Ian Returns!/Pink Mountaintops!

Sorry for the long hiatus from posting. Over the past two weeks, my time has been evenly divided between socializing and swimming, with little left over for work or internet procrastination. But now that I'm back and supposedly working, I'm pretty sure my posting frequency will pick up.



While in Vancouver, I managed to luck out and catch a solo-Steve McBean Pink Mountaintops show at Pat's Pub. It was the kind of show that I used to go to every couple of weeks when I lived in Vancouver, attended by a fair dose of art-school scenesters and friends I haven't seen in a while. I probably would have preferred to see Pink Mountaintops playing as a full band, with the usual cadre of 10 or so people on stage, but the solo show was still amazing. The audience was invited on stage to play whatever instruments they wanted, with someone ably taking drum duties at one point but mostly with a lot of enthusiastic tambourine playing and backup singing. But what I enjoyed most was the way in which the solo-show managed to emphasize the fact that the songs are at once both tongue in cheek dirty sex songs and genuinely sincere love songs. This was definitely true of the newer songs, which were noticeably absent of pornographic imagery, but even some of the raunchier songs off of the album like "Rock'n'Roll Fantasy" somehow seemed kind of sweet when delivered in a public setting. The song posted below, which is an unreleased cut that was played at the show, perfectly combines sexual imagery, declarations of monogamous love and great VU inspired rock riffs.

The Pink Mountaintops - Erected

Another bonus from the show was the fact that McBean also played some classic, but rarely performed Jerk With A Bomb songs. I haven't heard the song below played live since the first JWAB show I attended back in 1999, but it is easily one of my favourite songs. I almost crapped my pants when I heard the first chords. Enjoy.

Jerk With A Bomb - Summertime

God's Money

Over the weekend I bought the Gang Gang Dance album God's Money. Aside from being a fantastic album combining experimentalism and pop sensibilities with a hint of Gamelan it's title reminded me of my friend Daniel. Unfortunately Daniel returned to the great city of Portland. Before he left he informed me about his concept of God's Property, GP for short. GP is a concept useful for shared households at least following his example, I'm sure you dear reader could find other uses. I could for instance declare my tea to be GP, which would me that no one owned said object and anyone could use it as they pleased.

The cover art of the album is of Nathan Maddox, who "Left the Earth by a lightning bolt...[and] considered all money God's Money."(Lizzi Bougatos in the Chicogo Innerview)


Glory in Itself /Egyptian

1966-2005

I was sad to hear that Silkworm Drummer Michael Dahlquist was killed along with two others, when another driver who was attempting suicide rearended their car at a red light. The other driver was unharmed.

I have always loved this song.

Couldn't You Wait

Summer Soundtrack: Volume 3

Before I leave for brief trip to my former hometown Vancouver, I feel the need to squeeze in another instalment of the Summer Soundtrack series. The thought of escaping my heatwave infested apartment is improving my disposition these days, so I figure I'll leave you with a few more upbeat songs I've been listening to lately.

David Herman Dune - Song for the Family
The Herman Dune album Not On Top is easily one of the top five albums of 2005 so far and the title track is second only to "Druganaut" as the best single of the year. I assume you've heard a few of the songs posted by StG, Fluxblog and Catbirseat over the past few months, but if you haven't you can check out some MP3s here. This song is from Herman Dune singer David's fantastic solo album Ya Ya on Shrimper Records. The first verse to this song is only eclipsed in greatness by the ukulele playing.
[Buy the album Ya Ya]

The Aislers Set - Catherine Says
This is one of my quintessential summer songs. The handclaps are just about perfect.
[Buy the album How I Learned To Write Backwards]

The Thermals - A Stare Like Yours
I don't think we post enough love songs here at Popsheep, but its never too late to start. This song sounds all angry at first but is really quite sweet.
[Buy the album Fuckin A]

Pride Tiger

I haven't heard a good rocking album in a while, lucky for me Sonny and Bobby of Pride Tiger burned me a copy of their new 5 song ep (that they tell me is just a rough mix at this point). Sonny and Bobby both used to play in the Metal Band Three Inches of Blood. Pride Tiger also contains members of Vancouver's skate thrash band S.T.R.E.E.T.S (Skating Totally Rules everything Else Totally Sucks). That said, Pride Tiger doesn't sound like those bands at all, instead they play rock inspired by 70's garage and psych rock and a variety of other sources. Some of the guitar lines on this E.P are the kind that make you say "God damn". What I really like about this album is that is manages to satisfy the total tech nerd guitar geek in me yet remain catchy and fun without any excess wank. I was told this EP would be coming out in a month or so.

