Archives : all posts by Sean

Villa Villa Nola just released a digital-only split EP by Dishwasher and Cotton Mouth. Here are two songs, there are two more at the site, and then you should just buy the thing already. It's good.

Dishwasher - "Happy Valentine's Day". Every day I pass by where Dishwasher works. (He doesn't work as a dishwasher.) I say "Hey," and he says "Hi". He is always standing at the counter, in front of a stack of Panda Bear LPs, sewing. I say, "Were you out with your laaaaady last night?" and he blushes, bashful-shuffles. He was always out with his lady. Dishwasher is an indomitable ladykiller. He is an unstoppable hook-up artist. One look from his marble-blue eyes and a pretty girl is lost. I'm always seeing him in Laurier Park, teaching a new date to hopscotch; or on the subway with a sweetie, "just spending the day on the metro"; or on the airplane heading to Paris for a "romantic weekend". He's always wearing the same corduroy jacket and the same corduroy trousers but every day he wears a different collared shirt. There he is with it on the shop-counter, sewing in his new lover's name.

Dishwasher is Martin Cesar is in Think About Life, who play songs you can dance to.

Cotton Mouth - "You Are A Pragmatist". It was a Wednesday and Bud Flaherty was at the photocopier, listening to the whine as it scanned each page. He looked down the aisle of cubicles to the window. Outside, red petals were falling. Bud narrowed his eyes. He looked back down at the photocopier. It whined. Walking back to his desk, Bud almost tripped on some vines. He gave them a kick. He sat down at his desk, brushed aside the chestnuts & acorns & curled leaves & helicopters. He smacked pollen out of his mouse-ball. He loaded up PopwerPoint and got to work. Every now and then a bat would fly into the monitor but Bud just kept working. It was Wednesday. Maybe he'd call Clara at lunch.

Cotton Mouth is Martin Horn, backed by members of Parlovr, who play songs you can shove to.

[buy]

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Elsewhere:

Carl Wilson has finally written up his experiences on the Colbert Report.

The story of the doomed crate sphere. (via why^5)

Tim Schwartz's Paris, Physical is my favourite conceptual artwork in eons.

(photo source unknown - thanks Robin!)

Three songs because Said the Gramophone is a sampler of really good songs, and all of these songs are really good.

Emperor X - "Spieltier".
Emperor X - "A Violent Translation of the Concordia Headscarp".
Emperor X - "Go-Captain and Pinlighter".

Another wonder and marvel, releasing music for free. Jacksonville, FL's Emperor X exist on the same (very vital, very 2009) spectrum as Francois Virot - at one pole there are the looping whirling chants of Animal Collective, at the other the heart-on-sleeve work of The Microphones, Neutral Milk Hotel and even very early Wolf Parade.

But such synonyming is clumsy, a crude way of articulating why Emperor X's songs resound. I'm not taken with the "experimental noise" half of Blythe Archives II, but the other songs - short, bleated, wilder than at first they seem - have seized me by the lapels and hurled me across the city. There are songs that could ripple flags, power mills, rend umbrellas.

They're nonsense phrases set over galloping acoustic guitar, mingling handclaps, sudden blares. I don't know what a "spieltier" is, but it sounds like it could rally wolves. I don't know what the "Concordia Headscarp"'s meaning is, but when Matheny sings of tilled wastelands, bent kickstands, I picture just skimmed fields and raked skies. And "Go-Captain and Pinlighter", well its ghosted football cheers evoke the loneliest small-town Friday night lights. Sodium whites on empty parking-lots, cool astroturf, a thousand shuffling cleats and five hundred thirsty hearts. Songs don't get much better.

Emperor X are finishing a tour at the moment - in California and Portland, OR. I'm very sorry I missed them in Montreal; don't make my mistake.

Emperor X also distribute unreleased music, videos and other materials through geo-caches. Apparently a new one is being released tomorrow.

My thanks to karpe waters.

(photo source / by Meghan Dahn)

Herman Düne - "Show Me The Roof". An old song by Herman Düne, a song about being directed to the roof. There are lots of things you can do on a roof, some good and some bad. But this is a song about the good ones. This song suggests that going to the roof is the best way to cure yourself of the blues. From the roof you can see the whole city; you can sit with your friends and drink beers and there's nothing separating you from the sky. You can toast starlight, clouds, the city below. You can clink glasses with angels. David-Ivar sings that he wants to install himself in his lover's brain, like a huge fucked-up comforting software taking over anything that could make you worry. But he realises going to the roof can work just as well. Just sit here for a little while. Lean your head on my shoulder.

Herman Dune will almost definitely not play this song tonight. But they are playing Montreal's Il Motore. Come along. Maybe we'll end up on a roof.

(photo by Michael Hughes)

While the rest of MBV salutes the debut album of Micachu & the Shapes, streaming here today online, (and Dan will be writing about a song tomorrow), here's a few words on tracks from Filthy Kids, the Micachu mixtape that got me so excited in the first place.

Micachu - "Had Enough".
Micachu - "Train for a Brain". (with Golden Silvers?)
Micachu - "Soon Dun Blud".
(These tracks obviously feature other vocalists, but I can't squint through the mixtape liner notes to figure them out!)

Three short half-scampers of something, one-minute two-minute clips of sound, of whistle and grime, London swagger and Micachu's twee-wonky production. Yes, she's released an album called Jewellery with her band, the Shapes, but Micachu is also a fine London producer, a woman who slips into studios with garage MCs, grim spitters, and makes them songs. I think I prefer her production work to her own pop stuff; the way her sugar-twinges rub off on these growly rappers, the way she sprays sweet corn-syrup blood in the clubs' darkness.

