Everything this person has written for TUNETHEPROLETARIAT

Three perfect ways

Written by

The Dickies – Banana Splits (The Tra La La Song)

Yes, it is that song from that soundtrack and we’ve all heard it and bobbed those collective heads of ours, but it’s worth a closer listen. Festive energy is the wrap of deliciously delicate fury. “Four bananas, three bananas, two bananas, one – all bananas playing in the bright warm sun.” It’s fun and essential escapism, with a wink and a mocking nod to those incapable of such whimsical creation. A bad mood set to ruins with the controlling charge of aural bombardment. [Vinyl.]

Sickly be

Written by

Charlotte Gainsbourg – Me And Jane Doe

He spoke in tongues. Complete and utter babble is its only true description. The never approaching cul-de-sac of words and cliché chorus. And he’d speak them while waving cups full of tea through flailing arms – as if active at a podium – and it’d cause a shiver up her spine every time she would hear the faint thump of liquid hitting the cream toned carpet. Thump. Stain.

Are you prepared for death, friend? She asked this while lifting his legs to sweep away bits of bread and half-chewed pills and tiny balls of paper, formed when he’d tear strips from the newspaper and roll them up in his tongue, and then tried to spit or lob them into the open fire, but he didn’t have the energy to win. Even against his own self he’d lose. She’d ask this often, because it was an important question, but at no time in her recent memory had he understood or took notice.

“Does it matter?”

He had responded.

We got lucky and then time passed and we got unlucky. “Tell me one who had an ending any different.”

Startled by his fluidity and senses, she knew now was the time to approach his soul. She asked him was he ready and he said he was. Running blood; it’s a finite feature.

He lay stretched in the chair, kicked off and away his slippers, and adjusted the elastic on his pants which had tightened around a swollen stomach. She pressed it firmly against him and put a bullet through his temple.

She called the local police station, informed his youngest daughter that he had finally returned for brief moments and the opportunity could not be missed, cleaned up whatever she could before they came, and crossed his limp arms. She didn’t want to hassle anyone, not if she could help it. “Leave this room as neat as it was given to you,” she muttered. And she did so over and over until they came. [Purchase.]

Lovefool

Written by

Imogen Heap – Hide And Seek

Should you allow Heap’s voice a visual playmate, a celestial ghost or a spacial cloud, then you could imagine it diving into and upon itself. Dipping and thrashing with silk ease like playful dolphins. Emerging from a sun bounced ocean surface before plunging with seemingly languid ease into black holes, and spinning in and around crowded souls, coaxing them to fun or huddled hope. This abounding and daring multi-layer of a cappella stir, a motion blur of effort, is entirely gorgeous, even if founded on crestfallen confusion: “Blood and tears, they were here first… It’s all for the best? Of course it is.” [Purchase.]

That’s the man I am

Written by

Interpol – Success

Interpol, the album, by Interpol.

SuccessSuccess is a long-play opener of fecund opera. Feverish trading guitars cocoon bass grinds of hypnotised dance; bass lines reminiscent of previous bouts (re: Turn On The Bright Lights) (For one here so close to his leave, Carlos D is ensuring fun is had.). “I’ve got two secrets, but I only told you [of] one. I’m not supposed to show you.” Interpol usher through Success, the albums shortest track, the zestful return, and, with it, lay early claim to the album’s strongest offering.

Memory Serves – The drudge (not limp) of Memory Serves serves (pardon me) only as waste to momentum, gathered by the work of the three and half minutes previous. Still, the drone is widescreen in its offering, noteworthy to be sure, and there’s enough divergence and adventure in Banks’ melodic offering to attain repeat interest. And it’s a love song, to be sure, “It would be so nice to take you. I only ever try to make you smile,” but not in the sense that Leif Erikson is a love song, “She says it helps with the lights out. Her rabid glow is like Braille to the night.”

Summer Well – Oh, the sensory opposite of torture. “All the while, the protests have shined the same, but you will never notice it’s all right.” Unlike the Interpol of a recent past, and like the trend of Interpol the LP, the emotion is only accessible if the notes and melody provide it. There are no lasting drives, no higher pier to catch, no faked surge to raise your gut. There’s comfort in the plateau. It’s lacking false sentiment.

Lights – “Maybe I like to stray… but keep it clean.”

