Archives : all posts by Sean

Cannon Bros - "Fall Down". Why are you in such a hurry? What are you in such a hurry to do? Sometimes you fall down so fast there's no chance to catch yourself. A song can snag your heart like a barbed arrow, a fish-hook on a lure. One barb and you're down. One tune, two voices, an unfettered pronouncement of drums. 99 seconds.

[bandcamp]

Shearwater - "Stray Light at Clouds Hill". Sometimes you take strength from something you are not expected to take strength from. It is as if you are reaching into the sky and taking hold of the sunbeams, bringing them with you. Something powerless lies upon the ground, or inside your heart; something impotent flickers in the water; and you pick it up. It is yours now, an amulet or a weapon. In this way I think of King Arthur's sword in the stone: here is a hilt, what is it worth, what is it good for, until the right person lifts it? Look at your life. There are hilts everywhere.

"I rode in the crosswinds," Jonathan Meiburg sings. "I sleep in the open / I slide through the fences." He is a bodiless singer, invisible and armoured, glitter in his eye. "I move in starlight," he says, over echo and echo, over a bed of shining darkness. We are weak until we are no longer weak. We are passed through and over until abruptly that passing-through, that passing-over, becomes our greatest strength. We are no longer weak ghosts; we are comrades, walking through walls.

[buy Jet Plane and Oxbow]

We/Or/Me - "Always/Sometimes". We/Or/Me's Bahhaj Taherzadeh is a man who is comfortable with slashes. He is able to meditate on two possibilities at the same time. He is fond of the either/or. (I suspect he is also fond of Either/Or.)

This is a quiet/seeking song - content, settled; but searching at the same time.

It is patient/impatient.

When quoting poems or song-lyrics you place slashes between each line, to indicate a line-break or a pause. This is a strangeness. Why do we not use periods? Why not semicolons? Commas? No: slashes. "Lately / I find / years disappear in the blink of an eye." With the slash it is as if the line-break or the pause can mean "or this". Lately or I find or years disappear in the blink of an eye.

And perhaps this is true. Slippage happens in a song's pauses. There are moments when you forget the syllables that have just been sung and you are ready to consider a new thing. The lyrics are slashed apart in the same way clouds get slashed by sky. Or this...

And always / and sometimes," Tazerdeh sings, always and sometimes / I can leave them behind.

The lyrics in a song like this are a sort of broken-up sentence, sentences that aren't sentences, slashed next to each other. Each is a moment waiting to begin and then, once it has begun, it's waiting to begin again. You can play the same chords over and again; you can play the same song on repeat. They're all there, the chords and their songs, always and sometimes; and the more they're there, the more always, the more sometimes, the more the always and the sometimes start to feel like the same thing. Constancy feels intermittent, or the intermittency constant; and then a finger across guitar strings and the lullaby begins again.

[buy Everything Behind Us Is A Dream / see We/Or/Me at London, England's The Harrison on February 17]

Coeur de Pirate - "Carry On". I have never walked a tightrope so I cannot tell you. Perhaps it is better to overprepare for your first foray, to study and practice, and study and practice, running endless rehearsals. Or perhaps it is better to go running out a little before you're ready. I do not know; I have never walked a tightrope. All I have done is other things.

Johan Heltne - "Krieg ist Krieg und Schnaps ist Schnaps".

This song evokes a particular, gorgeous melancholy for me, only I don't speak German so this particular, gorgeous melancholy is somehow completely disconnected from the particular, gorgeous melancholy expressed by native listeners to "Krieg ist Krieg und Schnaps ist Schnaps" and in fact, I suspect, from the particular, gorgeous melancholy intended by Johan Heltne himself. Who cares, right? Or really: Who cares... Wait - do I care? I feel feelings, listening to this song. Are these feelings a deception - me deceiving myself? Me deceiving myself with someone else's song? Is this a conspiracy or am I all alone on it? Did Johan do this or am I doing it entirely to myself? Is this whole song in German, like its title, or is it in Swedish, like its singer?

All this is enough to make you order a snaps and drop your head to the table. If you are doing so, hopefully "Krieg ist Krieg und Schnaps ist Schnaps" is on the turntable. Hopefully "Krieg ist Krieg und Schnaps ist Schnaps" is in your iTunes. Hopefully your battered, tattered heart can be nursed to health by a glow of synths and a scatter of drums. Which is not to neglect the saxophone. Most saxophones deserve to be neglected - they strain too hard for the attention. But this saxophone is OK. This saxophone cares about you. It is a nourishing, sensitive friend. It has noticed that the stars are out, outside. It has noticed the state of your face and shoulders and silhouette. "Krieg ist Krieg und Schnaps ist Schnaps" is playing. The saxophone knows you do not speak German, or Swedish, whatever it is, and it understands the whole thing. It doesn't mind. It will wait. It will take you home, but only when you're ready.

[buy / listen to the discography / Thank you, Arnulf.]

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Elsewhere: I did write about David Bowie, twice, for the Globe & Mail: one, two.

David Bowie died. It's a sentence that feels like a contradiction somehow. As if silver died, or the rain. Bowie was once asked which historical figure "he most identified with." "Santa Claus," he answered. As Bowie receded more and more from public life, he came more and more to feel like a story someone told you - like folklore or myth. Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, Starman, Sailor, Aladdin Sane...

But Bowie was born David Robert Jones, in London, in 1947. He died of cancer, in New York, on Sunday. In between, he released 25 albums. He had two children and uncounted lovers. He was punched in the face and thereafter one of his eyes looked different. He played saxophone, mouth harp and guitar. He renamed himself after a famous knife, something to "cut through the lies and all that." He was clever and kind and stylish; he was shapeshifting and beautiful.

The last time I was falling in love, I listened to little else than David Bowie's song Sound and Vision. I drank it down like water, again and again. When you are falling in love the main thing you cannot bear is the thought that this ardour may fade, that it may leave you. Sound and Vision was my antidote. I drank it like a tonic, treating all the old dreads, soaking my heart.

Read the rest at the Globe & Mail.

Mizan - "Looking For". For me, sometimes, envy is like a tugging. A low tugging at the centre of my heart. Usually what I am envying is secrets. Other people's secrets, or their ability to uncover them. There are these rare moments when someone lowers their arms and their arms are filled with secrets and I wish I had these secrets, wish I knew how to obtain them. I feel that low tugging. The secrets are sometimes beautiful but they are not always beautiful. I envy even ugly secrets. The secrets I envy most are the ones I know to be true. I seem them resting in somebody else's arms and see their truth like a shine upon them. I wish I had that truth. I wish I had found those secrets with all their truth. Sometimes I think about this and I am melancholy. [more]