Said the Gramophone

A LITTLE WINDING RIVER

Modern Studies - "Ten White Horses". A song that seems written as a soundtrack to the various conjugations of to begin. Begin, began, will begin, beginning. The piano spells out a future and then the handclaps make it present; we follow, dawning, along Emily Scott's pronouncements. Lines about horses and their tumbling riders, death and love, or falling suitors. The "sun's a pale bystander" and it's a "one-league-wide meander", the rhymes like handmade coins or tokens, pieces to leave upon the train-rails. Once begun, there's crescendo too - horns and drums, winsome harmonium, the tools of an early Noughties sound steered by bands like P:ano and Architecture In Helsinki. I saw Architecture in Helsinki once, in Edinburgh, in a dripping Cowgate bar. It was 2005. Maybe members of Modern Studies were standing beside me, swaying softly. Begin, began, beginning.

[Modern Studies are based in Glasgow; they are Scott, (StG fave) Rob St John, Pete Harvey and Joe Smillie. / Out on Songs, By Toad Records / more on Bandcamp]

(image source)

Higher

Carly Rae Jepsen - "Higher"
Carly Rae Jepsen - "Fever"
Carly Rae Jepsen - "Store"

Twice in my life now - and only twice - I have met people who did not like E•MO•TION. Carly Rae Jepsen's last album came out last summer, at a time when everyone I knew was nursing an all-consuming, life-on-fire crush on someone else they did not know that well. This whole city, it felt like, was falling desperately and hopelessly in love with a near-stranger; everywhere you went everyone was just shot forward and wanting, uneasy and thrilling and charged. Even the stillest parts of the city, if you looked close, vibrated like a VHS on pause. You'd see two strangers brush against each other on the street and just from the contact one of them would turn into a bolt of pure neon, while the other burst into a cloud of silver and pink glitter. Just from all the floating, frantic energy. All summer, this went on. The whole city. It was madness. And E•MO•TION - sugar-high, bright as the internet and twice as speedy - was its hymnal.

One of the times I encountered any real, serious opposition to the album, I was in a car full of a bunch of dudes, and all it took to convince them that every single song on this album was a ray of pure beautiful sunshine was to get them to actually listen to it. But the second time was worse; I got into a protracted argument with a friend of a friend at some party. "She doesn't have a personality," he said to me, gesturing like a man with an opinion. "Her songs are all just so empty."

Here's the thing: insofar as Carly Rae has not built her entire catalogue of synth-deep pop hits around coy lyrics that lace a glossy love life with lite feminism and meme-worthy one-liners - insofar as her songs are just really good pop songs about really liking someone - then I suppose her music does not have a persona. But personality can mean a lot of things, and art that is well-constructed enough to give its audience a lot of beautiful space in which to project their own feelings (crushes, heartbreaks, likings) is a special subtle kind of generous. This is what really good pop music does, and that's what E•MO•TION is.

E•MO•TION: Side B has some perfect songs on it, and it also has some really really good songs that are also kind of funny and wonderful in a different way. B-sides are B-sides, and this whole album does not gleam in quite the same marquee-flawless way E•MO•TION does. THAT SAID: every song on this album is limned with the same kind of shimmer that rushed all the way through E•MO•TION-classic, and aside from Colouring Book, I cannot think of an album this year that has made me feel as completely swept off my feet by sheer summer delight as this one.

Plus, there's something else in these songs that makes me feel good in a different way, because it takes me back to that argument with that guy at that party and just proves me righter: these songs are proof positive that "personality" isn't always in the details a text or a song or a person chooses to reveal. Sometimes it's the structure, the mechanics, the nature of the gesture itself. When Carly does try to bedazzle her songs with specifics, they're always funny and a little off-base - like the details about the bike in "Fever" or the kind of totally insane premise of "Store"'s endless hook. A chipmunk-adjacent chorus that breaks up with you by saying it's just going out for some milk and a pack of smokes and don't wait up should be laughable, not dance-freakout-inducing. A song whose soaring, point-towards-the-horizon verses describe the borrowing and subsequent returning of a bike lock and helmet should be silly, but instead there's that rise and drop into the pulsing chorus. It's perfect even when it shouldn't be. That's personality for you: Carly Rae can't even touch a story without turning it into gold, into glitter, pure feeling.

