Archives : all posts by Sean

When I met Amber Albrecht, I was wearing my suit. I had just been at a job interview. I was visiting my friend Kit, who had an exhibition on, and as we were talking this small woman came in. She had brought fancy markers and, I think, her lunch. Somehow, just looking at her, she seemed like she had a forested spirit. (I don't really know what that means; think birch bark, poisonous berries, moss.) Kit said, Sean, Amber; Amber, Sean. She was there to do some drawing with Kit. And then I went Uhhhh... and asked if she was Amber Albrecht. Because I had just been wandering around the internet, looking upon the works of artists, and one of these artists was a remarkable Montrealer called Amber Albrecht, and Amber's work in particular I had been gawping at, dumbfounded. She made drawings & prints that were beautiful, elaborate, with extremely fierce, strong spirits. I guess that makes them sound like pretty pictures of lions or falcons but no, Amber's art recalled much more serious things. Half-a-Daguerreotype, maybe, of the witch that Hansel once met.

Anyway it's now a long time later and Amber is about to open a solo show at Montreal's Division Gallery, 372 Ste-Catherine, Suite 311. The show is on from February 28-April 4, and the vernissage takes place 3pm-6pm on Saturday. (The gallery will also be open very late for Nuit Blanche.)

I hope you like them as much as I do. Please leave Amber your comments!

[Amber Albrecht lives in Montreal, inside a giant bee-hive. Demarcations is showing at the Division Gallery from this Saturday, February 28 until April 4.]

(Previous guest-blogs: The Whiskers, Silver Jews, artist Ariel Kitch, artist Aaron Sewards, artist Corinne Chaufour, "Jean Baudrillard", artist Danny Zabbal, artist Irina Troitskaya, artist Eleanor Meredith, artist Keith Greiman, artist Matthew Feyld, The Weakerthans, Parenthetical Girls, artist Daria Tessler, Clem Snide, Marcello Carlin, Beirut, Jonathan Lethem, Will Butler (Arcade Fire), Al Kratina, Eugene Mirman, artist Dave Bailey, Agent Simple, artist Keith Andrew Shore, Owen Ashworth (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), artist Kit Malo with Alden Penner (The Unicorns) 1 2, artist Rachell Sumpter, artist Katy Horan 1 2, David Barclay (The Diskettes), artist Drew Heffron, Carl Wilson, artist Tim Moore, Michael Nau (Page France), Devin Davis, Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Hello Saferide, Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi), Brian Michael Roff, Howard Bilerman (producer: Silver Mt. Zion, Arcade Fire, etc.). There are many more to come.)

There are at least two ways to be a curmudgeon.

• Sole & the Skyrider Band - "A Sad Day For Investors (Astronautalis remix)". You can build a house out of cinders, chalk and dustbunnies. A perfect house, no one would ever know but you. Then you sit in your IKEA parlour with friends, all sipping Glenmorangie, and you're the only one who knows: this whole place is cinders, chalk and dustbunnies. You hold yr curmudgeonliness to your own chest and walk around town chewing on a piece of paper, a little slip that has the word SOURPUSS written in bitter ink. You glare at the news-agent. You shake your head when you see someone buy an extra-large ice-cream cone. If they only knew. You sit in your corner office and look onto the city and suspect, every day, that maybe this whole place is cinders, chalk and dustbunnies. [buy/MySpace]


• Rihanna ft. the Dream - "Hatin' on the Club". You can wake up early and while the sun is low, start making jars of sky. Cover your kitchen table with mason jars and pour sky blue sky into every one of them, boiling & sealing & setting them near the patio door. When your boyfriend arrives, that asshole in sunglasses, you don't go with him. You don't go out. You fold your arms and mouth the words "No way." Instead, as he watches you through the patio doors, you drink that sky. One by one you twist open the lids of the jars, your hold them up to him, and then with the sun nooning through to you you drink that sky up, drink it in front of him, in glinting gulps; stand all alone in your apartment drinking a hundred jars of sky. [official website]

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Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes, Blackout Beach, Swan Lake) has a blog and it's wonderful. (Years ago, we asked him to do a guest-post for Said the Gramophone. He never answered. Carey, if you're out there... please!)

This time-lapse video of a particular intersection on London's Abbey Road is getting a lot of play, but to be honest after about a minute and a half I was tired of tourists' hijinks. But I kept watching. Why? Because I was smitted by the song, Blame Ringo's "Garble Arch". (The band is not actually a Beatles cover band or anything - their name is revenge from a previous [and rather spurious] legal threat by Richard Starkey.) [buy]

The Phantom Band - "Throwing Bones". Get in the car, son! We're going on a trip. Roll down the windows, choose a radio station, crack open the Glosette Raisins. That blue sky is the blue of your mother's eyes. Those green trees are the green of your grandfather's eyes. The world's the stuff of all your ancestors, son. Never glare at a rain-cloud, never curse a mudpuddle, never glower. Love, that's what I say. The trunk is full of skeletons and we're taking them to the sea. [buy]

