Said the Gramophone

Advice to the Young

2013-05-17T16:14:37Z

In the most unhopeless way, there is nothing you can do. Here I am, old, and saddled with regret and pain, and you are asking me for advice. I must look similar to how I feel, and you want to hear what I would do differently if I were young like you. You want to hear the warnings of the old so you can see the future, sidestep the cracks and perils and walk the edges of disaster so you can be just like you are now when you are my age. Well like I say, and do not think I am being discouraging, there is nothing you can do. Sure, eat better, less, breathe deeper, walk longer and learn to dance, but I will not tell you to let go of pain, to live the life you want and not the life others expect of you, I will not tell you this. Because you are young, your project is not finished, whereas mine is done and its holes are showing. There is nothing you can do, you will either end up like me or more likely end up like you.

[Reissued by Snowstar]

AN ADVANCING RAM

2013-05-16T15:15:48Z

Steve Mason - "Come to Me". At 11:07pm, it is pouring on rue Raspail. The pavement looks black and the few tall trees shake down a heavy, cold spray. A man runs down the sidewalk in silver sneakers. A woman hustles with her head down, clutching a gold bag. There is a thin wind. At the top of the boulevard, a battering ram begins to move. The ram is made of teak, oak and steel, reinforced with ten thousand bolts. Whoever built this spent years building it, assembling and honing, to finally arrive at this horizontal beam, a ram of unimaginable strength, which is making its way down rue Raspail. Flecks of rain slip across the wood and metal. Shadows crisscross its head. Nobody is holding the battering ram: it is in the open bed of a truck. The truck advances one block at a time. When there is a red light, it stops. A man in silver sneakers glances at the ram and runs on. A woman turns a corner. If battering rams could speak, this one would say, "Soon." [buy]

BRAVADO

2013-05-13T19:59:37Z

Rokia Traoré - "N'Téri". I'm visiting Paris for a couple of weeks. I have visited here before. When I was 12, when I was 22, when I was 25, when I was 28. Four visits. It is easy to be cocky. Sure, the 14ième. Oh yeah, L'As du Falafel. Why je t'en prie. I pretend I am not a tourist. I am a saucy know-it-all. I am a boss. I drink pastis and Sancerre, hop on vélib. I am tempted, for one precarious moment, to spit upon the street. But no I do not. As the second sunset settles I am reminded: Be humble. Soyez humble. You are a stranger here, a mouse, a drab visitor from faraway. You are borrowing this horizon. You are stealing this clouded sunlight. These cream pastries, these lemongrass chocolates, these cheeses and breads and wines and olives, these cobblestones - they are all gifts. We come to this place and the unsaying city says, Here. It says it without saying it. Some generosities are so matter-of-fact that you can mistake them for weather, for masonry. We travel and we are welcome: this is a privilege, do not forget; this is a windfall. Merci.

These feelings - I have been feeling them but they are also tossed up into the air, blown like dandelion seeds, by Rokia Traoré's "N'Téri". Traoré is a Malian artist, singing in Bambara, and this is from her new album. It is a gorgeous treasure of a song - seven minutes of slow waking, then the day's wakeful living. OK and then maybe the night too: the scatter of dancesteps on a clean floor, until they abruptly halt.

I walked under flowering chestnut trees; I listened to "N'Téri". In both, it was easy to be seduced. To be a boss, a saucy know-it-all. To be forgetfully comfortable in Traoré's serenade, in her song's perfect rings. But no, listen: We are guests. This is faraway music, and a gift. So generous, so generous, the playing is so generous: slow bass, a kind voice, metronome guitar, then the waking glitter of electric guitar. I feel like I have been welcomed into a garden, or a magic desert, with lines of shade and white light, rainfall and sun, restful hours. A bird crosses the sky without flapping its wings. I think, Bonjour. (The bird, too, is a gift.)

N'Téri is a word that means friend. My friend. This is a gift Traoré has given us. I hope one day to deserve the name.

[buy]

(photo is of members of Delhi's Pullan family, all of whom have albinism - source)

Loop loop

2013-05-10T20:18:48Z

Peals - "Tiptoes in the Parlor"

Careful not to scratch the glass. Careful of the ice, it's thin like rice paper, and the edges can be sharp. Careful of people who always look perfect, careful of the wind. Careful not to promise anything to anyone, that will never land the way you think. Careful, watch, there's a candle on.

