April 30, 2012
METEORS
PS I Love You - "Saskatoon". Canada's deepest band - deep in the manner of mines and peaks, canyons. PS I Love You don't just rip up turf, they tear blazing from the secret places and into daylight. What is the word for the thing these riffs do? When you are rising too fast, thrown upward, shot like a rocket from the seabed or that molten pit. When you are thrust by your furious heart. Terrifying, violent, soaring. Earnest without any of the sticky sap of earnestness. "Saskatoon"'s sound is bigger, braver than anything else I listen to, these days. How can it be the music of just two men? YOU FELL DOWN / from the SKY / FLASHING like Saskatoon, sings Paul Saulnier. He sounds like he has been marching through a forest fire. Like he is blinking through smoke tears. PS I Love You are always desperate and wanting, overwrought, fraught, but their music is also certain, confident, joyous, strong. The noise of human champions, coming through. (And fun as hell to listen to.)
[Death Dreams is released on May 8 / buy it now / it's extraordinary]
April 27, 2012
West Coast By
Pow Wows - "I Heart My Goldifox"
Edmund and Helen at the airport Days Inn. A rough and tumble little tryst. His erection requires a series of justifying mantras, ones that are said half-squinted, under the breath. He wonders smiling if it was his tears that attracted her, or the way he nodded good-bye, knowingly, as he left the plane. Or the way he instinctually checked her skirt as they both waited for the shuttle. He thought about her skin, the way it had been affected by all that recycled air. He had no idea how old she was.
His phone beeped during. Afterwards, when he checked it, it was May: "Land okay?" Cheating in the age of texting is a gruesome procedure. Her ghost knocks upon the door and it's fine to just ignore it. And yet, simultaneously, he became more excited about May. About his decision. "Yep, made it!"
Rebecca Taylor - "Sole Command of the Day (Viking Moses)"
May jogs in cold spring. As she crosses streets, she often tries not to stop, not to break pace. She nears Elm, and a car is approaching. It's not really a close call, but she paces up a little to make it look like she's making an effort. And at the grass, her breath somehow still visible in late April, she turns to glance at the car that she sped up for. A black two-thousand-and-who-cares ToHondia Something. The way it passes, so perfectly at the same speed, as if she had never been there, it seems that the world closes up behind you. If you don't move, you won't survive, and as soon as you're gone it just closes right up behind you. When you jog there's only room for one thought at a time.
[Buy]
April 26, 2012
DUMB ZODIAC
Sonny Smith - "The Stick-Up". Sonny sings a song about a bad race. This town's not big enough for both of us. A petty crime set in the browns and faded mauves of Peanuts. An alcoholic behind the counter, a kid with a ski mask, guns. Acoustic guitar and dusty recorders, playing in a line. A story like this cannot be photographed, only taped, captured accidentally. There are no paparazzi at a stick-up; the only flashes are muzzle fire. So the song is a recollection, a fiction, or a lie. It is deliberate, no matter what. The song of a stick-up is never impulsive, accidental - it's a tale being told, in one particular way.
[Sonny plays in Sonny & the Sunsets / buy / This is my favourite song but One Act Plays also features guest appearances by Neko Case, Jolie Holland, Mark Eitzel and John Dwyer.]
Mirrors - "Hide and Seek (demo)". Starshine getting weaker by the minute; squint squint fire up the spotlights, turn them off, anything to change the fade. Venus rising, mercury twinkle, flashlights off snow. Sunglasses, let your eyes adjust. Close your eyes and extend your hand to the heavens and hope the stars'll flare up, brighter bright, then come and take your hand, to dance. Or else go inside: screw it, what does the calendar know anyway. Also: disco ball.
[buy Mirrors' completed Lights and Offerings / thanks Ami, from long ago]
---
Elsewhere:
- I support the student protests in Quebec. Did you know that this was what Montreal looked like last night?
- Montreal's excellent, striving, searching Young Galaxy are seeking help to make their new album. They want to make it with producer Dan Lissvik in Sweden. Lend them your support on RocketHub, the Canadian Kickstarter - flip the tables and buy your copy of whatever-they'll-make now, in advance.