[buy E•MO•TION: Side B]

Dream

Man meets Bear - "The Humber" [Buy]

I had a dream that Air Bud was at a dog park and telling other dogs that they can be like him and never give up.

And end of the speech, everyone(every dog) stood up and gave a standing ovation.

Then, I woke up and I was really motivated that I dreamt that.

Have a great week!

Earth and human anatomy

I went to a cabin last weekend. It was raining all day. But didn't care we went out to the lake like a rom-com and water was warm. Of course, I peed in the lake and it felt great to be with nature and contribute to this miracle called, cycle of nature by peeing in the lake.

Oh speaking of peeing, it reminded me that if you fart in the shower, because of steam of higher temprature, fart smelled worse! I fucking love science!

anyways, speaking fart. That reminded me something. Last week, I was vaping and drinking Arizona ice tea like a modern teenager on the steps of my studio building. I noticed there was an elderly lady going towards the door. So I stood up to help her. As I stood up, I farted uncontrollably. One of those "pooo boo booooo boooooo pooooooooo" continuous singular wavelength.
I opened the door for her and she just shook her head and went into the building.

It was really nice to help someone.

The end

DOUBLE CONFESSION

Two songs from 1998.

Dirty Three - "Authentic Celestial Music"

The musical transcription of a storm forming at sea. The fiddle is dark water in motion, the guitar strums are grey clouds building in the sky. And the drums are wind, we feel it gaining in power from the first clattering pattern. In time they whip up into a gale, pushing the water to violent heights. First whitecaps, then waves breaking high. Rain falls on the roiling water. Then after ten minutes it breaks. Silence.

Cat Power - "Say"

The storm is in the distance here, a thunder clap heard from the safety of a momentary hideout. Two crooks on the run are getting their stories straight before their inevitable capture. They feel that saying the same thing will bind them and protect them, a knot tying their lives together. One asks, Is the storm getting closer or further away?

[buy Ocean Songs / buy Moon Pix]

(photo by Spike)

PINEAPPLE SURPRISE

Les Amis au Pakistan - "M'a m'f". You do not need to put up with this shit. You've got a hammer for the window, a clutch full of doorknobs, spinach by the can. Volkswagens, squirt-bottles, rocket-launchers, indignation sky-written in the cloud. I•N•D•I•G•N•A•T•I•O•N. You've considered letting that stand alone; perhaps the letters are message enough. But: no. Not when you can make their phones go off like pepper bombs, not when you can yank away the cartoonery of their cover. You do not need to put up with this shit, nor shall you. The Ming vase will crash upon the floor and the lightning-bolt will come away in your hands, an elemental thing claimed by its rightful heir.

[Les Amis au Pakistan bandcamp / discovered on La Souterraine's O Canada compilation]

I WAS A WITCH!

Tenement - "Witches in a Ritual"

Simon pulled at the door, but it wouldn't open. He looked up at the flimsy sign, the words Occulter's Magick Shoppe printed in red on corrugated plastic.

This was where he'd been initiated into in the magick arts. He joined the after-school coven. They met in the aquelarre, which was also the stock room, behind black velvet curtains. It was a new world to him, of spells and lore. He was the only wizard in a circle of witches with skunk-stripe centre-parts in their dyed black hair. They wore black lipstick, had ankhs painted on their cheeks, and talked about boys in ways that delighted Simon.

