture their press release paints, these days: a gang of former lovers, and fireflies flying. I am excited to see what their band is, these days, when they play the CD release for Feye this Friday. It is in Montreal, at Sala Rossa, and they will be accompanied by three great opening acts: Adam & the Amethysts (with new band, new songs), Mountain Man Pat Jordache (Patrick from Sister Suvi), and North, My Love (Katherine Peacock, of Mussaver, Coal Choir, Dorien Hatchet, and formerly My People Sleeping). It costs just $8 ($7 more gets you the album) and if you live here, you should go.

(There's another fine concert on Saturday night, with Jane Vain, Mixylodian and Mountain Man Pat Jordache again. It's at Green Room.)

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Do listen to: Gorilla vs Bear's favourite songs of 2009.

(original photo source unknown, thanks sirhc)

Sleigh Bells - "Ring Ring". Didn't hear this until late last week, but here's a song better than Sleigh Bells' late-breaking addition to my Best of 2009 list. Loose-fitting indie pop that's been weaned on r&b, that's got the nimblest little groove. "Ring Ring" is breath & snap & jingle, like the office Xmas party that might go late, that goes late, with the girls you weren't sure would come; there they are; hi. It's a winter-ready raspberry jam. [Sleigh Bells' MySpace]

Beyonce - "Halo". A few days ago, I listened to this song as I walked home. First I heard it from a car stopped at a red light, sound coming cloudy through the windows. I heard it and thought yes, slipped my headphones on, chose the song with fingers stinging in the cold. Made private, the song changed. Standing at the intersection, hearing Beyonce on the radio, I had heard a hit: a public ballad, for the whole world to share. These moments later, walking alone - it was an intimate thing. I was staggering a little, because of different things, and "Halo"'s drums were my demolitions. I felt them like two-hundred tomorrows, winking shut. And they were quieter than I expected. [Thanks, Neva / BUY]

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