On Harps and Kalimbas

Arguably, my two most listened to albums of the past few years would have to be Joanna Newsom's The Milk Eyed Mender and Smog's A River Ain't Too Much Too Love. I'm not sure what it is about these albums exactly, but both share the quality of refusing to be background music. In Newsom's case, it's partially "the voice" that refuses to be ignored. But it's more than that. As with Smog, the lyrics exel beyond the kind of college creative writing level stuff that usually passes for good in the world of indie rock. Critics always point to the mythical creatures and fantasy themes in Newsom's music, but tend to ignore the complex rhythms in her lyrics and they way that the songs are ultimately more about playing with language than they are about evoking some kind of Tolkein-ish fantasy world (which they aren't really doing at all).

The live versions of the new songs floating around the internets seem to indicate that the next album is continuing in a similar trajectory towards greatness as The Milk Eyed Mender did. And, as an added bonus, Zoilus has reported that Van Dyke Parks is going to be doing the arrangements on the recording of the next album, which is awesomely good news. You can find a bunch of these new songs at the excellent fansite, Milky Moon, where I found this one.

Joanna Newsom - Emily

Clocking in at over nine minutes, this song is indicative of the increasingly epic proportions that Newsom's songs seem to be taking. But rather than stretching the song thin in instrumental wankery and long solos, it's packed so densely with lyrical imagery that it could easily be spliced into three or four separate (epic) songs. Even after listening to it a dozen times over the past few weeks, I still keep finding new bits of genius scattered throughout.

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Laura Barrett is a Torontonian who's also making some great music. Like Joanna Newsom, Barrett uses some unusual instrumentation for a singer/songwriter, playing solo-kalimba instead of the harp, while also sharing with Newsome a healthy tendency towards absurd and often silly lyrics. (Although Barrett perhaps exels in the silliness department with her great interpretation of Weird Al Yankovich's "Smell's Like Nirvana".)

Laura Barrett - Deception Island Optimists Club

Most of all, though, Barrett is especially good at packing seemingly simple songs full of interesting melody and tempo changes, aided of course by the unusual music-box-like percussive quality of the Kalimaba. I especially like this one.

You can only buy Barrett's hand stitched EP Earth Sciences by emailing her directly. You can find her contact info and some other songs here.

All stars/All hearts

Thanks to Maria (a noise/'hard' music enthusiast) for booking The Leah Quinelle All-Stars featuring Happy last week at the Che. The first song shows off the attributes of the group:
1) They publish a weekly zine, even while on the road.
2) They are generally unkempt in the fashion of any respectable, self sustainable person.
3) They heart-circled the faces of all the boys they had kissed in Razorcake Magazine (a number greater than 5 and less than 10).
4) They exhibit both regional AND familial pride.
5) Rough around the edges with a penny whistle solo inside.

The Leah Quinelle All-Stars - Aaron Cruz

As much as I really want Leah Quinelle to make it/break/achieve conventional success, I'm certain that the hype will never wash over them. And yet The Love Song trumps any Pipettes song writing and smashes a pie in the face of any stupid self-centered dipshit of a band, press kit in hand, that 'goes into the studio' to record their 'sophomore effort'. Despite the fact that the numbers were low during their set at the Che (greater than 5 but less than 10), Leah Quinelle + friends certainly have achieved great plains of unconventional success. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that not only are they aware of this success, they are also constantly satisfied by it as they continue their forever tour, happily photocopying weekly issue of various zines along the way.

The Leah Quinelle All-Stars - The Love Song

about bands:

I had originally heard that The Kiss Offs only wrote songs about kissing, which was enough to get me curious and on the look out. Several years later I found their CD Rock Bottom in the legendary CDBD MAN $1 bin on St. Catherines. I was pretty surprised to find only a few passing references to kissing. By far the main theme of the album was 'being in a not very well known band' or perhaps 'a treatise on our own existence' or 'kiss offs on kiss offs'. In case you don't make it to 3:15: "it takes dedication, to make a dedication when your songs are never played on the radio station, but that won't stop us from sending this number out to: young girls ages 10-21, singing screaming the words to Born To Run."


