silence kit #3

Super Furry Animals
Mwng [Flydaddy, 2000]

I have been debating myself about whether it should be considered a moot point or a merit that Mwng, unlike any of the other Super Furry Animals releases, is an album sung completely in their native Welsh tongue. Gruff Rhys and his bandmates have always fashioned themselves as pop eccentrics, and not comprehending a word out of songs bearing zonky titles like "Dacw Hi" must be a big part of the intrigue and appeal, right? It's probably truer though that I still enjoy listening to Mwng today, provincial Welsh or not, because this is by far their most cohesive piece of work. There is a rather deceptive, overly relaxed vibe about this album, especially in contrast with the flourish overload on the likes of Guerrilla (1999) or Rings Around The World (2001), so much so that the rose-tinted pop songs on Mwng somehow end up sounding not unlike unfinished demo recordings. But makeshift sounding or not, and no matter if you have misgivings as to being under the influence of anything from ELO to Welsh cult hero Meic Stevens or not, Mwng is one strange and glorious psychedelic trip all the way.

let's get away for awhile

Having worshipped Animal Collective for some time now, my first listen to Merriweather Post Pavilion left me, as expected, feeling mindblown, amply convinced that this latest maelstrom of electronic/psychedelic rock is something the band have been building towards all along. Whereas there always existed at times an ungainly quality about their experimentations or primitive-soundscaping indulgences (not that I'm going to fault them for it, for I have enjoyed every esoteric bit about albums like Here Comes The Indian or Danse Manatee), the beautifully composed Merriweather Post Pavilion now finds the band more interested in transforming patchwork sound elements into vivid feels of escapism that can be readily digested. Whether it is the gorgeous way the opening pop-nostalgic conflagration of "Bluish" set the scene for Avey Tare's "I'm getting lost in your curls" reverie or the mantra-melodic porousness of "Lion In A Coma", each of these eleven cuts presents the Collective in a new adventurous light. Guitarist Deakin sits out this one, so the Merriweather Post Pavilion songs are noticably conceived without the guitar in mind and are none the worse for it, with quite a few of the more accessible tracks sharing the same swirling retro pigments and sampling bloodlines as Panda Bear's excellent Person Pitch, a forever-changes fluidity most evident in Panda's stunning domestication theme "My Girls". And what of the mesmeric things Avey and Panda can be heard singing about? Tundra wilderness, flower dancers, a living room filled with arts and crafts, the night smell of garbage: Merriweather Post Pavilion races breathlessly through its purple-bottle fantasies always in lockstep with human foibles before slowing to a trot with the icy, baleful tones of "No More Runnin" (which recalls a little of the loosely structured "Street Flash", an EP track released last year that is best listened to while rollerskating at midnight). Then senses awaken once again for the climaxing "Brother Sport", a song that for all practical purposes serves as a Panda-inflected conduit for letting go but whose sentimentalities are soon eclipsed by an endlessly clattering electronic drone that turns progressively intoxicating and more ecstatic along the way, until the song/album/band feel completely liberated of all the misfortunes and hang-ups hinted earlier. Befitting of an album that is by far the most expansive in Animal Collective's workaholic canon, ever shifting sounds and sensibilities light up every tendril of this genuinely audacious music that is hopefully a signpost of many exciting things still to come.

silence kit #2

Joan of Arc
So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness [Jade Tree, 2003]

Matthew Perpetua posted a few really cool Joan of Arc mp3s a few weeks ago, which sort of reminded me that this Chicago-based experimental music outfit was one of my favorite bands for a short period of time, a band that my younger self would champion for being 'difficult'. That period of time was roughly in between the release of their 1999 album Live In Chicago (not a live album by the way, while the cover art was like a wicked sendup of a seminal Jean-Luc Godard movie) and So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness. On the records, Tim Kinsella and his band of revolving members always come across as being more than a bit inscrutable: weird lyrics definitely, the art-school influences that was always going on in the background, the band's dalliances with a kind of post-rock guitar soundchecking that comes at the listener at all angles, the combined effect sometimes sounding not unlike some fucked-up jazz troupe trapped in a time warp. Challenging, indeed, but very rewarding if you enjoy music that don't quite bother to start making sense.

