the torture garden

The Ambience Affair - Burials

2011-10-20T17:03:00.001+01:00

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

2011-10-04T20:10:00.001+01:00

<p>&amp;lt;a href="http://therevivalhour.com/track/hold-back-3"&amp;gt;Hold Back by The Revival Hour&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</p>
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

2011-09-19T16:26:00.002+01:00

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

2011-09-14T23:26:00.001+01:00

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

2011-08-18T23:29:00.005+01:00

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

2011-08-14T16:35:00.004+01:00

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

2011-07-25T20:00:00.001+01:00

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.

Grand Pocket Orchestra - Ooo La Te Woo

2011-07-12T21:22:00.003+01:00

This is buckets of fun. This is like cycling along the promenade by night, with the sun on a bit of rope, shining everything around you. This is when you are so downright happy and possessed by a glorious disposition that you don't even notice you're alone, or that other people aren't brimming with the joy of how beautiful everything is Right Now. When you sing with a silly voice just because you can. When you have no work to do and know exactly where your place is.
This sounds like a bit of a mess, I admit, guitar scars and looping whoops jostling for attention with their handful of chords, but I really wouldn't have it any other way.

This is from GPO's new album, which will be out all of a sudden sometime.

---

I have moved my blog onto a less demanding update schedule, and should be able to return to writing something nice and silly at least once a week. Should that not be enough, please note that I will be sharing nice and silly things on Google+ and Twitter between posts. Thank you.

The Wilderness Sessions

2011-06-01T12:40:00.004+01:00

James Vincent McMorrow - Follow You Down to the Red Oak Tree

Some months back, a friend and I met James Vincent McMorrow by a beach north of Dublin. As you may have gathered, James is one of my favourite musicians, and when we first came up with the plan to start recording musicians playing songs in settings where they were written and recorded, he was first on the list. His songs are imbued with an earthy charm, a genuine sense of place and experience. Great things have always come from the wilderness, and this music proves it.

That's the idea behind these sessions - the notion of songs, and where they come from, finding out what helped to make them what they are. It's a side of the creative process that too rarely gets attention. There will be more of them, hopefully before too long.

If you want to keep up to date, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Come on! It'll be fun.

it's such a lovely day

2011-05-08T16:02:00.008+01:00

This is a new song by The Gorgeous Colours. It is called 'It's Okay to be Normal', and it is very fine indeed. It shows, once again, their singular knack for a beautifully catchy little melody - in this case, played wistfully on a breezy synth - that sounds somehow both universally catchy, yet tailor-made for you. In fact, it sounds so natural and self-evidently delightful, that it might be the very first little tune you picked out with such childish joy on that plastic Fisher Price keyboard you got so many Christmasses ago - the one that sounded even better after you left it out in the rain that night. In fact, I think it is. It might even be you playing it now, had things gone a little differently. It's okay that they didn't though. The important thing is that The Gorgeous Colours recorded it, and gave it the attention it deserved, and that it sounds so freewheeling and beautiful. In another world, you made it and played it, and people loved you for it. In another world, everyone understands.

This single will be launched on Thursday in The Workman's Club, and it will be available for free download here.

i want that you are always happy

2011-05-03T21:34:00.010+01:00

Months ago, I saw The Middle East come to a Dublin stage, and ramble along, singing, swaying, like a happy wagon of people propelled by their own music down the road, and for one night, it seems you're going the same way.

This song, 'Deep Water', was one of the night's oddest moments. It's so soft and understated that it almost seems like a single wavering note held by one voice, and no more than one member of the band is playing at the same time. It's a tale told by the last person left awake, mumbling and tired and grateful for an audience. You listen, patiently, growing slowly more and more absorbed and involved, and eventually, and with a great shuddering beauty, having brought your eyes to the ground, brimming and wet, the voice finds someone else to sing along, and remembers the rest of the song, and by the time you realise you've been told the end of the story, you're looking up at the teller wandering off, away from your path, never turning to look back, and you're trying your best to get the story straight, for whoever you meet next.

This album will be out on June 3rd. Learn more here.

is that so wrong?

2011-04-18T20:15:00.004+01:00

The Luyas - Too Beautiful To Work

This song starts all frantic and confused, clamouring for your attention at the piano, hammering out a song that makes almost no sense. It shouldn't work but it does. The rhythms are all unfinished, the vocals murmured and breathless, the lyrics jarring and disconnected. Ideas collide in mid-air and land on the drumbeat to be carried along like scrap metal on a conveyer belt, hurried away by the only part of this mess that makes sense - and somehow at the end, welded together ingeniously into the finest few minutes of out and out confusion this side of Kerouac, stumbling and tumbling, and over far too soon. Whatever the Luyas are trying to tell us, they really mean it. And I love the way they say it.

