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Careful, watch your step, in you go

Written by

Destroyer – Archer on the Beach

I saw Dan Bejar live once. I bummed cigs from a couple from Sweden, and the Asian kid sitting on the plastic stackable chair next to me played some racing game on his phone between sets.

It was awful. Bejar kept pushing his fro out of his eyes and his sentences trailed off, like he was thinking aloud to himself on the stage. I could have chalked that up to his endearing standoffishness were the songs – performed solo acoustic – not so lifeless, so carelessly tossed out of his mouth and guitar as if he were practicing alone on his back porch.

Like his demeanor in that show, the two 12″ singles Destroyer has released since have had a cold complexion. Electronic synths and midi orchestrate lengthier, repetitive tunes. But the warmth of the recordings coddles me. On the b-side, Grief Point, you can hear the flint of a lighter and clink of ice cubes in a glass behind the most earthy recording of Bejar’s voice we have yet.

In this song, Archer seems paralyzed on the beach, his arrows just out of reach – it’s chilly and melancholy. Except that we can hear the pitter-patter of every rain drop in the sand beside him.

[Hurry and get one of the 1,000 copies of Archer on the Beach b/w Grief Point.]

Posted on October 31, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Give me a village the size of a teacup

Written by

James Yorkston – Woozy With Cider

If you are reading this later, you might notice these words are different. Initially I tried writing from the point of view of the girl in this song. But that’s wrong. Her song is different, it doesn’t sound anything like this one. It didn’t fit.

I’m not sure what her song is. Maybe I wouldn’t like it. But I know what this song is.

This song is an old picture of that road trip you took after freshman year. Forget the all-nighters you pulled, erase the gnawing stress of finals week, let’s not even bring up the shame on the night you lost your virginity – for that one week all was right in the world. The sunlight hit your hair from behind, giving your face a warm glow.

This song is a steaming cup of hot cocoa with Bailey’s in it. You sip it tenderly as the frost opaques the windows and a soft blanket of snow drapes over the car. You don’t have anywhere to be all day.

This song is an old home video of your two kids fighting, viewed long after they’ve moved out. It’s the dry kiss you place on your lover’s brow as she tears up watching it. It’s the way she rotates the ring on your finger.

[Buy The Year Of The Leopard.]

Posted on October 27, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Dragons

Written by

Karl Blau – Before Telling Dragons

Komodo dragons grow up to 10 feet in length, half of which is tail, and can weigh over 150 lbs.

Komodo dragons can stand on their hind legs, using their tails as a prop.

Komodo dragons can live over 50 years.

Komodo dragons can climb trees when young.

Komodo dragons can sprint over 12 mph, belying the methodical pace with which they slither-crawl around when relaxed.

Komodo dragons use their “flexible skulls and expandable stomachs” to swallow anything up to 80% of their body masses. After digesting, Komodo dragons will regurgitate a vomity mass of horns, hair, feathers, and teeth.

Komodo dragons have two penises which are held inverted in the body and rotated between hot sexin’ times.

Komodo dragons kind of scare me.

[Buy Nature’s Got Away.]

Posted on October 22, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Open mouth, look up now

Written by

S. Carey – In The Stream

Copper. All We Grow.

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

Eat your hearts out, OK GO

Written by

Posted on October 15, 2010 - Videos - 1 Comment » Share

Fuck you, Baby Jesus

Written by

Eef Barzelay – Jews for Jesus Blues (live)

“So, do you go to church in Seattle?” she asked.

I smirked. I knew what she meant. She meant, “Where do you go to church in Seattle?”

I was crashing a family dinner of a friend of a friend in the suburbs. Like usual, I had spent most of the evening refilling my wine glass and flirting with the mother.

Thus far, she had been duly charmed.

I fingered my glass of White Zinfandel and glanced out the window. Across the plots of potato and rolling meadows I could see a thin plume of smoke, probably from a bonfire.

“Burn this,” my mother would say every couple of months in middle school, handing me a box of papers. “And remember to stay and make sure it’s all gone.”

I would stand on my tiptoes to grab the box of matches from above the fridge, then head down the street to the unused plot where the neighborhood had set up a mini-dump of sorts. Letting the box drop heavily on the dirt, I’d make a tepee with Alliance Life magazines and start a flame. Steadily I’d add more paper.

Most of it was newsletters from the mission or other random information with potentially compromising personal information about the other missionaries in Indonesia. I’d poke the curling, blackening papers with a stick, making sure all the ink was seared from their pages.

I took a sip of wine, sizing her up over the rim of my glass. I didn’t know how to explain that somewhere along the line my faith had been seared right off, that I must have accidentally dumped it into the fire with the rest of the box.

“No, I don’t go to church in Seattle,” I deadpanned.

[Buy Clem Snide’s End of Love.]