Barricade – The initial rhythmic section tickles excitement and then, too soon, you’ll feel as though nothing fits. It takes time so coerce each melody and instrument track into working as one entity. “I did not take to analysis, so I had to make up my mind.” Barricade is eclectically sullen, but sprite and fresh in approach. It is neither the strongest track, nor the unappreciated first single it once was.

Always Malaise (The Man I Am) – “I will act in a certain way, I will control what I can, that’s the man I am.” A far-reaching track, splintered into two: the quirky, superfluously darkened side-A, and the softening, blood-rush-warmth of side-B – backed by gun-fire drumming, reminiscent of the “aim” “fire!” training scene, charging towards its abrupt end, making way for…

Safe Without – … a Waits-like, well deep, detracted and muffled beat that quickly looms into a composed musical shedding of melancholy and repeat vocal expression, “I am safe without it.” Whatever “it” is, we’re no wiser five minutes on. It’s Interpol, lead by Banks, at their most cantankerous. Remarkably expressive, even by vague means, through every pour of sound.

Try It On – A quickened piano riff that develops through to a computerised cluster of sound, whistles of distance, and dance floor drumming provide a rapturous jump forward onto a modern field for Interpol, even if, ironically, it implements the old EP speak ramblings of Banks, “Somewhere to stay. There’s nowhere to stay.”

All Of The Ways – This track is coarse, yet the chorus offers moments of dramatic rises in sound, as if bombs were exploding beneath the belly of the track. “Who is this guy? Does he know I’ll wait for all-time?”

The Undoing – Panoramic, if not spiritual, with softened Church organ, ingenuous lyrical offering – in Castilian Spanish – atop a layer of trumpet glaze. They are indeed altered. “Please, please, the place we’re in now.” Indeed, the place Interpol are in now. The freshness of ideas and profligacy of elements that this album accommodates, and without sleeve-tricks, too, is generally missed, and was missed on my first adventures in, only to be found in the midst of several spins and drills of listening later. It’s worth pushing through. Aren’t Interpol always worth the push? [Purchase.]

Among the filthy; filthy, too.

Written by

Dirty Beaches – True Blue

It’s a song through grainy sands: a sound of muffled clarity. You remember placing and clicking that tape into its deck, and who has forgotten such magic? None, I hope. When the song would play you’d hear everything. You heard sounds that weren’t ever present and you saw colours in mushy pixels, too, but you can’t do that anymore. But then there’s True Blue. The cloudless tune.

The consoling jangle* of rhythm guitar passes play through to its leading sister, sensitive in her approach to the riff, with an almost double-bass delivery. Pluck and boom and soft fizzle…

Swallowed and consumed drums swim in shallow pacing, but it can be felt, and the sound won’t move without it. All backing to the most present of voices. And what of such vocal impression? “I’m beggin’ you, please.” :53. To keep pace with a Ronette, when your own effort is distanced from the original, is to stand alone with strength. That quick-fire mouthed gun; the lip spit-shake chorus change of ‘true blue’ to ‘TCHUBLU!’ – it’s all a whipping paint brush, spurting fantastic and tragic colours on the soon-to-be canvas.

To be a singer is to surprise swoon, for there is no greater charm. True Blue, it belongs in the arms of the smaller fishes of the more focused ponds. It belongs to my arms and their own anxieties. Christ, I must be blunt, hear me out, for this song is majestic in its nature. [Buy.] [View.] [Glare (At).]

* Do you hear Christmas, too?

Teach me to reach my desires (with some grace)

Written by

The Mamas & The Papas – Dream A Little Dream of Me

And he plugged in.

He lifted his shirt, flicked and tucked away some dust and mess from his belly button, sat against the wall, back-straight, and fit his spine into the vertical charger. Some rummaging, some swaying, but the eventual click. The mirror opposite told him the dulled whites of his eyes had flicked to lime green wash; he was in. He wanted music and dreams and a home, but he had to wait for the charge. A wait to drink it in. A boy who wanted to be a hanging picture, not the leaning mess on the floor’s back. No surprise.

The back of his head, his backing, took to the cold wall as he ran it across a small clump of dried paint, scratching at a spot somewhere on his scalp. Pop. His back took to the wall, too, and so his curved neck, the space untouched by brick, caused irritation. Phantom irritation.

There was too much hair on his knees, he thought; a sign of diabetes, he had once read – maybe. His shins were balding (both), but of the two patches it was the right-sided patch that lacked subtlety, and through his socks he could see his second toe was longer than the first. These are the type of things you think of in a state of charge, he thought.

