It's really very good. Their new album, Magic Chairs, which I have been overplaying of late, is quite a step away from their previous penchant for complex arrangements. Songs like 'Modern Drift' and 'I Was Playing Drums' aren't half as lavishly dressed up, and they get their point across more succinctly, with a sparseness that's more direct than anything they've done before.
This sounds like a night out in a touchscreen world. You're young and dizzy with youth and alcohol. You are all about love and nothing else, tonight. You swear you will only look at the kind of girl you could fall in love with, and go wild only in a singular, controlled way. But later your flatmate hears the unnatural roars and moans from your room, and knows what you won't admit. You wake up alone, and decide you have to try harder.
Choir of Young Believers - Claustrophobia (The Antlers remix)
And then, the next night, that's what happens. It's effortless, like slow motion. You are all fluidity and charm. Someone finds you, and that's it, and it hits you, outside in the wind and collared-up cold, that maybe you were doing the right thing all the time, for yourself instead of others. And you hold on tighter, to keep her warm. {Shout Out Louds' new album, Work, is out this week. I haven't heard it yet, but I'm betting it's as good as their very fine previous albums. Choir of Young Believers I know less about, but they are quite good, I think.}
I brought a writer friend to a dance once, convinced to attend only on the basis that he'd be able to wring a short story out of it. For the first hour he stood and frowned, as if wondering why everyone else was pretending to enjoy themselves. I could see in his head, he was taking everything in with words, and I could see too that it wasn't interesting enough to him, these clerks and public servants wrapped in suits and furs. And yet, he smiled, and with a flourish and a bow, took the second-prettiest girl in the room for a dance, whispering in her ear the whole time. When I read the first draft of his story the next day, I understood what he'd been smiling at. In his story, everyone else began to shrink slowly, almost imperceptibly, like lit candlesticks, as soon as his dance partner had arrived. She set down her handbag, and out of it crept a little red fox, skirting around the dance floor unseen, delicately taking the littlest dancers between his jaws and removing them from the night, leaving them outside. He did this over and over, ever unnoticed amongst the waltzing, the dancers spiraling away into ever smaller circles, until, finally, only my friend and his beloved stood there, each taken into the other's arms, the fox (who, incidentally, bore my name) sitting there, proud and loyal, waiting for the first sign of sunrise, when he would creep away. But until that hour, he watched them. {Buy}
This sounds a little like the spread of the Irish city into the old Irish countryside. It's been putting up a fight. Wander out where the buses don't run, beyond the train tracks, and you'll see it. Streetlamps slowly being uprooted by old oaks extending towards the light. Foxes caught in headlights, their bloodied mouths glistening. Owls in the attic, ghosts in the back garden. There's a new kind of darkness out here, like a living thing, and it's been introduced into living rooms, crawling along the walls, finding the ceiling, spreading like moss. This isn't in any of the papers. Children are disappearing and coming back with the dawn in strange clothes. People in these new suburbs are drinking more, almost instinctively. They're nervous, pale from their bad dreams, from the shrieks they're convinced they're imagining. Holy water fonts have gone back up, the crucifixes are being dusted off. There's a steady truce: we get the day, and they get the night. This is from David Turpin's album of last year, Haunted!. I don't know why I didn't get to writing about it until now. It's quite good. He'll be playing a special concert at the IFI in Dublin this Friday, along with Hunter-Gatherer, to celebrate American filmmaker Kenneth Anger. You can read more about this event here.
This is less My Brightest Diamond, and more David Stith taking a line of hers, the little tear-born one at the end of one of her best songs, and running wild with it, repeating it over and over, and meaning it more every time.
And eventually, when he's run out of string, and can't go any further, he flicks his fingers, and the ghosts join in, gentle, hymnal, happy to be heard. This is the last song on the Shark Remixes, a collection of reworkings of songs from My Brightest Diamond's gorgeous album of 2008, A Thousand Shark's Teeth. As well as Mr. Stith, other talented folks try their hand, including Alfred Brown and Son Lux.
It's a gorgeous collection, and you can buy it right here. Also, if you fancy, you can read an interview with Ms Worden here, and one with Mr. Stith here. They're both very nice people.
This song is in E Minor, and I love it. It features guitar, vocals, percussion and so on, and also the distinct sound of loneliness, blended in with the voices, solidarity from the solitary. Listen to it often enough, and you'll hear it there, singing between the lines, taking the story and using it to tell you something else. Telling you: missing someone is the easiest way to feel the seconds of your life tick past, unused and unfulfilled, spent trying to find comfort in the doughy seats of a train, instead of in the sweet-skinned arms of the girl you love.
This is maybe the most instantly lovable song on Hunter-Gatherer's fine debut, I Dreamed I Was A Footstep In The Trail Of A Murderer. It's got a darkness implicit in it, like waking up one day in a joyous mood, and using that fine feeling as an impetus to do the things you wanted but never dared, intent on getting your way. There's a mistrust here, a mistrust of love, but also of yourself.