This is the title song from their second album, and I love it like an absolute maniac. You can buy it here. Then, after you've listened to it repeatedly, you can go here for a nice bootleg, here for some nice pictures, and here for some great live footage. They're also on tour. You should go, they're pretty damn charming in person.

into the earth

2011-04-06T19:22:00.007+01:00

<a href="http://theambienceaffair.bandcamp.com/track/weeds">Weeds by The Ambience Affair</a>

This song is at least slightly about the Irish countryside and the way it might look at you, and that's the bit that speaks to me most. It howls into life like a wolf from the woods, and given that it's about ten years since I lived in the quiet country dark, it gives me the weirdest feeling of being back in a childhood place, cold and abandoned, layered with the years of silence and absence. It's weird how you can go back to places like this, and often they seem smaller and less significant, but sometimes they seem to have turned their back on you. These things happen.

I haven't written nearly as much about The Ambience Affair as I should have, but they have these songs, that they hold tightly in their hands, and they are worth every minute you give them.

the songs of 2010 {better late than never}

2011-02-22T21:24:00.018Z

It's been over two months since I had the time to properly turn my attention to writing about music, or felt the need to. I've been busy, to put it bluntly. I have a job I like, at a great company, and one that allows for certain amazing things to happen from time to time, as I will describe here, soon enough. But anyway, enough of that, and less of that other stuff, and more talk of music.

There are less songs here than in previous years, which I think means I wasn't all that impressed with 2010. Some beautiful music was created, and that's what's here, but maybe less of it resonated with me. Irish music shone more brightly than ever, and that's where my focus was, living in Dublin for the first time. Still, despite my pickiness, there was some spectacular work done, and more so than previous years, I found it tricky to put these songs in order. The top ten is amazing, and I'd bet that each of them is someone's favourite. If you haven't heard them before, I hope one of them is yours.

30. Tomboyfriend - Almost Always

I think this song might be what happens when you sit down to write a love letter about a girl, and accidentally end up writing a dissertation on class and socio-economic factors in your little suburban neighbourhood, before realising that the only thing you can do to make it work is write some superb pop hooks to accompany it, and huff into the microphone.

29. Samamidon - Relief

I saw Samamidon sing this to a packed crowd in Whelan's, and when it came to the chorus, everyone joined for the refrain, like a big drunk choir, and there was a fine general sense of relief, that we could say these things and have others say them with us.

28. Sufjan Stevens - I Walked

HERE was a man who once knew many stories, but they had slipped away from him—so he said. The Story that used to visit him of its own accord no longer came and knocked at his door. And why did it come no longer? It is true enough that for days and years the man had not thought of it, had not expected it to come and knock; and if he had expected it, it would certainly not have come; for without there was war, and within was the care and sorrow that war brings with it. “I suppose it must be dead, or gone away with many other things,” said the man.

27. Halves - I Raise Bears

Like much of Halves' stunning debut album, this feels like being a warm person in a place of sharp cold. It's a little like living in a hotel when you have no where else to call home. The twin vocals sing together, huddled and intertwined like scarves gathering snowflakes and frost, the wind rolling about them wildly. It's a gorgeous song, and it only gets better with each listen.

25. Joseph Baron Grass - Ring The Bell

This song has a distinct sepia feeling to it, like it was recorded over days in some lonely front room, as the dust settled, as the light faded beyond the window blinds. I swear by the end, you can almost hear how silent the rest of the house is, beyond the noise of one man, trying his best to quietly prove he is there.

24. Deerhunter - Helicopter

Here again Deerhunter manage one of their great tricks, making the chorus sound like some lovely undeserved luxury. This whole song is seemingly built around the sound of sedation, and it's all the better for it.

23. The Danger Is - All For Gold

This band sound a bit like the entire city knocking on your door at the same time, clamoring around at nine in the morning, wondering why you're not up, today of all days, when you're finally putting the finishing touches to whatever it is you've been at all these years. They have that kind of excitement to them, a pushing urgency, something to say that doesn't come out in words. Going by this song, they are very good.

22. Land of Talk - Swift Coin

The concise version: this girl loves you! And she has a buzz-saw for anyone who stands between you and her.

21. Beat Radio - Everything Follows

They say your best years are behind you, but there are times when if you sing loud enough, you'd never think it.

