no direction home (2005)

There is this moment of pure heathen chemistry in No Direction Home where Bob Dylan is seen doing an acoustic, beautifully fluid version of “Desolation Row” on stage (“Cinderella, she seems so easy”), shot like it’s a surreal dream. Then this Martin Scorsese documentary cuts abruptly to backstage, where Bob, lightning in his pants, was badgering this Richard dude telling him about a shooting threat, or prank, from one of the audience members (no doubt pissed that Dylan’s band gone all electric). “I don’t mind being shot, but I don’t like being told about it,” Bob deadpans. That’s how I like to feel about things these days generally: directionless, unheeded, taking it each shitty day at a time. In that respect – and apologies for ignoring the historical ground the film covers – No Direction Home is heroic, very inspiring. It’s kinda neat to see old Bob, very relaxed in his cowboy pimp getup, being interviewed as he stammers along when chatting about his transition from earnest troubadour to rock shaman. The central premise of the film, and something that Scorsese captured quite admirably, is that Dylan was someone who just needed to be constantly on the move; like the only one thing he could have done wrong, is to stay in one place a day too long.

silence kit #18

Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Master And Everyone [Palace, 2003]

A muffled count-in barely decipherable begins Master And Everyone, possibly Will Oldham’s most understated album recorded under the Bonnie “Prince” Billy moniker, and yet there is this feeling of quiet rebellion about the way these ten songs are performed. “Let your unloved parts get loved” he sings on the opening “The Way”, all its likely lasciviousness is flattened by how Oldham went about his business stoically; his muted delivery throughout Master And Everyone has the effect of quarrying the sublime out from the mundane. Too somber and private for some, maybe, but Oldham devotees undoubtedly would have found this slight change of pace quite illuminating – he employs the album’s general listlessness and slow rehabilitative moods as strengths. As Master And Everyone slides indolently into its quiet groove, the songs give the listener plenty of time to settle in, Oldham writing and singing about a bunch of simple stuff that are not outside the limits of our life experiences. I guess I listen to this album quite a fair bit whenever I am not feeling too good. Buried in the details of songs like “Wolf Among Wolves” and “Lessons From What’s Poor” are the clandestine undertones of one’s travails.

mixtape (july 2009)

Lethargy, a cavalry of obsessions
Grizzly Bear “About Face”
Bob Dylan “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)”
Emmy The Great “MIA”
Alexi Murdoch “All My Days”
Jon Brion “Strings That Tie To You”
Phoenix “Lisztomania”
Peter Bjorn and John “Teen Love”
Best Coast “Up All Night”
Dirty Projectors “Two Doves”
The Fiery Furnaces “The End Is Near”
The Rolling Stones “Factory Girl”
Yo La Tengo “Alyda”
The Broken West “Back In Your Head”
Broken Social Scene “Swimmers”
The Free Design “Kites Are Fun”
The Vaselines “Molly’s Lips”
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart “Doing All The Things That Wouldn’t Make Your Parents Proud”
The New Pornographers “Letter From An Occupant”
Belle & Sebastian “A Century Of Fakers”

When with the fortunate only: Another month, another new job, and the quiet march of employment tedium rolls along discontentedly, it would seem, tired and no time to read, no time to discuss anything, whiling away in the bleeding heart of the city, an 80-yard rush into nowhere, discouragement and a big confusion, directionless, apocalyptic thoughts, indebted to all sorts of nonsense, waiting for some shit to happen. Or well, things just getting good, eventually? Be careful.

there is no such thing as

If I could write a book, preferably an escapist novel, this particular chapter would end somewhere with a loony tune or two Emmy The Great performed last night that made more sense than they really should. Emmy’s knack for quaint melancholy and her easy confidence on stage make the songs sound like wobbly faithful daydreams. A bit more about those two songs where her pop sensibility really shines through in the wild blazing nighttime. “MIA” pulled me in at first with the sheer simplicity of its central melody, slightly jaded but very pretty. The tweeness subsides upon subsequent listens and then the tragicomic ambiguities of Emmy’s lyrics, which she delivers in an almost happenstance manner, got to me. The lingering feel of the song, kinda like the dying flames of some button-down romanticism, is enigmatic and lovely. “Easter Parade” is, similarly, heartbreaking folksong stuff and more directly so, and seems to be addressing some manageable neurosis rather than getting tangled in needless metaphors – a sudden rush of warmth when I heard sing this one perhaps, never mind my reservations about such feelings.

new moons (life is elsewhere)

“I want to live inside (Jorge Luis) Borges’ mind. In fact, I hope my entire life is just a daydream that he is having as he drinks his morning coffee.” – David Longstreth, interviewed on Plan B #24

Well, yes. Some strange things are happening here – probably a lot to do with the idea of living inside someone else’s head, which actually doesn’t sound too strange when coming out of David Longstreth’s mouth.