- Finally, this:
April 24, 2012
Abdicate Antipathy
Josephine Foster & The Victor Herrero Band - "Puerto De Santa Maria"
Edmund is flying. West in blind pursuit of the sun. To a conference for his 4th career. On the back of the headrest in front of him, he can see that he's somewhere over the prairies. Out the window, it looks like a cloud carpet, lumpy in spots, shifted perhaps from the gods making love on their floor. Next to him, a chubby fellow in a tight t-shirt, camera dolloped on his stomach. Edmund crushes the rest of the ice in his teeth, and fills his cup with the napkin, a perfect unit of refuse. Now the tray is up and he'll have to focus on keeping his leg from bouncing until the attendant picks up his trash. Flying makes him so emotional.
He can look out at the sky, have the sun break through from around the front of the plane, and it will bring him to tears. Vast majesty, etc. Below are all the things he's done and seen and wanted and lost, and for now he will never return. From up high the world seems like a pretty fuckin silly place, and this is delightful to him, and depressing. Kevin is down there, trying to lose weight. Frank is probably running, against his will, home. Jen is down there, texting, or laughing with Tate. Alison is probably, as always, on the brink, with a drink. Carolyn is nuzzling something, undoubtedly, be it Melon or Garry. And he is here, the parent and lover and husband and son, that doesn't ever seem to quite fit. As if, collectively, they had ejected him out of their lives with such force that he popped like a cork 30,000 ft into the sky.
He makes a decision. Suddenly, like when the tail of the plane ducks under choppy air, he makes a decision: I want to marry May. I'm going to ask May to marry me.
"Can I take your cup?" her nametag reads Helen, and she leans over the sleeping chubby. "Oh, yes, sure." He squints when he feels there are tears on his cheeks. "Thanks, Helen."
--
Josephine Foster & The Victor Herrero Band have done it again. A lush, brilliant, sun-dappled treasure, called Perlas will be released May 15, and with it it will bring all of summer, all at once.
--
Also: Tomorrow night, Wednesday April 25th, at Comedy Bar (945 Bloor West) in Toronto, the second installment of For My Own Benefit will take place. A very special and extremely high-quality comedy show for the benefit of pancreatic cancer research. Presented as always by The New Humourists, they will perform one of their written works in its entirety, and will be joined by stand-up comic Tim Gilbert, and sketch troupes Bronx Cheer and Tony Ho. Capping off the night will be the touching improvisational, Craigslist-inspired show Personals. Come see, it will be grand. [Facebook event]
April 23, 2012
PANEM TOP 40
Novel - "Forever Yours (ft Teedra Moses)".
Katniss Everdeen first hears the song on Octavia's comm. It is a bright morning: it's as if District 13's fluorescent generators are working at double capacity, sending extra sunlight down in slats. Katniss's hair is being pinned up in curls, her nails filed and polished. Octavia is at her ear, mouthing the words to the song. She wears a glossy lipstick, dusty blue, and Katniss guesses that it must have been bartered from another refugee. Octavia looks happy for once, as if the music has carried her away to another place, away from District 13's grey walls and hissing ventilation. As if they are not underground but back at the Capitol, at a party for young stylists, drinking champagne from slender cups.
Still, Katniss hates the song. The voices sound synthetic, the instruments unreal. It's like gazing at a pretty microchip. Katniss is used to real music, played by fiddlers and banjo players in the Seam. Kitchen parties with murder ballads, where everyone has tears in their eyes. By contrast, Octavia's song seems like a confection - frosted, sugar sweet. The only thing that catches Katniss's ear is this one crying guitar riff, once every minute or so. It reminds her of Buttercup's whine. Something wanting.
Yet in the days that follow, Katniss finds her humming the song. She will be walking down a hall between propo shoots, zipping in an elevator to Special Defense, and as her mind wanders, the melody finds her. What felt so sugary at the time seems darker in retrospect - earnest, earned. I'll always be forever your girl, she murmurs. Boggs flashes her a quick glance. Katniss blushes and looks at her feet. The lyrics make her think of Peeta, trapped far away, calling to her through his interview with Caesar Flickerman. They make her think of Gale, gray-eyed Gale, kneeling in the woods with a snare. Katniss swallows. She doesn't like to think of such things, Gale versus Peeta. It's different. She smooths her hands on her uniform. Only after the war is over will she have the luxury of songs like this, kind and warm, consummated, like a long embrace.
---
With some of your help, my friend Richard Parks made a short film called Music Man Murray, concerning 88-year-old Murray Gershenz and his hundreds of thousands of records. It's a lovely portrait, tender and funny, with music by Van Dyke Parks. And the whole thing is streaming now at NPR's All Songs Considered. As Richard puts it, "This is ostensibly a movie about a huge record collection, but that is just the setting. It is about 1) death 2) leaving a legacy 3) faith 4) fathers and sons..." Can't wait for Richard's (and Murray's) next thing.