Posted on October 11, 2010 - Tunes - 1 Comment » Share

There’s no reason yet why they took your friends

Written by

Blindspott – Phlex

I am profoundly unsettled by the realization that my friends continue making decisions and living their lives even when I move away. [Buy.]

(Picture by Glenn Jones.)

Posted on October 7, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Now I’m lying on the driveway, passed out

Written by

White Apple Tree – Passed Out

At 9:30 am last night I threw up. It was dark red, like the wine I drank. I hadn’t vomited since Mattro’s bachelor party a year and a half prior.

I’m an alcoholic; I know that. Most nights I can’t sleep without a few drinks to calm me down. I rarely get through a shift at work without a stiff glass.

My roommate is a cocktail snob. He’s helped me branch out beyond Jack and Cokes into the realm of Old Fashioneds, Tom Collinses, Between the Sheets. But last night was all about Fuck Work I Hate This Goddam Shit and I drank and drank. And drank.

Lying in bed I wiped the sweat off my forehead and kind of wished I couldn’t feel feelings. It was miserable. Then I knelt before the John and puked my brains out. Bits got caught in my teeth and my gums took on a maroon hue.

Wine, more than anything other than biting my tongue, makes me aware of my teeth. I can feel them, how dry they are.

When I lived in California, my drinking was stoked by Michael Lee (pictured), an alcoholic and member of the band White Apple Tree. I’d show up at his front door with a handle of Jack and he’d say, “Hey, baby,” and we’d start drinking.

Sometimes we’d strip down to our boxers and jump in his pool, or sometimes we’d split a bowl, but mostly we’d just content ourselves with cigarettes in the garage with loud electronic music vibrating our chairs.

Play this song while drinking until you pass out on your driveway.

[Buy other shit while you wait for the Peach Hat EP to come out.]

Posted on October 3, 2010 - Tunes - 3 Comments » Share

well I want to be well I want to be

Written by

Sufjan Stevens – I Want To Be Well

I find it occasionally enjoyable to ponder how decisions made by past generations have affected my life; like trying to grasp the idea of eternity, it’s a useless but quirky and mildly gratifying mind exercise.

Some five decades ago, my grandparents couldn’t agree. Having taken over an orphanage a few days after their wedding and spent a handful of years there, both wanted to move overseas as missionaries. My grandmother preferred India, where she grew up. My grandfather wanted to live in Africa. On their application to the Christian & Missionary Alliance there was a slot for a third choice, so they picked Indonesia at random and figured God would decide where they went.

Some four decades later, they retired. They’d been shot at while riding on a wooden boat, they’d built churches and orphanages with their bare hands, they’d been placed under house arrest for a year during a communist coup and been separated from their children; they’d grown old.

Some two decades ago my parents followed, choosing Indonesia largely because my father missed the country where he’d become a man, carrying planks of wood to help build houses and mopping away sweat in badminton matches.

Would I have been as relaxed if I grew up somewhere other than Southeast Asia? Would I still bear my fatalistic shrug? How silly would my accent have been? Would I have been more or less happy overall? Could I have turned out skinnier? What would have been my go-to party stories? What different foods would I enjoy? What book would have affected me as I grew up?

They’re mostly spurious questions, time wasters really, but what I want to say is this: If I meet myself in an alternate reality and I have that fucking American sense of entitlement, I will fucking thrust a knife into Alternate Me’s throat all the way down to the hilt and hold it there as Alternate Me thrashes and kicks and bleeds Alternate Blood all over my hands and shorts and eventually spasms one last time before drifting off into the Alternate Afterlife.

[Buy The Age Of Adz.]

Posted on September 29, 2010 - Tunes - 4 Comments » Share

That takes you away, that takes you away

Written by

Destroyer – Streethawk II (CBC Radio)

Tom and Lindsay spent the entire weekend trip in New York lugging around a jar of coins. It was huge. They carried it around in a baby backpack, cream blue, strapped to their chests. The Velcro was unusually loud, whenever the bustle of the city died down enough for them to hear it, Lindsay idly pulling and smoothing a strap back on again.

They saw the sights. A row of greasy quarters pushed across the counter at the Met, a handful of dimes for hot dogs in Central Park, one of those 50 cent Kennedy coins shoved into the slot to ride the subway, a scarred penny along with the rest of the change to get floppy slices of pizza.

A stranger agreed to take their picture in Times Square. Years later they found it crammed in that shelf in Tom’s desk that didn’t slide out well anymore, giggling about how dated film was, not to mention those haircuts! But there they were. Tom’s arm around Lindsay, his other hand pointing up and out at the buildings or some sign, Lindsay quietly smiling, and strapped to her chest, equally part of the family, a half-full jar of coins.

[Buy Destroyer albums, specifically Streethawk: A Seduction, for more tasty grooves.]

Posted on September 24, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

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