[Pre-Order]

ANOTHER FRUIT MACHINE

2013-05-09T20:12:16Z

Jim Guthrie - "Taking My Time". Stray dime rolls in on its edge, stops at the end of your shoe. Take it thin between thumb and forefinger. You hold it up to the light. The thought registers: I approve of this dime. Before you have time to pocket it you see the jewelled flash of an illuminated sign. It is as if God is sending you a gaudy message. SLOT MACHINES, the sign reads. DIMES DIMES DIMES. This is a dumb coincidence, it hardly makes you smile, but the phrase "dimes dimes dimes" makes you smile, makes you repeat the words under your breath, and soon you find yourself pushing the heavy brass door and into the house of slot machines. The gambling devices clonk, whirr and bling, flexing their lights, promising loot. You hold up your dime. Just what the doctor ordered. Just what the machine requires. Down into a slot, zip cachunk, then you smack the turquoise button and watch the treasure wheels spin. Bar, Cherry... banana. That is your fate. Bar, Cherry, Banana - a sequence that is worthless, vacant, wasted. The machine swallows your coin and adjusts its flash - gives the shine and glitter a different intonation, goading or disappointed. So much for your lucky coin of serendipity. So, stupidly (stupidly! you tell yourself) you take out your wallet and dig out another dime dime dime. This is a second dime. This dime is yours. You slip it in the damn dumb machine. You push the turquoise button. You sort of hold your breath. Zip cachunk, wheel & wheel & wheel, and you think to yourself: If I am really lucky I will win a bit of patience. [buy]

(photo source)

LOVE ON TENNIS CT.

2013-05-08T01:22:14Z

Thee Oh Sees - "Maze Fancier"

There are many stories from Tennis Ct, and I wish they could all be told today.

This is not, however, the story of the one-eyed dog that everyone called Ray Charles because of the way he wagged his head around.

Nor is it the story of the Philippine nanny who mysteriously took care of a different kid every week, never repeating one ever in her career.

And this is not the story of the actress who lived in 18, the big apartment with the bus shelter out front, which had a huge advertisement with her face on it that made her think thieves and rapists would now know where she lived.

This is the story of Kahn, the tall slender boy whose skin looked like a painting done with a loose wrist. Everything about Kahn looked effortless. He seemed to coast along Tennis Ct as if carried by a cloud. And he lived on that street all his life, and every day of that time, someone was in love with Kahn.

It was either Jennifer the kleptomaniac who had a penchant for pinching undies, or Therèse the bank teller who chewed more gum than anyone in history. For a while it was Benjamin, who would glance at Kahn while pretending to wash his Miata, or little Frederick who never felt anything deeper for anyone else, not even his parents or his toys so it must be love what else could it be. And eventually everyone had their turn to pine: Rita who flossed so much she had to have surgery, Nico Guzman who hated being left-handed, both Michael and Michelle who were fraternal twins and mortal enemies, everyone.

But Kahn loved none of them. Kahn was not of this world, he seemed to be in love with the great beyond, the hereafter, the next life. Perhaps that's what made him so desirable, and not his easy simple floating way, but that he seemed to know the future, and still he smiled.

[Buy from Castle Face]

THE SUFFERIST

2013-05-04T01:15:53Z

Beck - "Loser"

No, I work here, you can ask anyone. I've worked here for years. Years. I've come in every day, and I've put in my blood sweat and tears, haha. Years. How long have you been here? Maybe you don't work here. I work here, dude, ask anyone. Well, when they come in in the morning you can ask them then. Don't touch me. I work here, don't I look like I work here? These just happen to be the hours that I work! That's why I have a coffee, hellooo! I've been here every day, dude, serious. No, I mean, I've been here, I don't always go inside. I don't always need to, I can work out here. Yes, I've been coming out here every day and working, so I think I'm a fucking employee, yes. See the bag? See the computer? See the printer cable? Employee. Ask anyone.

If you listen to this song nice and loud, you will hear my new favourite part of a thousand favourite parts: at 3:48, just as the song is already fading out, that previously unheard huge guitar that comes in? That's it for me today.

[Buy]

(image from consumeconsume)

SECRET ADMIRER

2013-05-02T20:04:57Z

Colin Stetson - "Among the Sef (Righteous II)". Colin Stetson's third album is not the same terror or treasure that his last one was. New History Warfare Vol 2 felt mortal. It felt desperately mortal. The saxophonist's voice and breath, this unfurling force; dying as it unfurled, and striving as it died, striving & loving & hoping, clawing back the end. Stetson - a virtuoso and an athlete - made music that was suffused with vulnerability. Its weakness broke my heart into pieces.

There is little weakness to New History Warfare Vol 3, released this week. Its subtitle is To See More Light. Look at the cover: a black bird, rising from the wasteland. Listen to its songs, with Justin Vernon's hopeful croon. At times Stetson sounds threatened, or chased, but he never sounds doomed. Like the crow on the sleeve, these songs are ascendant. Their spirit seems puissant, victorious; whereas Vol 2 honoured - or at least held space for - fragility, Vol 3 is about gathering strength. Not mortality but immortality.

