Drag City YouTube

A few years ago, I'd come to the conclusion that videos were a dead art amongst indie artists. The chances of getting playtime on MTV or making a big 'breakthrough' without a massive budget video appear almost infinitely small these days and I'd just assumed that indie labels had found better places to spend their money.

Clearly Drag City didn't get the memo, though. This video for the new Bonnie 'Prince' Billy single, "Cursed Sleep", is everything that a video is supposed to be: a standalone narrative that's edited using the musical cues of the song (rather than an attempt to literally describe what's going on in the song itself) in order to create something far more than just images with a song playing in the background. It helps that this song is so fucking good, as well. It makes me very, very excited about the "The Letting Go" album.



But, as a cursory YouTube search will show, Drag City has been making amazing videos for a long time. I mean, this Smog video starring Chloe Sevigny is one of my favourite videos I've ever seen. Using a much less abstract narrative approach than the "Cursed Sleep" video, it manages to allude to a larger story using only a few mundane scenes in the life of a hotel maid.



This Joanna Newsom video is much more conventional than the above two, but I've always wanted to see what these songs looked like played live. I figure that this is a much more visually satisfying video of Newsom playing than some of the bootleg concert performances out there on YouTube because it manages to achieve a pretty good mix of showing the artist just playing the song while keeping the video visually interesting, especially with the 360 camera work and chalkboard animations.



And finally there's this amazing mashup of Planet of the Apes and the Silver Jews song "Punks In The Beerlight". Don't try to tell me that Charlton Heston wasn't the image that popped into your head the first time you heard this song. This is awesome on so many levels.



[I just realized that each of these four artists put out one of my top ten favourite albums of the past decade. Seriously, Drag City is one of the few record labels out there that actually make the concept of 'record label' mean much of anything. Go out and buy that shit.]

New Things, Old Things

Okay, I'm far too lazy this week to do a real post so, instead, I'll point you in the direction of some other quality free products available on the Internets.

Ladyhawk - War

First there's this: a free, non-ablum Ladyhawk track from what Jagjaguwar is reffering to as 'The Mushroom Session', which will probably see release later this year. The song is basically Ladyhawk with the crunchiness replaced with piano and it sounds very nice indeed.

And for those of you who still doubt the awesomeness of the new Ladyhawk album - or are perhaps scared of the naked dancing lady on the cover - you need to immediately reconsider your position. The album is amazing! You're wasting your life as we speak! If you're not convinced, there's this disturbing, presumably fan-made video of the song "My Old Jacknife".



And finally, I want to point you in the direction of the Ladyhawk website's outstanding "And..." section. There you'll find a bunch of MP3s from previous bands the various Ladyhawk members have been part of. My favourite are the MP3s from Jay's former roommate and Ladyhawk lead guitarist Darcy Hancock's previous band The Metic.

The Metic - There Was A Time

And this one from lead singer Duffy Driediger is also pretty great.

Duffy Driediger - In the Old Testament

I think you can still buy some of Duffy's solo stuff from Deer and Bird Records, where you'll also find stuff from other indie rock luminaries such as Jon Rae Fletcher and Jay.

Seagull is on the Rise (Part II)

For whatever reason, my initial excitement about the generously expanded reissues of the first two Frog Eyes' albums, The Bloody Hand and The Golden River, was followed by months of completely forgetting about their existence. Luckily, a recent binge of internet mailorder activity resulted in the purchase of the two reissued albums, both of which I've been listening to ever since.

I've had most of the songs from The Golden River reissue for quite some time (and I posted a few songs back in March), so I'm already well versed with their greatness. But I'm happy to report that the unreleased Blue Pine album Seagull s on the Rise, which is included in The Bloody Hand reissue, exceeded all expectations.

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Blue Pine - One Considers Sailing On

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This is not the kind of music that MP3 blogs capture well. Rather than the shiny, tightly packed, bouncing songs that can withstand being listened to semi-passively at work or while browsing the internet for news of impending global collapse, this is music to be engaged with more directly, preferably with the lights out. Using the medium of drunken, brooding and occasionally frantic vocals backed by heroin-binge musical arrangements, "One Considers Sailing On" is the musical equivalent of fever sweats: it has an unstable quality to it, like both the singer and the song could collapse at any minute, like it's being held together by a kind of desperate, nervous energy. You can almost picture Carey Mercer writhing on stage, with beads of perspiration and blood forming on his forehead, spitting the lyrics into the microphone as the band plays hypnotically behind him. And, with song titles like "Drinking: The Song" and "Before They Was Killed in a Car Crash", I think you can form a pretty good mental image of where the rest of the album is coming from.