20. The Holy Roman Army - Here

This is a song to listen to on the way home from work. It's one for the flow of tired faces, reeds swaying in the wind, examining each one for the feelings that have been held in check the whole day long. It's a song for hard times, and for getting a little more honest with yourself about your life, and what it is and might be. For all this, and for the way her voice wavers, down and down, it's something beautiful.

19. Mixylodian - Make Me

I've been listening to Mixylodian for a while now, but this is the first time I've heard sex in one of their songs. It seems like something I don't hear too often from the kind of musicians I favour, sex free of any catches, no doubts or reservations, just a kind of impulse that needs to be followed, the question on your lips that you want to put on someone else's. I think they get it right here, too, the weird mix urgency and love, gentleness and passion. There's the ticking beat, the softly insistent vocals, the frantic guitar at the close, everything in the right place.

18. Solar Bears - Primary Colours at the Back of my Mind

Solar Bears are an Irish band, from Dublin and Wicklow. This is one of their songs, and it's stunningly fine. The harsh guitars, jarring at first, melt sweetly into the flow of strings and rhythm, and nothing seems out of place. The overall effect is akin to something completely natural, a chaotic small-scale mix of flooding colour, the palette you hold in your hand suddenly and unexpectedly chiming with your exact mood, your blue evening, your dim mind.

17. Jose Delhart - Accountability

This song is for sleepy people. There's a very quiet, albeit very steady level of energy here. The song never gets too excited, never moves too fast, never speaks above a murmur, but it brings you along with it anyway, tempting you with its narcoleptic charm rather than overwhelming your inhibitions through agitation. The guitars doze along underneath murmured words, and in the background a saw hums, hoping not to be noticed. It's all quite lovely, really.

16. Peter Broderick - Pulling The Rain

If I could go back through my life and assign different songs to different scenes, rescoring them maybe, then this song would be for the times I sat as a child, still and invisible, in darkened cars, hearing the steady patter of rain on the roof, waiting for someone to come back, and take me home, or maybe, like one night, called to the house of a relative, in the silent moonless countryside, waiting to be told it's okay to come in, waiting to know how bad the news is.
This is not a cheery song. But it sounds like it's exactly the kind of song it means to be. It's from Peter Broderick's most recent album, and the rest of the album is as lovely as this.

15. A Classic Education - What My Life Could Have Been

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.

14. ARMS - Heat & Hot Water

Sometimes, the experience of ending your working week feels a little weirder than normal. Fridays are like every other day, coffee breaks, emails and routine - but afternoon arrives, and all of a sudden you kind of fall out of it. Everyone else is laughing more than usual, and you're not sure what will happen - the night is beckoning you to come out and celebrate this temporary respite, a lull in the fighting, a ceasefire between you and work.
This song is a little like that. It starts out regular and conventional, and it's not that there's a key change, or some weird time signature surprise, but it's more like the chorus gets there, and you realise you've been waiting for it for the whole song. It's finely made, like all ARMS songs, and it's part of a free EP which is very worthy of your attention, a little step on from 2008's excellent debut album. It's worth celebrating.

13. Twin Sister - All Around And Away We Go

The demo for this has been floating around for a while, but it's astonishing how much of a progression the band has made with this song. It still sounds a little like wandering around a city while looking at the sky, but now that sky is full if images, of flickers of paper falling from above, not manna from heaven, but the revolution taking hold over skyscrapers. That kind of simple dream, the kind you trip into when you're tired, and then jerk awake from. That's the kind of dreamy that Twin Sister have put into this song.

12. The Gorgeous Colours - The Creatures Down Below

The Gorgeous Colours specialise in doing old things so well that they sound new. They sing harmonies good enough and warm enough to put the sun in the winter sky, and their songs are full of the kind of happiness and sincerity that most bands don't dare attempt.
The above song is their new single, the title track from their new EP, and while it perfectly exemplifies the cheeriness at which the band excel, it shows the darker side of their new material, the sadness that you can occasionally hear in a lingering word, or tense guitar arpeggio. It's beautiful, but slightly heartbreaking at the same time. You'll see.

11. Efterklang - The Soft Beating

Just when I thought I could never have and could never need a better reason to love Efterklang, they make this song.

10. Joanna Newsom - Good Intentions Paving Company

I sometimes think that this is the kind of song you could only write if you went out some evening meeting people, talking to gentle men, and delicate women, talking to the angry and the sad, the sweet and the bitter, the flirty and the desperate. You could do this until the sun came up, bright and strained, distant and cold, and write something friendly and wise to keep yourself warm.