April 20, 2012
Hit Wonder
Zeus - "Are You Gonna Waste My Time?"
Good Father Day. Edmund wakes up in May's arms, his head against her single breast, and his feet coldly dangled off the edge of the bed. They seem to have slept in smiles, the way you can fall asleep with makeup on, their faces sore from the constant easy strain of it. His phone is ringing.
Frank is crying.
"Garret Ng said he's gonna chase me off a cliff." As Edmund makes one-handed toast with almond butter, in May's pristine granite kitchen, he calms Frank down and wonders to himself shouldn't he be in class? is he hiding in the bathroom? "He said he's gonna make me swallow his farts." The bright morning traffic looks cold from the window of May's 8th floor glass, but today will be hot come the afternoon. "Frank, a bully is a weak person, if you can muster the courage, remind him that he doesn't actually control you," May's hand on his back, "You control you." He loves her short blond hair. She loves his height, standing naturally, lips at her forehead.
Off to see Evelyn run cross-country.
The classic rock blares at the track, teachers in white shorts and sunglasses, everyone's leisure like a window to their true selves. They've dressed the way they dress when they don't have authority, and thus risk never getting it back. The heats are listed on a large piece of dollar-store bristol board, and Evelyn is third. She looks up at him from the track, her long ponytail a hazard in this sport, but a striking unique quality amongst the runners. In the distance, there is Trey, her ex, the one that's caused her so much pain. She sips from her water bottle and doesn't seem to mind. Though there comes a time when your children become curators of their own feelings, they don't just show you everything anymore, they're not the crumbled humble emotional messes they used to be. Evelyn wins her heat. She has the ambition gene, from Edmund. A quiet, competitive streak. With that body, that wit, and that streak, she will go very very far.
Tate at daycare draws a picture.
He and Jen call it "Tatecare", because the ECEs are always talking about some breakthrough that Tate has shown, they seem to be calling him out as a genius now so they can take credit down the line. Today, Edmund arrives and Tate has drawn a picture: a "road to nowhere" he calls it. They mention the presence of a vanishing point, the representational quality of something as simple as a road, and the detail of a traffic line down the middle, all point to seriously advanced intelligence. Edmund thinks about some stock interview footage, of Timothy Leary or some such thinker, talking about the way school is designed to find the best soldiers; the literal, rule-following, button pushers. He pats Tate lovingly on the head as he finishes his chick pea salad.
Edmund drives home in the sunshine, he's forgotten his sunglasses so he squints and feels those sore smiling muscles. 41 years ago, he was just being born, in the kingdom of Carole King, Joan Baez, and Three Dog Night. In this moment, not too much has changed.
[Buy]
--
This Sunday, April 22nd in Toronto, there is going to be a delightful show at the Garrison. Featuring gramofriends Henri Fabergé and The Bawdy Electric. Go go.
April 19, 2012
DRIFT + SLIP
James Irwin - "Needleye". This is a new song by James Irwin, whose album Western Transport is the best LP of any unsigned act in Montreal. "Needleye" is woozy and deliberate, patient, all ghostwater and sinking, will o'wisp & folded cloud & gentle saxophone. Rivers rise, shaker shakes, electronics sing. "I don't know why I went alone," James speak-sings. "Somehow staying here felt wrong." His lyrics are always chosen and wrong, accords he finds in dream. His voice is flat as paper. Sometimes he writes his songs quickly and sometimes very slowly. Imagine if you could do the same thing with a tree - cut it down quickly or cut it down slowly, depending on the tree. Imagine if a sinking ship could choose how long it would take, as it eases into the iceberg. The wood would say, This long. No this long. When a needle slips into an eye it does not hurt: it is like a light that enters another light, a shadow that crosses another shadow, a time that becomes another time. You realize only later what has happened, the ruin that was wrought, what the needle has done. Blood pools. Night falls, slowly.
For a short time, listen to the rest of Western Transport at James's website. If you are a record company man, with a tie around your neck, or a shiny blouse, you can write to James here. He will play a concert in Montreal on May 5th, at L'Onestar, a clubhouse he founded in 2011.
(photograph by Frédéric Lebain)
April 17, 2012
A Hatchback He Bought
Love is a series of performances. And I would like to finally admit, "I am scared."
Edmund slips that note in the crack of May's front door. And thinks again, as he often does at times like this, of his first car. The Alfa Romeo that his friends called "pipsqueak" because of the feeble sound that the horn produced.
