What does your soul look like? (Pt. -7)

Song: "Didn't I"
Artist: Darondo
Source: Gilles Pearson Digs America comp, via Big Brain comics
Day: 8/24/06
After arriving too late to see Monks singer/guitarist Gary Burger live, I wandered our fair city aimlessly, finally ducking into Big Brain Comics to escape a torrential rainstorm. For my troubles I was rewarded with this amazing song. Its a slow, sweet, falsetto, come-back-to-me-baby, soul number with a great string arrangement, tastefully understated guitar lines, a bridge/breakdown worthy of "What's Goin' On" and backing vocal ornaments somewhere between a sung horn line and Esquivel.

But wait, it gets better because Darondo's voice is kinda weird. His falsetto is not a smooth, Al Green style soul croon. Or it almost is, but there's this raspy edge to it as if he has laryngeitis. And occasionally his pitch is slightly off. The effect is like listening to those compillations pre-war 78s. This is a real person. I mean Al Green is great musically, but its hard to imagine him really having to plead to get his beloved back, because he's Al Green and he has that voice. (Yes I know he has had personal tragedies, but a) I'm talking sound here not biography and b) the triggering event was Rev Al rejecting her. Not that this makes it any less tragic, I'm just saying for the baby-come-back-I-was-good-to-you genre Al's got a slight credibility gap.) Or a better way of putting it is, when you hear Al Green sing that kind of song, that's how you wish you could sing it, 'cause it'd work. When Darondo sings it, its like you on a really good day. But that doesn't change the fact that neither one of you is sure its going to work, which makes it all the more moving.


Song: More Action! Less Tears
Artist: A Silver Mt Zion
Source: Pretty Lightning Paw
Day: 8/25/06
The Silver Mt Zion show a few weeks ago has got me revisiting their older records. This song is a tad more upbeat and fun than most of their songs with a big graceful riff (like doug martsch covering one of godspeed!'s more triumpant moments) and its playful intro mistake. How can you (unless you are a gramatical stickler) not love a song that starts out with a voice shouting "The name of this song is more action! The name of this song is less tears The name of this song is 1-2-3-4!" Kick ass.


Song: Silent Shout
Artist: The Knife
Source: Silent Shout
Every so often I'll give into indie hype and check something out that I probably wouldn't otherwise. This is one of those cases. I don't quite know why everyone is making a big deal about the things everyone is making a big deal about, like the effects on the vocals (hasn't any one ever heard a Kate Bush album before?), or the dark sound (um to my novice electro brain, I thought that's what half this stuff was all about, anyone remember Depeche Mode?). However, I can say this song (and the album) is really good.

btw - to answer my own question, I think the problem is twofold. People writing about music are a) younger than me and don't really remember the 80s and b) they have word counts to meet and I don't. So where I can say "this is stripped down dark-sounding electronic music with solid songwriting and interesting synth lines that doesn't make me feel like I am being pandered to", they can't. But ihmo that's really all the description you need. They conviently stream it on a website (although it relies on flash).

Or perhaps I don't listen to this kind of stuff enough to really grasp the uniquness of The Knife's particular genius.

Honorable Mention: I am still digesting the new album by the Mountain Goats. Preliminary thoughts most center around the string arrangment on the title song, its back-loaded-ness and the similie involving something coming something else like a drifter to a highway ramp.

Last evening down on lover's lane she strayed

Song: Miss Otis Regrets (She's Unable to Lunch Today)
Day: 8/23, 8/24
Artist: Cole Porter, Ella Fitzgerald
Source: Ella Fitzgerald sings the Cole Porter Songbook
After a week of perfect weather (and also too much running around to really think about music), a few days of gray have settled in. Last year this would have meant Elliot Smith, right now it means Cole Porter.

Apparently this song was meant as a parody, a comic juxtaposition of gentility and violence. In the version I know best, Ella Fitzgerald's from her song book series, its played straight. Ella makes the song into a great leveler; no matter who you are, what kind of manners or upbringing you have you are subject to the affairs of the heart.

