Snow & Fire

Snow Lion is Feist's smoky voice contrasting with Jean-Philippe Verdin's computer music, and it turns downright spooky at precisely 2:43.

A Fire in the Forest is David Sylvian singing with a vintage wind-up music box in his hands. Equally creepy, and equally beautiful.

Readymade FC mp3s, from Babilonia:

Snow Lion
A Fire in the Forest

Bablionia is essential listening for these and other gorgeous songs, including Slide and The Only One, both featuring Yael Naim.

NY Times on Canada's Collectivism

To call BSS [Broken Social Scene] a "band" is to simplify matters drastically. It's more like a network, or, as Emily Haines, a sometime BSS'er and lead singer of the Toronto band Metric, put it, "somewhere between a tribe and a cult." Most of the members of BSS are also members of other bands that are released by Arts & Crafts. The very name connotes what all the artists on the label have in common: they are lo-fi, heartfelt, ironic, makeshift and as tightly interlinked as the kids in a summer-camp lanyard-making session. The musicians play on one another's CD's (BSS can have between 9 and 17 musicians on a given track depending on who shows up or what's needed for a particular song), a level of cooperation and organization unusual in any popular-music scene, even one that might be summed up by the slogan above the bar code on BSS's most recent CD: "break all codes." Perhaps it helps — or maybe it hurts — that a few of them have also slept together, though the BSS'ers tend to be secretive about whom, when and why.

Musically, you could say that Toronto has become a nicer but less aesthetically coherent version of Seattle in the early days of grunge. Broken Social Scene is Toronto's Nirvana, without — so far — the troubled-rock-star antics or the anomie and with a social agenda that puts collective music making above individual success.

...

Just as the L.A. punk scene circulated around the SST label and the early grunge scene sprang from and adhered to the Sub Pop label and K Records in Olympia, Wash., the Toronto scene has coalesced around a few key labels. The 25-year-old Kado, who has joined or started more than 10 different bands, started his own extremely independent music label, Blocks Recording Club, in 2003. Blocks now puts out records by local bands at a phenomenal pace — 30 CD's in two and a half years. The most acclaimed is Final Fantasy, which sold 7,000 copies of its last album, a string-heavy CD with full band arrangements, which Kado describes as "orchestral loner music." Unlike A&C, Blocks is a cooperative — CD's are packaged by hand — that divvies up profits between members and musicians.

- From Guided by (Many, Many) Voices, in Sunday's NY Times Magazine.

Cotton Candy Restrung

This song was on the radio yesterday. I came with them inside their dream, and told myself I'd post this song today.

Healamaster & Tarsier - Cotton Candy (Moonbunny Remix) (mp3)

From The Heart of a Blue Whale is the Size of a Small Car.

In the Pines, In the Pines.

Looking for something real?

There's nothing more real than a man and a banjo or harmonica.

Roscoe Holcomb - In the Pines (Where Did You Sleep Last Night) (mp3)
Roscoe Holcomb - Married Life Blues (mp3)

From The High Lonesome Road.

Tasty Habits

Remember the early days of the World Wide Web, when you never knew what you were going to discover from click to click? When I came across the Myspace page for DC's The Tasty Habits while surfing yesterday (who does that anymore?), I got that old feeling that you get from finding a little treasure after a string of dull links. These songs made me laugh, nod, and sing along, and I think they'll do the same for you. Scroll down the page and you'll see the comment: "are you coming home for winter break loser? im just kidding...i love my big brother!" How touching is that.

RIYL Weezer, and I'm going to say the early 90's band from Burke, VA, Poole.

The Tasty Habits - Me Deane and the Drum Machine (mp3)

The Tasty Habits - If Nick and Jessica Split (mp3)

From the Nick and Jessica Split EP. Sorry, but I've no idea where you can get it.

We All Go In The Same Direction, Eventually.

I listened to this song by Compass just now. Five times. Remember how Stipe used to declare "This next song is my favorite song" at REM concerts, and those choices might change from month to month?

This next song is my favorite song. Better listen to it now, because you won't live forever.

Maybe the universe is still too small
Even Baby Jesus had to learn to crawl

You'll Never Live Forever (mp3)

The Wedding Present, Live on KEXP

The Wedding Present played an in-studio set at KEXP yesterday. It was an inspired, albeit short, set. Crushed was especially good. It would be even better to see them at Criminal Records in Atlanta for an acoustic set & autograph signing on March 3rd.

