The Future

I was treated once again last night to a P:ano show. Some new songs were unveiled; they reveal an exciting new tangent for the group. P:ano are always moving, never staying in one place for too long with their sound. This could have two effects, the longing for the past, or in their case, optimism for the future. As much as I love what P:ano has done, they always seem to be echoing my current musical listening desires. They were joined on stage by members of Great Aunt Ida, and Veda Hille who provided girl group back up vocals and a horn section. It was pure Spector style bliss, but with Nick's characteristically quirky lyrics.

Today's song is from an old recording from 2002, from Nick's other project, Burquitlam Plaza. The song is on the second part of the album that features all guest vocalists. The guest on this song is Jon-Rae Fletcher. This album was put on on a label that Jon-Rae and I started up, and Jesse of Channels 3&4 continues to maintain: Deer and Bird. We are sold out of this release, though I think some are still floating around in stores. I recommend checking at your local record store, it is worth looking for.

O Beauty

Fingerfood with Dink Hand

Before Frog Eyes conquered the world with their consistently mindblowing live shows, frontman Carey Mercer's first band Blue Pine released one of my all time favorite albums. Blue Pine's self-titled debut, released on Canadian label Global Symphonic, just hints at the passionate chaos of Frog Eyes, but in a much more subdued and melodic manner that fans of Frog Eyes might not expect. There are still moments of Mercer's frenzied vocals, literate lyrics filled with mythological creatures, and an abundance of overly long (yet awesome) song titles. But the recording seems somehow cleaner, the guitars less distorted, and the melodies sweeter. Maybe its nostalgia, but I find myself listening to this album much more than the Frog Eyes albums. This song is too good for me to ruin with a half-assed description. Its title alone is solid gold.

Blue Pine - Fingerfood with Dink Hand

Order the album online using paypal here. It is a steal at $10 Canadian, which is something like $2 American. Buy it now!

New Popsheep Acquisitions

In the past two weeks I've spent way too much money on music. I keep telling myself that the goodness of all the albums purchased partially justifies it, but my bank account seems to be saying otherwise. Oh well. For your reading pleasure, here are a series of one sentence reviews of my new acquisitions.

Sleater-Kinney: The Woods
The crunchiest, fuzziest record I've heard in a long time, and it even more than meets the expectations raised by the first single "Entertain" for being the best SK album in quite a few years. [See this post on the "Entertain" MP3, or stream the record here.]

Belle and Sebastian: Push Barman to Open Old Wounds
Perhaps the worst cover art ever (which is partially forgiven by the nice overall layout and low price) but, perhaps more importantly, this album proves that B&S's EPs usually contain the band's best material, making this one of their most essential releases. [Download "Take Your Carriage Clock and Shove It" here.]

Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress: S/T
As per popsheep's seemingly ongoing theme of melancholy singer/songwriters, this album by a relatively young guy who sings like he's in his grizzled, tarstained fifties is perfect for people who like the very-talented-man-with-an-acoustic-guitar thing that I seem to be unable to resist. [Download the song "The Possibilities" here.]

Stephen Malkmus - Face the Truth
If he hadn't been responsible for two of the best rock albums of all time, people would be crapping themselves over this but, instead, they're saying shit like: "he's been total crap since Wowee Zowee, and is all, like prog and wanky and shit now and I, like, wish he would start writing songs like 'Debris Slide' again, or something." (Listen to the song "Baby C'mon" here.)

Chet: The Tiger is in the Window
I bought this Victoria BC band's CDR at an unbearably hot Great Lake Swimmers show on Friday, and it is way better than a self released CDR should be and, for some reason, made me think of the Afghan Whigs, which isn't what they sound like but they are at least as good. [Ignore my terrible review and listen to a few of Chet's songs here; you will like them.]

Caribou: The Milk of Human Kindness
In theory, I should like this more than I do, but at least I find myself listening to it pretty regularly; it is what I thought electronic musicians were doing before I actually started listening to electronic music. [Download the song "Barnowl" here.]