Emmy the Great - "MIA". Don't listen to this song because the chorus talks about M.I.A. - listen to it for the weird little cuckoo pipes. I mean the "LOO-la, loo-LA" at the corners of the lines, notes whose instrument I can't trace, sounds that seem at first like sweet Hello!s, like signposts of twee, and then gradually change into something else. Because this gentle song is ultimately a song about things being wrong, wrong as in not-right, and the weird little cuckoo pipes are the only musical marker of this. They turn in place and become very mildly discordant, just one step off, and to me it's the perfect sound for nostalgia soured, & dreams' sudden sunset. [buy]

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Thanks to, er, Jian Ghomeshi for the mention of Said the Gramophone on Q yesterday - if anyone from the show is out there, could they let us know how to hear it? It didn't make it into the podcast. Thank you! My mum was delighted.

SITE NEWS: I've taken the liberty today of introducing Said the Gramophone's NEW, FANCY comments widget ajax feature swish swish swish! Hopefully will encourage more commenting, conversations and talky-talky. Try clicking on 'Comments' and behold! (Will only work from saidthegramophone.com proper.)

(photo source)

Shelby Sifers - "Are You Devo? (The Spirituals remix)". If I had heard this remix last year, when it came out, it would have been on my Best Songs of the Year list (ps: this list is still online!). But no I just heard it last week, trollin' around after the Sarcastic Dharma Society. Shelby is a singer I know, but Tyler Tadlock & The Spirituals - they are new to me.

"Are You Devo?" is a song about loving someone as fiercely as you love a song. "Are you a man or are you Devo?", Shelby asks. "Because I get the same strange feeling next to you / as when I put my favourite record on." It's an odd thing to hear, coming from Shelby. Devo evokes blippy synthesisers, energy domes, "Whip It" - not the twisty earnestness of her songs. It's herky-jerk.

But what I later realise - and what the Spirituals understand from the beginning, - is that Sifers isn't saying that "my love feels like Devo". She's saying "my love feels like how Devo makes me feel". Which is to say, more herk- than -jerk, lunging and longing and lusting and leaping, breathing and dreaming, makes her feel alive and full of sparks. The Spirituals fill this beautiful song with bells, rings, swishes, claps, drums; they fill it with a lush pitterpat of glimmers, crashes, gleams. It's a remix that sounds like a kingdom falling down the stairs, a chandelier in the wind, a jazz combo at sea, a heart spun silver. It's the sound, I think, perhaps, of being in love.

Update: Mat from the Sarcastic Dharma Society in fact recorded the original "Are You Devo?", and played guitar. Also, I got the year wrong. Anyway - thanks, Mat! [and later, Shelby!]

[Shelby Sifers's MySpace/download her albums free, Creative Commons-licensed/The Spirituals' MySpace]

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Marvel of marvels, no less than Bonnie Prince Billy is coming to Montreal in May - to play the Ukrainian Federation! Buy your tickets while you can.

Carrie Brownstein, on the dissolution of Touch & Go's distribution arm. I can't agree enough. If you care about music, please don't stop buying the records you love.

Being found is as splendid as the finding. Stumbling upon an MP3 or a blog or a Web site is only half the search. We seem to have forfeited our duties and become half-participants -- and at the cost of the creators. But we have to realize, and the Touch and Go announcement is a reminder, that in order for there to be anything left in which to participate, we have to show up. We have to show up with not just our half-selves, our virtual selves, our broke-ass selves, but with our whole selves, and in the spirit of giving. Mock participation is more than just an absence of real engagement; it is a falsehood that has allowed us to justify our apathy. When, exactly, did we stop showing up? And how long until there's not much left worth showing up for?

(photo via Everyday Marvels)

The Cay - "Cachalot". I caught the fish the day I met you. Margaret introduced us on the road. "Alan, this is Harriet." Hello, I said. When I went down to the lake later I thought about you. Pretty, I thought. I cast my line and waited, and in time ate my lunch, and in time looked out over the lake to the sinking sun. That's when I caught the fish. He didn't even fight. He leapt right onto my hook. I took him home. I laid him on the stump outside to clean and gut, but I couldn't do it. He had such eyes. Cachalot have eyelids; they blink. The fish blinked and winked at me, kindly. I brought the fish inside and filled a fruit-bowl with water and put him inside. He swam. He didn't swim much but he swam. He swam in the middle of the bowl, big enough to fill the whole thing, just swimming in place. He was the colour of buried gold - black like the soil, gold like the gold. He blinked and winked at me.

I saw you again. At the bakery, once outside the church, once walking with Ferris. Then Margaret had everyone over for St. Stephen's Day and you passed me the sweet potatoes and I hope I thanked you. I was very busy looking into your eyes.

I don't know why I decided you had to see the fish. The cachalot. I'm not sure what he did or said that made me think you needed to see him. He was the colour of buried gold, big and soft and like a cat - a cat of the sea. He would have lazed in the sun if he weren't a fish. I sat one morning eating my oatmeal, the room dredged in sun, the fish swimming in place, and I decided that I needed to show him to you. That you would appreciate him. That if I could show you this fish then maybe you'd give the likes of me the time of day. You'd understand what I was about.

