Archives : all posts by Sean

The Monks - "Pretty Suzanne". The Monks at their most sentimental. Which is to say five former American GIs, living in Germany, the sort of men that that flick cigarettes into the harbour's empty boats, that read the newspaper on the toilet, that gaze frightened into the sea at night, that teach visiting girls about drugs, that dream of weddings in sewers, that wish they knew how to build jukeboxes, that wear dark turtlenecks, that kiss like dreamboats, that shout the words of "My Girl" as they ride the Hamburg busess... which is to say a quintet of black-pepper musicians falling head over heels in love, at least for a bit, and needing to trace these feelings in coo, shriek, doowop and the growling prong of a distorted electric guitar.

"Pretty Suzanne" is one of several unreleased tracks included on the new (beautifully packaged) reissue of Black Monk Time - the Monks' single, legendary record. (Previously on StG... 1 2) Buy it from Light in the Attic on CD or 2xLP.

Monks contest! Thanks to the generosity of Light in the Attic, we are also giving away one copy each of Black Monk Time and the Monks - The Early Years 1964-1965 collection. To qualify, all you need to do is leave a comment describing the best tattoo ever, real or fictional. Particularly tattoos you can imagine on the shoulders of the Monks. Our favourite will receive both CDs. Deadline: Sunday, June 7 - 11:59pm.

(photo source unknown)

Sharon Van Etten - "Much More Than That".

Sometimes I do not have the word. I thought about this for a long time. There are always two possible reasons, I realise: (1) that I am not a better writer; (2) that there is no word.

And so, later -

- I find myself in a starry garden, my hand cupped to tiny flowers, breathing in. I have no word for these blooms. And I wonder. Is it that I am not a better writer? Or is it that there is no word?

Perhaps an encyclopedia tells me. There is a word. There are several. "Snow-in-summer", "Cerastium tomentosum". It is I who was lacking.

But suppose I go back to the garden, moonlit this time, and I cup my hand to the tiny flowers; and I breathe in the night-time; and what if then again I find I do not have the word? What if "snow-in-summer", if "Cerastium tomentosum" is not sufficient? What if with my knees on the grass the word I need is something else, but again I do not have it?

Is it because I am not a better writer? Or is it because there is no word?

I have wondered this often. Watching the wind push down a plastic chair. Standing and holding my grandfather's hand. Seeing a girl turn away. I have wondered this as I stared at a padlock; as I stared at a key; as I stared at a swan; as I bit into an apple; as I woke, at 6:45am, to the bleep of an alarm. There are no words, I thought at these moments; and always I ask if it is the words that are lacking or I who lacks them; and like Sharon Van Etten I wonder if I can improve, if I can become better, if one day I will have words for everything. If I will be able to say I love you in a way that speaks its every leap and ridge; if I will be able to say I'm sorry with words that do not tremble or glow; if I will have another word for darling, a better word, hidden and small, and dawning.

[website/buy this beautiful album]

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Elsewhere: In Paris last week, I attended a screening of this 3 Days of Take-Away Shows - a short film of a road-trip by the Blogothèque team, together with Beirut, Slow Club and Mami Chan. The film is tender and charming, but it's also utterly hilarious - anchored in large part by the vif spirit of Mami Chan (and to a lesser extent cameraman Vincent Moon himself). It's one of those little movies that underlines why I so love the work of the Blogotheque's concerts à emporter - they are wonderful films, regardless (sometimes) of music; not just recordings of a performance but a story of the things it evoked. This one is definitely wonderful and you should go watch even (especially!) if you're unfamiliar with most of the artists.

(photo is "Oxkintok Blue", by William Hundley)

Withered Hand - "Oldsmobile Car".

You were checking your email at your parents house. You had come over for dinner because your mum asked you, and you realised it had been a long time, and without Jonathan there you thought maybe the house would feel empty. It didn't, though. You ate your mum's chicken and they poured you wine and your dad had for some reason baked a cake, since when does he bake cakes?, but he had, something with peaches, and you ate it and it was pretty good.

Now your parents were in the living-room, in easy chairs, watching Law & Order. It was 8:41pm. You were at the black IKEA computer desk checking your email; the only light in the room was the big buzzing CRT monitor.

You clicked refresh and there was an email from L.

At 8:51 you padded into the living-room and asked if you could borrow their car. "Night owl," said your father.

