This band is going to make a great debut album, if they keep coming up with songs like this, something so good and forcefully upbeat that I plan on waking up to it tomorrow, and seeing what wonderful things happen during the rest of the day. {Holy wow it's nearly December! The lists are coming. I am especially looking forward to Said the Gramophone's song list, as well as State's best-of-decade countdown, which began today. The lists here should be fun too, so they should.}
This is Efterklang at their best, meaning: thrills, space, sounds that come up to you and sing in your ear. It's a fine song, and it's so so easy to get carried away listening to it. You want other people to be there too, you want it to be one of those moments where great crowds of people are flooding through streets, and for once, they're not searching for happiness, but bringing it with them, sweeping up all they see, everyone around the next corner wondering what the noise is, those at the last corner trying to keep up with the frenzy.
As well as being some of the nicest people you could ever meet, Efterklang are ridiculously talented musicians. I'm really hoping to catch them again on their next tour. Their new record, Magic Chairs, will be out on 4AD in February. 2010 is starting to look rather marvellous.
This has become, almost immediately, one of my favourite songs of this year. The way it builds up and descends at the end, it's like wandering around a cold, wintry city, waiting to sit down with someone at the end of it all. Like doing your Christmas shopping, investing yourself in the promised joy of it all, the great times when almost everyone you know agrees to be happy by convention, and it actually works. I can't tell if those are kids shouting at the end, or if I just think they are, because they sound so sure and so content. This song is an instant good mood. The rest of the album is just as gorgeous, if not as immediate. You can find out more on their MySpace, and then go and listen to the Analogue radio show, because that's where I first heard this fine band.
When human beings get lost at sea, or mountaineering, or exploring, we act illogically. Other species would ignore the lost and forget, but we engage in the organised equivalent of panicking. We assemble search parties, we summon trained men and dogs. We go deep into the danger as a group. This song is a bit like that notion, the pure goodness of the intention. Many times they must have found someone they couldn't help anymore, someone who had died without knowing they were almost loved. This song is, almost accidentally, a reminder of this: if you got lost, if you disappeared, people would search for you. {You can buy this song, one of my favourites ever, here. This post is a repost, due to how I am busy dealing with something at the moment.}
This is lots and lots of fun. Listening to it makes me want to be able to push some sort of "trad" button in iTunes and see what happens. Have a nice weekend everyone.
This is the kind of song I want to flatten onto a little 7" vinyl, and hide behind a glass frame, high on the wall, so that some day, in the event of an emergency, I can look at it and remember how much it helps. Yes, it's very much an indie blogger's default soundtrack, layered with glockenspiel, group singing, and lovely lovely sincerity. But there's something charming about a song that is willing to take all those trappings and make something beautiful out of them nevertheless. Freelance Whales are quite clearly very good, and are playing with Fanfarlo on their tour of the US. That should be a lot of fun.
Have you heard this? Did you know how well this music lends itself to being cut up so other people can wrap themselves in it? I did not. But all of a sudden, three of my favourite remixes of this year are of DM Stith songs. Funny how that happens.
The Braid of Voices EP will be out on December 8th. Here is the tracklisting:
1. Braid of Voices (brass version) 2. Easy to be Around (Diane Cluck cover) 3. Braid of Voices (Clark remix) 4. In my dreams, I watch TV (Braid of Voices remixed by Ensemble) 5. Abraham's Song (Bibio remix) 6. I Heart Wig (featuring I Heart Lung)
The first two parts in this EP series, BMB and Thanksgiving Moon, are both spectacular, and are both out now, available here. The Michna remix of 'Thanksgiving Moon' is a particularly fine rework, as is Son Lux's transformation of 'BMB'.
This song starts off all woozy and understated, maybe a little drunk. Guitar strings are plucked like lights dancing around shadows, and the vocals shift and seethe around the lyrics, detailing the story of Po, and it's not long before you begin to feel like you're seated in the corner of some dimly lit pub watching someone stalk around, growing more and more interested by the second. It's testament to the band's abilities as musicians that they manage to keep the song this dark, and yet hike the tension as slowly as possible. It's done expertly, and it's almost reminiscent of The National, they way everything seems in line, down to the finest detail. And damn, but you've got to love that voice. It sounds like pulling warm clothes on when you're cold. This is one of the best Irish songs I've heard this year. You can buy 'Po' right now, on iTunes, or by text. I'm looking forward to seeing what this band get up to in 2010.