642 - from a untitled and unmastered ep

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Strange side note The CDDB thinks this cd is an Ace of Base Maxi-Cd with four versions of Unspeakable and the song don't stop!

Early Destroyer Recordings: Part 3

This is the last in my series of posts about early and out of print Destroyer songs. As I've said in earlier posts, despite their roughness, a lot of these songs are equally as good as anything Dan Bejar has written since. Quite a few are not, but it's still interesting to hear the evolution in Bejar's singing style, voice, and songwriting. I wish I could post them all, but they're not mine so you'll have to make due with the few that have been posted up to now. I haven't been able to find an early 7" that I own, so I'll finish this series by posting two more songs from the Ideas For Songs cassette, which is still one of my favorite Destroyer albums.

Destroyer - You Don't Need To Know
I've talked to quite a few people who were either really annoyed or really excited by Bejar's midi-fuelled Your Blues. Those in the annoyed camp seemed to be longing for the 'classic Destroyer', in particular for the indie-pop, guitar driven songs from Thief or Streethawk. But, as attested to by this song and quite a few others on Ideas and Golden Bridge, Bejar has always had a thing for bad synths. In fact, there is not a guitar to be found on this song but, instead, an array of partially annoying casio keyboard effects that at one point near the end sound as though they're on the verge of decomposition. I'm particularly fond of the lines, "Men hold cabinets/Women, covens" and "Films aren't forgettable/ Songs are".

Destroyer - Child of Styx
I have a feeling that the guitars are not in tune and that the tracks are partially out of sync in this song but, even as such, this is still one my favorites on the album. Much like in a Silver Jews song, it is written almost like a series of disconnected one liners strung together in such a way that they seem to make perfect sense. (I'm especially fond of the first line of the song "Child of styx, false pleasures do abound/Their staff picks have run us underground/There are no schools left to accept you.") This is what I consider to be 'classic destroyer'. The song is built around the rhythm of the lyrics, making the sloppy playing ultimately irrelevant, and it is filled with witty, yet seemingly throwaway lines and a chorus derived from a bad cliche.

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Well, that's it. I wish I could point you towards where you could find these early recordings, but they're long out of print. Maybe with some lobbying, Bejar or Merge would make early albums like Ideas For Songs or We'll Build Them A Golden Bridge available by mailorder or download or something. I kind of doubt it, but you never know.

New Songs for The Old Town

So lots of distant friends have been passing through town many of them playing a show on their way. Jon-Rae Fletcher was one of them. He played a show that could have sold the venue out twice. I was stuck outside until he convinced the bouncer to let me into the already packed club with over extended guest lists.

This was his first show in Vancouver with his new Toronto band. At one time he mentioned a song being about moving to the east coast, and crowd let out a boo and hiss the would scare off a southern linch mob. We just miss him and want him back is all. The new band though loose and ramshackle suits Jon-Rae like a worn pair of jeans. It was obvious that everyone was having a good time on-stage and in the crowd alike. The alcohol was flowing like the Mississippi all night long, and as Jon-Rae did his patented robo-preacher dance as the crowd bumped and shuffled along in the cramp confines of the Railway Club. It was perfect.


Ian has already posted on Jon-Rae's new album Old Songs for The New Town, so I'll leave it at that. I did grab a copy of a limited tour only album containing some of the songs that were the hits of the night for me. The whole album is about sex and jesus, a match made in heaven.

I'd love to let you listen to whole album( Maybe he could be convinced to make more copies for mail order if there was demand) but I had to narrow it down to two songs. I thought of including the previously mentioned song about moving east, but I decided on two dirty songs. One of these songs is the live version and might give you an idea as to the traveling gospel show madness that ensues at Jon-Rae's shows.


Just One More From Soul as Fuck

Nothing to do ( Live at the Music Gallery) From Soul as Fuc

all the world is gliss!

Photo by Kevin Parnell @ apertureenzyme.com

Oh, are you in for a treat. Glissandro 70 is Craig Dunsmuir and Sandro Perri - though I'm under the impression that this track is Craig only. If anyone knows for sure, speak up! (I've just received word from a very reputable lady, it is both SP & CD and this song is a demo! As the lady said, "if that is just a demo, though, imagine how good the finished one will be?")
As Ian's mentioned, it's sickitatingly HOT in Toronto and right now my only salvation is lying in bed with headphones on, listening to this song while eating fresh blueberries. The headphones have become essential to hear all the neat layers and subtleties of this song over the din of my overloaded fan.
The song is an evil tease wrapped in sheer prettiness - would Glissandro hurry up and share more music with us? Enjoy!