Imogen Heap

While an underlying focus of Popsheep is to share music that does not receive attention elsewhere it is also a musical diary of sorts. Music that I love, music that plays on radio Jay non-stop. Sometimes I like to point out the obvious, as it is really the sort of thing that I always miss. I heard this song on the season finale of The OC, insult me as you please. I almost decided to post this song in an anonymous fashion so your ears would be more open.

I love great singers, and by great I don't always mean perfect. The keyboard line follows the vocals note for note, almost blending, this is aided by what I suspect is digital modification of the vocals. The volume is shaped to match the keyboard. It is as if Imogen is playing her own voice with a keyboard. Nothing else clutters the song, just voice and keyboards. It haunts me.


Imogen Heap -
Hide And Seek

PINE*am vs. Erik Satie

On the theme of great Japanese bands, I thought I would post about the crazy electro-pop band PINE*am (which, according to their bio, is an acronym for "Playing Intense Neutral Electronica ad nauseAM"). I first heard them on Fluxblog, and was blown away by the song "Gymnopedie 0.1's" awesomeness. Not only is it a perfectly catchy little song, but it is perhaps the only non-stupid pop music cover of a piece of classical music that I've heard yet. The song being covered is "1st Gymnopedie" by Eric Satie (1866-1925), and is one of my favorites. If you haven't heard of him, Satie was an eccentric precursor to many twentieth century avant-garde and minimalist composers, and had a tendency to give his songs ridiculous names like "Genuine Flabby Preludes (for a dog)" or "Bureaucratic Sonata". The name Gymnopedie for instance, translates as "Spartan dance of naked youths and men". If you're interested, you can probably pick up a record of his music in many a thrift shop record bin.

The original Gymnopedie is essentially a slow solo-piano piece, but is transformed by PINE*am into a bouncy, although still slightly melancholy, pop song.

PINE*am - Gymnopédie 0.1

Erik Satie - 1st Gymnopédie

PINE*am's newest album, Pull the Rabbit Ears, comes out on May 31. You can also download another 5 or 6 more of their mp3s here.

Syzygys

A friend of mine recently insisted that I listen to this atonal band from japan with a name that neither of us really know how to say(well a least I don't). Syzygys play music featuring a modified reed organ, tuned to Harry Partch's 43 note to the octave scale. This song is from a compilation of all of their studio albums released on John Zorn's Tzadik Label.

Their official web site is great, sharing such tidbits as the bands collective interests: Frontier things, sweets,hot stuffs, wine, salt. It is not surprising that one half of Syzygys is active in scoring video game soundtracks, which I bet are great! Which makes me think of this rumor that circulated in my elementary school about this kid who's name I forget being a large fan of Nintendo music
"I hear he records Nintendo music onto cassettes and listens to it over and over" someone once told me. This sort of behavior was looked down on.

Fauna Grotesque
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We are moving towards a 2 week only hosting of mp3s so if you haven't checked out the archives do it quick...

Elsewhere:
Fluxblog posted a song by the A-Frames, a Sub Pop band. The song is great. I thought I'd mention it here there has been discussion of lesser know sub pop bands.

They shoot horses, don't they?

I've been told that the movie They shoot horses, dont they? is a classic about a depression era dance marathon, but I've never got around to seeing it. I have listened to a few bands who have dropped some not so subtle hints about their admiration of it, however, and judging by the quality of their songs, I really need to see this movie.

The band Quickspace put out a fantastic album on Matador a few years ago called The Death of Quickspace, but I never really heard much about it in the music press. I'm not even sure if they're still around anymore. The song below is from the Matador website and was my first introduction to the band. It's built on a kind of meandering, repetetive almost post-rock quiet/loud dynamic, but is filled with occaisionally whispered/occaisionally frantic singing, a well placed musical saw, some moments of total rocking-out, and a overall steady beat. I'm bad at describing songs, though, so you should just listen to it. And, yes, it does have a kind of dance marathon quality to it.

Quickspace - They shoot horse don't they?