The garage was darker than you remembered it. You pressed the button that lifted the garage door and you looked at the Oldsmobile glinting in the street-light. You got in and turned your keys in the ignition and the radio began to mumble. You sat blinking at the bottom of your parents' driveway in the rear-view mirror. You thought of L, in the park.

You got out of the car, you left it running, you scampered up the stairs to your old bedroom, to the cardboard box in the corner of the closet, under packets of unopened athletes' socks and suit jackets that didn't fit you any more. The box held cassettes. You closed your eyes and you thought of L and you grabbed a mixtape without looking. You scampered back down the stairs. "Everything okay?" called your dad, and you yelled "Yep!" just as you closed the back door with a thump.

You got back into the Oldsmobile and you clattered the cassette into the tapedeck and on the mixtape's case you saw in your handwriting the words OLDIES AND NEWIES 1996.

Looking over your right shoulder, with your hand on the back of the passenger-side head-rest, you backed out of the garage.

And you drove. The lines on the street seemed freshly painted. The conifers seemed further away from the road. The Denny's had become a Dairy Queen. The car felt good and strong & it felt like it was under your foot, like the gas pedal was the engine of the car, like you could feel its heartbeat through your right sole; and the tape played "Lola", and "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)", and something that reminded you of King Creosote, but of course it wasn't King Creosote because the tape was from 1996. And you drove toward the park where L would be waiting for you, words on her lips, and you wondered if there were more yeses or more no's on her lips, and you wondered where she was right now, walking or bicycling or still at home.

And you looked at the empty passenger seat beside you and hurtling down the highway you wanted more than anything to have L here beside you, no matter what she was going to say, no matter if it were yeses or no's; just to have her here with streetlights flashing in your faces and this cassette playing. You would take a corner and she would look at the case and she would say, "You still write your e's the same way."

["Oldsmobile Car" is from Withered Hand's new EP, You're Not Alone, recorded by King Creosote. Withered Hand is my favourite new Scottish artist and I loved his debut EP, last year's Religious Songs. Dan launches the new EP in Edinburgh on June 9 - together with Benni Hemm Hemm, Ish Marquez, Emily Scott and Sebastian Fors. Scots, mark your calendars & non-Scots, send in an order.]

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Beloved Montreal record-shop Phonopolis writes about the pleasures of Bach.

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If you speak French, read Garrincha's precise and elegiac words on Iron & Wine's "The Trapeze Singer", so that you will never hear it any other way again.

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My dear, dear, dear friend P is participating in the Ride to Conquer Cancer and is earnestly seeking donations. It would be really wonderful if you donated any amount.

(photo source)

Luke Temple's music as Here We Go Magic is part Paul Simon and part El Guincho, which of course means he sounds a lot like the Beta Band ca. Three EPs. Do you remember Three EPs? The album that John Cusack's character in the High Fidelity movie resolved to sell multiple copies of just by playing "Dry the Rain"? Yes?

Well let me play you two songs and suggest that you buy Here We Go Magic, by Here We Go Magic.

Here We Go Magic - "Only Pieces".
Here We Go Magic - "Fangala".

Certain things, most cities have. Telephone poles, sidewalk cracks, garbage bins, birds, electrical lines, traffic lights that change colour. Some things, only one city has. Mount Royal, the Eiffel Tower, Red Square, Recoleta cemetary. And some things again, we do not know. How special is this intricately wrought fence? How distinctive is this clockface? How far has this bluebird travelled? Can I find elsewhere a manhole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a great & underground hall?

Listening to "Only Pieces" and "Fangala", I feel a similar wonder. How verdant is this song? How new is this rhythm? How catchy is this line? Because it feels so extraordinary. These things have the colours you might expect to find in a thousand different places - but I have not. I find them only here. It may be Beta Band and Paul Simon and El Guincho and Panda Bear; but that's like saying it's fence and clock and bluebird. I know it is these things but - listen! Listen! It is more.

