Hello, Friday! It's us, Said the Gramophone!
Today, two ladies who have put out new albums in the past year. Both cuts, however, are from earlier records. Kooky.
(These are wonderful songs.)
Sarah Harmer - "Lodestar". Sarah Harmer's very finest track. Behind "Pyramid Song," it was my favourite song from 2001. For Canadians, Harmer's now a familiar face at festivals and in national newspaper Arts sections. Like the Leslie Feist of 2001, or something. But while she's proven her songwriting skills, I'm not sure she's ever reascended to "Lodestar"'s moon-bathed heights. The song's brilliance is in the way it starts slow, smooth, an oar through lakewater. But a trumpet cuts over the water, sharp through the night. A cello begins to advance, the stars sliding out of focus. Dazzle. Before long everything's turned sparkling, bright, a night "scooped out," full of laugh and dance and, as Harmer sings, "fireglow". These are two songs, almost, but the whole is so much finer than the parts. This is dusk, midnight and dawn; it's loneliness, freedom and jubilation. It's some of the country's very, very best. (From Sarah Harmer's debut, You Were Here.) [buy]
Nina Nastasia - "Ocean". Nastasia' debut, Dogs has just been reissued and, wouldn't you know it, I still haven't found a copy. I'm left, then, with the dark richness of 2003's Run to Ruin, and 2001's Blackened Air - both on Touch & Go. Nastasia does amazing things in her songs. Her words are stories, macabre and haunting and brave. The melodies, meanwhile, are tossed like black rags into the air. They turn and twist, pulled by creaking strings and the entropic drumming of Jim White (Dirty Three). Listening to Nina Nastasia's songs, I always imagine the wood of the cello like the hull of a ship. "Ocean" blows in slowly, a snatch of accordion that comes in on the wind. Later, as drums thump and hammer the roof, as a violin tears the door off, Nastasia stands resolute - angry, defeated, unwilling to bend. There is a moment of respite, literally a calm before the storm, but then she's wiped away by tide and gale, dashed on the rocks. The blood mingles with slate-grey surf. Post folk. [buy]
tonight, if all goes according to plan: The Microphones and Matt Haimovitz.