The Ambience Affair - Burials

Burials starts subtly - a mist of earnest vocals, rattly drums and sweet chord swells descends before being pierced by an angular (for want of a better word) power chord riff, that bursts in right where it's not expected. This is a pretty good way to start talking about the album, I think - right from the start, it challenges expectation and description alike.

I don't mean to sound hyperbolic. I love this record, which is something I guess should be clear before I go any further. Usually when you hear about something defying description, it means the author is a bit lazy, or the band have gone slightly mental and made some decisions that defy explanation, rather than description. Here, I think it's more like we recognise the album's constituent parts - vocals, drums, angry guitars, - but the sum of the whole is rather unexpectedly new. It's as if someone who'd never seen a guitar managed to invent one out of sheer curiosity, and this is what they made. And it's pretty special.

I'd seen the band live before, and knew how hard they could devote themselves to their songs. And while I really enjoyed their first releases, this record displays a maturity and focus that most debuts lack. While the album is absolutely not repetitive (indeed, despite its reliance on drums, guitars and vocals, the first listen is rewardingly rich - there's a world of difference between 'The Fallen', chosen here, and 'Weeds', for example) each song is woven from the same material as the whole. Frankly, trying to describe the whole thing has me reaching for more flowery language than I'm used to.
Personally, this album sounds inescapably Irish to me, which is not something I would expect every listener to agree with. Lyrically, musically, emotionally, there is a complexity of simple things on display that reminds me of childhood, of wilderness, of the basic nature of the Irish countryside where I grew up. The music here is more than good enough to withstand such an unwieldy emotional connection, and that may be why I love it.

You can buy the record here, and stream it here - and if you can make it, you should come along to one of the gigs on their tour. They're wild live.

take all this time

I've been waiting to hear the final version of this song for over a year, and I'm happy to say that what I heard before, though deeply impressive, seems less definitive now, like a bud beside a blooming rose. My first response was to wonder where in DM Stith's music had this expanse come from, and where he had learned to revel in it. On Heavy Ghost, a stretching blank night looms darkly, but here it has filled with glittering stars, that shine brighter the louder he sings. He's got the night inside him now.

The Revival Hour is David's project with JM Lapham and many others, and from the two songs available to buy here, it sounds like it's going to be beautiful. Of course, if it's pure Stith action you're looking for, you'd do well to check out his recently unveiled Daytrotter session.

Villagers - Cecelia & Her Selfhood

Today we are lucky, because before finishing touring and taking a break for a while, Conor O'Brien has seen fit to bestow another gently-crafted sliver of beauty upon the world, this time accompanied by an equally affecting video, by Adrien Merigeau.

You can download the song over at the Villagers site. It's beautiful.

all of our feelings

 Slow Club - Two Cousins

 I love this song for its rainbow synths, multicoloured, and descending violently, lurching out of the sky. I love it for its heartful bellow, simultaneously "Hold on!" and "Hell no!", and the notes that beg to be held a little longer, like the warm thing struggling into your arms as you sleep, someone you realise you've always hoped to to share your bed and dreams and silly sleepy moments with. It's like that really, vulnerable yet intense, happy yet fraught with desire and insecurity. This song somehow summons all these feelings at once.

{this is really really good}
{buy it}

Bring Arcade Fire to Work Day

In December of last year, Arcade Fire came to Dublin to play two nights at the O2. I was there for both of them, and I remain convinced that no other band can cause the same kind of joyous riot on stage that they do. On record, the band are exquisite. Live, they're even better; a raggedy, blistering mess, all deep breaths and impulsive dancing, intense stares and musical fireworks.

If you were there the first night, you may well have met me. I was one of the volunteers for Partners in Health, a genuinely incredible charity doing work in Haiti and elsewhere, and it was my job to wander around and attempt to charm and impress people into donating money to a truly worthy cause. The band have long been deeply involved with the charity; one of their most laudable commitments is to donate €1 from each ticket sold for each concert - and just as impressive is the way that Brande, the charity's representative on tour, forms a shambolic band of volunteers for each show, who then do their bit before the band take the stage.