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Blue Pine - slowhorse or traversing the canadian wilderness father and son search for the elusive wife and mother

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Without a doubt, Seagull is On The Rise makes The Bloody Hand reissue worth owning even if you already have a copy of the original. But don't stop there. Also seek out the first, self-titled Blue Pine album, which is still among my favourite records of all time. This song is a perfect example of the strange, otherworldly country music you'll find throughout the album: the kind of music only imagined by cough syrup drinkers asleep in the alleys of Nashville and Memphis. The music will be somewhat familiar to fans of Frog Eyes, but it's insistence on slowness and restraint reveals it as something different altogether, something perhaps more subtle and complex. For instance, as this song moves slowly through the first few verses, it gradually creates a kind of tension which, while never really very overt, makes the climax shouts of "I'm a liar!" and "Families of hoboes!" seem like the perfect, natural progression of everything that came before.

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[buy The Bloody Hand reissue and Blue Pine]

Clouds of People

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The Sky Drops - Now Would Be

The Sky Drops - Green To Red

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It would be impossible to write about these two songs or this band without mentioning My Bloody Valentine, so I'll get that out of the way right now. But I also have to add that, unlike most bands recording songs in the tradition of MBV, this comparison isn't the product of an impressive array of distortion pedals or a wall-of-white-noise aesthetic. Instead, the Sky Drops manage to capture something closer to Kevin Shields' way of writing and playing songs that somehow overcome their modest three power chord origins and sound enormous, regardless of whether one or twenty guitars are playing at once.

[buy]

]]]]Girls]]]]

Sweetly: a brilliant new record further confirming 'do your own thing'.
Shortly: Sorry to intterupt Ian - I just had to step in and post how wonderful and magnificent this band is and how they need shows in Vancouver or anytown, BC on their current tour

Parenthetical Girls - Oh Daughter/Disaster

Up All Day, Sailing By Night

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The Choir Practice - Up All Day

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At this rate, every band in Canada will soon be just a "collective" of bands from other collectives, armies, scenes and the like. But this is a collective I can be down with: a group of musicians from pretty much every band in Vancouver, fronted by Coco Culbertson from the Gay and AC Newman, all getting together every week for choir practice, singing songs using only complex harmonies and an occasional guitar, and taking pretty awesome press photos in the snow.

[listen]

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Department of Eagles - Sailing By Night

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This song features one member of the band Grizzly Bear, some dramatic string samples, a few very high end drum machine noises, and what seems to be a Kazoo solo somewhere in the middle. The resultant noise is a very pleasant one, not dissimilar from the UNKLE songs that are actually good or from a Radiohead song played by a band with a better sense of humour.

[buy]

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Great Speckled Bird - Rio Grande

Familiar voices with loosened interactions: Ian and Sylvia Tyson. Production: Todd Rundgren. There is an incidental excellence in this album - not necessarily production quality, musicianship or great song writing but more like director of photography, assistant re-recording engineer or title designer. It's filled with wide angled snowy shots of mud and mountains, orange flames of warmth and foggy windows. There are no aggressive catchy hooks, or belted out harmonies. It's so informal that it hardly feels like an album at all. That's not to say that this was just Todd Rundgren producing Ian and Sylvia with some session musicians. There certainly was a band that made this record. It's just that when they recorded it, they weren't really thinking about the final, finished product. They were just out there, seeing what they could do.

Great Speckled Bird - Bloodshot Beholder

Gnossiennes For Guitar

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Eric Satie - Gnossienne No. 1

Eric Satie - Gnossienne No. 2

Eric Satie - Gnossienne No. 3

Eric Satie - Gnossienne No. 4

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A few years ago, I had this seemingly great idea to record Eric Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes using fourtracked layers of fingerpicked acoustic and heavily distorted electric guitars as a way of paying homage to some of my favourite songs ever written. Like most of my ideas it was at once bad, kind of pretentious, and almost immediately forgotten. So, it was with these vague memories of failed ambition that I first approached this 1982 recording of Satie songs by Pierre Laniau offered up recently for free download on UBUWEB. (Download the whole album here.)