The band They Shoot Horses Don't They is out of Vancouver and always put on a good show. They play a kind of crazy oompah, carnival marching band, tom waits, punk rock sort of thing that I think is really great. I think they've only put out one four song EP, but you should look more carefully at their website than I just did. This song is especially awesome.

They Shoot Horses Don't They - Hit My Head

The hound chronicles the sunset tree

I just recently saw the Mountain Goats in support of their new album, The Sunset Tree. Unfortunately, the show wasn't nearly as good as the last time I saw them, probably because it was way too short and was less "hit" focused, with only a few better known old songs getting played. (You can see some good pictures of the show at Chromewaves, who gives it a deservedly much more positive review.) But the show being only okay was more than made up for by the fact that the new album exceeds all expectations, and has been playing constantly in my apartment since I bought it. The album's got some quite intense content, being chiefly about lead Mountain Goat John Darnielle's experiences with an abusive stepfather. But the liner notes make it clear that the album's not intended to be a total downer, stating that it's "Dedicated to any young men and women anywhere who live with people who abuse them, with the following good news: you are going to make it out of there alive/you will live to tell your story/never lose hope". While all that might sound a little too intense and borderline-after school special, Darnielle's talent has always been to make quite dark subject matter into witty, well-crafted lyrics filled with humour and great imagery. He also manages to do all of this while still writing undeniably catchy pop songs. The song below is the immediate standout, a la Talahasee's "No Children", but I highly recommend that you buy the album because every song is great in its own right.

Dance Music

As a bonus, I thought that I would post a song from the The Hound Chronicles, which is the first Mountain Goats tape I ever heard way back in high school. I'm pretty sure the album's long out of print and I think I remember Darnielle saying something about not reissuing it. Hopefully I'm wrong, because it's a great album.

Spilling Toward Alpha

An ego the size of texas

Earlier in the week Said the Gramophone did a excellent retrospective of Smog, including a great track "The Well", from his new album A River Ain't Too Much To Love. I have been listening to the new Smog album for a few days now, and I'm hooked. I'll have to admit something, I don't really like any smog albums aside from Red Apple Falls which I think is a great album containing one of my all time favorite songs, "Ex-Con". So as you can imagine, I wasn't really that excited when I heard about the new Smog album--but I should have been. Bill Callahan has a knack for crafting lyrics that spin round and round in my head, "Drinking at the Dam" has a phrase that does just that "Skin mags in the brambles / for the first part of my life I thought all women had orange skin". This perfect tale of early teenage life was almost my selection for today, but in the end, it had to be the second last song on the album "I'm New Here"(I wanted to limit my self to one song, or I would have picked both). Bill Callahan's voice is strong in the mix of this song, so much so that it borders on a capella. Given his conversational singing style, it is as if someone is telling you a funny tale in a deep voice sing song, as he plucks away a few notes on his guitar.

A River Ain't Too Much To Love is released May 30th, I highly recommend going down to your local record store and picking it up.


I'm New Here


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p.s It was a busy week for me, sorry for lack of postings.

David Cross vs. Pitchfork

If you haven't read the David Cross article in Pitchfork, "Albums to Listen to While Reading Overwrought Pitchfork Reviews", you need to. It is a perfect encapsulation of why I don't read Pitchfork reviews anymore.

As a bonus, here's an excerpt from the Cross comedy album, Shut Up You Fucking Baby.

David Cross - My Wifes Crazy!

La Live Band

As you may have noticed, I am very interested in demo tapes and unreleased recordings by regional bands. When I meet people from other places I tend to ask them about their friends' bands. My friend Marisse and I started our friendship by trading mixes, and I asked her if she could make me mixes of things from her home town of Monterrey Mexico. This was around the summer of 2003 or so, my memory is foggy. What is clear is that this song was a hit around my house. It is so much fun. Half the lyrics are incomprehensible, this Marisse explains is because Gustavo really didn't have lyrics he was just mumbling shit. This only adds to the Louie Louie goodness of this song. La Live Band are part of a thriving Monterrey music scene represented by the label/collective Happy-fi. They have a website here, that is an accessibility nightmare and a myspace page here that has more music on it. Oh yeah, the name is spanish! so make sure you say it with an accent it sounds better that way.