The Kiss Offs - Broken Finger For Talented Singers

The Kiss Offs - The Freedom of Rock

Guitar and Voice: Good

The thing I like most about indie music, particularly of the guitar and voice variety, is that it is egalitarian. Sure, I know that it's overwhelmingly middle-class, white, twenty-something males singing about middle-class, white, twenty-something male things. But, for the sake of argument, lets just choose to ignore this one fact that pretty much defeats the premise of my whole argument. Okay? Alright, now here's what I mean by egalitarian: the guitar is a cheap, relatively easy to play, and beautiful sounding instrument. Guitars are everywhere and even a shitty one doesn't sound all that bad. And singing. Singing is free, there's plenty of interesting things people can do with their voice, and there's infinite room for lyrical creativity even within the confines of three or four of the same chords played over and over (and over) again. Basically, if someone wants to learn to write songs, they can do so pretty easily. And if someone wants to record a song, even the shittiest ghetto blaster can usually record voice and guitar pretty decently.

For all the reasons I've mentioned above, a very large number of people have chosen at one point or another to record songs and a good portion of these people have chosen to release it in some form or another. And, while most of it has been horrible, horrible garbage, the beauty of the whole process is that, occasionally, hidden gems of everyday creativity rise to the surface and prove once again that the whole guitar and voice thing is capable of something good. Below are two artists that basically self-recorded some guitar and voice songs that managed to find their way out of the wasteland that is the Internets and onto this blog because they are lovely.

Ivana C - Threads
Ivana C - Pet Sounds

You Ain't No Picasso was kind enough to introduce me to Ivana C's music, for which I am very grateful. Ivana C. plays guitar and voice songs precisely the way that they should be played: with plenty of silence, like they're being coaxed out of black space inside the instrument. Sure, they are songs about relationships and about not being all that happy - the standard fare of this kind of music. But sometimes a song is good enough that you believe that those things are actually pretty important and like you've felt the exact same way yourself.

You can find more of Ivana C's songs and some info and whatnot through her Myspace page here.

*****

The Golden Hours - White Sheets
The Golden Hours - Shallow Breath

From the infinite depths of the Popsheep comments comes one of my favourite discoveries of the past few months. The Golden Hours are people who know for a fact that tape hiss is in itself an instrument, and a beautiful one at that. They know that songs recorded in small rooms into tiny microphones allow the listener to feel like the song is coming through their thin apartment walls, as though the xylophone and guitar and singing is happening only a few feet away from where they're sitting. These songs are in the tradition of Shrimper records, early Mountain Goats, and that person in high school that had that band and put out all those awesome tapes that you still covet to this day.

The Golden Hours have a very awesome website here and a less awesome Myspace page here. At the website, you can download five songs and you can find four more at the Myspace page. You can also read an NPR bio of the band here.

And The River

Once again the evil badness that is Myspace brings forth some pristine goodness from its annoying depths. Jon Rae and the River has just finished recording a new album and the kind people at Permafrost Records have posted a few unmastered new tracks on their myspace page. Judging by these teasers, this album is going to be enormous. It's going to require Pitchfork to bring out their most obscure and elitist critic to prevent their weekly ratings bell curve from being completely thrown off. The Globe and Mail is going to need to publish an article on how Jon Rae is the new Broken Social Scene and how West Toronto is the new East Vancouver.

Jon Rae and the River - Just One More (unmastered)
Jon Rae and the River - Just What I Needed (Cars Cover)

Jay first posted "Just One More" last year back when it was only a demo, but age has treated it well. Even in its current unmastered state, it is a perfect expression of the pornographic gospel music that has become the band's current fixation. Prior hearing this song, I had no idea that a grown man's desperate sexual frustration could sound so good. The other song is in all likelihood a live song and not an unmastered track from the new album like I'd said earlier, but that doesn't denigrate its goodness. The multipart harmonizing starting at 3:05 and the explosion at 3:45 are almost enough to make me forgive Myspace for all of its past transgressions.