Instead of the loud distorted compositions I had imagined, these recordings are relatively faithful classical guitar renditions of songs. But, rather than being disappointed, I was immediately reminded of why I love the songs in the first place. At once melancholy, simple and affecting, the songs also manage to avoid falling into the maudlin romantic territory that other classical music from the late nineteenth century often tends to. Perhaps it's because Satie's instructions left little room for the musician to take themselves seriously, asking them to play the songs at various points "Slow", "Very Shiny", "With Surprise", "Don't Go out" and "With Great Kindness."

Anyway, I know so little about this kind of music that I should probably just stop talking about it and, instead, implore you to listen. Especially to Gnossienne No. 4, which is my personal favourite.

ahhhh, a music war.

I labeled it 'fun rock' or 'feel good music', but I guess I might as well go with 'yacht rock'. For a very long time I have been working on the nuggets compilation of our generation. It features fun rock, smooth disco (see Firsts for everyone, Nov 17), feel good music and soft pop. Add to the list:

Olomana - Home

Olomana aren't quite obscure enough to make the comp., but they certainly have the sound - like The Beach Boys' Friends but whittled down to home style guitar and buttery vocals. Why is this so smooth? It's from Hawaii.

Steve Hackett - Hope I don't Wake

During my navigation of the uncharted 80's, I've come across many great looking, unrecognizable works on major labels. Had I been a Genesis fan, I would have recognized Steve Hackett's name instantly. Instead, I just focused on the mixed drink and island setting. Did you know Chevy Chase played drums in Steely Dan?

Acronym Rock

Okay, I'm usually of the opinion that having an acronym as a band name is a generally bad idea, but I'll make some exceptions here. Although, I do think we should all at least remember the whole Boyz II Men, ABC, BBD ("the east coast family") fiasco of '91. Let's just say that it wasn't a coincidence the two acronym laden members of the family faded into obscurity while roman numeral sporting dorks became annoyingly famous. Just saying.

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OHM - Spoon Me

I don't usually quote from press releases, but I think that it's appropriate in this case: "Unknown to the outside world, OHM has kept their music in secret dark places. They have never sent a demo to a record company, only played live once and carefully packed their recordings and put them were no one can find them. Mostly in dark, closed train tunnels deep under Stockholm." Now, I don't know what kind of abandoned train tunnels and secret dark places they have in Sweden, but they must not be anything like what we have in Canada. Although it is kind of refreshing to picture subterranean dwellers and goth kids bouncing about to infectious pop-music in the in deepest, darkest corners of the Swedish landscape. Who knows, maybe the Scandinavian variant of social democracy has been even more successful than I'd imagined.

[buy/listen]

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OMR - Captive in the Height of Summer

Sounding like Blonde Redhead in a way that's does more than just make me want to revisit my old Blonde Redhead collection, this French band makes some very good atmospheric indie rock, with the perfect combination of electronics and heavily accented English. I'm especially enamoured with lyrics like the one that starts off this slow dirge of a song: "all is becoming sparkling impossible to catch". It's one of those series of words that I have a feeling a native English speaker probably wouldn't say but that, perhaps for that very reason, manages to evoke an unexpected set of images.

[buy/listen]

Smooth Disco

So I was a little embarrassed when Ian posted the yacht rock videos. See I was caught with my sailors hat on. But I didn't really know I was all yacht rock. I hadn't found an identity group yet, I was still just calling it smooth disco. This all explains why my favorite song on Beirut's new album Gulag Orkestar, sort of had a nice smooth beat that would be nice to sail to. "Scenic World" is an exception to the more eastern inspired songs of Beirut, and a well met one at that. While this song does not fully exemplify my vision, it is the correct start.

Here is how I see it. First we had the folk revival, which is being followed by the bands that sound like the band. What we will have next is phil spector/girl group doo-wop pop that will make everyone bop. Things being as they are, I think the yacht rock stands a chance as future music revival trend. Mark my words. It is just so damn smooth.

Scenic World - From Beirut's Gulag Orkestar

Yacht Rock

Why didn't anyone tell me about this?!? So much genius. I especially love how Hall and Oates are portrayed as a bunch of soft rock badasses.



You can find the other nine episodes here.

Soft Effects

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Spoon - Mountain to Sound

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From my favourite Spoon recording, 1997's Soft Effects EP, comes the most complete statement of mid-1990s "alternative" rock as imagined by the writers at Spin magazine and by 17 year old longhair stoners: more guitars and more distortion, a few power chords, all played at the pace of skateboards passing over the cracks in the sidewalk, the whole thing building up to a perfectly formed wall of even more guitars and distortion.

[buy the reissue]