Baby Baby Baby

(I get the) craziest feeling

A while back I posted some songs from the great online record label Comfort Stand Records, which provides freely downloadable albums by a few dozen artists. While Joe Meek is pretty awesome, my actual favorite artist on Comfort Stand has to be Edith Frost. Usually releasing her albums on Drag City records, Frost decided to reward fans with a free album of demos from her previous albums, the entirety of which can be downloaded here. (They even provide full color images of the cover art and the liner notes!) I was very excited to hear the alternate versions of some of my favorite songs from albums like Telescopic such as 'Walk on the Fire', and there are plenty of other good songs. My favorite is the song below, which is one of the few songs on the album played with a full band. It's kind of a slow country dirge, but is quite pleasant.

Edith Frost - (I get the) craziest feeling

Frost is also one of the few artists to maintain a regularly updated blog, so I have to give her props for that. You can look at the blog here.

The Children's Hour

Spurred by a post over at Said the gramophone on Josephine Foster and The Supposed, I thought I'd follow up with one her earlier projects that I rarelty see mention of The Children's hour. This was my introducti0n to Josephine Foster the opera school dropout. While the Album SOS JFK really does begin to wane in interest near the end, the first half is worth the cost of entry. It is a simple album, with a simple idea, beauty. I tend to choose what albums I listen to based on the feeling that they can conjure within me. This is clearly filled under sunday afternoon feeling groovy( yes Paul I know how much you hate the word groovy, and regret putting in one of your songs but I love it anyway).

The Lumberjack song

No Silver, No Gold, No Culture Icons

I don't know what happened with Sup Pop records since their mid-1990s doldrums, but they've been consistently releasing some great records over the past few years. But while bands I enjoy like Iron and Wine and the Shins have justifiably recieved plenty of positive critical recognition, I haven't seen many people giving props to other great Sub Pop bands like the Baptist Generals and the Thermals.

The Baptist Generals' album No Silver, No Gold was something that Jay turned me on to a while back, and it is perfect summer music. It's kind of akin to Iron and Wine, with equal part backwoods country songs and simple folk ballads, but instead of the melodically whispered vocals and expertly fingerpicked guitar lines, it's got more of a drunken, gruff voiced rambling quality to it. Beneath the rough exterior are some really beautiful songs, though. This one is one of my favorites.

Baptist Generals - Going Back Song

The Thermals are another Sub Pop band that perhaps deserves more recognition than they've had. They remind me of a kind of Pinkerton era Weezer, but with a rougher Guided By Voices feel to their songs. Based on Weezer's recent trend towards crapiness, it's pretty clear that someone like the Thermals are more necessary than ever. Their Fuckin' A album was one of my most listened to albums from last year, probably because it made for perfect driving music.

The Thermals - No Culture Icons

The Thermals - How We Know


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Lori @ Outfox set us in this photo she took of the show that I was rambling about(in the comments) at the department of saftey, which is by the way one of the best places on earth to see a show. I had forgotten that Ian was at the show with me, but here is photographic proof, he is in the bottom left corner.
-jay

One too many hands in the pie.

It is not normal for us to post so many songs from one artist, but this is a special case. As these are old dubs of an obscure band's demo tapes. Also said obscure band has recently become active. Ian and I are also a two man team trying to convert the world to the brilliance of these recordings. Ian recently got his hands on some new versions of these songs, but this posting consists of the Kim strain.

When I first met my now old friend Kim, and found out she was from Victoria, I asked her if she had any Daddy's Hands tapes, as the versions I then had were about 4th generation dubs via Ian. Just my luck Kim had two quite good condition Daddy's Hands tapes. A friendship was born.

This song and some others were missing from the recent strain that Ian just got. It was the brilliance of mancoat's exclamation "I'm so sick of talking about you, shut up when I have the conch!" that made me fall in love with this band. I hope it will do the same for you.

