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Handsome smile, wearing handsome shoes

Written by Joan

WINTER …these fingers grow brittle and cold and hold tightly fisted the letters you sent one week from your birthday, underlining all the truths you weren’t ready to say.

SPRING …the flowers bloomed scattering pollen while the bees carried paranoia to and fro. People, scared and impressionable, asking questions they didn’t want answers to.

SUMMER …the beach called home and asked if we were in. It hadn’t seen us in a while. Salt in the air and water in the lungs, drowning in nonchalance.

AUTUMN …the leaves fell steadily in a stream from their branches. Your phone was unhooked. Strips of your torn summer frock sat on the dresser.

[These Streets.]

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

The detective agency

Written by Daniel

Detektivbyrån – Hemvägen

Detektivbyrån have already parted ways, but they leave behind a small chunk of effort for us all to dine on. Hemvägen, taken from their debut album, titled ‘E18 Album’ – essentially a regurgitation of an EP release two years previous, is a four minute instrumental in the same form as Yann Tiersen’s Amélie outing.

Your instrument of choice is an accordion, and you’ve been requested to produce a Disney soundtrack – and so arrives Hemvägen. An open smattering of rapturous accordion, soon accompanied by muffled electronic keyboard riffs, builds until layered with a delicious twinkle of small bells – that same sound you hear from holiday trinkets. It’s fantasy music by traditional means. [Purchase.]

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

well I want to be well I want to be

Written by Zac

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

Yeah, we know you love L.A.

Written by Noah

Local H – California Songs

Local H lead singer Scott Lucas cuts a solitary figure as he carries two guitars on to The Call’s elevated stage and nestles each into its respective stand. Task completed, he disappears behind a curtain that divides what passes for the green room from the rest of the now defunct Providence, Rhode Island club. Moments later, he returns to tune his instruments, alone again.

It’s the summer of 2004. Lucas and drummer Brian St. Clair, who replaced original kitman Joe Daniels in 1999, are playing out the string on a career that appears bound for the floor. (The Chicago Tribune will name them 2008 Chicago Band of the Year after the release of Twelve Angry Monkeys, but critical acclaim doesn’t translate to sales.)

The duo tour in support of Whatever Happened to P.J. Soles, an enjoyable if forgettable album that includes the non-hit single, “California Girls.” The days of roadies, prompted by the success of 1996’s As Good As Dead are gone. On a stage in a venue that soon will be converted to luxury condos, Lucas twists his own tuning pegs, fading away before your eyes.

He disappears once more, returning with St. Clair in tow. Local H begin playing. Loudly. Incredibly so. Ten or 15 men jump up and down with the band. They do so for the entire set. Lucas is no longer alone.

After playing his last chord, the singer lays down his guitar, supermans headfirst into the crowd where he is suspended horizontally at eye level, held by a dozen pairs of sweaty hands. He points to the front of The Call. Local H’s fans, quite literally supporting the lead singer, carry him 30 feet to the bar where he rips shot after shot in true rock star fashion.

Clark Kent didn’t forget how to fly, but sometimes he needs a push.

[Purchase Whatever Happened To P.J. Soles?]

Posted on September 28, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

electricity comes from other planets

Written by Joan

The Velvet Underground – Temptation Inside Your Heart

When the shaman crawled into her ear canal and pried her brains apart with his chipped fingernails, he whispered into the mess:

I know where temptation lies, inside of your heart.

“You can talk during this,” he tests. He digs his fingers in, presses his lips to the fleshy bits of brain, licks her neurons. He burrows into her fear center, bares his teeth to the pulpy crevasse, bites into the terror.

If you’re gonna try to make it right,
you’re surely gonna end up wrong.
(wrong wrong wrong wrong)

[V U.]

CALLmeKAT – Bug In A Web

It’s pretty much that your head works like this: when you’re young, your brain soaks in memories like nobody’s business; they come in, sinewy and impish, and evaporate within seconds. All the details – the genuine smiles, the uncomfortable hands, the waiting to tell you something you won’t enjoy glances – all that shit soaks in.

And then you get older, and like your genitals so too does your memory sag and wrinkle. It stops processing, stops mincing each moment down. They come in, ropy, hanging from end to end. Recollections sprawled atop memories, crossing paths, sometimes melting into each other.

[I’m In A Polaroid – Where Are You?]

Posted on September 26, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

ABRA CADAVER

Written by Noah

The Hives – Abra Cadaver

On “Abra Cadaver,” The Hives lead singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist makes his point in 93 seconds. Not much time, especially considering his first lyric comes 11 seconds into the track and the last few perfectly formed English words explode from his Swedish mouth at 1:07. Fifty-six ticks, less than a full revolution of the second hand.

(An aside, a luxury for which there isn’t time on “Abra Cadaver”: The Hives wanted to replicate American punk rock and ’50s soul music. The teenage members of the group grew up in Fagersta, Sweden, population 13,000. Record stores lacked… records. The Hives had images of its heroes but not their music. Nicholaus – the band’s senior Almqvist – offered Time’s Josh Tyrangiel a quote to explain the dilemma: “Sometimes, we had only seen bands in pictures or seen them on a record cover. So we had to try and figure out, ‘What does that haircut sound like?'”) [Acquire.]

(photo taken, on an iPhone, by Jesse Wright)

Posted on September 25, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

That takes you away, that takes you away

Written by Zac

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

Three perfect ways

Written by Daniel

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.]

Posted on September 23, 2010 - Tunes - 2 Comments » Share

TWOKS

Written by Joan

The Twoks – Snails

On the evening her hair fell away, Alia felt the air around her scalp, soothing her pores. The linoleum floor was littered with red strands, curled in bundles around her ankles. She knelt down and gathered each thread, running her fingers through. She licked the tips and tied one to her arm, starting at the fore and crossing the elbow all the way to her shoulder. She tied the other end to the buckle of her belt. Soon she had hundreds of strands strung from belt to outstretched limb. Sitting quietly on the corner of the kitchen counter, knees swinging, she strummed each one with a purposeful calm. And the sound that came whirring from her makeshift harp set the sun alight.

The Twoks – No Matter What

If the arthritic trees in the charred forest bend too far forward, their branches dig into the ashen soil and fuse with the screaming nutrients. The dew on the remaining leaves bubble. Steam rises from holes in the ground. The parakeets whistle melancholic tunes. Children once played here.

[If you ask, they’ll mail you the album. Or go to a show.]

Posted on September 22, 2010 - Tunes - 7 Comments » Share