This is absolutely definitely with complete certainty one of my favourite songs of the new year. It manages to be sad and soulful without trying too hard, it manages to be funky without being contrived, and it uses all those old tricks in a way that somehow makes them seem new and fresh. If you're not playing air violin when those strings break their way in at the end, you're not listening. And if you can't hear the embraces, the feet-stamping, the hearts flying from rooftop to rooftop singing aloud, then there's something wrong.
This is from Ava Luna's new EP (and not the free album I wrote about last week) which you can get right here for whatever price you like. It's excellent, and shows that they've been improving all the while.
This is a song from one of my favourite albums, reworked by one of my favourite instrumentalists. It sounds like perfect relief music, for those moments when you teeter on the edge, almost ready to decide your day has become a bad one. Maybe waiting for a train in the rain, angry at the conspiracy of circumstance against you. This song comes on, and fights away that gloom, reminding you of the fine reasons you have for putting up with all the irritation.
Nils Frahm is giving his debut records an American release. They're gorgeous, a set of improvisations on the piano that contain a beauty that can't be denied. You can find out more here.
if you're looking for something to listen to before sleep...
This recording of a special performance by the ever-wonderful Peter Broderick is the perfect thing to accompany you as you drift off. It's kind of like he's using his loop pedal on different emotions, rather than sounds. It's also about an hour long, so there's no rush to it whatsoever, and it is meant to be played to your sleeping self too. See here for more details.
And if you're the kind who falls asleep in minutes, here's my favourite song of his.
This song, in all its incarnations, is beautiful and peaceful and angry all at once. It comes over you like a hot summer's night, lit only by a crescent moon, warm and close and insistent. I know this is an old cover, but I rediscovered the original recently, and it feels good to listen to, like a different understanding of the same experience.
This is a tribute to Arcade Fire by some students from the University of Guelph, and I really can't stress how fun it is. I particularly love the 'underneath the covers' bit. {via}
We employ several workers here at the Torture Garden. Mostly they do heavy labour, the kind of stuff I can't do myself: changing the titles of the latest post, handing letters to one another, suddenly child-sized in scale. They're the ones who painted the banner from my design, and hoisted it up with ropes and ladders, fitting it to the top there. They sort out the electricity and the heating (it gets cold here sometimes, especially lately), and they deliver the t-shirts and hoodies. They even look after me when I get drunk and threaten to tear the place apart, and fire them, or sleep with their wives, or give them ugly children - they're my characters, after all, and I could probably get away with that kind of thing.
Still though, they're really good, and this place wouldn't work half as smoothly without them, even on the days when I have to argue Marxist theory over beer and sandwiches at a paint-aged table. And some days, they come into work singing a song, and I wake up, still dressed, still at my desk, and I wander out to the front and ask them what it is that sounds so good.
You can get Ava Luna's album, from which this is taken, for free right here. It is all sorts of head-bopping harmonising awesomeness, equal parts charm and violence.
So, I've moved house, and I now live even closer to the sea than before. I only mention this because this song has that kind of air to it - an odd mix of the beauty nature has to offer and the mundane practicalities of human invention. A little like looking at the open empty sea by night, and noticing a helicopter in the distance, a single skipping white light, like a pebble thrown over the waves. Inlets' debut album is finally here, and it's called Inter Arbiter. I've heard it, and it's pretty special. It's too much to grasp on the first listen, but once you come back to it and listen to it a little, it comes together like a puzzle, piece by piece. It really fulfills the promise shown on the Vestibule EP (which was woah nearly four years ago) and goes even further, creating a sound and atmosphere all of its own. It also features contributions from Zach Condon of Beirut, Angel Deradoorian of Dirty Projectors, and Marla Hansen of Marla Hansen. It's a fine debut.
Last week, Owen Pallett played a concert in London's Union Chapel, with the following super special guest: Sam Amidon, Nico Muhly, and Beth Orton. It was super special. They played a new song by Beth Orton, which sounds as fine and affecting as wind in your hair - this song is the one above. They also played one of my favourite folk songs ever, 'Sugar Baby' - preceded by an odd rendition of a German folk song. This stuff is all as good as it sounds, and clearly, it sounds very good.
There are two Haiti benefit concerts in Dublin over the next few days. The first is a concert/cake sale in The Twisted Pepper this Thursday, featuring the very solid line-up of Bats, Groom, and Hunter-Gatherer. All the proceeds go to GOAL, who are working to provide aid in the aftermath of the quake. The whole thing starts at 7pm.
One week later, in Vicar Street, is another benefit - this time aiming to draw attention to the absurdity of Haiti's debt to other countries, and the effortsmade to have it cancelled. It's being organised by Trócaire, and features a fantastic array of bands: Cathy Davey and Villagers among them. I'm definitely hoping to make it to this one.
