1) We're back in business.
2) This is thanks in very large part to the hard work of Dan Beirne. Praise him.
3) It turns out that Sean already posted "Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts." We are like Two Bad Dudes, he and I. Well, here's another perspective.
***
The Decemberists - "Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect"
I heard the Decemberists' album a few weeks ago and was unimpressed. It sounded to me a bit like Neutral Milk Hotel without the good songs or interesting production. Not pleasing.
Then I heard this song. And everything changed. Everything. Most notably, the mercury I'd been stirring for weeks, finally became gold.
A swaying, zigzagging electric guitar walks in and out of the path of forward looking drums and acoustic guitar. The expressive vocals and Romantic lyrics recall Destroyer and a Great War era Rousseau (had such a thing ever been [!(?)]). The organ falls note by note onto the intricate instrumental dialogue. Gusts of Mellifluous backing "ah"s pass through undisruptively.
After hearing "Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect" I decided to give the album another listen. It still stunk.
Maybe they lucked out and stumbled onto a good one, or maybe this is an indication of their potential. Either way, the status of this song as a winner remains unchanged.
Epicurus says: Listen to it because it makes you feel good.
***
Wolf Parade - "Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts"
Here is raw, vital pop gospel. Scratchy keyboards bubbling up. Distorted electric guitar biting tentatively. Full throttle glam-soul vocals calling to arms.
53 seconds into the song, when the band's energetic anger turns to a manic focus on a detailed and substantial plan, we are given the gift (so thoughtful (what have we done for Wolf Parade lately?)) of a most gloriously propulsive keyboard line. "The Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" hits you in your chest.
"But God doesn't always have the best goddamned plans. Does he?"
The band is a preacher, and the song, delivered on bended knee, is a desperate but most righteous sermon.
Though this music is new sounding and clever, it's the body (the power, energy and sweat) and not the mind, that draws me in and makes me want it. I know, I'm shallow.
***
p.s. in celebration of the new server, Neale has purchased saidthegramophone.com. Thank you, Neale.
The End of Something
Said The Gramophone will be taking a day off tomorrow as we prepare to move to a new home. I'm utterly baffled by the computer science issues (which, I believe, are fairly simple), but I do have a crafty team working on the move. Hopefully, we will be up and running in our cosy new place on Wednesday.
***
Spengler - "The Choice Is Made, The Traveler Has Come"
Driving through New Brunswick and into Nova Scotia in February, the smell of evergreen is pungent and the fog can be blinding.
This song, through screamed harmonies and shredding guitar, manic energy and unexpected changes, vividly evokes that drive. Though I've never seen the Bay of Fundy, one gets the sense from "The Choice" that it is a grand, fearsome natural wonder (I just looked up the Bay of Fundy, and apparently it has extremely high tides, which, I guess, could be seen as both grand and fearsome. Well done, Spengler.)
Spengler the band is to be distinguished from Spengler the mathematician and philosopher, whose own recordings are subtle and subdued (more in the vein of Low). [Buy]
***
Atrocity Exhibition, the first song on Joy Division's exceptional Closer, is an invitation to "come inside." "Decades", the last song, is a farewell (to life, as it turned out).
The muted bass and Gothic hammer-on guitar combine with the synthesized string slashes and low-down stilted drone of Ian Curtis's vocals to make the sort of medieval Requiem that could only have been composed in early eighties Northern England.
At halfway through the song the keyboards start to lose their tuning and the band comes out of time. This is the "degeneration" that Curtis sings about. It's giving up.
"Decades" is a song for the end of something.
Sniff...Goodbye Tangmonkey. [Buy]
***
House warming party on Wednesday. Everyone's gonna be there.
***
No, I Won't Call You Back
So, I'm going home to Ottawa today, where there is no computer.
"In all of Ottawa?"
"No, just in my shack."
Alas, this will be my last post until Monday night. And it's short. Why? Because I have to go to my apartment, feed my cat (Bruno, the Berber (purr-purr) kitty), pack some stuff and come back here (to this land of computers and technicians), all within the next hour (I should allow for about an hour of travel time), so that I can get picked up by (the) Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet, who will trustily pilot me homeward.
***
Muluqen Mellesse - "Wetetie mare"
From the first volume of the terrific Ethiopiques compilation, this track is a party replete with noise-makers and jaunty horns (do they have those at parties?). [Buy]
Because it's Canadian Thanksgiving in Ethiopia too.
***
Happy Thanksgiving, Canadians. See you on Monday, everybody.