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June 07, 2005
My body is made of Sanka and grief [snapdragon remix]
Benji Cossa - April
Benji Cossa - You're A Landscape
Only the people who have been reading this site since September (i.e. pretty much just me, Greenideas Matt, and my immediate family) will know that I posted these two songs previously. However, since 1)the Molars audience has grown (some) in the intervening nine months, and since 2)I look back on almost everything I write with both shame and regret, I figured I'd post these again and take another crack at discussing their numerous merits. Plus there's some good news to share about Mr. Benji Cossa's music.
'April' is just a straight-up banger, sonically speaking. The first thing you notice in this song is that palpitating heartbeat-beat, dense and all-business and perfect. The guitar (squealing and squawking with delight) and piano (ghostly) drift together to form a hazy atmosphere of nostalgia, a cool crisp autumn night at a school football game. This song is deadly reminiscent (lyrically) of the Blood Brothers' song 'Love Rhymes with Hideous Car Wreck', in that both deal with telling the story of a couple, or at least the initial encounter. Both songs also, for whatever reason, feel like they should have been shiny, innocent teen ballads back in the early 60s. Anyway, 'April' is truly a work of art.
'You're A Landscape' is a lot more fluid than 'April'. Where the latter seems broken into segments (thanks to that hard drum beat), 'You're A Landscape' (and the acoustic guitar in particular) rolls like a smooth-banked stream over rocks and logs and sediment. This easy-going spirit is injected into the song by not only the soft guitar sound, but also by Benji's whistling overture, the buoyancy of the bass, and the sun-dappled chords played on piano. The chorus is a nice little pop koan: "Sometimes you're a landscape/sometimes/you're the guy/who goes driving by/but if you're in the right place/and you're at the right time/you can't tell which is which/or why/there's a difference between you and/I", and he draws that 'I' out for all the vowelness that it's worth. There is something so calculated and also thrown-together about this song, and it's so ridiculously endearing.
Two individual good news portions- Benji Cossa now has a website, with information about what's going on with both his songs and also with pink honeybells (check it out). Secondly, Magic Marker Records recently announced that they are finalizing a tracklisting for Benji Cossa's debut album and should have an advance mp3 up soon. As someone who has been trying to find more info on Benji Cossa's music since hearing the 'They Keep Me Smiling' almost a year ago, this is welcome news indeed. Please listen to these songs- trust me, you'll like 'em.
Posted by Kevin at June 7, 2005 09:45 PM
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