--
"Grounded" was the earliest-dated file I could find on my computer. August 22, 2003, I'm sure it was a sunny day.
[Always buy Wowee Zowee, never don't buy it]
April 16, 2012
WRONG DENOUEMENT
Cynthia Dall - "Christmas (California)". This song has spent almost two years in my "to-post" folder, waiting for the right moment. It is a Christmas song, so I thought I would post it around Christmas; it is an unhappy song, so I thought I would post it when I was feeling unhappy, full of grey-black smoke. Today is a spring day that feels like summer, hot as hell, thunderstorms brewing. I am happy. I had coffee with my friend. But I have learned that Cynthia Dall died on April 5th. She was 41. This death feels incorrect, a story that ended at the wrong time. Cynthia should have lived to a ripe old age. She should have released another record, and have been rediscovered, and have staged a comeback, years later, covering "Someone Like You" in slow-motion electric guitar. But instead this - a terrible incongruity, a wrong thing, tragedy.
So let's listen to this wrong song on this wrong day, in a tribute to the wrong thing. Let's not hear the bruise in the singing but rather the gift of the work: this beautiful awful crystallization of a certain feeling. Dall makes a song in simple sounds - distorted guitar, schoolgirl voice, chiming piano, like an inverted "Good King Wenceslas". There are drums - tom, bass, tambourine. They are simple sounds but woven intricately: sounds pan from channel to channel, things disappear unnoticed. This is music mirroring meaning - when we have that blurry feeling, roiling, angry & sarcastic & hurt & wounded, sharp like the head of an axe, what seems simple is complex, a smear of many colours. It doesn't matter how this song was written - it matters how it was played.
Cynthia Dall could play.
(photograph_ of Anna Schuleit's installation, Bloom)
April 13, 2012
Wave In Agreement, Nod In Greeting
Caetano Veloso - "Cucurrucucú Paloma"
There is normally no such thing as slow motion. News replays and memories and heightened heartbeats make us think there is slow motion, but there is not normally any such thing. Catastrophes happen at their normal speed, the speed a car is going when it crashes is fast. When they go through the windshield and an organ donor pops and the city is fed with harvested life, that normally happens in a snap, like 1-2-3. But today, there is slow motion, today everything has the time to breathe, to consider.
Edmund and May make grinning love in sun-dappled 12th floor sheets. She is raised above him, spinning, and the ficus waves a twisted leaf.
Frank is tossed by Garret Ng, bully-ish straight-A, into fresh and shit-smelling mud. Before Frank can land he thinks, in what pocket did I leave my phone?
Jen high-fives the daycare worker taking care of Tate. He is tall and has beautiful perfect dark skin. They are high-fiving re: Tate tied his shoes, but today it's a prolonged rubbing of their palms. Jen crushes easily.
Howie halves a grapefruit. The knife splits the skin like a zipper.
Kevin looks down at a fallen bird's nest. Mixed into the sticks and leaves are fortune cookie fortunes: Be ever vigilant and Much has been said about you.
Evelyn eats cheese off a sultry vendor's knife. He has handed it over the counter, she stands slightly on her tip-toes, hands hovering over the display glass.
Carolyn swims under the feet of an Aquafit class. She imagines she is a shark and these are her victims.
[Buy]
(miniature by Lori Nix)
April 12, 2012
AT THE CAROUSEL
TW Walsh - "Struggle and Strife".
"Struggle and Strife" is exactly itself, each of its stanzas telling themselves. Rare these days that you hear a song that does this and is also excellent, beautiful. Here is a recording that feels like part of a life. A drawing that looks like a photograph. Bruce Springsteen had a dream of a song and he woke up and he wished he could remember them, those perfect verses; wished he could go into his studio room and press a button on a panel and put those flawless, melancholy lines onto hissing magnetic tape.
[thank you TW Walsh for sending me your outstanding record / buy]
It does not have the rosy intimacy of "Adorn", but it has hook hook hook, singalong and rumpapumpum, these pulleys of sighing and crave, up down down. This song will not make a paradise but it will secure one, chains gold garlanding the gates.
