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October 28, 2004
220, 221, whatever it takes
Here are my instructions to you:
1) Go back to yesterday's post. Really read the shit out of it. Download 'Kitchen' (because it's ruthlessly awesome) and buy 10 copies of the album, listening to only one track on each individual disc before switching to the next track on one of the other 9 copies. Then sit down at your desk, light your pipe, and compose a nice letter to Rob Mitchum, c/o Pitchfork Media, asking him why he insists on reviewing records when it's clear that he despises both music AND fun. Put the letters S.W.A.P. on the back of the envelope after you lick it shut (Sealed With a Punch).
2) Note that, while running is a healthy activity and highly addictive, it does not help your foot speed in general. Only your endurance. I learned that the hard way tonight when I played almost 35 minutes of a soccer game. I have the foot speed of a newborn giraffe, tops, or in my weaker moments, maybe a neurologically impaired rhino composed partially of melted Vermont cheddar. Time for yours truly to start juicin'. And by juicin', I mean: injecting anabolic steroids into my eyes.
3) Halloween is coming up. I would put something on here, but every other mp3- and regular blog is going to do that, and Molars does not bow to societal pressures, people! No. Maybe when Walpurgisnacht swings around again.
Posted by matt at 10:56 PM
New Wave OR the Soft Pink Truth: the law of excluded middle
the Soft Pink Truth - Kitchen (L. Voag)
This song is a toddler you agreed to babysit, named Jason, who is standing in the middle of a white lineoleum floor. He's wearing a Barney costume, and he's brandishing an egg-beater like a West Side Story Jet (if the movie took place entirely within the confines of a Willams-Sonoma outlet). Somehow the little son of a buck managed to get into his Mom's make-up box and smear lisptick all over his face, so he's got this weird Sunset Boulevard/Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? vibe going on. You're getting paid $14 for six hours of supervision. Enought money to buy, what- a box of Hot-Pockets and maybe a can of air-freshener? This little boy is the word 'petulant' made flesh, the Brat Christ, etcetcetera. Now, can you change his diaper, de-freakify his face, and get him to zonk out in front of 'Blues Clues' before his semi-attractive mother returns home? Can you do all that without him biting your nose like a Gila monster? I think we both know the answer to that.
Actually, this song is only like the first half of that paragraph. As I mentioned the other day, 'Kitchen' is composed of one part sass, two parts zing. That's real chemistry, my friends, pure science. Drew Daniel himself(!!) handles the vocal duties on this piece, and he does an amazing job. He whines, he mutters, he sighs, he demands. So many of the background percussive noises in this track sound like something a little kid would do: clicking his tongue up against the roof of his mouth, blowing raspberries, beatboxing...you know. Add that to the super-patent kitchen utensil field-recordings (tea kettle, pots and pans), and this becomes something like what the bespectacled gamin from Jerry McGuire (the human head weighs 8lbs. boy) would produce, if he was given expensive synthesizers and sequencers, taught to use ProTools, and was an unqualified musical genius. The proximity-echo handclaps at the end of 'Kitchen' are what pushes it over the top from 'outstanding' to 'fucking priceless'. This album, 'Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth', is unstoppable, beginning to end (including the Carol Channing snippet of the last track), and absolutely worth your money. You can buy it HERE. 'Kitchen' was written and originally recorded by L. Voag, of the Homosexuals, and (I think) released on his solo album 'The Way Out', which you can purchase for only 2 dollars (less than one hundred), right HERE. (Whoa- Soft Pink Truth now has its own snug little webpage, with excellent background color choice. Check it out.)