and the way it is, I can leave it all

I suppose the fuckest thing about Mogwai and their gig last night came when four songs into their set, they turned in a rendition of "Cody" that I must say I was completely unprepared for. Who would have thought that a bit of twinkly post-rock gone dark, companioned with nondescript singing, would be so accommodating to twinges of nostalgia? Indulge me if you will, but Come On Die Young happened some ten years ago, alright. Cut to the present and the slow wonder of this song performed on stage, everything about its monochromatic melodic glory, the way Stuart Braithwaite warble through the words ("old songs stay 'til the end, sad songs remind me of friends") -- while my outlook today is a world away from how I felt about numerous things ten years ago, from broken dream to dream this song has ranged, "Cody" still left me shaken. Besides this surprise inclusion of "Cody" on Mogwai's setlist, the only other acceptable expanation that I can come out with for why I enjoyed this performance so much more than the last time the band showed up in town (in 2006) was that the newer song materials the band was now playing were much stronger too. The better parts of their most recent album The Hawk Is Howling come closest to echoing the restrained sonic fury of Come On Die Young, as in tracks like "I Love You, I'm Going To Blow Up Your School", "Local Authority" and "Scotland's Shame" unfold in well-oiled motion and evolve into something much more deeply involving at their own pace. Appropriate or not, after an evening of music that called attention to the band's less well-advertised subtleties, Mogwai ended their two-hour set by shuffling off full gorge into viking berserker mode with a "Like Herod"/"Batcat" encore, the wavves of louder-than-you'd-imagine feedback abuse still sounding toxic, still brutally uplifting.

mixtape (january 09)

Not a neutral discourse
Handsome Furs "I'm Confused"
David Bowie "TVC 15"
Tom Ze "Quero Sambal Meu Bem"
Filastine "Palmares"
Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin "La Chanson De Slogan"
The Knife "Neverland"
Animal Collective "Peacebone"
Asobi Seksu "Breathe Into Glass"
Battles "Tij"
Os Mutantes "Dia 36"
Antony & The Johnsons "Shake That Devil"
Dizzy Gillespie "Upper Manhattan Medical Group"
Stereolab "Cellulose Sunshine"
Super Furry Animals "Y Teimlad"
Mogwai "Kings Meadow"

ps: perhaps the track that is closest to my heart for a long time now is "upper manhattan medical group", as performed here by a dizzy gillespie band, always been my favorite composition by billy strayhorn, duke ellington's longtime creative foil ("blood count" probably my second favorite of strayhorn's, love stan getz's rendition).

Macunaíma

I don't know too much about Brazilian filmmaker Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's best known work Macunaíma (1969) before watching it; what an amazing feat this film is. Though based on a 1928 novel by Mario de Andrade that is widely acknowledged as an avant-garde classic, a prototype of magic realism, the celluloid version of Macunaíma benefits plenty from the director's sixties-infused update (apparently there are many areas where the two narratives differ),the film a full flowering of anarchic black humor, unrelenting satire, cannibalism, basically a load of demented folk legends melded with biting political protest (obvious in the references made to the 1964 military coup in Brazil). Plus the fact that Macunaíma is so ridiculously funny, haven't laughed so hard at the cinemas for a long while.

silence kit #1

Jarvis Cocker: Jarvis [Rough Trade, 2006]

So I have been coming back to this very good and rather underrated Jarvis Cocker record for quite a long while now, and the more I begin to feel like Jarvis would probably be best enjoyed by folks like me who never cared much for Pulp in the first place, really. What draws me into Cocker's solo debut is the plainspoken elegance inherent in the songs that perhaps only someone like Leonard Cohen or that sort can pull off effectively, though Jarvis' turf is more quintessentially British than anything else. First, the stellar popcraft in the two songs he originally wrote for Nancy Sinatra, "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" and "Baby's Coming Back To Me", rendered more wonderfully in his own hands, I feel, especially the becalmed air of "Baby's Coming Back". Then there is the unguarded cynicism he gives free reins on his trademark misanthropic numbers like "From Auschwitz To Ipswich" and "I Will Kill Again". The "cunts are still running the world" protest of the album's hidden track (and single "Running The World") may conflict with the overall feel, but what an incredible tragicomic popsong achievement it is still – one of the essential tracks of this decade, I’d say. What needs to be said about Jarvis is also that this is one intimate showcase of this formerly Michael-Jackson-taunting songwriter's leap in maturity; throughout the record, clearly the older and wiser Jarvis Cocker is in his elements here and I think one can't truly appreciate the songs' truest revelations without muddling through enough of life's assless disappointments first.