[Jagjaguwar.]
Jolene, don’t leave me now
We don’t need drums. We don’t need guitars, or even bass. We don’t even need to hear the faintest words. We crave atmosphere. However that atmosphere comes around, be it calloused fingers plucking strings or measured, timed punches to a mechanism, we’ll welcome it. We’ll welcome the soundtracks to our finite, untallied days. We’ll welcome the vibrating hallway echoes in our ear canals. The background noise will wash away. No engines, gears or rattling exhaust pipes backfiring. No screaming from under the rip tides. We’ll perch on the mountainsides of our lower-level streets peering curiously at the grey landscapes as we breathe in the clouds. Toxic vapours fusing with the newfound fire in our lungs, exploding inside of us.
[White Blush.]
I’ve reason to believe we all will be received
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Graceland (Paul Simon cover)
I’ve had Graceland stuck in my head since Memphis. Sigh and I drove down from Niles, Mich. to visit New Orleans, something like 15 hours in the car together. We stopped in Memphis for some barbeque, and I set the iPod to Paul Simon.
She comes back to tell me she’s gone.
As if I didn’t know that!
As if I didn’t know my own bed!
As if I’d never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead.
We pulled into New Orleans bickering like a married couple, cruising down St. Claude in dark silence. The owner of the couch I am sleeping on lives in Bywater, which Sigh described as the part of town the hipsters move to once their parents remove funding. Rat, our host, pulls up Google maps and says, “The restaurants all look like abandoned hellholes, but they’re open.”
The next morning, we fight our way through weeds and missing sidewalk toward The Joint, a barbeque place with the tagline: “Always smokin’.” Most signs around here are playful, punny. Houses are square with french windows along the front, one of which makes do as a door. They are majestic and dilapidated. The whole place is rundown as shit.
Losing love is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you’re blown apart
Everybody feels the wind blow
On the way back from the bar I remember that I left a tab open. I hike back to retrieve my credit card; Sigh and Rat abandon me as punishment for my drunken folly. In the chill night air, I sling my laptop bag higher on my shoulder and lope forward. A white guy in a beanie rides a bike past me. I feel beer and gator sausage in my belly. I remember New Year’s. I spent it in Chicago with a group of pretty girls I barely knew. I drank too many whiskey gingers and threw up in the car on the way home at 3 a.m. They were sweethearts about it. Instead of scolding, they gave me a bed to sleep in and chocolate chip pancakes in the morning. They put a bowl near my head overnight. They hung my coat on the railing outside, and I scraped the vomit off the sleeve with my nails in the utility sink the next morning. Impressively, none of them demanded to know what was wrong. I probably wouldn’t have told them anyway. Some secrets can’t be shared, even with strangers, no matter how blatantly you’re drowning.
Hearts, like cities, can’t hide the damage of a hurricane.
But still your room is all a mess
I have blacked out twice in my life. The first time was at a bachelor party. I drank Sailor Jerry and apparently spent half of the night naked, trying to cuddle with other men. The second time was in Tijuana. I coasted down for a friend’s farewell party. They kept feeding me “scarfs” — double shots of half Hpnotiq and half Jäger. I kept saying “uno, dos, tres — viva Mexico!” and then I woke up with my boots still on and a pile of vomit next to my head.
I cleaned up around 9 a.m. and napped through the rest day. My friend groggily, grumpily dropped me off at the border around 5 p.m. I stumbled backward along the queue as it snaked around, full of Sunday traffic. At the end, I scooted into line ahead of some others, who started chatting. One was an alcoholic who had been sober 25 years. He worked as a contractor and visited his son, who married a Mexican, over weekends to get cheaper dental work. He was a Republican (“so Obama care basically boils down to . . .”) and was bald. The couple behind him were gentle, pleasant. They talked in thick accents about raising their children in Chicago, of their medical practices, of Bulgarian food. They genuinely enjoyed the foreignness of everything in the line: a mangy xolo; the lard used to make churros; a child, roughly nine, dancing nimbly under the drape of his colorful poncho, a boombox and upturned hat at his feet; lucha libre masks and other knickknacks.