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 27, 2004
Pine Needly
Gravenhurst - I Turn My Face to the Forest Floor
'I Turn My Face...' will probably end up as one of my favorite tracks of the year. It's excoriatingly gentle, in a weird sense- it's like taking a long, aggressively introspective walk along a rocky stretch of coastline after having an argument with someone you love. The whole song is just snary with alienation and anger. Nick Talbot's voice is buoyed along by a (intricately) fingerpicked guitar and unrelenting bass drum, and he does a fantastic job of building and releasing the tension here (and managing to work the word 'fuckhead' into the lyrics. Nice!) Ostensibly, this song is about a murder that took place some time in the past, and now the perpetrator finds himself back in the same neighborhood, living right next to the spot where it all went down. I'm not so sure about that interpretation though- the lyrics, discounting the aforementioned curse, are pretty vague. I can say that this song has a strange maritime feel to it; it would be right at home on Ishmael's or Captain Ahab's iPod. Whah-whah-whah. That was so fucking lame, sorry. No more literary references, promise. Anyway, 'Flashlight Seasons' is the name of the album, and you can buy it HERE, and then check this EP (you can listen to sound clips) that Gravenhurst has coming out in the beginning of 2005. Should be terrific. Hurst.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM | Comments (1)
October 26, 2004
Jon Brion Knock Yourself Out Huckabees I Love MP3s
Jon Brion - Knock Yourself Out
Here it is, people. Download the firewater you crave. Judging from the server logs for the mother-blog (greenideas) approximately 9000 of you search for this song every day. Finally, you can achieve satiety. Doesn't it feel nice? This is track two on the I (heart) Huckabees soundtrack, and it's a doozy. Swell, in fact. Good gracious. Mothertrucker. How annoying are 50's-style-network-television-censor-preferred euphemistic-profanities? Answer: super-fuckingly so. Son of a bee sting. Gosh darnit. It's hurting me to type this so I can only imagine what it's doing to you. Perversions of english. Oh, wait, someone just reminded me this is a music blog, not a forum for nerdbox grammar-douches. Apologies. You can buy the soundtrack right...about...HERE. (It's good). Thanks to the Big Ticket for the mp3. Gravenhurst tomorrow, probably. I'm going to try to write coherently for once too, so look forward to that.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM | Comments (4)
October 25, 2004
Purple is the Monster we Choose
Arab Strap - You Shook Me All Night Long
Copy, Right? posted this song back in May, and I've been listening to it pretty solid since then. Arab Strap, for those few who might not know, is a band from Scotland who make very fine records, and take their name from a marital aid (what in the U.S. we call a cock-ring), and whose lead singer has served (unwittingly and rather bitterly) as inspiration for a Belle and Sebastian song (one of their best, actually). Anyway- this AC/DC song. You've heard it, no doubt, a million times. Classic rock radio is in love with AC/DC, as well they should be. Weird coincidence: Stuart Murdoch, from B&S (whom I just discussed about 6 entries down), had written one time that, when he was about 12 years old, he swore to himself that he would always love AC/DC and that he'd never be a dick. DUDE, IT'S ALL CONNECTED. No, but I kid. Can everyone tell when I'm just trying to fill up space? oh, you can? Huh. This song is sexy, made all the more so by the fact that Scottish accents are so forceful and oddly mellifluous. You can't buy the EP (the Shy Retirer) that this track is from, but check out their latest full-length, 'Monday at the Hug and Pint', HERE.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 22, 2004
Go out and out along these lines
Joy Division - Live at Les Bains Douches - Disorder
Not much needs to be written about this song, you just need to listen to it. I will say this though: I don't think I've ever heard a bassline (the notes chosen, the tone, everything) as threatening as this one- it will bleed through your speakers, and it will wrap itself around your brain effortlessly. Don't underestimate its ability to endear itself to you. I've listened to this song maybe three of four times a week, every week, for the past three or so months- just the sheer force of it is enough to sustain anyone through an entire day. Love it like you know you should. Also, buy it HERE (it's so fucking worth it).
P.S. That contest is coming to a close soon, so you might want to enter. That is, of course, unless you hate fun. Which many people do.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 21, 2004
Black Dice are my Anti-Drug
Black Dice - Night Flight
A joint flock of board-certfied flamingoes and dodos (I know they're extinct, but work with me) are operating on you. Minor surgery, but you're anesthetized. The machines that monitor your heart rate and blood pressure hum pleasantly in the background. But then, about three and a half minutes in, the procedure goes awry. Your monitors break down, and the Dr. Birds are honking frantically at each other, trying to figure out what the fuck is up. Some jungle cats in the area. Purring loudly. Suffering from some sort of feline aphasia, their pitch and tone is all off, unnatural- they devour the entire staff of your well-meaning aviary/hospital. Son of a bitch.