9. James Vincent McMorrow - Red Dust

'Red Dust', seems to mark a break from the wilderness-bound landscapes of Early In The Morning, with a dim backing thump-thump that sounds like the moon's heartbeat. All the notes seem to hang in the air like ash, drifting to the ground in slow motion, until, two minutes to the end, the sun seems to come up and show this half-lit world anew. It's the best thing he's done yet.

8. The National - Lemonworld

This might be the finest example of the National's persuasive genius. We can all agree that that heavily shrouded guitar sounds beautiful, that the pacing rhythm is steady and reassuring, but it's the idiosyncratic touches: the sparseness, the du-du-du-du and the mumbling fade that will initially prove a little much for us, before we admit that we've been singing and mumbling along ourselves.

7. The Luyas - I Need Mirrors

"That might be true, but I don't want to end up sitting alone outside at night, mumbling to keep warm while I wait for help."

6. CocoRosie - Lemonade

There are two different kinds of beauty here, bound together like cords into a braid, the soft beauty of gentle sun and cool breeze, and a more riotous beauty, the car crash survivor, the freed slave. Together, they show us what they have in common, the strands they share, the fantastic in the everyday, the mundane in the spectacular. It's a song that doesn't blame you for choosing the simple things.

5. Ava Luna - Past the Barbary

There's nothing I don't love about this song. It manages to be sad and soulful without trying too hard, it manages to be funky without being contrived, and it uses so many old tricks in a way that 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.

4. Owen Pallett - The Great Elsewhere

I used to listen to a live version of this, assembled over several minutes with a loop pedal, and think it was the best set of sounds this song could be made into. But this album version changes it in heartstopping ways. It's like whatever world we were hearing about before, we are experiencing on a new level, as if it's been electrified, or laden with Technicolor.

3. Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

I grew up on a farm, with empty expanse and a sky dominated by overbearing clouds. That's what the days were like too, away from the hum of a city, blank and slow-moving as a drawl. Hours dragged, minutes hovered. But I remember the wonderful hours when the sky teetered towards sunset, when the night loomed, and the gloaming gloomed, and not one of us felt the presence of time, even as the treelines disappeared and the horizon faded, and the time to come indoors arrived.

2. Cathy Davey - Bad Weather

The Nameless was one of my most-loved records last year, and this is its troubled heart. 'Bad Weather' is a song about a couple watching love disappear down a crackling phone line, separated by seas and borders. It's heartbreaking to hear it, two people who can barely hear one another, one of them not yet aware how distant things are.

1. Villagers - The Meaning of the Ritual

My love is selfish, and I guess I didn't really know this until a few years ago. I thought different things, and wanted different things, but that was then, and they went away. It was summer, now it's autumn, and all the white light comes down staining through wizened tree leaves like church glass. I talk differently, I drink differently. I wandered through parks like a child, now I walk through them hurriedly.
My love is selfish, and I guess that yours is too. I didn't know that until a few tears ago. I still dream endlessly of summer days, you standing beneath the great oak, your face lighting up, your eyes smiling brightly. There are so many things I try and decide at night, sitting in my bedroom, but the dawn always lights up the same thing. I want to tell you not to worry. I want to get on the train to work, and for once have figured out everything by the time I get off, instead of stumbling over the same crooked thoughts like someone else's character.

My love is selfish, but I trust it, and it trusts you, and when I see you smile the way you do sometimes, softly, almost imperceptably, the smile that is meant for me, that's when I remember everything again, and it no longer seems childish to run, and sing, and stay up late doing nothing.

songs of the decade: part seven

2010-12-25T20:48:00.004Z

40. Polyphonic Spree - Soldier Girl

This song feels like love, but the militant, insistent kind, where not only is your heart beating like a marching band, but you're going to follow the feeling as it conquers the world.

39. A Classic Education - Badlands and Owls

It starts with a melody that digs into you, or puts its arms around you and drags you out into the desert or the dancefloor, promising to push any loneliness away beyond great curtain of the night. But unexpectedly, this song has its own sunrise (00.53) and that's where it goes, violins and raking guitars, and vocals curling like the first clouds of a bright morning, all together in one paling sky. This is the kind of song that could really mess up your sleep pattern, just because it demands to be heard as soon as you get back from the disco, or before the blue of night yellows out into morning. But it is a beautiful way to start, and there's no way you could hear it and stay in bed.

38. Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move {download}

The sun came up, quickly at first, then slowly, travelling towards me as I walked on, amongst damp and glistening blades of grass, and insects heading homewards, dropping their heads into the sticky earth, and then, in a good mood, and remembering I was writing all this, I made all the flowers around me bloom in vivid and gaudy colours, like drips from some melted rainbow, surprised by my morning sun.I headed away from the dying night behind me, and taken up with a sudden love and ecstatic joy, I began to run and leap and fly in little bounds, and the birds wheeled in the sky and clouds formed and dissolved sadly, and the sun burned fiercely for me, and in the distant greatness the few stars that remained exploded or didn't and every molecule of my being hummed with some content smile, and happiness bloomed out of everything! And I wanted to take that exclamation mark I just created, and place it as a cloud in the sky for all the country to see, and I did. Or maybe I just listened to this beautiful, beautiful song a few times, and let my mind wander.

37. Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal

My father says there was snow in winter when I was a kid, there was white Christmasses, and I remember them. I remember wrapping up and opening the front door, my two little brothers stuffed inside coats like eskimos, tumbling out into the cold. Making thin and uneven snowmen, coal for eyes, dirty black watering out into the white, little teary trickles. It's a long time since I held a piece of coal. We don't live in that house now.My father also says there was real summers in this country, once. When he talks like this he talks like he was back in that old warm farmhouse, briquettes roasting and strips of yellowy fly paper hanging from the ceiling when I looked up. When I was out in the fields, he says. You'd take off your jumper and you wouldn't put it back on you till you went back to school, that was a summer. In my mind he's pausing in the field, the grass hacked to yellow straw sticking out angrily after the harvest, leaning on a pike, but he's not some young man.This song, oddly, is both summery and wintry. It's a little like going into hibernation, no matter the weather.

36. The Avalanches - Since I Left You

This song is all apples and oranges, and the mixed drinks that remind you of them, and smiling faces, and the bodies and behinds you've left behind.

35. Devendra Banhart - At the Hop

If you listen to this enough, long enough for the words to stop hopping, and for the singer to stop smiling, you'll hear the heartbreak hiding behind each verse.

34. Michael Knight - When Will You Collect Your Boxes?

This represents the record as a whole, a break-up song not weighed down by bitterness, with lyrics that come unexpectedly heavy to you, like a friend coming into your home, and suddenly pouring their heart out in your kitchen. It's like an old and forgotten love song, or an old love letter, with dust scattered and stuck in the creases of the paper, over which you once spilled the few words that you really meant. All those feelings tied to the paper, so warm in the past, feeling cold in the present. This is also a song for anyone who once found the person they could always love, even when shopping for curtains in Ikea. This is a song that doesn't bother with any of the normal love songs things, because it's not about the kind of love that only needs two chords and a chorus, it's the kind of love put into a song where the piano tears a little under the weight, but still finishes, and falls silent. When the vocals and the noise vanish, there is a real sense of loneliness, like being in your house or apartment on your own waiting for someone to come home, thinking "this is what it would be like," a melding of longing and wishfulness. This is a break-up song (and a break-up album) but it's not bitter, it's been softened by the warmth, like the wrought frame of a fireplace. Even though there's nobody at home with you, there once was. Looking out at the rain, you're still inside, the embers in the hearth are still red, the house is still warm.

33. Samamidon - Saro

In adapting old dusty American-settled songs like this, Sam Amidon is being pretty damn postmodern about love and loneliness and the unbearable lightness of being apart. It's a bit easier to understand the great depth of these feelings in a historical setting, with oceans between outstretched hands and fingers, but it's not the context that makes this little piece of music great. It's all the little angels fluttering about the poor narrator's head, winging this way on that on violin strings like living puppets, attracted by the longing full-hearted thoughts that send his gaze to the ground he's found himself walking, attracted like moths to a flame. In the weird way that even when caught up in feelings like this one, so alone and distracted by your longing that it's as if you've forgotten to get out of the rain, you are a bit closer to life, or God, or humanity or whatever it is that makes such depth of sorrow possible and real.

32. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - In This Home On Ice

It sounds a little unusual, and I can't necessarily explain it, but some songs appear to me to be shrouded in colour, some weird fog of certain tones, a crashing mix of paint, of certain hues and shades. This has been happening for some years now, and it would seem the colour I like the most is a mix of purple and pink, deep and rich, like some distant mountaintop, or the inking of a sunset with the tinge of night's hem. It is bright and dark like cartoon bruising, the kind of colour that usually only appears in the sky.
This song appears in that colour to me, and I'm not sure why.

