Archives : all posts by Dan

Tokin' Black Guy - "Turn My Music High"

I'm scared to post this, because I don't know anything about it. Granted, I don't know anything about any of the stuff I post, but I can't find anything about this guy or this song. All I get is this strange email from someone named Ken Ken with this song attached, and the subject line "tip". I feel like I'm getting scammed, like this is just a joke to see how many bloggers they can get to post a song by an artist with as terrible a name as "tokin' black guy" (seriously, if you're for real, change your name NOW) and I'm the first and probably only one to fall for it. I mean, yeah, let's write a super-fun, completely danceable, by-all-rights grade-A song and then see how many people we can get to be fooled by it. Well, you did it, I'm dancing, I'm smiling, you win, I give in. [MySpace (nothing more mysterious than keeping Tom in your top friends)]

Mt. Cooper - "Lower Plenty Rd."

Again, nothing. I feel more at home feeling scared with this track, though. I recognize this alien metal factory, this gleaming alley at night, this strange cab ride through strange streets. I'm used to these wet shoes, these eyeless kisses, this stabbing painful breath on the back of my neck. Yes, those inkbled pages are mine, yes I'll keep them, thanks, I think I can still make out what it says. [MySpace]

[source]

Eternal Summers - "Fall Straight Back"

--ever again. So now I can finally go home and clean my apartment. I'll make some soup, have a nice bun with it, make some ginger tea. Yeah, I can do all this stuff now. I'll read the last chapter of Tideland, I can finally write my brother back, it's a nice day. How many nice days like this have I missed? No more. Not one.

Eternal Summers - "I Must Winter"

There's a Stan Brakhage film about falling on the ice, and all the colours you see when you black out. There's also one about dead bodies, and one about a cat. Making a film the way Brakhage did was like building a house of cards out of the contents of a fine art museum's permanent collection. Like putting a computer in the oven to show how it affects the way it plays solitaire against itself. That is to say a magical brilliance, a dangerous surprising genius. I feel like the same kind of danger, the same kind of radiant freedom, is released with every crash, every stronk.

[Site]

1. Born Ruffians - Red, Yellow, and Blue - "Foxes Mate For Life"
Somehow two things can sometimes come into existence at the same time. Like babies who look the same and also happen to be named the same name. But when this happens, one wins, right? VHS beat Beta, Madonna beat Cyndi Lauper, and unbelievably, Vampire Weekend beat Born Ruffians. Both their big debuts kind of offer to fill the same kind of role of "clear new vision and singular charming, moving new musical voice." But it's unfortunate that Vampire Weekend got all the credit, because Born Ruffians blow them out of the water, right out. So this is the best album of the year because it's flawless and fuck Vampire Weekend. [Buy]

2. Ladyhawk - Shots - "I Don't Always Know What You're Saying"
A forest at night. If you scrape the bark off the trees, you can hear songs that sound familiar, but drip with the dark fresh sap of the tree. Ladyhawk has made an album so vital I can't think of another way to describe it except for the blood of trees. It's not human blood, it's tougher, harder, ready for danger, it's more removed. It's familiar with humans, it's been watching them, harmed by them, but is not itself human. [Buy]

3. Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping - "Nonpareil of Favor"
Nothing has the shape you thought it would. Suitcases are used like life rafts, fruit like wall-hangings, windows like doors and vice-versa. But in this world where it feels like conversations happen with people talking at the same time, and every day has a different tempo, precarious, still there is magnetic, towering, thorny, blessed and bloody, truth. To hell and back with gender, sex, race, fame, subservience, control, and charm. [Buy]

4. Destroyer - Trouble in Dreams - "My Favorite Year"
Destroyer has sewn the clouds into the snow on the mountains. Every song seems to fade to white, after bursting with gold or red or blue flower and flame. Epic one step at a time. [Buy]

5. Wild Beasts - Limbo, Panto - "Brave, Bulging, Buoyant, Clairvoyants"
Limbo, Panto is hard to listen to all at once. It's kind of like a 10-course meal, just over the half-way mark you're kind of thinking, "okay, that much again?" But that's only a quirk and not a detriment, there's just too much to love here. A list of some of the things you can think of when you listen: ghosts, opera, Morissey, picnic with a stereo, socks dancing, bike riding, witches, fake women voices. [Buy]

6. Hologram - Summer Jammer - "Mommies"
This band doesn't even have an album yet, but I couldn't ignore them. Such promise I rarely see. Caroline's voice comes straight from out of the woods, full of spring water and hollow logs, and she always sings strange and swaying and moonlit. And the guitars are loud in just the right way, they really make it sound easy. They made the most consistent collection of 6 songs of anyone this year, and I'm told there's a full album coming out next year, and I've heard one song from it already, I can tell you we haven't heard the last at all. [Buy from Insound, with insane blurb written by me]

7. Lykke Li - Youth Novels - "Breaking it Up"
5 songs out of 12 isn't even half. One show on a whole tour is only a fraction. But these things are enough for me to consider Lykke Li, and her first album, a masterpiece. Every side of her is marvelous, rich, full, gorgeous. [Buy]