[buy buy buy / website / opening for Grizzly Bear on several upcoming dates]

(photo source)

Dirty Projectors - "No Intention". One of my favourite songs of the year so far, "No Intention" showcases the Dirty Projectors as summer pop band, as streamers in a park, as spangled yacht-sails in the harbour. But as airy as it feels, (like Spoon on a beach, or the instrumental middle-eight of Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa",) "No Intention" is virtuosic, utterly intricate. The arrangement of voices, of fingers on guitar-strings, of rhythmic twitch and back-step. There's the complexity of a bluebird hopping from branch to branch, snapping sunshine out of the sky. An illuminated colouring-book in grass greens and June golds. [buy on CD/LP/cassette]

Archivist - "Sunday Morning". This is no kind of Sunday morning I've ever known. I don't mean the heartbreak, the cotton-mouthed glumness - but the particular sort of strings and bass, the shine of tambourine and sneer of horns. Sunday morning is eggs and toast and sunlight on sheets - not dumpster clang, pavement stones, warm beer. But Archivist, friend of Pony Up, Cotton Mouth and the Dears, seeming admirer of Radiohead and the National, has known different weekends than I - Sunday mornings that are moonlit, grey, with mice in the dresser drawers. [buy/MySpace / playing again in Montreal soon]

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This weekend was a wonderful, twang-and-flash show by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, but also a double CD launch for Clues' self-titled debut and Elfin Saddle's Ringing for the Begin Again.

Elfin Saddle's new CD is so distinctive and very fine - and I've written about it before. Folk music dark as moss, tinged with Japan and Appalachia. Theirs was the better performance of the night - a band playing for one of the largest crowds of their career, one of the best gigs of their career; mesmerising us, scaring us.

Clues are the band formed by Alden Penner (the Unicorns) and Brendan Reed (Les Angles Morts, Arcade Fire at their earliest and best). They too, we've written about before. Said the Gramophone organised Clues' first-ever concert, at Pop Montreal 2007, where they played again with Elfin Saddle (as well as Horse Feathers and Casey Dienel/White Hinterland).

Clues is a frontrunner among my favourite albums released this year, an album that reveals itself more with every listen. Every time I turn it on, I discover the treasure of a different song. It's adventurous, immediately gratifying, but also much more complicated than it at first seems - songs that switchback, that change, that are reincarnated.

But this Clues concert was a disappointment. It wasn't as flawed as the one last summer, for the anniversary of the Cheap Thrills record store - but nor was it as good as that first catastrophic concert, at the McGill chapel.

The heart of Clues is expressed in one of their song titles: "Let's Get Strong". Their music is limber, dazzling, fraternal, utterly strong. All of Alden's songwriting gift - the lift and glimmer of melody, the cat's-cradle, - all of Brendan's north wind spirit. But it all relies on a kind of violence, a fighting spirit, a punk & knuckleduster glare. It's still kind, still wide-eyed and generous, but that kindness is cooked in a crucible; Clues would collapse inhabited skyscrapers to take you by the hand, would push over a bus to make you smile.

In their current incarnation, much of that vigour, that pure muscle strength, is lost. Its fury is diffused through too many musicians, its precision made sloppy by too many hands. Because the songs make so many about-faces, with false climaxes and sudden twists, I can't help but feel that more is less. Yes, sometimes two drums hitting at the same time makes it twice as hard a hit. But sometimes, two drums mean the hit is just half as hard. Sometimes ten people yelling is less than two people yelling. There were four members in The Who and three members in The Unicorns. I wish this band were small as a fist, strong enough to stick in a fire for a week.

Brendan's "You Have My Eyes Now" was the highlight of the set - so simply played, so utterly precise. The charisma of this band's leaders is all it needs - no smoke machines, no ragged edges, no chaff.

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I am going to Paris tomorrow but Montrealers should go and enjoy The National, this time playing not (alas) at le National, but at Metropolis. The sound will be great; go early and sit on the balcony with a double of Jameson.

[This post is the second in a series about my recent visit to southwestern Louisiana and New Orleans.]

Jeffery Broussard and the Creole Cowboys - "Motordude Special".

It didn't matter that we were uh, going out on Friday night. They told us that we should be ready at 6:30am on Saturday. I am usually of the belief that human beings should sleep until it is later than 6:30am, particularly when they have uh, gone out the night before. But in this case they were persuasive. Zydeco Breakfast is not to be missed, they said.

Perhaps you have not heard of Zydeco Breakfast. Certainly I had not heard of it. It sounds like the name of a clumsy Detroit punk band. In fact, Zydeco Breakfast is, well, a breakfast with zydeco music. It begins at 7:30 am.

I wake to Lafayette's morning sun and I am instantly, unforgivably warm. The blue sky seems to buzz. I meet my hosts in the lobby and they all have this funny, thinly cheery expression. It is difficult to smile at 6:40am. It is difficult to speak with the rising inflection that PR work requires. Someone makes a joke and then no one laughs, it is too early for laughing. We nod.