[website]
(photo source unknown)
April 11, 2012
Infinity Cat
With Edmund, there is a cat. It is not his cat, but it is often in his house, he often leaves food out for it, in warm months they make eye contact while it walks on top the fence, they are connected. Technically, legally, it is his neighbour John Johnny's cat, but in reality, the kind of reality that doesn't exist in courtrooms, but rather face-to-face-this-is-it-no-one's-watching, it is no one's cat. It is orange, short-haired, confident, and dusty. It does not hesitate the way some cats do, it does not consider its actions, it simply performs. John Johnny's cat, let us call him John Johnny since it has no other name (there is no room for diminutives with JJ's personality) has seen fights, and eaten garbage, and dodged train cars on the tracks. John Johnny is a great and straight-faced cat, a fearless and autonomous cat.
With Edmund, there is also an ant problem. Now that April is here, the cloudy warmth has given way to little moving lines in the kitchen cracks. Little lines that point to old spills or a piece of food that fell between the oven and the counter. Edmund laid the corners with ant poison and left the house as usual. But still left, forgetting what he'd done, the screen door open just a crack for John Johnny to get in. And as JJ did most days, he came by around 1:30 and there was still old food left in the bowl, and a bit of stale water left to drink. But as he drank he too saw the lines, and followed them a little. He saw what they were taking, the bait, and tried some himself. John Johnny was not prepared for this. He hopped up on the fence and walked its length, his feet slipping off a time or two, his travel slow and woozy. He saw the grass like stretching caves, he saw crickets making the sounds of jet planes and the trains were always right inside his brain. His feet now mud, his lower jaw a senseless drool, the cloudy sun seemed to be chasing him, burning him, singeing him like a hot element. He ran, scoop-footed, drool-mouthed, wide-eyed, panting through the drainage ditch, and made it scrambling to the junkyard, where he curled up in a trailer's tailpipe, the tunnel vision calming him, focusing him, protecting him. John Johnny could not connect this experience with visiting Edmund's house, for he was not even, and you cannot blame him, self-aware. [Out May 8th on Infinity Cat]
April 7, 2012
Two Things
"Their entwined personalities made a fascinating knot. A knot hypnotic to look at, they would stare happily at the wound strands, guessing giggling where one finished and the other began. And that would last many months, some people stayed that way a lifetime, but for them eventually the time came to try untangling it, the way one decides to finally put together a puzzle. There seemed nothing else to do. And when they untangled it they found that their strands, their individual and respective strands, were quite normal, nothing but string, and not a knot at all." Ugh, barf. Edmund held the vegetarian pizza like a waiter and carried it quickly into the house. "Buon Giorno!" he yelled, catching himself in the foyer mirror, saggy-chinned. In the living room, Tate was putting together a puzzle, and Jen was closing a window of Minesweeper.
Broken into a million little pieces, Edmund was something to behold. His pixels were whole pictures. An entire sky! A blueberry pie! Exiting a non-exit! Crossed fingers, fake promise! Tinted paper, looks old! Hand hold! Gold tooth! Lemon cream! Book of Numbers! Tryst list! Sped-up footage! Tragedy Trunk! Bad underwear! Theatre comps! Sewer secrets! The 3rd Beer!
Edmund and May felt tenuous these days. Short texts, breaking plans, an inexplicable and unseasonable lack of enthusiasm. How many million things need to go right for something to even have a chance, Edmund would think, plugging in his phone at night, getting into bed with the usual ten ghosts.
[Buy]
Au have made something like a masterpiece. Both Lights is marvelous. (Pitchfork have it wrong, wrong, wrong.)
(image by jake rajs)
April 5, 2012
A DIFFERENT PLANTS AND ANIMALS
Plants and Animals - "The End of That". Rupert could remember when he wrote "The End of That", sitting in the basement at about 11 o'clock pm, on the night Joe and Thom called to say they were going to The Swallow, going there again, the fourth night straight, the night after Rupert bumped into Claire on the street and she was with a girlfriend and he hadn't seen her in forever, and it was her that recognized him first; she said, "Rod!" and he stopped zipping up his jacket and he blinked and then he saw who it was, with a shorter haircut now, Claire, standing with a friend of hers in pink he didn't know. "Claire sweetheart," he said, kissing her on the cheek, and just that kiss felt huge and awful, stinging, everything tightening in his chest. She said, "Lucy this is Rod-- uh, Rupert. RP." Lucy sort of folded at the shoulders. "I know who he is," she said. Claire's eyes were blue and beautiful and seemed like something Rupert had lost and then finally found. "How you gals today?" he said. He finished zipping up his jacket, tucked back a slip of hair. "On our way to the market," Claire said. "How are you?" Rupert laughed, like it was a joke. "I'm great. You know." Claire nodded. "Things seem to be going so great for you guys." Rupert shrugged and found himself flicking Lucy's pink elbow, saying, "So do you live here?" and immediately in a panicked terrible way he wanted to cry, to burst into tears, because he didn't know why he was flirting with Claire's random friend, not here, not now, when all he wanted to do was to show his heart to Claire somehow, to show her everything as it was, like Spock in that new Star Trek movie, a mind merge or whatever, and get over everything, get over the night at the canyon and the thing with Jess and the morning things were weird, at the cabin. Just to get over it all. But instead Claire looked at Lucy and then said, "Well we gotta go. Good seeing you." And again she leaned in to kiss his cheek and again Rupert, Rod, RP wanted to cry and he didn't even notice Lucy go away because he was staring at the back of Claire's head, the back of her neck, the nape.