The result is a forceful, handsome work. Once again, Stetson weaves his compositions from endless strings of notes, arpeggios dancing across the room. He uses the rhythms of his fingers striking the saxophone's keys, the resonating hum in the horn, a roar that comes from somewhere in his chest. Vernon is an excellent companion, subtle and undaunted; with his presence, perhaps for the first time, Stetson's music gains a sense of safety. The musician calls out, or his sax calls out, and I imagine the call rippling out over the plains or the ice, like northern lights. Unlike the saxophonist's preceding work, I can imagine his call being answered. I can imagine the hymn being heard.

"Among the Sef (Righteous II)" is my favourite piece on the record. It is darting, birdlike. It flits, dives, searches. All these flickering notes, too fast to follow; the flutter of touches; the thin sound of Stetson drawing breath; then his animal voice, wordlessly lowing. I don't know if it's a prayer or a vow, and the message doesn't need to be understood. Here is a searching spirit, speaking its heart, without an audience. Like art in its purest form - a cave painting, a secret dance. A shout, a whisper, a song, for its own sake.

But this record is not often so lonely. On a later track, "What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?", Stetson and Vernon turn a song by Washington Phillips inside-out. Whereas the the original is troubled and fragile, this cover is confident, saved, like a riverside revival. I don't hear any of Phillips' lonesome, unsettled asking. Take the original lyrics, where the singer is full of questions:

What are they doing in heaven today?
Where sin and sorrow are all done away?
'Peace abounds like a river,' they say.

For that last line, the essence is its end. They say. Washington Phillips did not need to sing those words; he was a believer. He might have told us simply, as a promise, "Peace abounds like a river." But Phillips could not make this promise. He could not give us this certainty.

When Vernon sings this chorus, "They say" feels like an afterthought. And the second question disappears.

What are they doing in heaven today?
The sin and sorrow are all done away.

Such calm confidence, such serenity, over Stetson's blanket of glimmering notes. It's a beautiful reassurance.

But I don't believe in the reassurance. I feel shy writing this, as an acquaintance of Colin's, as someone who deeply respects and admires his work. If I hadn't been so moved by New History Warfare Vol 2, maybe I would be able to quietly love Vol 3 - to be bolstered by its impressive consolations. Maybe the stakes would not feel so high. Maybe if I were a believer, or a millionaire, or if society seemed like it was getting wiser, I would be able to take more solace in this album. I think the way you feel about To See More Light will depend on how much you believe in Stetson's reassurance, or how much you need it. I am happier in 2013 than I can remember ever having been before. But Stetson's earlier songs touched me more than all this gorgeous triumphing. I believed the laments more than the fanfares.

I'm still grateful for both.

Postscript, May 4: I went to see Colin last night, playing at Montreal's Sala Rossa.
"Who the Waves Are Roaring For" seemed like an Édith Piaf 45, old and rose, slowly sinking in the brine. "High Above a Grey Green Sea", questing & optimistic on the record, felt abandoned. It felt all-alone. The set was filled with shrieks and groans and the sound of shearing metal. The stage was pitted with little shipwrecks. It felt bloody. There were mistakes in the playing, hiccups and tiny failures. I guess I am trying to say it felt mortal. Stetson, so Olympian up there, also seemed so small. It was a crowded room. Sometimes, when the songs spread out like fabric, a painting of space & time in pinprick notes, like minimal techno, I was as aware of the crowd as of the man centered in spotlight. I tried to stay steady as I thought: a room full of human beings, almost all of us strangers.

If you are in Montreal, please find a way into his show tonight. Or else see him on tour this summer.

[buy]

(photo source)

Weaves

2013-04-30T18:02:08Z

Weaves - "Hulahoop"

Please go away. Please go away and never come back. Please fuck right off, and keep fucking right off for the rest of your fucking life. Take your perfect leather boots, and your haphazard hair, and the tiny ankle fold in your jeans and vanish from Earth. Please let your oddly-clumped freckles and your skewed glasses and your gap-toothed grin have never existed. Please let your love notes and your open toothpaste and your breakfast leftovers be long-awaited proof of a parallel universe, inapplicable to this one. Take everything that happened, every second of it, and fold it a million times. From meeting to parting, fold it up, take an awkward dinner and crease it at great sex. When you can't tell a text message from a backrub, we're good. But I never, I mean ever, want to see you again. You are steam now. You are white-on-white, you are a dream that sits on your tongue like "it was something" and then disappears.

Weaves is a project involving (at least) the great Jasmyn Burke (of RatTail) and the marvelous Morgan Waters. So excited to hear more, and for live dates. I'll let you know.