The song itself is an impressive combination of form and lyric. This clash is carried into its form which marries a sereis of very formal announcements "Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today" with what is essentially a blues form of a repeated first line and a closing third that explains everything else. And its really this third line that gets me. This is where all the action happens, and melody highlights it with an unusually wide and bluesy interval jump that underscores Miss Otis's awkward pain that errupts through her otherwise impeccable behavior.

beautiful and strong

Its been a little while, sorry. I the challenge of writing about A Silver Mt Zion seemed a little daunting.

Artist: A Silver Mt Zion
Day: 8/7-8/10
I saw them a week ago and listened to the first 2 songs off of Horses in the Sky for the rest of the week. Simply put they were really, really good. The hard part is concisely saying why.

Mostly it is about the vocals, particularly the parts where everyone sings. What I've always liked about the dark, large-group Montreal post-rock bands with strings is the way they mine the gaps between the potential beauty of the world (natural and human) , and the ways we routinely fall short of it. There is a strong feeling of lament, but they never lose sight of the hope that we can recapture that beauty and realize that potential, depite the madness and degredation we have surrounded ourselves with. In turn the depth of the lamentation makes the hope that much more precious and noble.

In A Silver Mt Zion, the group vocals become a powerful metaphor for this struggle. When all the members sing together, it clears the mental and sonic space. Singing is the most basic and readily available way of making music, and invites you to join in. I cannot play violin, but I can sing "When the world is sick/Can't no one be well?/But I drempt we was all beautiful and strong" and it helps. You can sing as well. We could sing together.


Song: Kiss Me Again And Again
Artist: Polmo Polpo
Source: Kiss Me Again And Again EP
Day: 8/11/06
This is a cover of Arthur Russel's/Dinosaur L's breakout song "Kiss Me Again". I haven't found the original yet but if you like Sandro Perri's work either as Polmo Polpo or Glissandro 70 you should check this out. Its a good marriage of the stretched soundscapes of the the Polmo Polpo "Like Hearts Swelling" record and the propulsive pulse of dance/disco.


Song: Believe It
Artist: Arthur Russel
Source: World of Echo
Day: 8/12/06
Cello and vocals with effects (as you might guess, echo and delay feature prominantly here) from '85. The treatments abstract the instrument and his voice, so they become something less recognized as "cello" or "singing" and something more heard as tones, textures and sounds. The parts are very minimal but the the experience is full and interesting. If you are having a hard time picturing this, think of Liz Phair's "flower" only serene and better executed.

Honorable Mentions:
Shows! Lots and lots of shows this week.

• 8/7 was A Silver Mt. Zion which was awesome.
• 8/9 saw an OK but way too late Frog Eyes and Wolf Parade show. I keep thinking at some point Frog Eyes is going to produce something transcendant. There are glimpses of it on the albums and when they play live, but they haven't quite nailed it yet. We'll see, maybe I'm wrong here. The Wolf Parade half of the show convinced me even more that Spencer Krug is the part of the band I find interesting. The other songs felt flat.
  
• 8/12 I caught Cloud Cult at the Pizza Luce Block Party. The set had some amazing moments. Facing the throngs jostling for beer and pizza was a difficult comedown after an intense closing song that temporarily turned me into a basket case.
  
• 8/13 The reformed Gorilla Biscuits played here on Sunday and were great. I am deeply skeptical of reunions, particularly of punk or hardcore bands, since they are supposed to be more than just entertainment (or so the scene claims). The very idea of the show was problematic and its execution did not clear those questions, but it was also very, very much fun so its best not to think about all that.
• 8/14 This Bike is a Pipe Bomb and Japanther - lofi fun. TBIAPB played fast, slightly twangy country/folk/punk with lots of goofy, easy charm. Japanther are bass and drums 2 piece with cassette tape accompaniment. People were dancing and having a good time. A show to clear out the cobwebs.
  