That is exactly the video treatment that I would give this song, for heavy rotation on MTV (Buzz-bin, no doubt). Good, old-fashioned nightmare fuel for four year-olds everywhere. Black Dice make some of the best experimental music around today, and their latest album, 'Creature Comforts', which this is taken from, is their most accessible and most accomplished work. The record practically crawls, it's so filled with feral (atavistic?) noises. The jungle theme permeates throughout, esp. on tracks like 'Island', and 'Creature'. Surprisingly melodic, this is the album you put on when you want to envision what it would be like to stalk a mastodon, fail, and end up being crushed beneath its huge, hairy feet. So good. You can buy it HERE.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 20, 2004
cold hands warm heart
McLusky - She Will Only Bring You Happiness
Speaking as I was, the other day, of a lactose sea (two entries below this one), this track from McLusky's third LP, 'The Difference Between You and Me is that I'm not on Fire', features the lyric 'all the sea was coal', which I'm fond of, for various reasons. Although, I have to say, that line is by far the most orthodox turn of phrase in the entire song (when compared to the call and response harmony breakdown of 'our old singer is/a sex criminal'), which as a whole is somehow simultaneously joyous and spiteful. Not an easy mix.
'She Will Only Bring You Happiness' was touted as McLusky's soft song, but it exceeds some of their conventionally harder work by virtue of lead singer Andy Falkous' word choice, and the fact that you can actually hear what he's saying (kind of a rarity with their stuff)- I love the way his self-exhortations at the start to 'be erect by half past ten/be strong/be proud...' are couched within such a repetitive and oddly comfortable guitar line, and punctuated with a snare and cymbal explosion. McLusky is an extremely talented band- witty, agile, and capable of making perfect little songs like this one. If you want, you can buy their albums HERE.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 19, 2004
Kid vs. Judge
Calla - Televised
If you were going to compile a soundtrack for the hypothetically seven-hour long movie version of 'Blood Meridian', you couldn't do better than to ask Calla to compose it. Quick reasons why: their music is dessicated, sharp, and threatening in the way that a wide open, unpopulated space can be. And it's also music full of breathless passion. Lead singer Aurelio Valle intones almost everything in a whisper, one of those back-of-the-throat voices that makes him sound like he's on his deathbed and each line could be his last spoken. His (Valle's) guitar lines in this song shriek and stretch over the percussion like thin, exposed ligaments hanging on some carrion-animal's bleached bones. The ending to 'Televised' (the title track) is such that it could have gone on for another six or seven minutes in the same vein, and it wouldn't have hurt the song at all- it's just that well-composed. One of those songs that you can play when things are terrible, and it perfectly fits your mood- sort of punishingly bleak. Irresistably evil. Give in to temptation and buy it HERE.
P.S. Calla are currently hard at work on the follow-up to the album this track was taken from- should be out in mid '05, with any luck.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM | Comments (2)
October 17, 2004
Unsubtle Axe Wounds
Shalabi Effect - Blue Sunshine
I sneezed continuously for 6 hours yesterday. Let that sink in a little bit. Sneezes are usually annoying after like two or three. 900 sneezes (estimated) are absurd. Today is a little better, but it still feels like some sort of pollen-homunculus is living inside my nose, pulling at hairs and poking my cartilege. Which is disgusting, I know, and it hurts like a bitch- I'm having a lot of trouble breathing without engaging in odd physical rituals too complex to be detailed here. If anyone has ever gotten the same kind of grumble-dust stuck in their nasal passages, let me know what I can do to stop it.
Moving on: Shalabi Effect! This song is almost as juicy as the Luomo track I discussed earlier, but less rhythmically compelling. Which we won't hold against it, oh no. For whatever reason (maybe the delusional quality of antihistamine-soaked thoughts), 'Blue Sunshine' sounds, to me, like walking along a graham cracker beach at the high tide (morning) of an ocean of 2% milk. No such place exists, sadly, but if it did, this would be the music the Tourism Board of Pasteurized Shore would use to accompany promotional TV spots. This track has the strings and horns of some late 70's or 80's movie's 'fixing-up-the-place' montage, except it's more tenaciously melodic, and truthfully, it's one of the best things Shalabi Effect has ever done. It's from the oh-so-naughtily-named 'Pink Abyss' LP, which you really should just BUY straight from Alien 8.
I'll try to be more punctual in my posting tomorrow.
