Archives : all posts by Dan

Nobunny - "Nobunny Loves You"

This beach is so crowded! There's towels on every inch of sand, umbrellas covering every bit of sky, it's like this shoulder-to-shoulder tented towel-floored indoor pool. People are stepping on corn dogs and sharing candy apples, and only one person applied suntan lotion, but it's rubbed onto everyone else by now. There's 80 different stereos playing 80 different songs, but when this song comes on one of them, all the others turn their stations to this one. As it builds and bursts, the crowd begins to swell and sway and jive and break. The beach gives way, the bottom falls out, and everyone's left swimming, holding their shoes and their wallets over their head, grinning. [Buy]

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - "It's A Crime"

In anticipation of the new CFTPA album Vs. Children, here's a song from a split 7" in 2007. In the mystery world this song inhabits, it was actually originally written for Frank Sinatra, as a "traditional", that he could whip out at any given time. When the night was getting late, the glow of his stardom had worn off and people were looking into their ice for the words to follow along. When couples started sharing traffic looks and the wait staff stood at the back of the room with their arms crossed. He would take this one out, and break every heart in the room and remind them what they paid their money for, what they do anything for, why they don't need their coats or their cars or their kids or their computers 'cause they made it this far goddamnit and come the rain or the winds they'll kill whoever it is that's trying to close the door to tomorrow.

[Advance Base Battery Life, a singles and rarities compilation (which, if you haven't heard this stuff, makes an incredible collection) comes out March 10th, but until then, you can buy the soundtrack (as an EP called Town Topic) to a very intriguing film called Stay The Same Never Change which, having only seen the trailer and read a bit about the filmmaker, seems like Matthew Barney meets Harmony Korine, which I think I might love.]

(image source)

Harlem Shakes - "Winter Water"

A worm runs away from home. A short note in the middle of the night, and across the field in the rain. Out of breath and hearts racing, worm reaches the city limits and turns back only for a second before heading out into the cold open air. Barely stopping to sleep, worm eventually meets others, a new gang of friends. Starts a new life, and for weeks doesn't even think about back home. Until one day worm mistakes a worm for someone he knew back home. A beautiful young worm, reminded him of a worm, a special worm, who of course wouldn't still be so young. But it all came flooding back. Now worm sees leaves and bark and earth and water, and thinks, "Yeah, worm would like this." And at nights in the new life, worm finds himself thinking, too much, of a worm.

[buy March 24th (magnificent)]

(photo by M. Bacour, of Arcachon)

Heartless Bastards - "Sway" (removed by request)

Today is a day of real emotion. If you see me today, we'll probably fall in love. If you cross me today, I might get in my first fist fight. If you even look at me today, we'll have words. I have calm-faced and straight-backed and completely nutritional cabin fever and I'm ready to explode. I can see my house from a satellite, I can see people from my window, I see no one, not a single person from my window, I see memory graveyards online and all the cgi extras in procession. You're going to see me sing and cry and humiliate myself because I haven't said a word in weeks. You're going to see it because I said so, and I might be drunk, but this is a party I wasn't invited to. Today is a day of misplaced swagger and fortune tattle-taling. Of purple nurples and frozen park footprints. Of tapping on windows with the head of a guitar. Wrest slurping from the bottle of classic rock, come Heartless Bastards, clear and clean and high in the mix. Sing it. [Buy!]

Alan Price - "O Lucky Man!"

New to the game of "parachute", you might think you were going to be saved. But "parachute" is the game where you try to live under a parachute. You have to lift an arm's length ahead of you every time you take a step, you look like you're swinging on monkey bars the way it takes to walk around. If it's light, you see white, and what's in front of you, if it's dark, you don't see anything. I don't know why I thought up "parachute", and I don't have to. [music] [movie]

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John Updike has died. I quite liked John Updike, until Jordan Himelfarb leant me this book and I fell in a depressing but substantial kind of love with him.