31. Parenthetical Girls - A Song for Ellie Greenwich

When Parenthetical Girls sing about love, they don't sing about the kind of love that tells you a heart is a soft red spade-shaped thing. They sing like it's a lump of twitching muscle, involuntarily pulsing and pushing affections around like it does blood. This band makes everything sound beautifully imperfect. They play piano that sounds shaky and nervous, they sing softly in and out of key, they strain every instrument nicely, and maybe with all this, they make a point. Maybe, they're telling us, falling in love is inviting a lot of minor chords into your life, and that's okay. You can find your own happiness in them.

christmas eve

2010-12-24T15:54:00.003Z

Auld Lang Syne - Writhing Days

To celebrate: a Christmas song from one of the most under-rated bands I've ever heard. It's a real smokey epic, a smouldering yarn from what sounds like an extended family of noises. Trust me, it's a grower.

Merry Christmas everyone!

songs of the decade: part six

2010-12-15T22:03:00.003Z

53. Bright Eyes - The First Day Of My Life

Listen to this, turning a globe in your ends, dotting the places you've been: I was born here, here and here.

52. Uzi + Ari - Don't Black Out

I've noticed I tend to be quite partial to anything that concerns itself thematically with the link between falling asleep and the cold. I'm not sure why, maybe some sort of Hibernian affinity for the idea of hibernation, or maybe because I'm lazy, or maybe because my family name actually means 'the sleepy'. Anyway, I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, and that kind of thing is exactly what Ben Shepard does here, and he does it brilliantly. This song sounds like it was dreamt up, written and recorded in the midnight hours before slumber overtakes us. It's like a bed I keep coming back to.

51. Feist - 1,2,3,4

One, two, three, and four, like my four children surrounding me, gazing with whatever smile it was that won me, their mother's smile, maybe, simple and homely, and mine.

50. Múm - Green Grass of Tunnel

I cannot listen to this song unless it's dark outside, unless I'm somewhere sleepy and warm, and I can properly appreciate the way the singer here, here voice sounds like a blanket.

49. Efterklang - Cutting Ice to Snow

This song tries so hard to be cold. Look at that title! Hear the piano being tapped at like water dripping from icicles. Still, the sun keeps everything bright, glazing off in the distance, melting snow, warming hearts.

48. The Knife - Heartbeats

This song speaks about one night, but it's the same one night that everyone finds themselves going out looking for, a night of closeness and shared breath and warmth and feeling that we want to seek out. This song gets it so right, it could almost be shorthand.

47. Arms - Shitty Little Disco

A song which seems, when you really turn your head and listen to it, to be put together like some kind of constellation, guitar lines and streaking synths laid out and drawn together against a sparse black background, soft and big and beautiful, and telling some simple story ...in which Todd goes out, gets moody, drunk and sick, but ends up with a girl whose name he kinda forgets. This is the kind of story that sounds much, much better in a song, and he knows it, so he gives the story guitars that are angry yet catchy, vocals that are gentle yet insistent, and a beat that just won't fucking quit.

46. Page France - Say Wolf in the Summertime

Happy but not naive. Poppy but not cliched. Bouncy but not silly. Brilliant!

45. Peter Broderick - Games Again

This is the closing song to one of my favourite records of this year. It takes a melody first played in the album's first moments, and wraps itself up in it, making it bigger and bolder. It's like putting your little imprint on an apartment you've found somewhere when you move in, when you push your furniture at angles to the wall, when you've filled the kitchen with your food, when you've put up your posters and left your books on desks, when you've slept in your new bed until it's no longer new - and then the day comes when you leave. You pack up these things in boxes, tight and full and pressed down, like the feeling you get when you hold back tears. You pick up your clothes, and use the key a final time, and you undo all the things you did with such simple joy. You shut the door a last time, temporarily homeless. You bid farewell to a place you made part of you.

44. The New Pornographers - Myriad Harbor

This song in particular is really something, just for the way that opening melody has the strange effect of both knocking you off your feet and raising you up. It's an incredible piece of songwriting, and as with most Bejar songs, there's nothing good enough I can say about it.

43. Outkast - Hey Ya!

Don't let the laughter here fool you - this song is beautifully put together, and it pulls you together when you need it, with a chorus like a surprise party.

42. Frog Eyes - Bushels

This song is a country all of its own. It must be, because it doesn't sound like anywhere where regular people would live.

41. Sigur Ros - #4 {Njósnavélin}

Like sailing tall ships made of snow invading the sun, to borrow a phrase.