Posted by matt at 01:11 PM
October 15, 2004
Orange Felt Juice
Belle and Sebastian - Your Secrets
Hop on the Stuart Murdoch Hot Twee Lit-Pop Train of Perfection! (and people said this website couldn't get any weirder) 'Your Secrets' is seemingly addressed to an older lover, and Struan, in sweet harmony with Stevie Jackson and Sarah Martin, swears by his own maturity, his ability to cut loose and be wild, in an attempt to disabuse his gray-haired baby of her condescending attitude. Nice line from this song that hits home pretty hard: "I just had somebody tell me I was introspective to a fault". This song strikes a nice balance between the involuted melodies and arrangements of Sinister-era B&S and their of-late predilection for chewy 70s pop (check that bassline- it struts). Of course it's gorgeous- I imagine Stuart Murdoch has melodies like 'Your Secrets' pretty much falling out of his head on an hourly basis.
Belle and Sebastian are one of the three bands (the other two being Radiohead and Godspeed You! Black Emperor) that I count as a personal gateway artist, in that my interest in their music has led me to listen to so many other groups- their influence on my listening habits, and even on my own aesthetic judgments is almost incalculable. They're a hard band not to like. You can buy the Books EP, which this song is taken from, HERE.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 13, 2004
Standing on a Levee
the Double - Blanket on the Beach
There's something about the title of this song, and the way the guitar rings out, that makes this track insanely heartbreaking, and it's tricky for me to pinpoint why that is. Anythough, the Double = baroque 60's pop song-writing, transitory peripheral noises, and inexplicable melancholy. I was a little obsessed with this record, 'Palm Fronds', when I first heard it this past May, mostly because the music so well accompanies that time when spring is grudgingly giving way to summer, when mornings and evenings are still cool but mid-day is like a thick orange brick of heat. 'Blanket on the Beach' reminds me of nothing so much as what the song depicts: lying next to a girl at the shore, a breeze blowing between the both of you, and nothing to look at but legs, sea, sky, hair, eyes; resigned to contentment.
The Double is now a four-piece, after adding two new members to the original sqaud (now the double-double?) of Jeff McLeod (drums) and David Greenhill (guitar, vocals). Weirdly enough, 'Palm Fronds' is apparently almost wholly unrepresentative of the band's live show, since prior to the recording sessions for the album, McLeod broke his hand. The band decided to forge ahead, using drum machinery and electronic loopery. I'm interested to see how their next album turns out, with (one hopes) a fully-operational drummer.
N.B. This is easily one of my favorite songs of the year. You can buy the gorgeously packaged album directly from Catsup Plate HERE.
Posted by matt at 10:28 PM
Martin Van Buren Bone
Unicorns - Haunted House
Sooooo. A little late with this post, my apologies. Ahem. For anyone who reads this site regularly, you probably already know (from other places) all about the Unicorns, where they're from, what they do, etc. But! Did you know they once played a show at a car wash, pre-Alien 8 hype-storm? They did indeed. The recording of that show was the first of the Unicorns' oeuvre that I had heard outside of the mp3s offered (Tuff Ghost and Les Os, two of the best tracks from WWCOHWWG) on A8's website, and 'Haunted House' was one of the songs they played that really stood out in my mind. So it was surprising to see that they hadn't recorded it or released it as a B-side for the debut LP (maybe that would have pushed the album too far in the horror-pop direction). It sounds like anything else from Who Will Cut Our Hair...: sparse guitar during the preface, clean vs. filtered vocals, keyboard swirl-outs + a lyrical journey into the whimsically macabre. A little bit sloppy, but it's unabashedly entertaining and effortlessly great. They're on tour again, apparently. Which, hey, it's about time. They've been off the road for like two weeks, those layabouts.
Posted by matt at 04:46 PM
October 11, 2004
Motherfucker (g)
Download brides_of_funkenstein_when_youre_gone.mp3 Betty Davis - Dedicated to the Press
Brides of Funkenstein - When You're Gone
This needs to last you for both today and tomorrow, so take it slow. Maybe listen to thirty seconds of one track, mull it over, go grab a beer from the company fridge, come back, write a small play about the staple-remover and its cross-animate love affair with the girl in the office down the hall, play a quick game of solitaire, then listen to the rest of the track. People, you're on your way to time-management excellence, thanks to this mp3blog.