Each of these scraps-of-song is something you could keep in a pouch at your belt, Wily-Kit or Wily-Kat, things to throw at the slightest provocation. Face a muggger, a wild dog; toss "Soon Dun Blud" and in the smoke, flee.

[Download the Filthy Friends mixtape for free at Micachu's MySpace. / Stream her album at MBV, today (Monday) only. / Listen to "Calculator" (and read Matt's comments) at Fluxblog. / Listen to "Lips" (and read Ryan's comments) at Catbirdseat. / >Album review at Chromewaves. / She plays SXSW and NYC soon.]

(photo source)

The Daredevil Christopher Wright - "Clouds". Said the Gramophone tries hard not to be one of those music-blogs that recommends ten "awesome!!!!!!!" bands each week. Oh sure, we might post about ten different bands - but what we are posting is wonderful songs. Not every band we write about is at their peak, not every album a song is taken from is marvelous. And so it's with some embarrassment that for the second time this week I say: Here's something pretty great.. The Daredevil Christopher Wright are from Wisconsin and this record was mixed by Bon Iver's Justin Vernon but those are just the things that help lazies write a lede. What's more important is that In Deference to a Broken Back gives life and thrill to a genre I had mostly left for dead. This is folk-rock still fiercely flowering, bloody bleeding, finding new trees to climb. As with the recent albums of Okkervil River, there are gestures toward other sounds - 60s pop, guitar jangle, - but this band subsumes those influences with much greater skill. Compared to Fleet Foxes' melodic narcolepsy, these songs feel muscular & playful. And there's nothing of the Decemberists' emotional distance (let along their studious high-concept shtick). "Clouds" starts with just acoustic guitar and vocal harmony but there's a whole ravine of bassline, flurries of handclap, a boxer's fancy footwork.

The Daredevil Christopher Wright haven't yet made a masterpiece, but I feel like they might have found a map.

[Amble Down will release this album in May. This is the band's MySpace.]

Preak Faeans - "Wintering Out". I heard that this worked in Norway. What you do is you get out your brooms. Everyone gets out their brooms. You paint your brooms bright colours - yellow, red, egg-shell blue. You put on your toques and your mittens. And then all together, up and down the street, you sweep away the snow. You sweep it into the middle of the road, into a big icy snowy pile, and then the sun melts it, and the winter is gone. It becomes summer. Then you can put away your toques, mittens and brooms. You can take a deep summer breath. You can stand on your balcony, put out the flowerboxes, catch the eye of a pretty thing on a bicycle. I heard that this worked in Norway.

[the artist formerly known as Freak Paeans (see prev) is offering his new album, Wintering Out, as a free download for just one month. The album will be released on CD in April - pre-order.]
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Elsewhere:

They are constantly posting new stuff and certainly you should follow the site yourself, but the Hood Internet's Beirut/Ghostface mash-up, "Save Me Concubine", is one of their finest in a long time.

I'm so excited about my friend Abby Mcdonald, once of the musicblog Poptext, who is just about to publish her first book. Sophomore Switch is a young adult novel about two girls who switch places. It is also about celebrity, feminism, happiness and (I assume) boys. I haven't read it yet but I've placed my pre-order and can't wait to while away a day on a Montreal er beach. New Yorkers can go see her at a NY Public Library reading on March 10. Abby's a wonderful writer, with prose that's fun, eminently readable, and at its best shot through with a dazzling, human vivacity. Congratulations, Abby - i hope for all good things.

(photo of striped icebergs - source unknown... I think from the Associated Press or another wire agency.)

Does anyone have any good ideas for contests? We're trying to brainstorm interesting contest formats - things we can ask of people that are easy, creative, worthwhile. Please give us your thoughts in the comments!

One of my favourite recent discoveries is Twin Sister, a band from New York.

Twin Sister - "Ginger". Wake up with your redheaded lover; count their freckles; make a peppery omelet with whole mint leaves; pull on sweaters and jeans; pull off the sweaters and fool around some more; go for a walk; gravel in yr boot; ice cracks; clouds like stuffing come loose; cars spit salt; a boombox on a windowsill, "Maps" all sloppy-booming; spanish plums; turkish nectarines; canadian chewing gum; unlocked doors; sweaters off; watch the Breakfast Club; open the french doors; stand on the balcony, imagine where the ivy will grow; and later, beside 418 freckles, you dream.

Twin Sister - "I Want A House". The first half of this song is about how good it would be to move in with your lover. It's coo and thump, swing and lick; it's blue and rose. And then the second half of this song is about what it's like once you've moved in. It's a paradise in windchime and bassline, hair on pillow and ice in glass. I can't help but imagine Daft Punk passed out, unconscious; and in that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly reverie, laying in bed, the sun touches the drapes, touches the floor, leaves fingerprints on yr chest.

Twin Sister is a band that makes beautiful, reaching, hot music. All of their superb Vampires with Dreaming Kids EP, which has dry grooves and wet spots and even British folk fingerpicking, can be downloaded at their website. They are also documenting the musical process, posting snips of songs and videos as these songs and videos are made, trying to be "transparent", like ghosts, or memories, or lace.

They play New York's Lit Lounge on March 7, and the Stood @ SUNY Purchase on April 4.

(photography by the inimitable William Hundley)