Strangled Planet


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I took this photograph at one of the recent Daddy's Hands shows at Pat's pub with the new lineup.

Daddy's Hands Redux

As an addendum to this earlier post about Daddy's Hands - one of my all time favourite bands - I thought I would also share a few more songs from their absolutely amazing cassette demo releases. Their music is hard to describe, but it has the right combination of punk rock amateurism, pop sensibility, and insane freak-out that, until I saw Frog Eyes, made me wonder if any other bands were playing this kind of music. I had high hopes for their first official album but, when they finally released the LP Tutankahmun, it ended up sounding eerily similar to the Cramps and had lost alot of the intensity of earlier efforts. (Not to say that it wasn't good, but it would have been better if it sounded like the songs below.) These songs were recorded some time in the mid-to-late 1990s and are great. I promise that you will like them.

Daddy's Hands - Don't Go

Daddy's Hands - Bastard, You're A Hard Man To Love/Redman

Daddy's Hands - Hey Kunt

If you like what you heard, you can download an unreleased album - recorded some time after these songs - here thanks to the kind folks at the Hive Studios. I think that the band is in the process of recording a new album and there are even some rumours of Thurston Moore being involved.

Disco and Dragons

Arthur Russell is one of those people who was everywhere yet somehow eluded fame. A classically trained Cellist, he played with Allen Ginsberg and others in the early 1970's. When he first moved to New York his roommate was Richard Hell and he became known for producing underground disco tracks. He also had a band with David Byrne, and was supposed to become a member of the Talking Heads. Sadly Russell's life was prematurely ended in 1992 when he died of AIDS.

What I find to be the most fascinating aspect of Russell's musical output is his strange cello and echo drenched vocal pop music. Another Thought compiles these recordings, which is unfortunately out of print(though it seems to be available on the used market at reasonable cost). A little lost is also available on the recently issued A World of Arthur Russell, which also showcases his early disco output.

A Little lost

This is how we walk on the moon

Jon-Rae Fletcher

When I lived in Vancouver, I could always count of Jon-Rae Fletcher shows to be entertaining and epic drunken sing-alongs packed with a decent sized following of alt.country and indie-rock fans. I was happy to see that, after his relocation to Toronto, he's managed to build up a new fanbase and is getting ready to release another album in the very near future on Permafrost Records. For years, Jon-Rae put out beautiful self released albums with hand-made cover art on Deer and Bird Records, and you can listen to a few MP3s here. I particularly recommend the songs from Then Again, which was recorded by Popsheep's very own Jay. His last album, The Road, on Hive-Fi Records was fantastic and largely underappreciated by audiences outside of Vancouver. "It Shone", the song posted below, is my favourite track but the whole album is worth checking out. The live song is an amazing Townes Van Zandt cover that used to be a staple at Jon-Rae shows. This is a particularly good live solo-rendition played at Vancouver's Beautiful Music Festival in 2002.

Jon-Rae Fletcher and the River - It Shone

Jon-Rae Fletcher - Two Hands (live)

You can check out some of Jon-Rae's new songs, self described as "Gospel Hardcore", at New Music Canada.

Synchronicity

Well I finished my O.C marathon last night(the first season on dvd). As Seth sailed away on summer breeze and Ryan headed back to the hard life in Chino, Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah triumphantly played. All the shit was hitting the fan. I then had this idea, I would post that song and in addition post a link to this really amazing Leonard Cohen interview on the CBC website. I then slipped into blissfull sleep with dreams of Newport beach and mp3 weblogging. I must have some strong dream tigers, that sent Ian a message.


Hallelujah

Iggy Pop vs Leonard Cohen

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Canada's public radio and television broadcaster, the CBC, is one of the few 'old media' institutions that actually understands the the internet. Many of you have probably seen (the now defunct) CBC Radio 3, which was an amazing indie culture magazine; JustConcerts.com, which is a beautiful archive of live indie music that includes recordings some great shows that I've been to including this and this; or New Music Canada, which posts songs from hundreds of great indie bands like Jerk with a Bomb or the Arcade Fire.