Rupert could remember how Joe and Thom called him that night, to go to The Swallow, but Rupert was already in the basement with the organ and his guitar, and he told them "Nah..." and he stayed home, and he wrote "The End of That". He wrote it in one perfect long sitting, all the melody, all the lyrics, imagined the backing singers and the bassline, everything, feeling for one fucking pure second that he was getting it out, getting the real thing out, onto the page, saying everything true about Claire and him and the end of it.
Then they recorded it, him and Joe and Thom, and it was perfect.
Rupert remembered all this as he sat on his hands backstage at the TV studio, watching the playback of their performance of "The End of That", watching himself in his stupid suit and stupid hair and stupid makeup, lip-syncing like this was just another song, tilting and grinning like a pop star, cosying up to the backup singers - no, whispering fucking dirty come ons to the backup singers, - smirk and preen, high as a kite, while Joe and Thom did their jobs. He should have expected this by now. He should have expected this of himself. Even this song, even this song, even this this this this song, Rupert Poole, troubadour, ladies man, tearing down his memories and building nothing but ruins.
[Plants and Animals' The End of That is out now / buy / Warren, Woody and Nic are on tour]
---
Elsewhere: This is the other important music video in Montreal right now.
April 4, 2012
Wednesday Wine
Parlovr - "You Only Want it Cause You're Lonely"
Alison smokes to the history of the Suffragettes. Women, wizened into endless meaning. Recently Alison has been living staccato, sleepless, sexless nights. Frank, 9, in bed by 9, sleeps easily, breathes long, exudes peace, that she absorbs but daren't disturb, from her perch at the door. So, to the dining room where she can second-hand the curtains safely, Frank is rarely in the dining room, except for holidays and the occasional chore.
Alison looks through the photos and extends each one like a string stretching behind the image. Women of manly features, surveilled maybe for this very fact, women of delicate grit, women of purpose, of struggle. No 2 is a fighter, no 5 has untapped power, no 8 is a dinner party delight, no 9 is boundlessly caring, no 11 rides a penny farthing, no 12 is an Alison lookalike, no 18 is a brilliant mind. But no 10. No 10 is disturbing. It's a doctored photo. The original has a guard, physically restraining her while they take her photo, and then when the photos were sent to officers, the guard's arm was removed. Something in this, this ghostly unpersoned shackle, this unseen leash, moves her to tears. Remove the man, show the woman how she is, ruined forever by the very man. Alison checks her email 'drafts' folder. Still ten unsent letters to Edmund. She chooses one at random and hits 'send'. It has the subject line "Soulmate vs. Sole Mate" [Out May 15th, until then, older stuff]
(via Gemma James Smith and Retronaut)
April 2, 2012
WWW
Kendrick Lamar - "The Recipe (ft Dr Dre)". A paean to the west coast and its "three Ws", women, weed and weather. I have never had the chance to visit California, to sun in California, to gawk at the bronzed California women or to evaluate the notorious Californian foliage. But it all certainly sounds good, right here. It certainly sounds very, very good. Producer Scoop DeVille borrows Twin Sister's "Meet the Frownies", but Andrea Estella's Brooklyn coo feels perfectly at home, perfectly blonde; I think of Don Draper waking, bewildered, in a sun-licked mansion. I love Lamar when he is stricken & questing but also here, leaning (back and foward), contented as a field of psychoactive sunflowers. [from Lamar's forthcoming Aftermath / via Nah Right]
Walrus - "Growing Pains". Halifax's Walrus sing in low, flattened notes, with sighing organ. The bass is getting by. The glockenspiel is unconvincing. The harbour is emptying out, one boat at a time, because it's for the best, it's for the best, it's for the best but still there's something sad in the barren pier, the uninterrupted sky, the lick of waves against logs, without anybody around. [bandcamp]