{I know this has been delayed well beyond the point of irony, but my reasons are good.}

how they are

2010-12-10T13:10:00.005Z

Peter Broderick - Pulling The Rain

If I could go back through my life and assign different songs to different scenes, rescoring them maybe, then this song would be for the times I sat as a child, still and invisible, in darkened cars, hearing the steady patter of rain on the roof, waiting for someone to come back, and take me home, or maybe, like one night, called to the house of a relative, in the silent moonless countryside, waiting to be told it's okay to come in, waiting to know how bad the news is.
This is not a cheery song. But it sounds like it's exactly the kind of song it means to be. It's from Peter Broderick's most recent album, and the rest of the album is as lovely as this.

{Buy}

you're still hungry

2010-11-30T15:00:00.004Z

Jose Delhart - Accountability

This song is for sleepy people. There's a very quiet, albeit very steady level of energy here. The song never gets too excited, never moves too fast, never speaks above a murmur, but it brings you along with it anyway, tempting you with its narcoleptic charm rather than overwhelming your inhibitions through agitation. The guitars doze along underneath murmured words, and in the background a saw hums, hoping not to be noticed. It's all quite lovely, really.

This is from Jose's album, Little Red Buddha. You can hear more on BandCamp.

this hotel

2010-11-15T20:51:00.003Z

Halves - I Raise Bears

Like much of Halves' stunning debut album, this feels like being a warm person in a place of sharp cold. It's a little like living in a hotel when you have no where else to call home. The twin vocals sing together, huddled and intertwined like scarves gathering snowflakes and frost, the wind rolling about them wildly. It's a gorgeous song, and it only gets better with each listen.

{Buy}

hanging around

2010-10-30T10:34:00.004+01:00

The Danger Is are from Dublin. They sound a bit like the entire city knocking on your door at the same time, clamoring around at nine in the morning, wondering why you're not up, today of all days, when you're finally putting the finishing touches to whatever it is you've been at all these years. They have that kind of excitement to them, a pushing urgency, something to say that doesn't come out in words. Going by this song, they are very good.

{More + Facebook}

New James Vincent McMorrow

2010-10-25T19:06:00.004+01:00

James Vincent McMorrow - Red Dust

The creator of one of the finest records of the year is back with a two-song vinyl, and it's a real stunner. The above track, 'Red Dust', seems to mark a break from the wilderness-bound landscapes of Early In The Morning, with a dim backing beat that sounds like the moon's heartbeat. All the notes seem to hang in the air, drifting to the ground in slow motion, until, with two minutes left, the sun seems to come up and show this half-lit world anew. It might well be the best thing he's done yet.

{Buy}

come forward and confess

2010-10-15T12:42:00.005+01:00

The Gorgeous Colours - The Creatures Down Below

One of my favourite Irish bands have returned, and boy howdy was it worth the wait. The Gorgeous Colours specialise in upbeat pop that relies on doing old things so well that they sound new. They sing harmonies good enough and warm enough to put the sun in the winter sky, and their songs are full of the kind of happiness and sincerity that most bands don't dare attempt.

The above video is for their new single, the title track from their new EP, one of my favourite songs of the year, and while it perfectly exemplifies the cheeriness at which the band excel, it shows the darker side of their new material, the sadness that you can occasionally hear in a lingering word, or tense guitar arpeggio. It's beautiful, but slightly appalling at the same time. You'll see.

I've been terribly busy with my Real Life lately, so I didn't get a chance to mention that the band had organised a pledge system to fund their new EP, and didn't get a chance to contribute myself until today. Though the EP was launched this week, the site's still live, so don't let that stop you.

stadtzentrum

2010-10-11T21:02:00.005+01:00

Hauschka - Alexanderplatz by Hauschkamusic

I think this makes most sense if you see yourself viewing Alexanderplatz as it might appear in a silent film, with everyone walking around fast and uneasy, in stocky clothing, the weight of an empire over their shoulders, secret police ahead of them, nobody showing any flashes of skin.
This is slightly sped up though, the film accelerates and after forty seconds of black bodies milling in the square, colour appears: modern people begin to walk in, mingling like inks on a palette. Noisy Berliners with babies strapped to their young shoulders, punks with dogs, people on phones and skateboards, forcing themselves to be colourful for all their predecessors, for their quiet ancestors who kept their heads down. Alexanderplatz is no place to be quiet.

Hauschka is as amazing now as he ever was. His new record can be streamed here, it goes on sale tomorrow.