Recently, however, I've been really into their radio and television archive. Basically they've posted hundreds of video and audio clips from radio and television shows over the past century. For a total dork like me this is a goldmine of historical sources. For everyone else, though, there's some really great stuff too. For instance, take this classic interview with Iggy Pop from 1977 that was later immortalized in the opening track of Mogwai's Come On Die Young album (Mogwai - Punk Rock). Or, even better, this archive of ten radio and television interviews with Leonard Cohen from 1958 to 1993. In this interview, the sexual tension between Cohen and the interviewer is so high that it seems as though they're going to just spontaneously start tearing off each other's clothes.

The Cherry Blossoms

The Cherry Blossoms are a loose group of folks from Nashville that consider themselves the 'working stiffs' in that they are some of Nashville's musicians who actually hold a day job and do music as a hobby. This is a band that I always feel has been my secret delite. I imagine they are not so secret in Nashville but here in the great white north bands that don't really realese albums or tour tend to be unknown!

Their music is difficult to pin down, but I really like to think of them as a skiffle band. As in the stuff that Lonnie Donegen made inspired by jug bands of the American south. Saying that they are just skiffle would really be misleading though, as it is more like the kind of skiffle music that would be produced in an insane asylum. This would be a happy insane asylum, where theraphy would be everyone getting together and getting ripe drunk then joining together in song, those who could not play a guitar were given kazoos and bells and shakers and a good time is had by all.

Rocks and Stones

Glow Jesus Glow

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Once again today the songs are from the puzzling music archive and the photograph is from The Boat Lullabyes.

WS Burn

I have this fascination with this thing. I'm not quite sure on how to describe it but it is the thing that is present in found photographs, such as the one above which were created without thought of art or display. I find a similar quality attractive in certain musicians that seem to be making music for their own reasons. I can acknowledge that some desire to share their creations is complicit in the act of recording and making their songs available, but it seems to be a truly different experience.

When I first heard WS Burn(At the time still going by The Paper Dolls) I had that feeling that I was sitting with my ear against the heat vent as the tenant above whispered secrets. I couldn't help but wonder who she was. And where did this come from. The curiousity became too much and I emailed "pixie" asking if she would be willing to do an interview. I did not get a reply.

During the first minute of the song her voice is just accompanied by the hiss of the tape, it is dificult to tell what is worbling more her voice or the tape. I guess she could be described as a blues musician. The album has an infectious sadness, which is why I'd file it under blues.

Mother

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This song was found at the Puzzling Music Archive, a really great place. The entire album can be downloaded freely along with many other great albums. I think I will be doing a series of post on some music that I found there, as so much of it is interesting and off the radar.

ps. The image is from The Boat Lullabies an excellent weblog dedicated to found photographs.

Joe Meek Sings!

Jay first introduced me to Joe Meek as an amazingly creative producer of British 50's rock bands but my admiration for him was confirmed when I found out that he wrote 'Telstar', which is a classic of epic proportions. To say the least, I was surprised when I heard this crazy album of Meek’s own 'musical' output, offered as a free download on Comfort Stand Records. According to the album notes:

Meek was fond of singing along to totally inappropriate backing tracks to other records. Sometimes he'd slow them down, sometimes he'd play them Chipmunk-fast, jamming wrong chord sequences and phrasings over the pre-fab backgrounds he fished out of the chaos at his home studio.

A lot of this comes across as an early incarnation of the outsider music of Jandek or Half Japanese, with their strangely compelling and totally unapologetic lack of musicianship, melody, or tune. I'm pretty afraid of most of the songs, but the album is definitely worth listening to. 'He's All Mine' is my favorite, and is also probably the most accessible song on the album, but 'Telstar' is also kind of creepily endearing with it's out of tune humming of the 'Telstar' guitar line over tracks from a completely different song.

Joe Meek - He's All Mine

Joe Meek - Telstar (over backing track 'Try Once More')