Where the comforting smugness about his past Dirty Projectors ventures – be it reimagining a bunch of Black Flag songs on Rise Above (2007), or fabricating Don Henley into bizarre fiction on The Getty Address (2005) – renders his compositions mostly unlistenable, the new Bitte Orca taps straight into a vein of fantastical pop music that sounds easier to comprehend and, importantly, quite uncannily accessible. The songs having a much broader appeal, and Longstreth is learning to make the most out of the band’s influences. (And a couple of quick caption-like thoughts to back this last line up. Dirty Projectors is doing the whole Talking-Heads-of-our-generation better than TV On The Radio. Some parts of Bitte Orca reminds me of Prince’s Purple Rain.)

“Cannibal Resource” sets out the terrain: weird guitar chords ringing out anxious and flirtatiously; multilayered voices carrying a hungry, volatile force and motion that reverberates through Longstreth’s sense of awe about everything that is around him – “Everyone looks alive and waiting”, indeed. After that good start “Temecula Sunrise” is where one truly starts easing into the strange behavorial patterns of Bitte Orca. The song resembles a breezy morning drive through shitty streetscapes of a sickly suburbia, a deceptive acoustic tranquillity grazed by the twitchy electric noise the band produce in the background.

“The Bride” is Longstreth doing his contorted troubadour thing, probably the album’s weakest link and yet the band again pulls it together with a workshop of musical deliriousness. The girl vocalists take over the reins on the next two. I’ve read the stunning “Stillness Is The Move” being compared to Aaliyah and Mariah Carey (which kinda makes sense because Amber Coffman apparently grew up singing mainstream R&B), but that doesn’t explain how the joy and jubilee of this chic centrepiece can sound quite so life affirming every workday morning without fail. Angel Deradoorian’s “Two Doves” is almost just as good in a totally differently way, a delicate lamentation that comes across like something out of Nico’s Chelsea Girl album, not least because it share this one really tenderly candid line with “These Days”, as written 40 years ago by Jackson Browne: “Don’t confront me with my failures”.

The colossal-sounding “Useful Chamber” articulates Longstreth’s crush with eyeliner; the unpredictable and yet totally captivating way he wrings some sort of manic, disbelieving pathos out of an electronic pop anthem as choppy and eccentric as this song is. And as if the Dirty Projectors’ agility and mastery over the pop idiom on Bitte Orca is still not obvious, the sprawling, mutant soul music of “No Intention” would be more than enough to seal the deal; or, the lovers rock of “Remade Horizon”, with its flurry of joyous rhythms on which Amber and Angel harmonize like wildflower souls. “Fluorescent Half Dome” wraps things up with the album’s most indefinite moments of gravity defiance, as Longstreth’s inventory of dream sequences loom up and away, floating towards new moons.

I listen to this shit so much and yet I don’t think I have quite let the merits of Bitte Orca to fully sink in and write coherently about it. But fuck that. Probably no other record released this year has better abused the unclassifiable memories of every fucking day of our lives; nine perfect songs to help us through our trials and tribulations time out of mind, to help us in our daily cup of sorrow.

silence kit #17

Jens Lekman
Night Falls Over Kortedala [Secretly Canadian, 2007]

I have been using this CD as a mirror in my room every morning these days. (Don't ask me why it matters.) I bought my copy of Night Falls Over Kortedala in Brussels two years ago (also bought Caribou's Andorra at the same store) during a November spent vacationing in Europe. The autumn season felt right for Lekman's sort of music. I listened to this on the hourlong train ride from Brussels to Bruges, upon a friend's recommendation, with some pretty confused emotions - bits and pieces of elation from being alone and away from home, while at the same time feeling like the world's most miserable sod for being away from home for too long. Bruges was fine though. It was a strange time in my life. Every time now I hear "I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You" I think of the smell of European rain at 4am in the morning. For some strange reason "A Postcard To Nina" always remind me of the Velvets' "I'll Be Your Mirror". I caught Jens Lekman perform twice where I live. The first performance, a good nine months or so before the release of Night Falls Over Kortedala, was revelatory and quite possibly one of the most memorable gig experiences for me. Jens did an awesome "Opposite Of Hallelujah". The second a year later was easily one of the worst. I read that Jens was down with the swine flu. I wish him a speedy recovery.