Glissandro 70 - Bolan Muppets - not "all the world is gliss" as previously dubbed. I'll fix the filename this weekend.

Gris Gris

I'm totally inspired lately by the awesome posts over at Said the Gramophone, maybe even enough to actually start putting some real effort/creativity into my posts. I was recently thinking of posting the Sloan song "Deeper than Beauty", but I'm glad that I didn't because Sean's post said how I feel about the song better than I could. Maybe I'll do a post on "Loosens" instead sometime.

The Gris Gris - Everytime
This song is the official soundtrack to the time in high school when my friend Ryan's crazy older girlfriend was driving us down Columbia Avenue at about midnight and for no apparent reason swerved off the road and onto the meridian, accelerating over a grassy hill and into the parking lot of the Fireside Inn. No one really knew what was going on, but she started laughing and probably called us "a bunch of pussies". When she drove back out onto Columbia, we all assumed that her craziness had subsided. But within a few seconds she began to accelerate again, only this time she shut off the headlights and began speeding towards the nearest intersection. After running one red light, she got to the next intersection and made a hard left on another red light with no signal (and no lights on) against oncoming traffic and began speeding towards the road where you drop off the recycling and that ultimately leads out behind the arena. All this time we were screaming at her to stop the car, but she kept accelerating down the unlit road the headlights still off. The tension increased when she began to speed up as we approached what everyone else in the car knew was a brick wall. (She was from out of town). Then, with no warning, she stopped the car, missing a zamboni parked out back by a few feet and the brick wall by even less.
[Buy the Gris Gris self titled album at Insound. I highly recommend it.]

The Diskettes Take Over Vancouver

Vancouver Popsheep readers take note, The Diskettes a Popsheep favourite are playing at the Marine club This Tuesday the 12th at 10 pm.

More Phil Elvrum

My earlier post Phil Elvrum Rules! is probably a plain give away as to my bias about this neo-hippy troubadour's music, but I'm the first to admit that he has a tendency towards flakiness and kind of annoying 'deepness'. But, despite my hesitations, he seems to consistently put out albums that I think are great. While I don't yet own the new album 'No Flashlight', these two MP3s posted by Japanese label '7 E.P ' indicate a healthy dose of awesomeness on the new album. The song "I hold nothing" is reminiscent of the pleasant ambient-folk, semi-spoken word type of songs that are found on the wonderful (and freely downloadable) Seven New Songs of Mount Eerie. The song "The Universe is Shown", however, is a kind of circus-march drum-explosion that more accurately captures the Mount Eerie live show, which is often filled with audience participation and crazy percussion (which, I hate to admit, sometimes even includes steel drum solos; but we'll forgive Elvrum for that one transgression, especially because I once saw a show that included large-scale audience basketball dribbling in the place of drums, which was awesome).

Mount Eerie - The Universe is Shown

Mount Eerie - I hold Nothing

Despite the semi-derogatory pre-review of the new album from Tiny Mixed Tapes, I'm looking forward to it. (And, I have to say, I think its pretty indie snob to diss an album because the artist put some creative effort into the packaging of it even though they'll probably end up losing money on the venture. Is TMT becoming the new Pitchfork? Their jerkiness filled/bitter Black Mountain review seems to say so.)

Wilco vs. the CBC

Here's an interesting video clip courtesy of the CBC of an interview with Jeff Tweedy from Wilco talking about filesharing and music downloading. Thought you might find it interesting, as he seems to say some pretty sensible things. And, as we've noted before, he and his band have been kind enough to post some great songs for free on their website.

The Free CD

Sorry for the delay regarding the Draw for the Frog Eyes Live Cd. I was really suck on how to randomly chose a winner. In the end I resorted to writing the names down and drawing them from a hat. I was feeling bad for waiting so long so I drew two names. (Drum Roll) The winners are W-S and MEG. Please contact me with your mailing addresses so I can send out your Cds!

Bastards

I'm getting pretty tired of reading about innocent civilians getting violently killed by bastards. The sheer number of fanatics who are willing to kill based on some fundamentalist religious, political, economic, or nationalist ideology seems to constantly reaffirm my suspicions about human nature. I'm not sure how you're supposed to stop this sort of shit, but I think it starts with fighting all the various incarnations of fanaticism in our own countries.

Cat Power - Maybe Not
[Find more MP3s echoing this sentiment at Protest Records]

Breeder

A few chords, a bass line on the verge of colapse, some barely intelligible lyrics, an unexpected (unnecessary?) sound at 0:43, and the most subdued vocals possible barring Kim Deal just speaking the lyrics into the microphone. I'm pretty sure the whole thing is just an arbitrary string of total nonsense phrases, but I could really care less. I pretty much like everything the Breeders have done and this song is one of their best.

