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All but the bravest men wilt and retreat…

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Blind Willie Johnson – Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground

Living within his thirty-first year of existence, Willie Johnson smothered an instrumental he was working on with capering and swooning murmurs of vocal expression – words without words. Not to lessen the strength of this sound, but if we were all without word, then this would be our attempted mating call; that fight to deter the crippling loneliness all too often felt, that cry for touch, and that desire for one of similar workings.

Do you imagine Blind Willie on a trusted rocking-chair, crowded by mist, not men, and that humbled glow of candle light steady in the air, too? Wood enveloped home, shed like, with a roaming dog. How inappropriate it would be to fill the summers drunken festival air with this sound. How timeless and yet how wonderfully time specific this sound is. Let’s all just crowd around, quietly, and maybe he can feel us sway, even if his lacking sight and life puts us out of reach.

[Purchase here or donate here.]

Posted on May 7, 2010 - Tunes - 2 Comments » Share

Allow for a little joy in your life…

Written by

Art is the image of life, its purpose simply to enhance it. Look out for Nick Valensi in the background on drums. Oh, what fun to be had.

[Purchase Little Joy by Little Joy.]

Posted on May 3, 2010 - Videos - No Comments » Share

In my mind, this is my free time… to let it all away

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Interpol – Lights

“That’s why I hold you. That is why I hold you, dear. That is why I hold you near.”

“Lights” is rock & roll’s ever present six minute crescendo of song with the surprise hint that finally there may be a band that can lie comfortably and relish a discovered plateau of sprawling sound. No demand for further surges, no nervous excitement, but simply a grand and orchestral thunder smack of sound, and the volunteered escape from the forcibly darkened vistas that usually inherit the ideal Interpol track. Precision and intent throughout; raucous it most certainly is not.

This newly released track, a free download from Interpol’s official online home, is one of insistent keyboard-like drum beats and atypical percussion. Each beat failing to offer the ominous drumming tones of Forgarino that have long since been the trademark backing for this band. There’s unexpected fun to be had here and he’s having it – with the introduction of a discovery, multiple new arms, as numerous tips and taps invade your ear per flickering second.

Bank’s vocals are a continuation of his solo exploits as Julian Plenti… Is Skyscraper – a slight, but clear departure from earlier Interpol records – and had this been an guitar instrumental only then its identity as an Interpol track would have held. It’s the change in structure and rhythmic section – along with a supporting role for a bass, the instrument that once danced for this band – which is enough to to ensure “Lights” is not simply a continuation of what has gone before. It may only be a taster of the proposed new Interpol, but it’s certainly enough to instigate an itch for more. An album opener (perhaps) or a risky first single choice? Whichever, whatever, however, they are back – and to be welcomed with open arms. Hands away!

“Maybe I like to stray… but keep it clean.” [Download, free, at InterpolNYC.]

Posted on May 2, 2010 - Tunes - 2 Comments » Share

She danced on tables

Written by

Cat Power – Lived In Bars

Relieve me of all responsibilities, sedate me heavily, and let’s start our own peculiar ways, please. What would suit is to opt out entirely; to jump ship and abandon it all, but I’m not sure I believe in the foreign sea, and so the towering anxiety suffocates what little interest I may have held. Onward we will march.

Shoo-bah-doo! Shoo-bah-doo! Shoo-bah-doo!
Doo! Doo! Doo!

[Buy The Greatest.]

Posted on April 28, 2010 - Tunes - 1 Comment » Share

You can’t get rid of me yet

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I saw you this mornin'

Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson – In My Secret Life

Quiet little voices creep into my head and they begin chewing.

I wonder if he’s worth it.

What? Worth what?

It all.

He’ll make you happy, Bambi. He will. When you turn in bed and stick out your butt, no matter what mood, no matter what came before, he’ll fall in beside you and won’t stop holding till he wakes. Even then he’ll probably shimmy in closer.

When I look at him, I believe that, too. Yeah, I think…

One thing I can assure for the coming summer is the desire for a scorching sun to spray heat upon this earth, and – when it finally does – for me to profess, ‘I don’t like this. I’m not used to this,’ and for me to scurry in return to the cooling sensation of a walled space.

Just like that! Just like that he’ll change his mind. He will.

I was trying to move us along. Don’t worry. He won’t. He won’t change his mind. It’s set.

[Buy 10 New Songs.]

Posted on April 19, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

“We have time-Warped with the best of them.”

Written by

Jimmy London – Bridge Over Troubled Water

Today I flicked through a guestbook of an old – now closed – Irish restaurant based in Dublin, Ireland. The guestbook had the strong outward presence of a hardened cover and a fleshy inside of yellow and browning paper. There were names, there were dates, and some drawings – some random, shaded drawings. There was also a drawing of a beetle.

Names flew by without any recognition and then:

O R S O N – W E L L E S

Not spelt out in such a manner, you’ll surely understand, but the letters followed each other in the same rigid formation. I knew that name, didn’t I? Of course I did. Then more. Christopher Lee (the darkness), Ingrid Bergman (the sensation), and Alfred Hitchcock (the genius). I was flicking through sheets and page after page of worn paper that these people had once held, had once pressed their creative – and sometimes beautiful – hands against. These pages they had pushed ink upon. And then, of course, the drawing of a beetle.