Sitting there for hours, the charge bar hadn’t yet reached halfway, but the energy fell into him like fierce surges of electric waves. Progress. Feel.

He drifted in his impatience and dreamed dreams of her and of a home somewhere else. [Buy.]

The Rat Disco

Written by

The Walkmen – The Rat

Lollapalooza – that funny word – happened in Chicago earlier this month and nothing was overpriced; minus the $60 spent on band tees. And how it felt…

Wavves brought boisterous belch-mint air, an unfortunate support act to the “saved” Mavis Staples and her insistence on a specific presence, but petition I won’t for the charm felt safe. The New Pornographers offered glitter guns and sterling recognition of a hot day and fan fascination, as the Black Keys wasted litres of water on swollen necks, taunting a moisture purged audience. Friday night’s end granted a late-to-stage-Strokes offering, one that rapidly dissolved for those fighting for air, hanging from the front fence. A battle for balance and gulp of thick air saw one pop song fused with another, all lost to us along with innocently expected comfort. Years waited, mere seconds to pass.

Stars not clear to the Chicago night visited said city early Saturday evening with a main-stage showing, as echoes of the xx devoured people’s murmurs on our way to a raucous meet of Gogol Bordello set mania. Metric’s Emily Haines paused for a brief moment of costume-change rest: white sunglasses to red – a necessity. Spoon and Cut Copy spat magic behind our picnic-perched backs, before Phoenix wooed the open-mouthed gang with Playground Love whispers in the evening’s Air.

Sunday morning Dodos presented us with rain and time to breathe, before the Cribs screamed, made noise with their toy guitars, and but for the reference of records would be indecipherable through each word and note. MGMT brought pop-bounce and the National screamed their way to the finishing line, surprisingly impressive for a non-American, uninformed to their musical wit. And the Arcade Fire. Oh, it’s been a few moments since the debut album obsession began and although those songs fell from my ears and impression, such a majestic performance was felt through each vein. The rediscovery; sure to be the greatest.

[I forgot about Friday’s Walkmen. Make sure you do not.]

Oh, great, yeah!

Written by

Littl’ans & Peter Doherty – Their Way

Bags crammed with girlfriend owned additions. Grandmother’s holy water etching comforting passages through the oil on my brow. Fear for the moments when the stomach is too slow to catch up with the plane and its surge. Photocopies of photocopies – just incase. A borrowed iPod – green – fully charged with selected musical, podcast(ical), and audio-book goodness. And Say Anything…, prepared for the play.

[They did it their way and no other (way).]

Cast a cold Eye on life

Written by

Sharon Robinson – Alexandra Leaving

You’ve [almost] [possibly] never been.

To a moment where you whisper to “Yours, L. Cohen” through drizzly air; whispers of wishes for further days and contentment for each and every candle whip of light that remain.

“I don’t know when I’ll be around these parts [“Yeats’ county”] again.”

He wouldn’t allow us to set our own tone, our own world – he forced the question, the thought: the chance of adjoining edges to his lifes frame. The concluding paragraph. The finishing touches.

“Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn – I have torn everyone who reached out for me.”

The gut wrings with prudish rejection when it hears something so crass, something lost in the plain sight of previous visits and views and listens. You see, for the most part, I see Cohen as a comic. Not meant as a negative: he grasps at irony and dangles brimming tales in front of us to toss and devour whole, but then there’s true tragedy – and until now the tragedy of Bird On A Wire, that specific line, such tragedy was lost to me.

“The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both,
Beautiful, one a gazelle.”

When he smiles, we do. Keyboard skills [basic notes on Tower Of Song] met with claps and bellows of reverence and veneration. Cohen’s rebuttal? “Thank you, music fans.” A world in cahoots could author no line so love inducing.

There were a few sporadic seats untouched. Still some who don’t [won’t ever] get it.

[Everybody knows you and me and the things we do.]

Wisdom

Written by

Marc Streitenfeld – Wisdom

The opening click clack of acoustic and modern swoon may be all your heart needs to fall. This song and its sensitive synth, artfully allowing for the calm transition of keys to horse shoe clatter, calming choir, and drawn out strings. Oh, to have a château in France. I lost one whole summer to that dream – and I’m willing to hold to it tight until its eventual fruition. The wisdom is in the jump, not the landing.

[‘A Good Year’ and its soundtrack.]