The Wedding Present (Live on KEXP, 21 February 2006):

Suck
Crushed
Go Out and Get 'Em, Boy
Always the Quiet One

Minus 5 Live on KEXP

The mp3 blogs aren't gushing about or teeming with tracks from the new Minus 5 album. I suppose that's about right, since it plays a lot more like pub rock than indie. I like that, though. They're probably my second favorite supergroup, next to New Pornographers. And Travelling Wilburys. Let's not forget Wings. And on that note, Damn Yankees. Did I leave anyone out? That's right - GTR. Okay, okay, seriously, though, it's a really, really good album. And their in-studio performance at KEXP was also really, really good. There, I gushed.

Minus 5 KEXP Live Set (mp3s):
Out There on a Maroon
Hotel Senator
My Life as a Creep
Cigarettes Coffee and Booze
Lies of the Living Dead
Twilight Distillery

New Arcade Fire Video - Tunnels

Sean at Said the Gramophone posted a beautiful new video for Arcade Fire's "Tunnels." It's by far his favorite Arcade Fire video, and mine too.

Arctic Monkeys Live on Sounds Eclectic

I hereby predict this creepily accurate prediction: within 24 hours, at least two other mp3 bloggers will post the exact same mp3s from yesterday's Sounds Eclectic broadcast of a recent (November) gold medal-caliber performance from Arctic Monkeys. Cue Twilight Zone theme.


Arctic Monkeys mp3s (Live, Sounds Eclectic broadcast 2/2006):

A View From the Afternoon

Dancing Shoes

Fake Tales of San Francisco

You Probably Couldn't See The Lights But You Were Looking Straight At Me

Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But...

From The Ritz To The Rubble

A Certain Romance

Oops

I mislabeled a live Of Montreal mp3 that I posted earlier this week. It's not I Was Never Young. It's the modern sing-along classic from Satanic Panic in the Attic, Disconnect the Dots (Live on KCRW, 2006)(mp3). They had extra time in the studio, so Nic Harcourt encouraged them to play one more.

Wooden Wand's Gipsy Freedom

The title of the new Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice album, Gipsy Freedom, might give you pause: how can you not imagine a disc full of eastern European Gypsy music, perverted by indie-hippie experimentalists? You fear that you'll be disenchanted by some sort of Freak Gypsy Avant-Folk, and prepare listen to Wooden Wand with a Vanishing Attention Span. So you pop the disc in, expecting jingly percussion to pop out at you immediately. What you get, though, is an arresting downtempo Trane-influenced sax intro with strong feminine vocal.

Did I accidentally put the wrong CD in the jewel case?

The second track, Didn't it Rain, begins, and, ah - there's the gipsy music. There's the percussion and there are the rhythmic strings you knew were coming. And it is Wooden Wand, so there is a fair amount of perversion that goes on in this nearly 11-minute experiment. What you're not ready for is the brass, psychedelic electric guitar, and the chanted "Didn't it rain, rain, rain, my lord..." that sounds like Kate Bush singing as a documentary on free jazz in Pakistan plays in the background, a guitarist practices solos next door, and a UFO sits on the lawn.

And then, Don't Love the Liar (mp3) surprises you as a pretty straightforward, accessible, short (1:37!) song with a classic rock feel. And that's when you realize that Gipsy Freedom has nothing to do with the spirit of geographical travel, but is a stylistic musical journey through time, and it covers a hell of a lot of terrain. This is no Harem of the Sundrum & the Witness Fig, an album that held together as an experimental folk-americana record, though the fingerpicking on the foreboding, brilliant Dread Effigy (mp3), which has replaced Dogpaddlin' Home to Live With My Lord (mp3) as my favorite WWVV song, would have fit nicely with Perch Modifier (mp3). In Gipsy Freedom, you have no idea what musical ground you'll be standing on from one track to the next, and in some cases, from one moment to the next.

And yet, you always look forward to that next moment. The album holds together, with some enchanting thread that you can't hear or see, much less grasp. Confounding? Yes. But it's strangely satisfying to be confounded in this way.

Q And Not U - People Wonder (President Remix)

Get this mp3 and find out what the former members of Q And Not U are up to at Muzak For Cybernetics. I picked up Purple Blaze, the new album from Ris Paul Ric (a.k.a. Christopher Paul Richards), a while back, and highly recommend it. I also have Laura Burhenn's debut album, which showcases her great singing and composing talent, so I'm eagerly anticipating Georgie James, which is Q And Not U drummer John Davis' collaboration with her.

Experimental Songs About Shootings.