To be specific, the drawing of a beetle wasn’t so much a drawing of a beetle as it was a drawing of a Beatle by a Beatle, understand? John Lennon had drawn an image of what looked like Paul McCartney with a right-handed bass guitar (I tut at you, Lennon) with small musical notes drifting in waves from his sketched mouth. Beside it, no note or autograph, but simply:

“The other the three
are saving up to
come here !

YEAH – 3

BSL

Flicking through these pages and slowly dragging my fingers over such a drawing almost felt as good as this song. Almost, but not quite.

[Buy A Little Love.]

Posted on April 14, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Come on, somebody – say something!

Written by

Alexandre Desplat – High-Speed French Train

Do songs and their emotive power enhance movie scenes? Or does that emotion you embrace – that punch pounding its very way through the eyes of the actor – infiltrate the song on future listens? Or is it possible that they come together to form the perfect balance, one of equal passion and charm and wit and thrill? This song, with all its dainty nooks and pure subtlety, will not answer any of the above. This song is simply yet another song to raise the thought of which came first.

Two foxes sit together in a room lit by weakened night lamps. They watch as a train glides in circles along a toy track; their burgeoning minds and tiring eyes captured. Those brief seconds, seconds void of jealousy and frustration and fear, are utopian. If you’re not moved then widen your eyes, stare a little harder, take it in, and allow it to soak. Every twist of colour splashed upon a sound canvas by an intoxicated and boisterous Vishnu, every loop of frail yet gallant noise intoned with senseless and joyous gravitas.

[Buy Fantastic Mr. Fox (Original Soundtrack).]

Posted on April 9, 2010 - Tunes - 1 Comment » Share

If what we had was good… then why?

Written by

Prince – How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?

The city background had faded to aqua blue, but street lamps were still ablaze with light. His little red cigarette had burned with a temper for minutes without ever leaving his hand or waist. An eager stream of rainwater twisted its way down along the cobbled street, between each stone and merrily around his brown Oxfords. He flicked at whatever water had gathered and watched as the flying tail of stream whipped the streets onrushing glisten and disappeared for good.

He tried to see could his eyes follow what flew.

He flicked at the surrounding water again and immediately lost sight. Gathering some spit, he swished it and laid it upon his tongue. Curling his tongue to gather the spit whole, he brought it forward to part his lips and catapulted – what once sat in his mouth – up and onto the street. He followed this bubbly glob for maybe three seconds, but that disappeared, too. The man straightened his lilac tie, looked again at everything that would disappear, the world and its edge, stepped inside, and called her.

[Buy How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore (LP Version).]

Posted on April 1, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

It’s all about the way that it unfurls

Written by

I feel lighter

The Magnetic Fields – A Pretty Girl Is Like

I’ve never responded truthfully to a “How are you?”

(Outstanding.)

Above Benjamin, clouds darted eagerly forward, growing hearts in jars. Kind loving mountains near opening, planning quests. Rising suns teasing unicorns, violently. William XI yelped, “ZANY!”

No mind… inside. They call it spring fever.

Listen to music.

Let’s be happier.

[Buy 69 Love Songs.]

Posted on March 27, 2010 - Tunes - 1 Comment » Share

Will it spin? Will it soar?

Written by

Gorillaz & Little Dragon – Empire Ants

0:00 – Song 2-D.

“The sun has come to hold you.” Trudging acoustic lines press against the ticking delight of drum machine snare; it’s the sound of midnight air. Playful delicate taunts of piano lines skipping around the nucleus of flame drenched sound in stealth ninja suits. “The whole world is crashing down on you.” It will arrest you with longing-for melodies and then…

2:14 – Song Yukimi Nagano.

When I was seven years old I bought a Rubik’s cube. It took seven weeks to save up for through the not too admirable practice of collecting stolen pennies and an altogether flawed changeover of cash from the church tray: in one penny and out one pound. Still, I got to where I needed to be, alone in my room with my colourful cube. It was too big for one hand to handle, too colourful to avoid squinting and too complex for my mind to fathom, but it was here. It was glorious. At night I hid it in a potted plant – parental detection would be avoided – but one of these nights my mother watered the plant, the water soaked through the soil, wrapped around the cube and my cube, as I slept, grew.

There are still indents along the wall where the cube fell against. Each square I could climb into, if I had the nerve to squeeze out from the safety that was laying underneath my bed. Sometimes I’d peek, but mostly I listened. My room sized Rubik’s cube on crack with its twisting and twirling shapes. Every square revolving with colours my young eyes had not yet seen; colours I have yet to see again. Pellets of booming bass gushing through its plastic pours. Torrents of sound hitting and bouncing against every twist and turn my ear had to offer. And there was a voice, too. It was a girl – a voice of childlike transmission, but a knowing hook. This was as much as I could tell for certain. And I listened to her sing through this electrified pallet of colours – my overgrown Rubik’s cube. “My little dream working the machine.”

With my ear against the pulsing ground I felt her come to rest as the sound died and watched as my cube fell to the floor to fit in my hands once again. I rushed to the corner of the room and packed it back into the soil. In the bathroom I cupped my hands together as the tap emptied with water. Losing half of my cupped collection I emptied all I could onto the soil and then I waited.

[Buy Machine Dreams.]

Posted on March 20, 2010 - Tunes - 3 Comments » Share

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