she'll sing again

Song: Lena's Song
Artist: Angels of Light
Source: Album (Other People's Songs)
Date: 4/27/06

Angels of Light is Michael Gira (Young God records, Swans) plus whomever he gets to back him up. On this record most of the Angels are Akron/Family which is reason enough to be excited about anything on this album.

Or that's what i told myself. I have to admit I still had some doubts. A/F operate in a strictly backup capacity here and I'm not too familar with Michael Gira. This song, which opens the album reassured me. The simple chiming riff (not sure what's playing here it sounds like a combination of instruments - guitar, mandolin, bells - in unison) eases you into the song (and the album) and perfectly sets off Michael Gira's lazy baritone. He uses his voice quite effectively throughout the song adding various shadings to the story of Lena, varying from a plain sung Johnny Cash style to subtly emotive phrasings. The music is similarly not-flashy-but-interesting. The bridge is accompanied by some Beach Boy like harmonized "bahs" and there are interludes of primitivist clapping and wistling that lighten the mood. A simple song with just the right touches to make it shine.

in the stream

Song: Swans (Life After Death)
Artist: Islands
Source: Album
Day 4/24 - today

Its probably lazy to compare canadians bands to other canadian bands. The famously open border (at least for a little while longer, anyway) and a similar cultural background ensures a lot of give and take. Yet, I can't help but think of other musical neighbors to the north when I hear the first song of Islands' debut. The sparse guitar and weird synthy/spacey/thermin-y sounds of the opening recall Do Make Say Think and the structure of the vocals, which ride a simple but propulsive riff/harmonic progression, remind me of a scrappier, less bombastic Arcade Fire. And then there are the hints of the Unicorns (Islands features a couple ex members) clever and gleefully cheesy pop.

Which is all fine and good and gives you a sense of what it sounds like, but only gives minor reasons why the song is compelling. (If I had an editor she'd be dragging a red pencil over the above paragraph right about now). Really the specifics of the sound are secondary; it's the (for lack of a better word) groove that I keep coming back to. It's hard to explain - we're talking indie rock, not parlament here - but there's an organic, self-sustaining quality to "Swans", a perpetual motion of verses and choruses that reminds me of the quality (but not really the style) of groove and momentum that Stereolab works up at times. Maybe a better comparison is the story of Lou Reed spending most of the Loaded sessions playing the chords to sweet jane over and over, writing new verses every time. The music just doesn't want to die or get tired and it carries the song along with it for close to 10 minutes. The band in fact seems helpless to stop it and can only stop the rock by diverting it into a heavy jam that sounds a little like Built to Spill in their classic rock mode. (Not a bad thing.) Once altered, the beast can be slayed. (Thankfully they do not commit the most heinous of rock sins, the fade out.) But it doesn't stop it from keeping me company throughout the past few days.

Saucy like pesto

Song: various Cheers
Artist (and I use the term lightly): TBA
Day: 4/22/06 and 4/23/06

The "about Ultimate" section of the Ultimate Players Association website defines Ultimate as "Player defined and controlled non-contact team sport played with a flying disc on a playing surface with end zones in which all actions are governed by the 'Spirit of the Game.'" That last phrase is a big part of why I play it. It's the idea that sports should be fun and that sportsmanship (in the best sense), respect, enjoyment and competitive play should go hand in hand.

One of the Spirit traditions is cheering the other team. Usually a cheer is a song with the lyrics reworked to reflect the other team and the game, but it could be a haiku, a skit or just about anything else. As ultimate slowly expands beyond its quasi-hippy roots, this tradition is slowly dying but my team, TBA always cheers. Its a fun, creative way to end a game and invariably I leave tournament with the cheers we've composed running through my mind. So here's what I've been humming to myself the past couple of days. (The first line is the name of the team we were cheering, followed by the tune we stole):

Dudes (tune: She'll be comin' round the mountain)
(I forgot the first cheer on sat)

Hot Karls (tune: Darling Clementine)
Hot Karls, Hot Karls Commie pinkos from Carleton
We're not sure what your name means, but we're quite sure its a sin
Hot Karls, Hot Karls You sure can play some disc
HOt Karls do you ever kiss your Mama with those lips


GAC A (tune: yesterday)
Yesterday,
we were looking forwad to today
The winners bracket seems so far away
Gustavus you had your way

Suddenly
My man's not standing next to me
He's catching the disc where I should be
I believe in the Gusties

High, they played so well
There's so swell
They came to play
I threw something long
But it bombed
like meister, jaeg

Jaegermeister


NDSU (tune: Oklahoma)
North Dakota, where a new team's gearing up its game
With their shirts of yellow
On every fellow
Except for the one that's on the dame

North Dakota, we're glad you came to give us game
The disc is rising
In the land of the Bison
Your team is bound for future fame


Hot Karls rematch (tune: Hot Time, Summer in the City)
Hot Karls, playing on the hill
Cutting for the disk and getting their thrills
HOt Karls, saucy like pesto
Gonna go home and write your manifesto
(Mike Taylor guitar solo, jazz hands)


St Olaf B (tune: giligan's Island)
Just sit right down and you'll hear a tale,
a tale about SOB-ld
They came from St Olaf,
from the town of northfield (town of northfield)