We chatted for the three hours we inched forward in line. Conversation turned to travel. Somewhere along that zigzag it dawned on me that I had been or held legitimate opinions about everywhere they mentioned: Chicago’s bone-cold winds during winter, the Pike in Seattle, the socioeconomics of South Africa, Shanghai’s public transportation, where to visit in Indonesia, hurricane season in the Caribbean, Dimitar Berbatov.
I realized, as I picked crusted vomit off the sleeve of my shirt, that this was the first time in my life I had ever felt like an adult, or at least like I had accrued an adult amount of experiences.
[If Children.]
Wolves creepin’
Wickerbird is music heard from the other room. Your ears press against the cold wall. You strain to hear, to understand, to love. The words are echoed and muddled. Your nails scratch against the cement.
You imagine people huddled, fingers dirty, harmonising. The alders breathing, keeping, weeping as they twist and writhe against the walls, catkins slumping on the floor they fall to from high above the melodies. The leaves swirl around the dirty hair, the cracked lips singing. You can see their faces.
The leaves stop mid-air, you can see it. They are motionless. The music stops. You can’t hear it. The leaves fall, loftily. They fall around nothing. No dirty hair and fingers, no cracked lips, nobody. You’re still in the other room. There is nothing to press your ears to.
All we ever wanted, needed.
It’s New Year’s Day. It’s 30°C and clear, sunny. Fuck off, I’m going to the beach. Here’s to two-oh-thirteen being fun, maybe a little exciting. Don’t kill your vibes. Do all the nice shit people ask of you, and ask of people some good shit. Drink less, but only between the hours of 9:00-11:00am. Then you should drink as much as you want. Smoke less, but only when you know you don’t really feel like smoking, you’re just doing it out of habit. Wait. I’m not doing this. Fuck off, I’m going to the beach. [Listen to some more Alekesam. Go on.]
interviewtheproletariat
Cub Scouts
A few tidbits from Tim Nelson of Cub Scouts:
On forming Cub Scouts…
TN: I had been writing and recording songs solo for a little bit, then I wanted to do some full band stuff. I contacted people that I knew could play instruments to see if they would be keen to play with me – and they were! We played as ‘Tim Nelson’ for a while but we wanted it to be a band, not a solo artist with a backing band. We had a little shuffle in band members and started ‘Cub Scouts’ in October 2011 and it was good.
On the band’s presence in social media, how interactive they are, and whether it’s strange keeping track of all these outlets…
TN: Yeah I look after our Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, Soundcloud, Youtube, Bandcamp and Triple j Unearthed accounts.
Our social media sites are very interactive, I try to reply to everybody that writes to us.
It is kind of weird that people that like our music know so much about us as people, but I think it helps build a connection with our listeners and probably shows them where we’re coming from with what we do. I think that’s a good thing!
On touring anecdotes…
TN: I had conjunctivitis for a lot of the Loon Lake tour. It was very mild, and it wasn’t itchy so I didn’t realise that that’s what it was until Andy got it and I figured that maybe it was my fault. That was pretty eye-opening.
On which musician he would open for if they had the chance…
BEYONCÉ.
On his favorite words…
Hello, cool, gr8 [sic], m8 [sic].
On his favorite cuss words?
The really full-on ones.
On winning two gongs at the Queensland Music Awards…
Yeah that was great. I did not expect that at all. When we won the Pop Song award I kind of had a speech sort of prepared in my head, but when we won the Song Of The Year award I really had nothing to say, it was kind of awkward but really good.
On which song he would gush about if he were writing for tunetheproletariat…
I would write about Phebe Starr’s “Alone With You”. I would talk about how perfect it is. I literally can’t remember the last day I didn’t listen to it.