Naked City, the avant-supergroup featuring John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Fred Frith, Wayne Horvitz, and Joey Baron, played at the Knitting Factory in 1989, and these tracks are from the live CD from that show.

You Will Be Shot (mp3) is a frantic victim chased. He runs, he hides, he's found, he runs. The sax expresses horror in short loud bursts.

Shot in the Dark (mp3) is, yes, a murder in a dark corner, a short, uneasy silence, and then, death as chaos. A gathering order follows, and next thing you know, the spirit is surfing on a crashing black wave with accompanying surf guitar and halloween keyboard.

Igneous Ejaculation (mp3) is pretty much self-explanatory. At 22 seconds, it might be the shortest offering on an mp3 blog on record.

My Morning Jacket: Live on Sounds Eclectic (mp3s)

Jim James is a genius and a pioneer, and the My Morning Jacket albums are brilliant. So of course I penciled in their Sounds Eclectic performance on my calender, and captured it this Sunday. Anybody rip the Austin City Limits performance Saturday?

My Morning Jacket live mp3s (from 2/12/2006 Sounds Eclectic broadcast)

Wordless Chorus
It Beats
Off The Record
Wonderful Man
Dondate

Forget Ginger vs. Mary Anne. It's All About Jake Ryan vs. Lloyd Dobler.

From What I Did For Lloyd, in the Washington Post:

A New York documentary filmmaker came by last summer and set up lights and rearranged furniture and interviewed me -- she was making an entire movie about Jake Ryan... "But what about," she finally asked, "Lloyd Dobler?"... Because, it turns out, for every one woman with a residual Jake Ryan thing there are maybe 100 with a persistent Lloyd Dobler fetish.

...

"Jake Ryan is dessert, and Lloyd Dobler is like the vegetables you need," says Sasha Johnson, 29, a Washington TV producer. "Lloyd Dobler ruined men forever. I can't take total credit for this, an ex-boyfriend said this to me once. He contended that Lloyd Dobler's boombox moment became the pinnacle of romance -- the standard that no man could ever meet no matter how hard he tried..."

What do I think? It's a no-brainer, ladies. Lloyd just wants to spend as much time as possible with you, and clear rubble from your path. Jake is sold, bought, processed.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: hoping you feel cooler than you might actually be

Bites from Sasha Frere-Jones' New Yorker review of the forthcoming Yeah Yeah Yeah's CD, Show Your Bones:

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs value joy over indie credibility, and they want to be catchy. [Thank God.]

...

Is she talking to her lover? Or to her bandmates, imagining that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are on the verge of becoming big enough to be resented? Karen O understands that rock lyrics aren’t necessarily better when they’re clearer.

...

The next song, the gentle and plangent “Way Out,” borrows liberally from R.E.M., Sonic Youth, and Nirvana, which is a sign of confidence; the Yeah Yeah Yeahs know that no one will mistake them for anyone else, however much they plunder the past.

...

“It’s important for kids to feel bigger than they usually do,” Karen O told me. “We’re trying to make you feel a little bit cooler than you might actually be.”

Nelly Furtado - Maneater (mp3)

It kinda came and went pretty much unnoticed yesterday, but "Maneater," from the forthcoming Nelly Furtado album, "Loose," is available here. It made the poor blogger weep.

Of Montreal, Live on KCRW

On my way home from work today, I listened to the Go! Team and the New Pornographers' live performances that I ripped from KCRW, and couldn't decide which was the best in-studio show of the year so far. It's a 3-way tie now. Yesterday, KCRW broadcast their Of Montreal performance from a few weeks ago, and it smokes.

Of Montreal mp3s (Live at KCRW, broadcast 13 Jun 2006):

Raptur Rapes The Muses
So Begins Our Alabee
The Repudiated Immortals
Wraith Pinned To The Mist (and Other Games)
Oslo In The Summertime
I Was Never Young
Party's Crashing Us

As always, you can listen to or watch the entire broadcast at KCRW.com. If you don't listen to the interview, you remain unenlightened.

Buy Sunlandic Twins.

Teenage Fanclub - Here Comes Your Man; Flaming Lips - Somewhere Over the Rainbow

...all this and more:


"Here Comes Your Man" (Pixies cover) - Teenage Fanclub

"I Don't Think I'm Ever Gonna Figure it Out" (Elliott Smith cover) - Kevin Long

"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (Judy Garland cover) - The Flaming Lips

"Rocky Mountain High" (John Denver cover) - Engine Kid


at Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands.