Archives : all posts by Dan

Times New Viking - "Middle Class Drags"

A cold fall Friday night, the sun beaten off early by the streetlights. A concrete high-rise with a bike rack that, bulging and salted with yellow leaves, sits like a brooch on the building's moist lapel. Up on the fifteenth floor, a power-saver pre-drink is fully underway. Freddie randomly messages girls on twitter, while Gut plays Unkillable and listens to some soupy guitar on tiny tinny speakers. Drang drang drang drang. Freddie gets his first reply in a half-hour: "@stingsfan fuck off."

Freddie and Gut get KFC combos and eat in baseball caps. Freddie wears a frayed Stingers cap, his jacket flecked with white paint from an old job, and the smell of his shoes wafting up from the floor, damp from the light drizzle. Gut, his age swimming somewhere between thirty and a heart attack, is aptly nicknamed. Freddie nudges Gut with a look, points his eyes towards the line-up, where a teenage girl in a fur-lined hood stands in black tights looking up at the menu. Gut smiles.

After nine drinks each, at Danny's the well-lit bar where the tvs competed with the conversation, they stumble to a certain corner where they know they part ways. "Well. Yep." "Yep," and they separate like two water droplets, blown by different winds. Freddie texts his girlfriend from three years ago, and Gut knocks a garbage can over. [pre-order]

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Also, Toronto-people, the wonderful Emma Healey is launching her new book of poetry Begin With the End in Mind through Arbeiter Ring Publishing at Type Books (883 Queen W) this evening at 6pm. Come!

Cheap Time - "Typically Strange"

They're one of those special couples. That go off and make things and you forget about them until they're ready. The kind of couple that will never show you what they're like when they're alone, that's a secret. They + each other, they don't just =. They're making their own loud music that is great and going on out of sight but when the sun hits it it sparkles.

[Buy]

Each Other - "A Strong Spinning"

This map is not for this place. These rooms are shaped for creatures unlike us. These are doors, unshaped without handles or passage, hallways move in strange directions, unexpected and illogical. These directions are not for things that move like us. "Go to the middle of the hill, turn side, drift, and breathe around the summit."

[Each Other, one of those bands that stirs excitement in me with every move they make, are going on tour (check sidebar "shows"). Americans, Canadians, go catch 'em!]

Generationals - "Ten-Twenty-Ten"

Upside-down, a calculator is boobies.

[Buy] (image by Wanda Koop)

The Bad Plus - "In Stitches"

Jermaine, the cat, wears a trench coat in the rain. Drops bead on his shoulders and back, I'm like a duck's ass over here. Jermaine is down on his luck. Way down. Luck like pocket lint, luck like old soup skin, luck like an eight-dollar handjob. Nothin to eat in this town, thinks Jermaine, looking through closed flower shop storefronts and barred barrister windows. This town weighed heavy on Jermaine often, he thinks of the way it runs, like a big clock in the sky, full of gears and moving parts, beyond his understanding. His apartment is small, a little room with a mattress on the floor, litter box in the corner, stinks the whole place to high heaven. Can't cook in there, smells so bad, so he goes out every night to eat. But he's sick of the same old diners, that surly bastard with the dirty apron at Gil's Place, that old smoke-stained lady at The Fournier. Tonight, it's just rootin' through the garbage in the alley behind the grocery store. Back to this old shit, he thinks, holding his breath and chewing.

Jermaine goes back to his apartment, left the tv on. "So You Think You're Innocent?" is on, announcing this week's verdict. Not guilty is very different from innocent, thinks Jermaine, clawing in the litter box. The contestant, in a pompadour and a patterned button-down, waits nervously. Jermaine flicks off the screen before the announcement. He looks at old birthday cards on his fridge, almost a year old now, when can you throw these damn things out? He collapses in his bed, looking up at the ceiling. He stares up at it, like staring at a wall, this is my whole goddamn life, just white walls in every direction. But every time Jermaine closes his eyes, it isn't like this. When Jermaine closes his eyes it's colours and stripes and landscapes and everything's easy. And something stirs in Jermaine. He sits up, on his paws, looks to the corner, by the closet. Old paint cans leftover from when he moved in, lids half-closed, drips down the sides, no one ever paints without spilling a little bit.

Jermaine slinks over to the cans, brings them one by one over to the mattress. Stands the mattress up on its side, roaches scatter. He slides his one chair over, it squeaks with weak legs. He holds the open can, Sunday Cloud, with one paw, dips his other paw right inside. Wipes it on the ceiling. Gets the other, Rusted Sand, dips his other paw in, wipes another streak. Something happens. The ceiling opens up and sings, Jermaine is rubbing swirls and streaks and it drips in his face and he's pressing his whole cat face up against the paint, breathing it in, toxic or not it doesn't seem to matter. He paints for hours, layers on layers on layers, sometimes a face, sometimes a whole world, sometimes a series of colours. It's what Jermaine sees behind his eyes, come to life. After hours of painting, he's tired but can't sleep, can't breathe in the apartment, goes out for a walk by the tracks. A train comes by and he hops on and he's more cat than he's ever been in his life. He heads to a place where the sun actually comes up when it's morning.

[Buy]

Boys Noize - "What You Want"

...but when robots are hunting us for sport, mounting us in Bodies Exhibit-style silly poses, skinned, plasticized, faces forever splayed in last-moment horror, it will be the great human endeavour to hide and run and stick together. In de-lectrified chambers we will live by candlelight, running in untraceable patterns that we learned as children to the convenience store to buy extremely expensive cans of tuna or Orangina or Doritos Mecha-Crunch. Brave ones, bored, will sit on their roof with Beta Shields and a Polarizing Gun, picking off drones as they float by like sky manatees. Political ones will hold Voice Tuber meetings in the sewers about new policies of strike and defense. Fratty ones will run naked through a dark alley and join, heart pounding, their brothers in arms for life on the other side. The romantic ones will write whole novels longhand about Love in the Time of Laser Whips. There will be no music. [Free]

Dazzletine - "Here Come the Babes"

We crept up at dawn, the dew on our clothes, on the grass, in the air. What a time for war, dawn. Dawn has always been the saddest, most pointless time of day, it's all atmosphere and no goal. But now, dawn would be forever ruined. We crept up knowing the sun would be shining like hot gold by the time we were trough with our attack. And attack we did. We permeated their membranous defenses, breaking the skin of their spirit, they'd been waiting days for us to come. The blood that was flowing went from trickle to torrent, the way flesh goes from resisting to simply giving in, open to all impact. And we tasted victory's soft center.

[the whole record is really good, Buy for $6]