For our Toronto readers, Jon Rae is playing at the Tranzac on Tuesday night, so I recommend that you go there and bear witness to the glory that is these new songs.

*****

Ladyhawk - the Dugout

With two members of the previous incarnation of Jon Rae's River, and one of Jay's former roomates, Ladyhawk is also set for some world domination. Their new album is coming out in June on Jagjaguwar and, while I haven't heard it yet, this song seems to indicate that massive amounts of alcohol and a healthy diet of guitar solos can occasionally combine to form something beautiful.

Popsheep Birthday Excitement!

A year ago today, on April 12, 2005, Jay published the first Popsheep post. Since then, there's been roughly 181 posts, more than 175,000 visitors, and one commenter calling me "a fucking dumbass, the dumbest fuck on the internet". I hope whoever it is that makes up our regular readership enjoys what we do. It's been kind of fun, I think.

Below is the first song ever posted to Popsheep.

Daddy's Hands - Ghost on the flies

You can read the original post here if you want to feel all nostaligic, although I think only me, Jay and Amy would have actually read it at the time. You can also download the entire album that this song is from here, courtesy of the Hive Creative Labs.

Springhill Centre Appreciation

Shotgun and Jaybird are first rate people. They make jokes about confusing bubble jackets and life jackets (while wearing). They record their own music. They book their own tours. They love their homes. They run shows, play shows and do sound (in the same night). They organize their lives. They organize other people's lives. They help other people and they help themselves. Luckily, it's not just in Sackville, it's right here in the music.


Shotgun and Jaybird - What is this, fuckin Vegas?

Blog music at it's greatest. Where's the album/Who will put it out? We've all been checking for the updates.

Lavender Diamond - In Heaven There is No Heat



in the future: the ultimate meta-band. right now: more compliments directed at the Not Not Fun 7" series Bored Fortress

Conventional Lullabies

The first two bands in this post are some of my favourite Vancouver bands and appear to prove once again that the boringness of a city is inversely proportional to the quality of its music.

The Battles - Suzanne
This song is an epic of minor proportions: a series of carefully thought out and meticulously arranged changes in tempo and melody, trapped within the claustrophobic interior of someone's bedroom or closet. A band of full grown men playing almost on top of one another, the drums perched precariously on the bass cabinet, the organ buried beneath the torsos and limbs of the guitarists. Like the membership of an entire fraternity occupying a single telephone booth, the smallness of the space occupied by this song is fundamental to its aesthetic: it's intentionally outside the realm of the hi-fi, of the wide open spaces offered by the multi-tracking beasts of expensive recording studios. Some unhelpful points of reference might include Guided by Voices, the first Shins album, or Sloan without a record deal.
[buy]

Young and Sexy - Conventional Lullabies
This is pop music without the saccharine sweetness that it can so easily succumb to. Despite the perfect harmonies, syncopated hand claps, and reverb washed guitars, the song has a darker melancholy core. Like those Danish candies that are liquorice on the outside but salt and pepper in the middle, the song is a complex set of ideas held tightly within the conventional pop song format. That is, if by conventional you mean "amazing" and pop song you mean "this will never be played on the radio".
[buy]

The Skygreen Leopards - the heron (a dream of waters, pt. 2)
The mixture of the falsetto and the just-woke-up vocals on this song are very endearing. It's like one of those pleasant hangovers when a strong cup of coffee and a pile of ibuprofen is all you need to make everything make sense again.
[buy]

Single and Double Nostlagia

First a single shot: The Evaporators are possibly the longest running best band you ever saw in high school. Other attributes: totally punk, nicest guys in the world, fierce regionalists, never give up, love doing what they do. This track never made it to any LP/CD release, although possibly to one of their many 8-tracks, but it is a fine testament to the previous sentence.

The Evaporators - Grouse Mountain Scenic Railway

Double: The Bonaduces classic western Canadian tour with ninety-nine. Was that a life changing event for anyone else? The music is just straight prairies pop punk
(the mellow 'inteligent' Winnepeg style, not that brutish Calgary strain) but it just sounded so good ripping up the Downtown Youth Centre gym and the next night at The Brickyard Pizza's backroom. Then there's Judy Blume - just her name brings back a million pages of amazing 9 yr old escape. Both of these tracks are from the famous CiTR Live at Radio Thunderbird Hell sessions, and this one takes a little while to get into, so have some patience.

