Archives : all posts by Sean

Both these songs have unnecessary intros.

The Crown Vandals - "Guenevere".You want to go back to the 14th century, to wait in a grove by the walled city. You want to hide your drum-kit beneath under a leafy oak, conceal your guitars in a mulberry bush; cheap amps, cheap mics, cheap booze nestling among beech-roots. You want to wait there, for courtiers and commoners who steal away from the walled city - weirdos & thieves & lovers & lonelyhearts. They come loping to the grove, in tunics and bucklers, coins in coin-pouches; they turn their problems and thrills around in their heads. They hum sorrow as a lute-strum, sing lust as a minuet. They have no idea. They have never heard an amp blow out, a cymbal crack, an electric guitar-string snap. They have never heard a sound this loud. You wait in the shadow green, to teach them. [The Crown Vandals are from Montreal // they play New York and DC next month // MySpace]

Taken by Trees - "Anna". Some things just simply mostly work, like traffic. They are based on physical laws, like batteries. They ignore whims, like clouds. They are reliable, like good clocks. // But these "things" I talk about are not all boring. // Some of the "things", the ones that work and are reliable, that ignore whims and are based on physical laws // are friendship, rhythm, and sunset. // And some of the things you think are like traffic, batteries, clouds and clocks; // they're not. [MySpace / buy]

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Witchies, Mixylodian and Silly Kissers, three of Montreal's best bands, all of whom we've written lustily about in the past, are playing together (yes, together) this Friday. Le Milieu, 6545 Durocher #200, $7/$10. MP3s, courtesy of Mr Mixy: Mixylodian - "Bad Girls (Mase Cover)" /// Witchies - "Hater" /// Silly Kissers - "Easy Fantasy".

End-of-Year Plea! As usual, I will be preparing a list of the best songs of 2009. And as always, I ask for your help. Heard a wonderful song, this year? One that we haven't written about? Please email it to me. Major-label or local obscurity; indie rock, folk, hardcore, especially r&b, pop and chart hip-hop - you name it, I'll listen. But do remember: I care about the song, not the artist, not the album. Please don't send me more than one track by any given act.

(photo by Simon Roberts / source)

Flaming Lips - "Watching the Planets". Sometimes you reach for that crystal bottle because you want it to shatter. You want to grab it with your pink pretty hand and pour a dollop of wine and then when you take a sip - for all the monster in you to sour and redden, for your tendons to burst your gown and your eyes to glow like furnaces. You've taken a little drinky-drink, late at night, alone; and you know what that means, you know what that's supposed to mean. Stand up raging; shatter glass, bottle, cabinet and lamp; wreck everything; wreck yourself. That sip of ruby port and now you will find him, blow the sleep from his eyes. You'll roar in his face and tell him everything you've hidden. [Pitchfork did its thing today, and well; this is mine. / buy the startling and wonderful Embryonic]

Red House Painters - "Cruiser". My confession: I don't follow Mark Kozelek's story, here. I never do. I am not a story-song man. I can't trace lyrics, sung. I get lost in lilt and longing. I sink too deep into feel. And so no, I don't follow Mark Kozelek's story, here. Something about driving with a girl from Tokyo, listening to songs. I want Mark to know I feel sorry about this. I feel guilty. I have done him a dis-service, I think. But what I also want Mark to know is that even the people like me, way out here in Canada, listening to his songs without hearing the stories - we're listening real hard. We're listening and breathing, slow. We've put on records by Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon on so many late nights, slipped into chairs, streetlights hazy through the window. We've taken these songs with us on journeys. We've treasured them. I would not give away this song, give it up, for $20. Not for $50. Would I accept $200 to never hear this song again? I do not think I would. This song whose story I never follow. It's a song I do not understand but that murmurs to me, no matter what, you do. [buy]

(photo source - thanks andrew, see you in december)

Chad Vangaalen - "Corvette". This is a song of metaphors. Most of them are obvious. Lyrics about a he and a she, manifested as corvette and jumbo jet. Lines about millions of miles, wheels going around. But it has quieter metaphors too. Two drums represent time. An electric guitar stands in for the grim truth of life's indeterminacy. A soft clang for accident and miracle. I'm still figuring out the harmonica. [free download of Chad's Soft Airplane b-sides // buy Soft Airplane]