When I received the email informing me that I was one of the lucky ones who'd get to take part, I was in a good mood. I was settling into a new job at Google, and I felt there was a chance the band might want to visit and perhaps do a little fundraising in the office. There's a constant stream of activism in Google - Movember was coming to a close, and another Age Engage event was in the works. So I sent off a mail suggesting the idea, and waited a while.

Touring being what it is, we didn't have anything fully confirmed until the night of the first gig, when I met Brande and Marika to discuss it. I knew as soon as I met them that if the talk went ahead, it would be wonderful. Their enthusiasm for Partners in Health was infectious, to hear them talk about it was to think about the great things that can be achieved when people set themselves aside and work for the benefit of others.



Shouting over the supporting band's set and the level of cold that seeped into the venue from Dublin's apocalyptic winter outside both meant that the next day my voice was almost gone, but somehow, with the help of some very kind colleagues, everything worked out, and I introduced a room full of Googlers to Brande, Marika and Regine, who kept the audience entranced for almost an hour. They spoke passionately about their engagement with PIH, about Paul Farmer and what he has achieved, about the terrific book that tells his story, Mountains Beyond Mountains. They told about mistakes and sadness, the horrors of the earthquake, the role of foreign governments in Haiti's misfortune, but never let these things stop them from remaining positive and unwavering in their belief that Haiti's future can be different.

Arcade Fire - Haiti {live at First Avenue}

Once you've met them, and heard how they speak about PIH and the work they do, it's impossible to remotely cynical about the band, despite the well-worn trope of the celebrity activist. They know what they're doing, and they know how necessary it is, and the world is a better place because of it.

Links and Further Reading

Donate to Partners in Health

Volunteer for an upcoming show

Learn about KANPE

Preview and buy Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains

Read Will Butler's blog about the band's visit to Haiti

Read Regine's Guardian article on the visit

{A quick word about the video - due to the last-minute nature of the talk, it was not professionally recorded, unfortunately. Thanks to Megan for putting together what we have on such short notice.}

something about a new day

Sandro Perri - Love and Light

It's hot outside today. Like, shimmering pavements hot, and everyone's kinda quiet, and a little shocked and awed, if you know what I mean, because it turns out the moon is a girl. A pretty girl, all subtle sway and sexy cast glances, and she's strolling around like she owns the place, which maybe she does. I mean, if it turns out the moon is someone you'd very much like to go to bed with, who knows what else might be going on.
I guess this is the kinda thing I'll tell my kids someday. I'll tell them how the moon stayed in the same place in the sky, not yielding to daylight, not moving on. I'll describe how she descended almost imperceptibly, like a balloon at first, but then like a great piece of cloth in the sky, grey and dappled. I'll tell them how she descended like a leaf, billowing in her dress past skyscrapers, reflected up high bright and dazzling like in some sort of hall of mirrors, and then settling slowly, the cloth tightening into a dress, the shadows and sparkle falling away like wrapping paper to reveal the woman sitting on the bench there by the river, smiling at us all.

This song is from Sandro Perri's new record. Sandro remains one of my favourite music-makers of all time, and I'm expecting him to move up the ranks with Impossible Spaces - out in October.

the former soviet republic - i mean everything

I've been listening to this song really closely. I've been parsing away its steady layers of ringing guitar, its semi-National croon, the rhythm that pads along heavily. Sometimes it sounds like that time I stood in my parents' bedroom a few smoky days after it had gone up in flames, a crust of black layered on everything, bedclothes and duvets that would never again be clean collapsed in the shrinking corner. It sounds like being close to something terrible in your past, trying not to see too much of it, but willing to acknowledge that it has affected you.
Then again, sometimes it sounds all slow motion break-ups and beautiful women, New York taxi cabs and the softest rain. It should sound more like Dublin, but maybe Dublin's not big enough for this kind of heartache. Maybe you have to cross oceans just to be able to acknowledge it.

This is from the debut album by The Former Soviet Republic, and it's beautiful. It will be released on August 19th, and launched in Whelan's on August 20th - till then, you can stream it here.