Betty Davis. So talented, so cool. Married to Miles for one year. Introduced him to Hendrix and Sly. On the cover of Filles de Kilimanjaro. But a funk preistess?? You bet. I first heard of Betty's work from the (brace yourself) playlist of Radiohead's DJ sessions when they did their Kid A-era webcasts back in '99. Passionate rhythms, free-roaming keyboards, and pachyderm basslines, she stands tall in the middle of it, ready to fight. This song, 'Dedicated to the Press', gives me the strange compulsion both to go out and stare people down, and to dance large, intricate routines in front of a muscle car. Kind of a weird feeling, but nice nonetheless. This is from 1975's 'Nasty Gal' LP, which you can BUY for only 3 tens of dollars (import).
Brides of Funkenstein: George Clinton produced, girl-group sweetness the Supremes x Parliament, glossed out till it's shiny like lips after a long kiss. Melancholic in that it sounds like the kind of faint longing that occurs right after you say goodnight to the person you love, and even though you know you're going to see them the next day, you still have an indefinable ache settling in your chest (note the lyrics tell a different story entirely, I'm just talking about the feel of the music here). This is from the fantastic 'Funk or Walk' LP, which you can also purchase, right.....HERE. Someone needs to reissue both these records, they are criminally out-of-print/expensive/hosted in impractical media (hint-hint, Warner Brothers. You know you owe me).
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 08, 2004
Delicious and Disgusting
Hall & Oates - Private Eyes
Remember the crazy Hall & Oates hipster-nostalgia freakout of aught-three?? Confusing to say the least. Or was it? Hahahaha, woo. Anyway, 'Private Eyes'. Q: "Is there any music made by humans that could have physically and psychically pernicous effects upon both my motor coordination and volitional hierarchy, because of its mind-raping catchiness and complete perfection?" A: Why yes, nerdbox, there is. Download this song and be tympanically violated.
P.S. Oates is from my hometown (true) = avalanche of cred points for yours truly. Oh, if only. Anyway, Monday and Tuesday might be a little light on the text (reader reaction: staunch indifference), for reasons I choose not to disclose (elective surgery). But will I still have the goods? Oh yeah.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM | Comments (1)
October 07, 2004
On to the Brocken the Witches are Flockin'
Liars - Peel Session - Catchy Like Brains on Gangs
Liars - Peel Session - We Were Still Young Enough to Lay Face Down in Front of the Speakers
These two songs are from the halcyon days of early-era Liars, when Pat Noecker and Ron Albertson were still with the band. Both tracks are from a 4-song Peel Session that they did in April of 2002, and neither was ever studio-recorded and released. 'Catchy Like Brains on Gangs' was widely regarded, during the first nationwide tour Liars did (when they played it out), as the best thing they had ever done, so it's a shame that it'll never see a hi-fidelity release. Let me know if I'm crazy, but I swear that the initial bass harmonics that Pat plays in this song bear a pretty strong resemblance to the main riff in the Cars' 'Let's Go'. Aaron Hemphill's guitar alternately whines like a ______ (screaming celtic ghost), and grinds as hard as an oilless engine. It has the sweet-and-heavy feel that so many of their early songs had, and features what is possibly the first instance of Angus and Aaron's irredeemable love for looped vocals (see also: Radiohead's 'Everything in its right place', or 'Scatterbrain'). Classic.
'We Were Still Young Enough...', which is a better quality recording, is a great example of how Liars are/were geniuses at taking something basic (the two-note guitar riff), mixing in some nimble bass and hyper drum work, and ending up with something that's unbelievably compelling. Angus' vocals at the start of the song, sung in the low, growly chant that functions as his 'calm' voice, foreshadow a lot of what would form the basis of 'They Were Wrong So We Drowned'. "A wreck, sir/a mess, sir/we melted all the guns and we did it together/ ten thousand years...from now". His voice has a sort of intrinsically creepy quality to it, which is maybe what makes the 'ten thousand years' line come across as such a harsh threat: as if he'll still be around then, but you (the listener) sure won't. This track is also, incidentally, one of two Liars' tracks that starts out sounding like a music-box and ends up as sort of a mind-fuck threnody (the other being 'Grown Men Don't Fall in the River Just Like That'). Speaking of which, I'd say that no other band does such a good job (besides maybe Godspeed You! Black Emperor) of making up song titles that are both entertaining and somehow weirdly apropos. Enjoy.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 06, 2004
Halo Above Every Sour Note
the Joggers - the Devil Wears Earplugs
I'm going to try writing well about music for a change. Fans of strange and abrasive similes, don't worry, there will still be plenty of extended nonsense for your enjoyment. Viz. right here: 'the Devil Wears Earplugs' sounds like someone corralled the most wild and stubborn guitars, trained them slightly, and is trying their best to deliver a valedictory speech over the din. Really though, the guitars are the warp and woof of this song's fabric, wrapped around the four-part (shape note-sung) harmonies of Ben Whiteside (lead singer, guitarist) and the rest of the Joggers, who all do a fantastic job of making the richest (but somehow v. airy) and most textured guitar rock I've heard in a while. This track is from their debut record, 'Solid Guild', on Startime Records, which held tenure in my cd player for about 3 or so months last fall. It sounds even better now than it did then, if that's possible. Hopefully they'll be gearing up for a new album soon, but in the meantime, you can download another mp3 from the band's website, and hit up an online merchant to BUY it, if the spirit moves you.