I ride bleary-eyed in the minivan. Louisiana's drooping trees are the bright green of a warm salad.

Our destination is the Café des Amis, in the village of Breaux Bridge. Breaux Bridge is quiet, uncrowded, and most of it is sensibly asleep. And yet... and yet... outside the Café des Amis I see the first sign that wonders may truly lie ahead. There is a line-up. Every citizen of Breaux Bridge who is awake on this Saturday morning is lining up outside for the Zydeco Breakfast, the whatever-it-is inside the Café des Amis, a parade that stretches down the block and is more local than tourist. In the summertime, we're told, people bring coolers full of beer. (No need to wait to get inside for the breakfast to begin.)

The Café des Amis is owned by Dickie Breaux. It is a big long room with whitewashed brick, high ceilings, cool air, and the best shade of sun. There is a long bar, many tables and folk art on the walls. The first thing you do when you arrive for Zydeco Breakfast is you sit down and you order a drink. (This will be the first of several drinks. It is 7:45am.) I have a bloody mary, and it is very good, there is even a green bean in it. Next I order food: crawfish étouffée with poached eggs, and cheese grits, and a café au lait so sweet that it tastes like melted-down Werther's Originals. It is the Zydeco Breakfast and I am going to do it right.

Already I am pretty happy about this whole thing. Sure, it's 7:57am but this place is nice and there is chatter in the air and I have just discovered that crawfish étouffée is delicious.

And then the band begins to play.

Many different bands play at Café des Amis but on this given morning it is Jeffery Broussard and the Creole Cowboys. I cannot see them at the front of the room but I know they are playing because there is MUSIC, all-caps, and it is present in a thousand different ways. Across the restaurant, every single foot begins to tap. Every single light in every single bulb, even the light streaming through the windows, gets a new & redoubled spark. The room has glints and movement in every corner - so many more taps and so many more sparkles that it's downright distracting, downright thrilling, and you feel the thrill along the insides of your arms, the roof of your mouth, the soles of your feet. You see it in the bright shining flick in every single pair of eyes.

All at once, the eaters kick back their chairs and grab their partners and the big dance-floor is no longer an empty space for wheeling out crawfish étouffée, no now it is a place where couples are twirling and grinning and dipping, and the accordion's full of hollondaise sauce, and the singer's got a mouthful of early morning boozing. The washboard is the sound of my wheezing morning heart revving ticktock up to speed.

There are young couples dancing, remembering honeymoons. There's an elderly couple dancing, taking the rhythm at half-speed. There a wiry dude with a handkerchief round his wrist and one more in his back pocket, to pat his sweaty face, because he dances double-fast, like a maniac, and maybe he's the greatest dancer of all time, maybe he is, dashing and slipping and picking a new pretty partner for every zydeco hit. Dickie Breaux watches from his chair and I understand how this idea could travel, this 8:33am marvel, how when Dickie and his wife divorced she opened her very own Zydeco Breakfast, in Donaldsonville, because of course she had to. Of course she couldn't go one week without this party in her living-room.

And I dance too, at least for a while, the dancing junket journalist. The compulsion to dance is not in the bass drum, high-hat, bassline or washboard - it's not even from the peer pressure. The reason to dance is the ten thousand glints; the rattle of (gold) eggs and (silver) booze in our bellies; the rollicking zing of the air around the room.

[more on Jeffery Broussard / buy]

Crazy Cousinz - "Inflation". As many of you will know, they call this "funky". This is not an adjective; it is a noun. It is the name of the genre; the same way you might say "jungle", "kuduro" or "wonky". Wikipedia says, it mixes traditional UKG beats, bass loops and synths with latin percussion. But what I like best about funky, - what I like almost as much as I just simply like this song, "Inflation", with its open-mouth spectral ah!s and paradise xylophone, - is that funky is not funky. That is, it is not funk-like. It is not James Brown, the Meters, or even Red Hot Chili Peppers. Its basslines do not swing and flick in the same way.

And how can you name an un-funky genre funky?! It's like naming a tree a bird, like naming a cake a month, like naming a baby girl an unbleached flour. I love it, I love it. It's as arbitrary as language, as dance-steps, as the place the emphasis falls in a beat. Taking a thing and making it yours. [myspace]