Sheila called them to order when they gossiped too much. Exhaling a cloud of clove cigarette smoke she would exclaim "Silencio!" and gesture with the dog-eared book of spells in her hand. It was the knowledge she'd imbibed from these pages that gave her the authority over their coven, but she was only a teenager, like the rest of them.

Simon stood back and tried to look in through the tinted glass to the store, but all he saw was his own reflection. Like every other Tuesday he'd stopped at the park and donned his polyester cloak - purchased at the fan convention back when he was but a lowly Dungeonmaster - and applied the eyeliner he'd stolen from Shopper's using his locker mirror.

"Greetings, dark lord."

"M'lady witch," Simon spun around and bowed gallantly to Sheila. But as he righted himself he was surprised by what she was wearing. It was the first time he'd seen her out of her cape. She was wearing raver pants, a belly shirt, and a baby backpack.

"The coven is over."

"Indeed," Simon nodded gravely. His magic education was at an end.

"Have you ever tried bubble tea?"

"No," Simon dropped his affectation, speaking with his regular voice.

"Come on," she said, gesturing him over. "Let's go get some. I think you'll like it."

--

So the best new punk is basically boogie-rock now, and that's fine with with me. Tenement's "Witches in a Ritual" is in the running for song of the summer.

[bandcamp / buy the LP]

Sappy Time Singular

Nancy Pants - "Kokoro"
Cakes da Killa - "The Sermon"
Jay Arner - "World of Suffering"

Last week, I went to Sackville for Sappyfest, the best music festival in the world. This was my third time attending, but my first without Sean's voice there to guide me. For 7 years, Sean wrote a little newspaper for the festival called the Sappy Times; every year, he attended as many shows as he could, then stayed up 'til sunrise typing out accounts of everything he saw that day, the things he heard and the feelings he felt.

Sappyfest is a pretty magic-feeling festival - it's incredibly tiny, the town is idyllic, and every weekend I've attended the weather has been absurdly summer-sunny, like it's being directed by someone with no sense of subtlety. The town, too, feels almost comically lovely - there's a perfect bar that feels like the best living room you've ever been in, attached to the town bowling alley; there's one cinema filled with dreamy soft light next to a perfect terrible diner; there's a hidden tobacco store where you can buy a 25 cent mug you'll treasure for years or a baseball cap with an incomprehensible logo ("ALLERGY 2000") across the front. And somehow, just like in a normal dream, your friends are there. Not all of them, necessarily, but a lot; old friends, new ones, people you haven't seen in years, people you didn't know were coming. By the end of the weekend, everyone starts to look like someone you might know or have met at some point - people from bands, people from your life, people you stood next to at the house show yesterday - so eventually you just give yourself over to smiling and nodding and waving at everyone you see.

Done right, the whole weekend feels like a dream, and I honestly can't think of a single writer better-suited to transcribing its strange swamp magic than Sean. It's a really specific kind of pleasure (one whose exact analogue I've never felt anywhere else) to wake up every morning, amble into town, and pick up a copy of this secret note that feels as though it belongs to you alone and to every single other person around you all at once. Seeing everyone walk around town with their copies creates a kind of loose, sweet, camaraderie, one that's as diffuse as it is palpable, not just because you know everyone's reading the same thing as you, but because you know everyone's feeling the same thing while they read it. You get to see the things you saw yesterday (plus all the stuff you missed - Sean is somehow everywhere, always) from a new angle. Clear-eyed and dazzled all at once. There's this feeling like yes, everything you felt and heard and did and saw was real, but also yes, you were not wrong to think there was something else to it, something shimmering you could not quite touch or describe but that ran through your experience like a charge. Yes, this is all real, but real isn't all of it.

But Sean has a life, one that's getting bigger in all directions all the time, and so this year's Sappy was my (and many other people's) first without the Times. Though I'd realized in the past how good it felt to have the paper around, I don't think I was quite prepared for how different the whole festival would feel without it. Missing its paper of record, the whole festival felt as though it were missing a crucial thread, a through-line or a third rail. More and less real at the same time.

