Well, if it isn't already Monday. I passed a fine weekend with my friends Anne and J, up from Virginia/Montreal and NYC. We oohed at totem poles, watched a little english boy play catch, ate beaver-tails and poutine. You know, Canadian stuff.
Graeme Downes - "Hammers and Anvils". A song to fill sails, to blow ships across straits. Downes sings like Billy Bragg or Greg Macpherson; like someone who gives not a shit for discretion or noise pollution laws, like someone who simply wants to sing their fucking heart out. An electric guitar rumbles and rings, Downes opens his mouth wide. As frontman for NZ's The Verlaines, he learned to demand attention. And now he's stamping his foot on a bare black stage, his voice a blare: "I didn't do it, the moon did / but just for a minute or so / my head started raging / she was laughing with slaughter-house eyes." Does anyone hear his confession? Or is his only audience the stars, with their unwavering silver stare. (From Downes' 2001 solo debut. Clare = awesome.) [buy]
Kid Serious - "Armageddon Girls". Annette sent me this drowsy, mysterious song, but neither of us can ascertain where it really comes from. Google can't tell us anything about artist or track, at least as far as I can tell. It's possible the song is mislabelled - if anyone has insights, please do pass them on.
The tune's nebulous origins make it all the more appealing. A lonely, phased guitar repeats over and over, 80s-echoing drums like the nighttime flyby of telephone poles. The singer has a cigarette rasp, a voice of warning. It's like a movie's nighttime drive, gas-stations crumbling to dust. When the backup singers begin their chant, it's a memory quickly dismissed. "She got road-signs in her eyes / waiting for the lights to change." It's a song to get lost in - the compulsion of the glimmering guitar, of the headlong drift.