8. The Whiskers - Distorted Historian - "Heat Death"
Distorted Historian is kind of like the Synecdoche, New York of albums. It's cool and warm, it's completely touching and personal and affecting and true, but also horrifying, wrong, and made of parts that don't all fit together. It's marvelous, and I liked my time with it, but if I listen to it too much the goddamn winds of old age, sickness, forgetting, dreaming, wishing, disappointment, small victories, real-life love and all else starts to weigh a little heavy on my admittedly sensitive little shoulders. Here's to whiskers, and The Whiskers. [Free! / Buy]

9. Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea - "Party Barge"
I used to go to a cottage in the summer times, and on that lake there was an actual Party Barge. It was this floating deck covered in astroturf, with a tent and some lawn chairs and a cooler on it, with a little prop motor on the back, and it would pup-pup around the lake, slow as can be, and the people on it would turn and wave to every beach they passed. Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is a beautiful and sincere Party Barge. Huge, friendly, calm, comforting and slow with still plenty of room to party. So much care and love and offered-up confession. [Buy]

10. Diamonds - Diamonds - "Diamonds"
This album is about one thing. I don't know what it is, I don't think they know what it is, but if you listen to this album, like if you listen to On Avery Island or Aw Come, Aw Wry, you start to see it reveal itself. Some kind of alive idea that goes beyond similar beats and chords, those are just the only ways of dealing with this same idea. [Get!]

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tomorrow: Sean's Top Songs of the Year.

also: Shaq's twitter account

Nurses - "Apple's Acre"

We're getting buried in snow today. Everything outside is heavy, wet and soundless. Which means everything inside glows with a new warmth, somehow things find a heat they didn't know they had, and songs like this melt the inner layer and drain a full fresh glass. [Buy from the MySpace]
*credit for title goes to lead singer of Nurses

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Also: go here http://www.cutethingsfallingasleep.org/

The Tallest Man on Earth - "A Field of Birds"

I put a letter on a kite for God to read out loud. I didn't hear anything, but I think I saw his lips move.

[source]

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"A Field of Birds" is, strangely enough, the theme song to a charity organization. Yellow Bird Project is an organization that connects great bands with a charity of their choice. How it works is a band makes an unique t-shirt design especially to sell on Yellow Bird Project's store, and the proceeds from the t-shirt sales go to a charity that the band picks. For example, Bon Iver, who are from Wisconsin, are donating all the profits from the sale of their new shirt to Interval House, a woman's shelter in Toronto. So go check out the list of bands there, maybe someone on a gift list would love something from there.

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Also: I've written about Henry Joost before, but things have changed since a year-and-a-half ago, so it's time for an update. Henry is working with Supermarché, production company in New York who are doing very special work. You should start by watching their work for GOOD magazine. A brilliant series of little documentaries on recent veterans, a story about a floating clinic, a piece on ideas for urban aquaculture, it's absolutely brilliant stuff. Next you should watch their PSAs for Kids with ADHD (Henry also works teaching "at risk" kids filmmaking at a summer camp). Then, yes, they have an ad for Nike, but it's brilliant too.

What interested me most was one of their feature documentaries called Opus Jazz. As of now they've cut a trailer for what the film could be if they got the money they need. And I was struck by how much it seems like a finished film, and how knowing that it wasn't finished made it feel like it ought to be finished, no matter what they needed. And I just got a very good lesson in new methods of fund-raising in the current filmmaking-financial world.

CPC Gangbangs - "Teenage Crimewave"

My fucking fuck landlord slumlord fucker calls me downstairs for a meeting in his "office". It's an unfinished basement that looks like it has tar barf on all the stone walls, dark and runny and his big fat mug smoking cheap cigar after cheap cigar. "You haven't been paying your rent," he says, not looking at me. "I got your cheque right here," I say, and I throw a wet cheque at his combover. "This isn't enough!" he barks, "and you can't sign your cheques with a drawing of a gun!"

Later, picked up by fucking slug crewcut goose-stepping civil slave cops, they asked me my name and I gave them my fucking business card just like I did my fucking landlord. "This isn't a name! This is a drawing of a gun!" I swear, said just like a sample in front of a song, like a, "how dare you rotten kids!" or something. BANG BANG bitches.
[Buy the seminal Mutilation Nation]

Surf City - "Headin Inside"

NOTICE TO RESIDENTS: The city has decided to implement the much-discussed program of enlivening facades. Houses will stay as they are, at their core, but individual facades will be created to reflect the spirit of that house, however the community organizer sees that spirit. Some will look like a haunted mansion from a cartoon, some like an Arabian palace, others like a cloud city, some houses will just look like a giant vegetable. You can contact your community organizer if you wish to volunteer your time, but be aware that these facades will be implemented with or without your help. Some houses will be harder to get into, some will be near impossible, but the benefits will be apparent once the program has been fully implemented. Oh my goodness, yes, there will be so many interesting ones. A western saloon, a microwave, an Arthurian castle, a ski hill, a beautiful woman, a Korean flag, a bendy straw. Yes, this will be fun. [site]

Stetsasonic - "Stet Troop '88!"

"Stet Troop '88!" is a portrait of some pretty well-adjusted dudes. They're trying to cut meat out of their diet, they like staying at home with a nice girl, they remember fondly the days they used to build go-karts, and they break even at the casino. They spend maybe a little bit more than they should (we like cordless mics, we ride ninja bikes) but I get the feeling they're probably putting a bit away for savings too. [Buy]

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please read Adam Waito's fantastic post from yesterday. Below!