I would pay to be fulfilled

Song: Beleaders
Day: 8/1/2006
Artist: End of a Year (here's a version from a previously released split w/ threefifteen)
Source: Sincerely
voice in ear: "Davin, no one wants to read yet another rant by someone well into their adult years about the tragectory of the word and idea 'emo'"
me: "but its key to understanding why this band is so compelling to me, see back in the mid 80s through the early 90s or so..."
voice in ear (interrupting): "what did I just say?"
me: "but come on, they are named for an Embrace song. Besides, I wasn't going to try to win the term back. You can't stop language from changing. Its gone, I give up."
voice in ear: "about time, you were starting to sound like you were trying out for that national language board I heard the french have."
me: "haun-haun-hau"
voice in ear: "yeah, I know, it's a cheap shot"
me: "still, all I am saying is what was cool about the first few waves of bands tagged with the e-word is that they were willing to push the boundaries of what punk/hardcore sounded like while still maintaining punk's immediancy and intenstity. I mean I love Minor Threat and Bad Brains as much as the next person, but sometimes I want to hear something else."
voice in ear: "What about your extensive collection of Amy Grant records"
me: "I thought I told you never to mention those"
voice in ear: "sorry, so for you it comes down to a retro-punk/progressive-punk thing?"
me:"well I have a lot of records with bands playing fast power chords. listen to this song. Its clearly got the drive of a punk song, but the main riff is a bass and two guitars playing off each other. A little like a fugue. It gives the song a loose, open feel even though the interplay is pretty tight. In this way they kind of remind me of a less showy 1.6 Band."
voice in ear: "who?"
me: "never mind. Or perhaps early Public image limited if you took out some of the dub elements and noisier tendancies and sped up the tempo some."
voice in ear: "uh, Ok"
me: "but also its about the lyrics. What's cool about Embrace or Rites of Spring or Heroin or Moss Icon or the Hated is that their songs weren't all about bad relationships and getting dumped, they had this outward looking element to them as well. End of Year picks this up with some (perhaps a tad sarcastic) existentialist commentary:
There's something missing, there's something missing
I've tried girls and jobs/all that's left is drugs and god"
voice in ear: "Fair enough. But Davin, no wants to read an over-long imaginary dialog. Who do you think you are, Plato?"
me: "shut up, you."

camel's eye

Day: 7/28-7/29 of 06
Song: "Toast in the Water"
On the way up north to go camping Mike inadvertantly combined the colloquialisms "you're toast" with "dead in the water" resulting in this phrase and a weekend of inventing new lyrics to "Smoke on the Water". Examples include:
toast in the water/the soggy butter side
and
luke, I am your father/you know it to be true
we could rule the galaxy/if I joined up with you
(in the cool light of reason, its possible this last one might be disqualified since I don't think the original has the 4th line).
Oh Well, I guess you had to be there.

Day: 7/31/06
Song: Needles in the Camel's Eye (link courtesy of/heartlessly stolen from The Rich Girls Are Weeping)
Artist: Brian Eno
Source: Here Come the Warm Jets
I stumbled across a mention of Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy and this song popped into my head. Now the Eno-savvy of you out there (or those of you who read the header) will no doubt point out that this song is not from TTMbS and you'd be right. But I've always liked this album better. Sure "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More" is probably a better song than anything on Jets, but if its pop you are craving, Jets is the better all around bet.

... which is indeed what I was craving. Needle in the Camel's Eye was the lift I needed to get me through a blistering 100 degree monday with the airconditioning only half functioning at work. Try it sometime, things can only seem so bad while you are listening to this song. (Setting aside buzz-kill reductio ad absurdum examples - dental procedures without novicaine, genocide - for a moment here.) From the band pounding away on their wobbly guitars to the way Eno sings at the edge of his vocal range with just the right level of ease and strain, the song is nigh perfect without seeming so; the arty/cacluated elements simmering just under the surface of the song's melody and drive. Even the guitar solo, a rock artifact that I'm usually suspicious and/or resentful of (unless its Lou Reed's interlude in "What Goes On"), is laudable model of restraint the accentuates the rest of the song instead od destracting you from it. And how can you not love a song with 4 grand pauses?