Manson Family Picnic - "Sounds Drifting On". He gives her gifts: a funny best friend; a yearning companion; a box of chocolates, handmade; a banjo with strings in silver, lead & gold; a bare tree, leaves stuck back with tape; a pineapple; a hot-air balloon ride; a kiss in a bottle; a photograph of a man saying, So? [buy/MySpace]

(photo is of the 1964 Indy 500 crash)

Land of Talk - "Sixteen Asterisk". "Who tore the paper?" asks Lara Wright, standing at the front of the class. They watch her and say nothing. "Didn't you hear me? Which one of you tore my paper?" She lifts it from her desk, bedraggled, crumpled and ripped in two places. "It didn't just tear itself," she says, mouth crooked. There's a funny glassiness to her eyes, something the class hadn't ever seen before. There are spots of flush in her cheek. "Nobody in all of 4-2 saw who tore this paper while I was outside with Mr Mackie?" It's just an attendance sheet, they think to themselves. "Let me ask again," Ms Wright says. Her voice cracks -cracks like dry savannah, like wood under an axe, like cold steel strings. "Who tore this?" Everyone knows Brad Farczik did it. Mr Mackie knocked on the door, waved weirdly in the tall rectangular window, Mrs Wright stopped in mid chalk-like, swallowed, said "Just a sec, guys." She slipped outside and closed the door behind her. Then Heather Luft said, "Ms Wright likes Mr Mackie," and everyone said ooooh, and Mo Singh tossed a pencil at Adam F, and Adam P tossed a pencil at Adam F, and Lulu, Stacy and Merecedes started fiercely passing notes. And then Brad Farczik, speeded by the thrill of it, rushed to the front of the class, climbed onto Ms Wright's chair. Everyone gaped, Brad posed, girls laughed. Everyone waited to see what Brad would do next. He hesitated. Through the door he could see Ms Wright's back, and one hand raised toward Mr Mackie. It was 11:22 am. Brad Farczik picked up the attendance sheet, tore it up, crumpled it in his hands, held it above his head. The class cheered. Then he dropped it to the desk, jumped from the chair, ran back to his seat. // Now Ms Wright asked "Who tore this?" and everyone was silent. And something inside Ms Wright tore in two places. "WHICH ONE OF YOU DID IT?" she shouted. "Fuck, please- please, just who." // Brad Farczik put up his hand. [buy]

GOBBLE GOBBLE - "o Sacred Dandruff". In the land of slides, everyone takes slides everywhere. You slide from your bed to the breakfast table; from your kitchen to your workplace; from your workplace to the fancy restaurant with the glass of Syrah. It's fun. The world slips by, your friends and family slide in parallel paths, with different accelerations. Sometimes you see dogs on the slides, or cats, or birds in full feather. Other times it's enemies and long-lost lovers. It's easier than driving, than cycling, than airplanes; in the land of slides, everyone takes slides. But then sometimes you don't want to take the slide. Sometimes you want to walk. You want to be able to stop, to clasp hands, to kiss a chance encounter on both of its cheeks. Sometimes you have a heart-attack on a slide, or a sneezing fit, or a bout of homesickness. You want to stop, you want to stop, you want to stop. You want to stop. Sometimes the slides just feel like you're falling down. [buy/MySpace]

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Marcello Carlin writes about the Beatles' White Album.

(photo source unknown)

Matias Aguayo - "Rollerskate". Cat made of grated ginger; chase her across town. Flit over fences, dive under gates, climb up ivy, slip into open windows. Steal silver necklaces, little diamonds, whole satchels full of catnip. We give lovers tiny kisses as they lay in their beds, breath rising & falling, then me and my cat of grated ginger leap onto widowsill and out, skimming the clothesline, gleaming in the white sun. Slide down eaves onto an Almost skateboard with Bones Swiss bearings, Venture trucks, four Ricta All-Stars. And oh, me and the kitty-cat glide. [buy]

