Alina Simone - "Country of 2". In the twenty-three months since I first wrote about Alina Simone, she has gone out of her house on the occasion of every thunderstorm and she has brought a mason jar. She stands under the low dark needles of a spruce and she leaves the jar in the open, with the lid off. Rain doesn't fall in the jar. She collects thunder and lightning dust. She collects the low cracked heat and the sharpness of the wind. When she went into the studio to record her debut LP, Placelessness, she again brought her mason jar. She put it on the studio floor and she opened it. But this time she did not collect lightning; she loosed it. She stood at the microphone with her guitar and felt the electricity like sharkfins. When the drummer hit the kick-drum the air flashed. She swallowed and sang, feeling the air tingle in her mouth. With every rhyme her heart thumpthumped. She closed her eyes and she longed, and she tried to sing the greyblack of what she had weathered.
Robin Allender - "The Memory Trap". I'm not sure Robin Allender can tell us anything that we've never heard. The vocabulary of guitar and voice is not, as some might think, limitless. But there is much in the reminder: reminders of autumn nights, or the Red House Painters, or love, or loss, or lying in your bed as evening falls and waiting for the world to sway against you. The way a nightingale can remind you of all nightingales, or the way the idea of nightingales can remind you of one in particular. The way a beauty can shock a forgotten feeling out of you: a certain walk, a certain laugh, a certain sky, a certain place. Robin Allender used to be called The Inconsolable but he sounds like someone who has been consoled. Someone who remembered the names of the constellations, who remembered night after night that he could pick up his guitar and summon every memory he had ever had.
[buy the very beautiful Bird and the Word, now out on Dreamboat Records. More mp3s are available here.]
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Elsewhere:
Tuwa writes about a young Elizabeth Mitchell, walking on her hands, playing songs. (Jordan on Elizabeth Mitchell.)
Posted by Sean at July 12, 2007 8:32 AMLove the Aline Simone track. I haven't heard something like that in a long time.
Posted by Jad at July 12, 2007 2:11 PM"All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea.
That the clown-faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk of that black birch is, by his presence, some tragic falling off from a first world of undivided light.
Or the other notion that, because there is in this world no one thing to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds, a word is elegy to what it signifies."
-from Meditation at Lagunitas by Robert Hass
Hmm Alina is so gifted by talents that a bubble of joy always follow her everywhere she goes. She just add colours to every place she's visiting and the sun and moon meet each other each second above her just to make alina's smile brighter. World is just better with this girl somewhere on it.
Posted by julien at July 12, 2007 5:12 PM"The way a beauty can shock a forgotten feeling out of you: a certain walk, a certain laugh, a certain sky, a certain place."
Wow, I'm *certain* I couldn't have described it any better. A beautiful description of a beautiful song. Yay, Sean!
Posted by robin at July 12, 2007 7:15 PMWhat a shock to discover I've been reading StG for 23 months.
Keep up the good work, gentlemen.
Posted by Jeff at July 17, 2007 11:05 PM
and it will begin playing. All songs are also available to download: just right-click the link and choose 'Save as...'
