Welcome to this bank-holiday-weekend edition of Said the mahataflutta' Gramophone. All of these songs come courtesy of Jeremy, the bangingest dude to have ever played with Kepler, Julie Doiron, Jim Bryson and the Arcade Fire.
The Legends - "Call It Ours". Well would you listen to this. The Legends don't even give us a few seconds of mope before hitting us with their goofy, gravy guitar riff, that playful dance-on-the-flower-carpet sound. There's handclaps on the song's every downbeat, boy-girl harmonies, tamborine, and then the slightly phased blur of the main vox, "I said no, no no no-ooo," jangly twee crossed with The Hives' mangey scruff. Maybe there's a bit of Jesus & Mary Chain, too, but more important still is the Happy, the innocence, the kiddy glee that tumbles down the tarmac and into urban decay. Thinking of when I wandered in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago, watching a drunken sausage-scromping Swede admit his love for Eric's Trip, I could imagine this music in the crack of underfoot ice, in the way the messy snowlight stung your eyes. [buy]
The Roches - "Hammond Song". The Roches were a force from my childhood, the lulling silly soundtrack for cartrips to Toronto, the monotonous windowwash of Ontario forests. I was listening to "We," this week, that Roches calling-card, immortalized on Tiny Toons, and I heard in the girls' weaving harmonies the following line:
"A trio we are, born on the fourth of December."
Yes, that's right. The Roches were born on the same day as Jay-Z.
If this isn't a glorious coincidence, the sort of synchronicity that this blog feeds on, then I don't know what is. So I toyed with posting Jay-Z and The Roches, "We" and "Izzo", fraternal twins side-by-side at last, smiling for the camera.
But then I decided not to.
"Hammond Song" is something more suited to today's episode of the Edinburgh spring, where the sunny daffodilled streets have gone slicked and grey and rainy. It's a song of reluctant goodbyes, of head shakes and slow stirs of tea. And in the sigh of that organ, the wringing of the voices, even the - beautiful, beautiful, - elegiac flowerings of guitar, there's a sorry inevitability. She'll go. It's inevitable. And it's an inevitability we all know so well, we've all seen in eyes across the table. The Roches, often such giddy cartoons, are here just birds, and friends, and streets, and New Years': all straining at the thought of your ["her"] departure. Such thick, full, blue-green music, such a bleed of voices. (Produced by King Crimson's Robert Fripp!) [order]
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More of The Legends over at The Big Ticket.
Posted by Sean at March 28, 2005 8:51 AMthe Legends remind me of a newzealand band, the Brunettes -- have you heard?
Posted by yoni at March 28, 2005 11:14 AMsean, good call (as per usual) on the legends. luv that track (posted it a few weeks back myself) & the rest of their disc. again, it's great to have you back!
Posted by mr g at March 28, 2005 11:38 AMthe roaches! my mum used to play "we" all the time! aw, I miss my mum.
Posted by ep at March 28, 2005 7:12 PMthe roaches! my mum used to play "we" all the time! aw, I miss my mum.
Posted by ep at March 28, 2005 7:12 PMWow, I haven't heard the Roches in ages. They were lots of fun. Do they still perform?
Posted by mister anchovy at March 28, 2005 11:57 PMThat's cool, mr g - if I had high-speed at home and had been doing my proper rounds, I'd doubtless have seen it. But I've updated the post accordingly.
mister anchovy - judging from their website, it looks like they still do stuff... They were available to sing Christmas Carols at 2004 holiday parties (no joke!)...
Posted by Sean at March 29, 2005 10:35 AM