P.S. The new Boredoms/Vooredoms record is fucking amazing. I'd like to post an mp3, but the shortest track is, well, 20 mins. long. So probably not.
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 05, 2004
None More Black
Black Forest/Black Sea - Blackbird On A Gray Sky
Black Forest/Black Sea are Jeffrey Alexander and Miriam Goldberg (not respectively, i.e. Miriam does not refer to herself as Black Sea) and they make some sweet despair-folk, I'm not going to lie to you. This song is a walk in the woods behind your house, through sunny glens and shady copses, back back back until you're in a place that you can't recognize at all. The main ingredient here is Miriam's gorgeous voice, and a repetitive but deliciously plucked acoustic guitar phrase- however, a violin also swirls its way through, and the drums leave a sort of sticky residue after each thumping beat. The entire thing quietly caterwauls (bear with me) itself into an intense heat-death by the end, unraveling into its constituent parts like an overworked wind-up toy. BF/BS are, like the art-slaves in the Jewelled Antler Collective, bewilderingly prolific, but also not widely distributed. The self-titled album that this song comes from is now sold out (due to be re-issued in the winter), but you can always snag their imrovised album or their split cd, if 'Blackbird' catches your ear. All of their stuff is this good, or better. [BUY]
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 04, 2004
The Pinkest Doldrums
Mahjongg - Aluminum
Mahjongg was the beneficiary of a nice little review in the We Are the World section of P-fork circa midsummer, and now they're working on/about to release their debut LP on Cold Crush Records , some time this fall. This track, from their Machinegong EP, is leagues better than anything else on the disc, and is hopefully the direction the band will be pursuing for their full-length. An enfilade of hyperkinetic beats at the start clears the way for a pounding bassline and a swashbuckling (yes, you read that correctly) guitar. The vocals come in all hazy and disaffected, like the singer recorded all his tracks while lying on the floor in a smoky backroom. Then there's the breakdown, so well executed and natural, that makes this song particularly appealing for drunken 3 a.m. air-guitar freakouts. Which are pretty much a nightly ritual around here. [BUY]
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM
October 01, 2004
Ne Plus Ultra
Andre Ethier - She Will Never Be Your Girl
Andre Ethier is one of the lead singers of the Toronto band Deady Snakes, who released last year's 'Ode to Joy', an audio bricolage of garage rock, blues, and freakishly tight hooks. Andre got together with some of his friends, namely Messrs. Christopher Sandes, Pickles and Price, and recorded a solo album in late 2003, titled, appropriately enough, 'Andre Ethier with Christopher Sandes featuring Pickles and Price'. This track is the perfect example of what I would consider a musical 'miniature', and I'm not saying that just because a ukele figures prominently. It's what I would point to if forced, at gunpoint perhaps, to indicate the pop music analogue of a literary short story. The lyrics and music are as wrought and elegant as a piece of scrimshaw, carved for months and months at sea, down to its most vital and compelling essence. Ethier has one of those voices too- a little bit nasal and a little bit rough- that just complements this type of music perfectly. With lyrics like 'she holds you in her court/and she bars you like a fort', you know this is a heartbreaker of a song, and it is, all the way. It articulates that kind of arational crush that seems to metastasize your entire body, cell by infatuated cell, and ends up paralyzing you with (intimidated) adoration. Good stuff for late nights with cigarettes. [BUY]
Posted by matt at 08:00 AM