[photo by Davida Nemeroff]

Animal Collective - "In the Flowers"

The first and oldest, nameless and quiet. Not a picky eater, eyes that linger on shiny things, sometimes dart around the room, but smile when they meet mine. She'll grow up slender with dirty floppy socks and hilarious hair. Posters of quiet boys on her wall, reading books like Sophie's World and even the morning paper with her cereal (!). A vegetarian, we'll go through that together, and fascinated by famous old speeches. She'll write a story about a queen with her name and a dragon with mine, and I'll read it while I shouldn't be drinking. Hanging on every word, inflating them with meaning they never had, and thinking "what a genius, I never taught her that."

Animal Collective - "My Girls"

The second, nameless and grinning. A tomboy, landed, knees akimbo, as if from a treehouse or heaven. Flashing eyes and dirty feet, yet still more interested in fancy clothes than her sister. Lacy dresses, heeled shoes with buckles and little purses, all thrown about and ruined. Admires her older sister like you would something in a museum, a crown jewell. Sleeps in a hammock and goes to speech therapy, and hates hates hates homework. Writes "formal complaints" that she leaves on the fridge that say things like "please put the cap on the toothpaste" and "turn your music down, dad". She's so open and friendly with strangers, part of me gets scared, part of me cries with happiness.

[Buy]

Our friends at the National Film Board of Canada have launched a new website. NFB.ca is now the best way to explore the most famous films in the NFB collection that are under an hour long. Films like Lonely Boy, the incredible and almost prescient documentary about Paul Anka's unapologetic clamber to fame. This is probably my favourite NFB film in the entire collection, I never get tired of watching young girls in the sixties react to celebrity. As a matter of fact, if shows like TMZ were about the fans of celebrities, I would probably watch religiously.

and you can wander about like you would any other video site, but the NFB has 65 years of production behind it, so you'll find the strangest gems, like 23 Skidoo, a film made up of shots of empty Montreal streets.

and tons of other stuff too. Enjoy.

AIDS Wolf - "General"

IN MOON LANGUAGE WE WILL NEED TO LEARN TO COMMUNICATE EMOTIONS. HOWEVER, WORDS MUST REMAIN RESERVED FOR TOPICS OF SURVIVAL, RESOURCE CREATION AND HABITABLE CLIMATE INITIATION. THE NEXT OBVIOUS PATH WILL BE THAT OF MOVEMENT, DRESS, AND EYE CONTACT. DURATION, SPACE, VOLUME OF MOVEMENT, LEVEL OF INTENSITY SET FORTH THROUGH THE EYES (HERETOFORE CALLED "EYE DREAM BEAMS") AND COLOR, SHAPE, LENGTH, USE, AND SWEAT DISTRIBUTION IN THE CLOTHES AND HAIRCUT WILL ALL BE WAYS OF COMMUNICATING EMOTION. I ONCE SAW A WOMAN SCREAMING, SURROUNDED BY THREE SOLDIERS IN KHAKI SHIRTS PLAYING GUITARS LIKE THEY WERE TYPING IN A MASSIVE PASSCODE, HER HAIR CUT IN LIVING SCULPTURE DESIGNED TO TROMPE THE L'OEIL, CAREEN INTO A CROWD OF PEOPLE SO MESMERIZED BY HER STATEMENT THAT THEY SEEMED JOLTED INTO ACTION AS FROM ELECTRICITY. THIS WAS A PERFECT USE OF MOON LANGUAGE.

[Buy]
[and see AIDS Wolf live as soon as you can]
[image source]

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Barack Obama is now the president, I couldn't not mention it. The only thing I have to say is that in my open letter to all the Canadian cynics who seem to be looking for holes, reasons not to believe a word they hear or a thing they see, you could sum up the gist of it as "shut up".

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an alternate post for the same song after the jump..

The Strokes - "Killing Lies"

I don't live poorly, I live a distilled life. My clothes distilled into one outfit, my friends distilled into one web site, my food distilled into one soup, my movies into one scene from Cannonball Run, my music into one song. It's a kind of meditative purity, my mind is clear of anything unnecessary, non-essential. Which is not to say my mind is empty, on the contrary, it is exactly full. No meniscus on the water glass, no pressure in any direction, complete and true balance. I give any extra money to charity, equally divided up amongst every charity in existence. I keep a savings account that will keep me alive until I am 83, at which point I will abandon balance and see what else there is. But until then, I am satisfied with perfection. [Buy]

(drawing by nick howard)