(thunderclap)
The weather never got too rough,
The wind came and went
Your handlers sliced through our zone
And now our cup is spent (now our cup is spent)

So joins us here each year my friends
At the Thrill on the HIll
We look forward to playing again
And drinking Jaegermeister

Don't waste me in the ground

Song: "Naked As We Came"
Artist: Iron & Wine
Day: 4/19/06 & 4/20/06

Iron & Wine
"Naked as we Came"
I put on Iron's & Wine's Our Endless Numbered Days to drift off to sleep to last night and this song is the last thing I remember before sleep took me. All I really remembered from when I was dozing off was Sam Beams voice singing gently over an intricate guitar figure vaguely reminiscent of Pink Moon-era Nick Drake (specificly, "In the Morning") and I wondered if I would be as entranced upon waking and reading the lyrics.

And I was, and more. As I listened and then broke out the CD booklet several stories unfolded. The lines...
"She says 'Wake up its no use prentending.'
I'll keep stealing, breathing her"
...spoke to a casual, loving rituals of long term co-residence. Perhaps he is pretending to be asleep and she is teasing him about it.

But then the topic turns to death:
"Birds are leaving over autumn's ending
One of us will die inside these arms"
At first I wasn't certain, the "die inside these arms" can be read 2 ways, the Cutting Crew way and the literal sense. Soon it's clear he means it literally...
"She says 'If I leave before you, darling
Don't you waste me in the ground'"
.. and the "Wake up, it's no use pretending" retroactively took on a sinister tone. I satarted to ask myself, what is the she asking the narrator to "wake up" to? Terminal illness? (side note: "Don't you waste me in the ground" has to be the best request for cremation ever)

Viewed in their totality, though, the lyrics suggested a 3rd reading of a couple talking about their inevitable, not impending deaths and planning for it in the context of their marriage, love, and family. Odd morning conversation perhaps, but the ease and comfort that pervades the lyrics and the music is inspiring.

Whichever way you interpret it, the fact that it can lead you in a couple of different directions (not to mention the beautiful singing and guitar playing) makes it something special; the song becomes a minor triumph when you consider it does all this with just 12 lines of lyrics, 3 of which are repeated.

This is my current Second Favorite Death Song, sandwiched in between the Mountain Goats' "Shadow Song" after Why?s "Light Leaves". Full lyrics below:
She says "wake up, it's no use pretending"
I'll keep stealing, breathing her.
Birds are leaving over autumn's ending
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
One will spread our ashes 'round the yard

She says "If I leave before you, darling
Don't you waste me in the ground"
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
One will spread our ashes round the yard

Stuff I've been listening to lately

A quick rundown of things I've been listening to the most when I haven't been writing here.

Akron/Family
Any and All
My favorite discovery of the past few months. New, weird folk that also takes its cues from Radiohead, mathy post-rock and White Album era beatles. There's even free-jazz energy explosions and gentle electronica. The self titled album shades more towards the modern sounds than the split with angels of light which is more settled in folk-rock sounds. Both are excellent. Intelligent and interesting songwriting combined with virtuoso playing, but in the service of something immediate and occasionaly transcendant. And they have awesome group vocals full of grit and beauty that hit me in a similar way Jeff Magnum's did on In the Airplane Over the Sea. And a great live show to boot. And I have yet to hear a song better than "Running, Returning" since getting their S/T debut. OK I'll stop now.

Jesu
S/T
I never knew I was awaiting the marriage of shoegaze and metal until I heard Jesu. In retrospect it makes sense, more sense than some of the other acts who have directed their gaze towards the early 90s. Distortion, like echo, reverb and phase takes the often-thin sound of "clean" amplified guitars and makes them take up more space. I'm just so used to hearing distortiou, I've forgotten. Jesu is the sound of metal slowly drifting out across the universe - as if the space program had put Black Sabbath into Voyager instead of Bach. If California ever slides into the ocean, like they threatened it would when I was a kid, this will be the soundtrack to the footage of civilization meeting the sea. Crushing and beautiful.

Wilderness
S/T
All the post-punk comparisons you've heard are more or less apt and so what? It's great. What I love is the use of space and how it allows the listener to inhabit the icy beauty of their songs. The fact that they come from Baltimore and are vaguely reminicent of some bands from that area that I love greatly (Moss Icon, the Hated) and admire a lot (Lungfish) probably doesn't hurt, either.

Animal Collective
Feels
I think I'm too pretentious/rockist to really like the pop of my time, so Animal Collective serves that role when I need a dose of infectious catchy exuberance.

Wipers
1st 3 albums
This collection is bookended by 2 albums of great catchy, garagey punk with enough angular guitar phrases to keep things interesting. Hearing this you can hear the qualities of so many awesome bands that sprung up later in the northwest (Sleater-Kinney, Unwound), (p)recast in a 1st wave punk/new wave context. Then their is the Youth of America LP with its drawn out, almost dubby experiments. They make perfect sense now, but in 81? Gutsy and perhaps revolutionary. The set of the 1st 3 albums gives you bonus tracks too.

Explosions in the Sky
Any and All, (except the special limited EP, which I missed out on.)
Always and forever. If you want a description as to why, I wrote one a while back that still lives on in the google cache