The Bonaduces - Judy Blume Weekend

New (for me) Music

A few years ago, new music just started making me sick. Everyone became so busy watching once stupidly obscure Mutantes videos and quoting impossible influences like Sun Ra meets John Cage that I just couldn't trust anything anymore. But every now and then, without downloading or recommendation, I have managed to stumble on something new (for me) - like when I bought the first Xiu Xiu LP based on cover art, or when I saw Bobby Birdman in a basement in Langley BC, or when the Port City All Stars completely changed the way I thought about playing in bands. These sorts of experiences have been few and far between but about a hundred times more rewarding than going to 20 blogs everyday in a vain attempt to follow trends/bullshit (be warned: sooner or later you'll end up buying $300 private press psyche records off ebay).

Anyways, remember the days before this information overload? Remember when name dropping Charles Bukowski was enough? I went deep in to suburban California and retrieved this:

Elliotfuckingsmith - Roman Candles

I also recently took joy from the pop-punk stylings (oh, keyboards?) of the latest product of the Brooklyn Posi-Scene: Matt and Kim. One night at the Che, they made crusties and bike punks dance along side radical SoCal high schoolers and twenty-something loser graduate student types and then they sold cd-rs on a sliding scale: $[0,5].

Matt & Kim - Silver Tiles


tomorrow: a return to true, real, pure nostalgia

Psychic Hearts

Abstract: This post will make the case for a revisionist history of the Sonic Youth discography, positing the period of 1994-1997 as a creative peak second only to the period 1986-1988. It will also argue for Thurston Moore's "Psychic Hearts" as the best post-"Daydream Nation" Sonic Youth album, despite the obvious limitation of it being a solo-album comprised of only 50 percent of the band. It will also suggest the single "The Diamond Sea" as the best song ever or, perhaps more realistically, as a really fucking good song.

Thurston Moore - Elegy for all the Dead Rock Stars (Excerpt)
We don't have infinite bandwidth, so I can't post the entire song from the now re-issued Psychic Hearts album. Hopefully, this 7 minute excerpt will be enough to give you a proper taste of what may be one of my favourite songs.

When you open this file, you will be thrown roughly into the middle third of a 19:46 minute behemoth of a song. And when I say "thrown roughly" I mean that you will hit your head on the song. It will steam overtop of you like a rolling pile of amps and pedals and patch cords. Actually, that's not entirely true. The song will collapse around you in a landslide of instruments somewhere in the middle of this excerpt, but most of it will probably seem to flow past almost imperceptibly on either side of that moment. The repetition and the small shifts in direction throughout the song guide you almost unsuspectingly into the chaotic middle, only to have the band reassemble all of the quiet leftover pieces of the song into a graceful exit (that, unfortunately, you only hear a small part of). I'm not sure that this 7 minutes really captures why I've listened to this song literally 100s of times. Then again, I don't care all that much that it does.

Thurston Moore - Just Tell Tell Her That I Really Like Her
There was brief period when I felt that this song accurately summed up my entire musical aesthetic. I can't remember whether that was a two week or two year period, or why I would have ever thought that the idea of having a static musical aesthetic was a good idea. What I do know is that I've always been drawn to the name of this song, which is taken from a split 7" single with Loren Mazzacane Connors. I've always imagined it as being the soundtrack to a series of typical high school moments: the memory of a 15 second conversation followed by the reenactment of cumulatively less embarassing versions of that same conversation or, alternatively, a scene in which two people awkwardly talk to each other at a bad party, with strains of classic rock drifting by as trucks arrive with more firewood. Most of all, I think I can relate to this song because it's a guitar-driven song in which the guitars are used in the most understated possible way: brief repetitions on a theme working themselves up for a kind of anti-climax, or gentle collapse near the end.

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You can buy Psychic Hearts here.