The Breeders - Off You
[Buy the album Title TK]

Bonnie Prince Palace Music

After putting out a series of classic albums and appearing to fade off into the indie rock sunset, Will Oldham managed to come back, create a ridiculous persona named "Bonnie 'Prince' Billy", and somehow release three of my top ten favourite albums back to back: I See A Darkness (1999), Ease on Down the Road (2001), and Master and Everyone (2003). In order to leave room for other albums on my list, I like to think of them as one giant, devastatingly solid triple album much like I do with Leonard Cohen's Songs, Songs From a Room, and Songs of Love and Hate. As with Leonard, the themes that run through the albums are pretty simple - sex and death - but are visited without cliche and in a stripped down, dark country/folk kind of way. The recordings and arrangements in all three albums are also almost perfect.

These songs are from a radio show at a station that I have long since lost the acronym for. It sounds like they were recorded around the time of I See A Darkness, but I'm not totally sure. All that information really doesn't matter, though. What does is that these songs are unbelievably good. This live recording played a major part in convincing me of Will Oldham's genius and I have been thankful for it ever since.

Will Oldham - Death to everyone (solo live)

Will Oldham - I am drinking again (solo live)

His Name is Alive

His Name is Alive have had a long an diverse career. Starting out as experimental ethereal tape loops supported by Karin Oliver on vocals evolving into soul music supported by a southern gospel singer Lovetta Pippen. The one constant element in the band is Warren Defever. What I like about this band so much is that I like both periods of the band even though they are so different. It is a real testament to the quality of an artist to be able to drastically change stylistically yet maintain a common thread of appeal. This is also what I really enjoy about Paul Simon.

Lucky for us all His Name is Alive have a new EP Summerbird that is freely downloadable on their web site. The song Highlighted here"Get Your Curse" starts out as a combination of piano and Horns reminds me of Gilbert O'Sulivin and the like. It then drifts until it falls apart held by a few loose threads of melody.


We had our first real summer rain in Vancouver it was hot and the rain was making rivers in the street. I had my window open, and the second disc of the Cloud Box set USA vs. Gamelan softly playing. It was as if the music was made for this exact situation. I sat in bed with the hope that someone might pass by my window, and hear the music floating out in collaboration with the rain.

Aside from beautiful Gamelan music, the cloud box set running 10 discs long is a really amazing thing, so amazing that it is absurd to me that it was limited to 50 copies. I would understand if it was limited to 500 or 1000, but 50? Although half of the albums are the sort that you might only listen to a occasionally, but they are very interesting, such as the album made with plucked and bowed amplified pinecones, and the album recorded during a Detriot riot and more. But for every disc like that The Cloud Box set presents an addictive listen until your ears bleed type album. Maybe they could be convinced to re-release the set?




Get Your Curse From the Summerbird EP


Ghosts From Disc 5 Mystery Spot of The Cloud Box Set

Destroyer Post Update

For the three of you waiting for another installment of the Early Destroyer Songs series, I'll be probably post one or two more songs in the next couple of weeks. To tide you over, here's a link to an alternate solo-Bejar only version of one of my favorite Destroyer songs from his hands-down best album, Streethawk: A Seduction.

Destroyer - Streethawk II

(The link is to a streaming .m3u file, which will play in Winamp or iTunes or whatever it is that you people use, from the Merge Records website. While you're there, be sure to listen to the stream of the awesome Neutral Milk Hotel B-side Engine.)

Summer Soundtrack: Volume 2

Here's the second instalment of the summer soundtrack series. The heat has sapped all my strength so expect a little less 'pep'.

Jolie Holland - I want to die
Actually, forget everything I said about summer. I hate summer. I hate it so much. How long can an "extreme heat advisory" possibly last? Why do people live in this smog infested, humid, stinking city? I seriously cannot figure out why I left the womb-like comfort of Vancouver for this. These days, the wish for death usually comes at about 4:00pm when the thermometer in my house breaks the 30 degrees Celsius mark. The attempting suicide usually occurs sometime around midnight when I realize that the house will not get any cooler, no matter how many fans I turn on.

Little Wings - Look at what the light did
In late May, when summer didn't so much resemble a torture device, this song was being played in my apartment regularly. All the doo's after the chorus are perfect. I used to hate Little Wings, but have been recently been reformed.

Great Lake Swimmers - Moving Pictures Silent Films
This song from my winter soundtrack has crept into my summer one both because it is so good and because I long for coldness. Mostly because it is so good.