Men Diamler - "Black as a Cat in the Morning". My dog is made of hematite. Hematite is a mineral, a heavy form of iron (III) oxide. Max is steel-gray and reflective. He is a labradoodle. He has a hardness of 6.1 (Mohs scale). Max is heavy, heavier than I can lift; he moves when he wishes to move, and he does not move when he does not wish to move. Normally he is copacetic. But this morning - oh jeez. I woke up late, had just ten minutes to walk him before catching the bus to work. We walked, as usual, past the Gamba coffee-shop and Fairmount Bagel. We walked past the Académie Plateau and the triplex with the glowing cube. And yet just as we turned the corner back onto Parc avenue, outside one of the shops that sells baby clothes for Hasid families, Max stopped. He smelled something. It was a spot that just looked like asphalt, normal pavement, but Max smelled something. He halted totally, lowered his twitching nose to the concrete. He sniffed, sniffed, sniffed. I let him be for a while. But then we needed to go. We really needed to go. And Max wouldn't move. My hematite dog would not budge. He was still sniffing the asphalt, where some quartz schnauzer had wee'd or something. "Come on, Max," I said. "We gotta go, Max!" After a while I raised my voice: "MAX!" I tugged at his leash, put my whole weight into it. He didn't seem to feel it. He was blinking and sniffing, very cutely. "Max, PLEASE!" I said. I nudged him with the toe of my boot, then the tip of my finger. "MAX WE GOT TO FUCKING GO COME ON," I said. I shoved him. His hematite exterior reflected me, greasily. "MAX JESUS CHRIST." People were staring at me. The owner of the baby clothes store had arrived and was unlocking her door. "Max," I hissed, "come on please please come on I'll bring you back here later want a treat i have treats at home please max." Max gazed at me for a second, then lay down. I just about lost it. I looked at the time. I looked at the white sun arcing over my head. I squatted down beside him. "Max, I'm gonna lose my job if you don't come along." My hematite dog sneezed. [MySpace / thanks, Milo]

(photo source unknown)

El Perro Del Mar - "Change of Heart (J Rintamaki remix)". A remix of one of my favourite songs of this year. And it is one of those rare remixes. You may have noticed we do not post them very often, remixes I mean, even though they are very popular. It's because this is a blog about "wonderful songs", not "other versions of songs". However this remix, it is one of the rare ones. It is itself a wonderful song. It takes "Change of Heart" and it changes the contrast. It changes the hue & saturation. It makes it darker in places, and brighter in others, and in places the differences are too faint to see. No longer is "Change of Heart" a glossed and despairing kind of Fleetwood Mac; now it is a doomed dive, a rain-soaked soft-rock Knife. It is terrifying, persistent, hurt. It is awful and rare.

The first time I wrote about "Change of Heart", I told the story of a dead relationship. But J Rintamaki's version tells the story of a relationship that is petrified; that has been haunted by ghosts for ten thousand terrible & unending years. No one has yet found an axe. [buy]

School of Seven Bells - "Half Asleep (alternate version)". Yes & yes, yes it's another, a different mix of my #6 "best song of 2008". And it's great, it's wonderful, this starry ballad written over with filigree. You see the chime of an electric guitar does a special thing to kids raised on the music i was raised on, who heard pearl jam and radiohead at a particular age, who closed their eyes and wished for teenage love even as coldplay were preparing their first hit... We, jaded now, knowing better, "traded our guitars for synths", but we still feel a special prickling thrill at the sound of pick on strings; and well here it is, golden; that prickling thrill; and all the song's treasures still shine like christmas ornaments. [buy the deluxe reissue of Alpinisms]

(drawing by Maxwell Loren Holyoke-Hirsch)

Black Feelings - "Golden Children". King runs. Faster than you, faster than death. He catches eagles, panthers, thieves, wives. He glows white at night and black at day. Coughs rubies, spits diamond, shits topaz. Breaks walls, kills sin. He splits beings right open, twists spines into crowns, uses stones for eyes. Sees everything. [Black Feelings, Montreal's new fierceness, is available now from the label that brought you the Unicorns -- buy (preferably on LP).]

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During filmmaker Vincent Moon's talk at Pop Montreal, he played a clip from his Take-Away Show with Kazuki Tomokawa. None of us knew who Tomokawa was. Vincent confessed he didn't know who Tomokawa was before he went to Japan. But oh my gosh, the film, the musician. We were dumbstruck. Strange, terrifying, tarry with feeling. An old man yelling. Blogotheque has now posted the first video from these sessions. It's not the video we watched in Montreal, but I assume that's forthcoming. I can't think of a better way to follow up Black Feelings.

Finally, I am writing a tribute to the band Sister Suvi (RIP). Please email me (ASAP) if you would like to share any memories or thoughts.