"On 9 November, thinking to deal with the crisis, the Politbüro met and decided to relax travel restrictions. People would be allowed to travel freely and be prohibited from leaving the country only in 'special exceptional circumstances'. The session went on into the night. At this stage the regime had taken to holding a regular press conference with the international media. That evening, Politbüro member Günter Schabowski needed to get to it. He hadn't been to the session, but was hastily given a note of its decision to read out at the press conference. When he finished, there was no visible reaction among the journalists in the room; all pens were poised, the boom mikes floated in the air. Then a question came from the floor: 'When will this new provision come into force?' Schabowski has baggy eyes and a face like a blood-hound. Embarrassed, he looked at the paper. He turned it over but found no answer. 'It will come into force... to my knowledge, immediately,' he said. The decision was to have become operable the next day, after the border guards had been instructed on its implementation. But as soon as Schabowski had spoken it was too late. Within hours of his blunder 10,000 people were at the Bornholmer Bridge checkpoint on foot and in their Trabant cars, thronging the Wall. The light from the death strip showed up breath, exhaust. There was a symphony of horns. The guards stood at trigger point, but no orders came. Eventually, the supervisor decided to let the people through, on one condition. The guards were to place the exit stamp to the left of the passport photographs of 'the most importunate' (those at the front of the queue), so that they could later be identified, and refused re-entry. The people didn't know and they didn't care. They streamed through into West Berlin. When the first few came back with cans of western beer to show where they'd been, the guards tried to stop them coming home, but it was too late, it was all over, and people from east and west were climbing, crying, and dancing on the Wall."
"Stasi officers were instructed to destroy files, starting with the most incriminating - those naming westerners who spied for them, and those that concerned deaths. They shredded the files until the shredders collapsed... On 13 November, Mielke, aged eighty-one, became desperate about the waning of his world. He made his first and only address to the parliament. It was broadcast live. 'Dear Comrades,' he opened, and the booing began. Cries of 'We are not your comrades!' came from the newly independent minor parties. Then, as if he simply could not understand why he might be disliked, Mielke stammered into the microphone. 'I love,' he said, '- but I love all people. I put myself out for you...' When they think of Mielke, East Germans like to think of this."
This song looks like a lot of fun. The recorded version is even more joyous, filled with kind of sounds people only make when they are intent on keeping things as ridiculously happy as they are. It's the country tinge that makes it so surprisingly gleeful, because the only dances you could do would be a little embarrassing, and rather out-of-place in any city in which I've lived. But that's part of what makes this song so damn alluring - the idea that you could head off and find a new home elsewhere, somewhere that sounds like this.
Where did you buy your clothes? I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure the top and the dress are from different countries. And my mom bought these boots. Where did you get yours? I didn't. I don't know. They were there this morning. Um, what's your style? I dress like a girl in love. Don't you think? I guess. I feel pretty sure that's who I am today. It is a very nice look. Do you want it? You can have these now, I'm not cold. It's the middle of November! Well, let's go somewhere then. Where? Wait, let's finish the questionnaire first. What's your biggest style peeve? People who don't wear out their clothes. Wearing new clothes all the time is so slutty. Also, I hate the word 'peeve'. You don't remember me, do you? What? Should I? That Halloween party, last week. We met in the corner. We talked about clothes, yes, but also the infinite meanings of the colour blue. You cried. You made me cry. I was dressed as a marionette. You were really drunk. I think I was too. Oh God. You took me home. You didn't want to take off your clothes. You told me you'd see me again, and here you are. You told me you could love me, but never a marionette. Well, I'm not a marionette anymore. Listen, I have to go. I have to do five of these questionnaires by tonight. I'll let you know if I use you.
BellaJane are from Dublin, and they are clearly very talented. They make songs that sound a little like unrequited love. This song is sweet and sad, and all the sadder for the strings that ring and ring, like a broken heart that won't stop beating.
In the early hours of the morning we left the party, and started walking, and we walked all day. By the time we got back to our hometown, a shut-eyed little suburb out on the outskirts of the city, we noticed that things had changed. People were standing around, everybody we knew, or their parents, moving in lines, working in groups, working on buildings. It was like old footage of rubble women rebuilding cities after the war, but now they were fixing everything that had seemed to have gone wrong, removing the cracks in windows, polishing the signs in bus shelters, cleaning streets, replacing racist graffiti with smiley faces. It all looked so easy, the way they had a few words with the troublemakers, and left them smiling, and willing to help. They did all this merrily, like they were preparing all this for us, like Christmas morning. We walked past them all, trying to take it in, but the long night had left us with heavy eyes, and we were ushered to bed. By the time we woke, the town was empty again, and shadowed by the light of the moon. The day was gone. Sleep Thieves are one of my favourite Irish acts at the moment. They have this lovely song, and others on an EP. You can download and stream them via their MySpace.
If I still wrote with a pen, then I get the feeling that trying to write up this song would involve something little and brittle and metal going snap! and the ink would flow ceaselessly, forming and spooling on the page. And if I didn't keep writing, keep forming the endless black into words and images and clumpy similes, it would consume the paper, the table, maybe even this cold room. I would have to throw the pen out the window into the cold wind, hoping it would stop, that the gale wouldn't just take the ink and mar the landscape with it, drawing new people to look at us with blank inky faces. That would just be weird. Anyway, let's not get away from the song being gorgeous. It sounds like (yes) Joanna Newsom playing with (yes again) Sufjan, but only if they were twins who nobody else ever really understood. The song is from Tasseomancy, an album that is lovely, and dark, and sweet, all at the same time. You can buy it here.