My favourite shows were almost all in the bowling alley this year: Shotgun Jimmie's heart-swelling one-man party, Un Blonde's sweet, electric calm, Nancy Pants and Julie Doiron making my heart all jangly. Jay Arner turned my sorry hangover into a subtle synth melody and floated it away on the breeze, and Tim from Ought reading his poetry on a sleepy early afternoon in the cinema made me feel young-Montreal-lucky. I liked Nap Eyes like I always like Nap Eyes; I liked Weird Lines and She-Devils and Mauno; I liked a bunch of other bands whose names I forgot to write down because I was too happy listening to their music to hunt around for my phone or my notebook, because in my heart of hearts I am a good listener but a terrible journalist. I only heard most of Cakes da Killa's set from outside the mainstage tent and it still fucking knocked me sideways. I loved Partner's joyful shredding so much I thought I might faint every time they played a solo, and when Josée cried while dedicating a song to a dog she loved I cried too. I loved the perfect puppy I saw in the tank park behind the mainstage; I loved the raspberries Mike and Tree found and picked and shared with everyone; I loved eating fish and chips on the steps of the United Church while staring into the most gorgeous sunset I've seen all summer, hearing strains of Julie Doiron float over to me on the light; I loved driving with Carlo; and I loved missing a few shows to go swim in the ocean.

Sappyfest is magic. Go next year if you can, and even if you've never been before, do yourself a favour and get lost in some of the old Times.

[buy Greville Tapes / Cakes da Killa / Jay Arner]

hair go away

Margo Guryan - "Don't Go Away"

[Buy]

FYI This is just me whining. Another first world problem.

I'm slowly losing my hair. My friends say I'm paranoid but I can tell. I looked through pictures from last 5 years and definitely, thinner and less volume in my hair. I used to have thick hair like fresh seaweed salad that always sticks on your teeth kinda hair.

Now, I imagine myself in 3 years, looking like a Dr. Phil or I decide to shave it and look like Midnight Oil lead singer or Dalai Lama. Unfortunately, back of my head is really flat. So I might look like a Alien from the movie, "Sign" featuring Mel Gibson(before we found out he is an raging racist.) I always had this anxiety in back of my head.(pun intended)

I did read a lot about getting my hair thicker. and it all came down to healthy life style.

But I wanted to get an ice cream. Soft-serve dipped in chocolate.

When the ice cream clerk is dipping my soft serve into chocolate, I always get nervous that ice cream will fall into the dip and never comes back alive. But I've never seen such thing in my 35 years of eating ice cream. I name this phobia, "dipdropphobia"

At that moment, I realized maybe, my hair is going to be fine or worst, I will have funny looking hair that will make people laugh. It's just hair so be it. I think I'm just paranoid about what would happen. I can always paint my face blue and go as 4th member of Blue Man Group.

anyways, im blah blah blah right now since its hot. gonna go get ice cream and dip in the pool. have great weekend.

POSTCARDS

Primetime - "Pervert"

The four songs on the new Primetime seven inch are about small moments that feel enormous. There's the pep-talk at the beginning of a new day ("Get a Grip"), an ode to not giving a shit ("Anyway"), the joy of walking through the city in a good mood ("Fallen Out"), and the hilariously libidinous "Pervert," which feels like an answer song to "Orgasm Addict" lost in the mail for forty years.

One part of the initial burst of punk rock was singing about everyday life, adventures close to home. Primetime pick up on this, sending us funny, sassy, and totally nonchalant postcards from the workaday world. And of course the entire post-punk canon is masterfully distilled in these songs, with some British Invasion rock 'n' roll jammed in there too. I could list the bands they might resemble, but that's beside the point. What matters is that these songs, none longer than two-minutes, are gloriously about the here and now. Primetime's fresh dispatches make our days and nights sing new.

[bandcamp / buy the seven inch]