The cachalot blinked and winked at me.

The next time I saw you, walking home from Luce's, I made sure we talked a bit. And then the following week at the baker's. And then one day you were standing on the road near where I go fishing, almost waiting, and we talked again. I asked you out to supper. We went to Valentino's. You were beautiful, Harriet. You had the fettuccine in rosée sauce and I had the chicken. The next week we went to the café, then to the Blue Moon for Allie's party, and then back to Valentino's again. We had a lovely time, every time. Things were going well. Still, I knew: I just need her to see the cachalot.

It happened one night. I invited you back to my cottage for tea. You say now that you were already in love with me, that the ship had already sailed. You say that, Harriet. But I saw the look on your face when you saw that fish. He blinked at you and you saw him blink and that buried gold cachalot, it did all the wooing.

["Cachalot" is the first song on the first CD that comes with The Lifted Brow 4. Dan talked about this anthology + CDs several months ago, concerning a song written by Neil Gaiman. "Cachalot" is however written and performed by The Cay, the band of our own Jordan Himelfarb & friends. And I bring it up again because now The Lifted Brow is shipping, and it has arrived at my house, and it is a wonderful thing. A little book packed so tight with content - so many dozens of stories and songs squeezed into those onion-skin pages, - and what it holds is so marvellous. Pictures and tales and lullabys. From the experimental fiction of Rick Moody to the eerie work of Frog Eyes' Carey Mercer; from Jordan & Joel's hilarious, absurdist cruise-ship jokes (particularly those concerning Abelard); a million poets and writers and, well, former McSweeney's contributors; and a story by me, too, about the girl who stole the moon. The whole thing is wonderful and I strongly encourage you to buy it.]

Travels - "My Funny Valentine". One of the first postings at Said the Gramophone to achieve any recognition was a contest we held for the song "My Funny Valentine". It is my favourite jazz standard and I asked for covers that rivaled Chet Baker's. Nobody really did. And so I am happy that in Travels' version of "My Funny Valentine", released special for Saint Valentine's Day, they take their inspiration from Baker. This is a song undersung, underplayed. It is not whispered, but there is a scared tremble in Mona Elliott and Anar Badalov's hearts. (I can't tell if this song is a cinder or a bud.)

Travels - "Dogs". On their 2nd album, Travels travel a little more widely. From noisy flare-ups to ticktock murmurs, it's a music that recalls Hood and Logh as much as it does the members' previous bands, Metal Hearts and Victory at Sea. There's something beautiful & familiar in a mutter that feels like a shout, a shove that feels like a kiss, and I like how "Dogs" reminds us of this. It's a photo raising papercuts.

[Travels launch their album in Somerville, MA on Saturday night. / MySpace/BUY!]

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The Sarcastic Dharma Society - "You Swan Go On (by Mount Eerie)". I am usually hostile to covers, when those covers are close to the originals. And on Other People's Songs, a collection of covers, Mat Vuksinich does not diverge far from most of the originals. However he is redeemed by two things:

1. He makes his songs sound really good.
2. He covers some of my favourite songs: Clem Snide's "Find Love" (previously), Julie Doiron's "Untitled" (previously), Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Our House", Bright Eyes' "First Day Of My Life", and others.

[download the Sarcastic Dharma Society's discography, and more, here]

(photo source and, related, best library internship ever [tuwa!])

Window Twins - "Maybe It's Time". Window Twins' I'm This Tall City is a diffuse and yarny album - diffuse like stovesmoke, yarny like yarn. I've been listening to it off and on for weeks and now sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night hearing one of their half-melodies. At first I thought it was just an earworm, a song stuck in my head; but then I realised No, it's actually playing somehwere. Somewhere in the dustbunnies, there's a tiny gramophone. [MySpace]

Reefer - "Blue Moon". I know this song was actually recorded in Hawaii, and certainly it's got a recorded-in-Hawaii vibe, but in the messy croon of Nick "Unicorns/Islands" Thorburn's vocals I hear just someone wanting to be in Hawaii. Someone who isn't there and yet who hopes by force of ooooo-ooooh they might get there. As if a beachside beat and some tuneful strength of will could carry you wafting over the snowbanks and the conifers, up over to those sandy sunsets. [MySpace]

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Elsewhere:

Have been really enjoying the curation at Sunday Is For Sounds, an mp3blog by Peter Bayne.

Marcello and Lena have finally offered up their Top (100!) Albums of 2008. And with, I'm surprised to report, Kanye and Coldplay tied for #1.

Finally, NICE SNACKS (aka THE COLD DRINK) is the new t-shirt & prints company by my friend Dave B (of The Diskettes, Popsheep, Endless Bummer and more). So far it's just t-shirts, but they are doozies! Shaq and Yao Ming holding Major League Baseball's greatest prize! Audrey Hepburn wearing a t-shirt of Al Pacino wearing a Los Angeles Raiders poncho! Oh man. Limited editions, affordably priced, and even the location-specific postage rates are hilarious.

[photo source]