MAKE IT

2013-04-29T15:51:42Z

Junip - "Your Life Your Call". José Gonzalez as a steely-eyed aerobics instructor. Step, lift, back, step. I say "steely-eyed"; really the things you make out of steel. Tankers, skyscrapers, indestructible ball bearings. Gonzalez is level on a swaying ship. There are no tremors in his instructions. It's over now, he sings. You have taken your time. / But you can't stay here. / Go dry up your tears. Gonzalez's band, Junip, is one of the most underrated groups in indie rock. Their songs sound like kaleidoscopes: splendid, prismatic, controlled. You can use a kaleidoscope when you're high; you can use one when you're sober. Split up a problem: divide it into even pieces, bright shards, turn the dead-end into branching roads. Once I saw Junip play live, in a room in Montreal. This steady, fortunate joy. I thought to myself, Music is a common magic. It does not take much. Pull yourself together, Gonzalez sings. Draw the line. It is morning, and the day is yours. [buy]

---

A grateful, bellowing ovation for the Washington Wizards' Jason Collins, the first openly gay player on a major North American sports team.

Elsewhere:

My friend Luc built hoot.ch, a very simple, elegant digital playlist/musicblog. No writing, just Luc's careful selections, and images, in a handsome player. Press play and let it run. (Luc's taste centers on instrumental hip-hop, IDM and noisy pop.)

(photo source)

Fake It, You'll Never Make It

2013-04-26T18:45:43Z

Born Ruffians - "Permanent Hesitation"

If there is one thing that this song, its jeans-on-the-floor and text-messages-from-someone-only-named-J, seems to evoke, beyond its let-go-of-the-hand-hold and necklace-casts-a-shadow-on-the-neck, it's a phrase, written on faces, weather, and every tea store sandwich board: Time is running out.
--
Born Ruffians still speak to me. Their new album Birthmarks is really great, I think. You can buy it here.

NOW DUSKLY

2013-04-25T16:08:15Z

Jai Paul - "Str8 from Mumbai (demo)". Jai Paul's best cuts feel damaged - not drunk, not high, but still wobbly and redoubled, splendidly wavering. It's like someone is playing with the dials on the mixer, spraying samples, bringing volumes up and down, frequencies in and out; these microscopic fades, neurons firing and disappearing. A lurid part of me wants to call it Parkinson's pop. "Str8 from Mumbai" is a necklace of vanishing jewels, gems in and out of phase. A nightclub you can only see in a mirror. The treatment for a short film: mysterious billionaire, private jet to India, five hours out, then back to real grey life. But this song would be too vivid for the soundtrack. It would leave too strong a mark. [Jai Paul's debut is expected... eventually. This was allegedly an "illegal" leak.]

Weather Station ft Marine Dreams - "First Letter". A sunrise that changes its mind. A dawn that shifts, mid-dawning. Weather Station's Marine Dreams duet starts as one song, in silver light, and becomes another, with a different shade of silver. As we approach summer, I am reminded of the way it sometimes is: a long day that quickly changes, a twist ending for the sky. Our hearts watch the clouds, they swerve with the weather, they do what they're shown. [buy]

(Photo source unknown.)

A GENEROUS OLD DIRECTIVE

2013-04-22T15:00:06Z

Electrelane - "To The East". I need a mission, somebody give me a mission. An envelope with a folded, typed instruction. A clear cloud. A banner, a crackling radio instruction. Just a sign. Just give me a sign. Let it be plain or filigreed, simple or adorned. Let it be easy or difficult, let it be impossible. I will make love or wage war, I will run or howl, I will shove coke, spade by spade, into the belly of a train. All I ask is that you inscribe my future, so that I need not invent it myself. Give me something to live up to: a destiny, a fate. You will see me at my fullest, in body and indigo. I will stride into the tide. I will sing the rest of the song. I will find the puny needle or fire the long harpoon. I will go home, if that's what I am to do, or believe me darling I will hold out hope. [buy]

(photo source)

THE OFFICIAL OPINION

2013-04-19T22:40:13Z

Eleanor Friedberger - "Stare at the Sun"

The first drive on the day when the last polluting car has been retrofitted. [Pre-Order]

Jay-Z - "Big Pimpin'"

If I give my whole body to one song, it would be worth it, because what else is there to do but spend yourself on something. Pick the one that will shake you like a rag doll, spread you open, dance like lights, and drip you dry. Crack your hands from shadow boxing, spend your knees from Russian bending, and your shoulders, your shoulders will be the first to go. [Buy]

GLAD HAPLESSNESS

2013-04-18T23:10:01Z

Atakora Manu's Band - "Palm Wine Seller". Frequently, when I am listening to palm wine guitar music, I think to myself: This is the best sound in the world. It is beautiful and hapless. It is dizzy. It reminds me of my greatest joys and my most witless blues. Imperfect, expert, lo-fi, hi-fi, distorted and clear, oh how many reversing right yeses. I have never drunk palm wine but I have been drunk on it. I have lolled and then shot like an arrow into the heart of the waning day. [out of print]