Twin Sister's Double EP

2010-09-20T15:12:00.003+01:00

It's on sale now - meaning you can go and grab one of my favourite releases of the year without delay.
I've written a lot about them already - but in case you missed it, I'll do so again. Their original EP, Vampires with Dreaming Kids, was one of the most astonishing four-song releases I'd ever come across, combining songwriting finesse with a gorgeous aesthetic. Their new release is just as enticing, adding a certain understated charm and adventurous, and showing they're not willing to sit still. As a double EP, it's well worth your money.

Twin Sister - I Want A House

Twin Sister - Milk & Honey (live)

Twin Sister - Lady Daydream (live)

{Buy}

restless nights

2010-09-14T10:49:00.002+01:00

{via}

Grizzly Bear - Lullabye

I don't know if I am living in this song's head, or if it is living in mine. I just can't seem to imagine where something like this could come from. It completely overshadows everything else on this fine album, that much I know. But it is some puzzle to me, like some visually amazing film in a foreign language that I cannot place. It pulls itself from tired singing and guitar picking to awesome heights, with singing in chorus, and pacy drums, and electric guitar that slings itself around the room.
It was once said to me that little children, when they begin to sing random invented melodies out of pure happiness, write music that the best musician could never write, music closer to humanity than anything ever composed. I think this song is reason enough to rethink that statement.

{Buy}

{Please excuse the repost: I am terribly busy starting a new job. Regular service will resume shortly.}

don't tell me you can't remember

2010-09-08T14:03:00.003+01:00

Owen Pallett - A Man With No Ankles

When I first put this song on, it was raining like it might never stop. But by the time the last note had rolled away, the sun was streaming down instead. This says a lot about the song I think: it's so good that God himself pays attention, and takes it as scene direction. There's a lot of possibilities there.

A Swedish Love Story will be available on September 27th. As with most of Pallett's output, I'm assuming it'll be wonderful.

Solar Bears

2010-09-01T12:18:00.004+01:00

Solar Bears - Primary Colours at the Back of my Mind

Solar Bears are an Irish band, from Dublin and Wicklow. This is one of their songs, and it's stunningly fine. The harsh guitars, jarring at first, melt sweetly into the flow of strings and rhythm, and nothing seems out of place. The overall effect is akin to something completely natural, a chaotic small-scale mix of flooding colour, the palette you hold in your hand suddenly and unexpectedly chiming with your exact mood, your blue evening, your dim mind.

Their debut album, She Was Coloured In, will be out on September 20th. You can buy it here.

waste it again

2010-08-31T18:21:00.005+01:00

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (continued) {Christian TV Remix}

As much as I like the new Arcade Fire album - and I really like it a lot - every time I listen to it, it's with a measure of resignation. This is the album where I finally accept that they are going to be a great band, but not an astonishing band, not the band they once promised to be, or seemed to. It's a typical feeling, I know, and I can't expect any band to get come as close to perfection twice as they did with Funeral.

The Suburbs is a fine album, but of all their records, it means the least to me. Not just because I grew up in a small Irish town instead of a fading American suburb, but because I made the mistake of hoping for a bit more. The band has to escape the place they occupy in my musical scrapbook and start something new - and indeed, one of the finest songs on the album is the least typical thing they've ever done: 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)' is them forgetting what worked before and making everything anew, and it's stunning, and just enough to make me think that despite my overarching expectations, and despite the impossibly high standards of their debut, the band might well do it again, in a different life, freed of old expectations. This time, they've made the best record they could, and it's churlish to expect more than that.

down down down

2010-08-20T12:50:00.004+01:00

WOOM - Quetzalcoatl's Ship

I recently moved home again. I've lived in more than ten places now, which is odd. I'm only now getting over that sense of new-place, being unsure about filling the space there, like trying to be careful with the words you put on a page.
It's by the sea, so the air is different - it'll rust you if you don't keep moving. So far I haven't stopped.
Anyway, this is a great seaside song. It's got the same push to keep moving carrying it along like a tide, sailing it through speakers and mouths with its repeated refrain.

{Buy}

everything you say has water under it

2010-08-07T14:22:00.005+01:00

The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio

So, here we are! The signed vinyl is going to Daniel for his entry, 'overwrought'.

When I was younger, my dad would tell me bedtime stories. They always began: 'once upon a time in Edinburgh." We live in Canada, but for some reason, Edinburgh had stuck with my dad as the setting for these on-the-spot fairy tales he'd tell me each night. I don't remember most of them, and they've all kind of blurred together, sticking into one lump of witches and goblins, princes and princesses, but one story always stands out. It was the fist time I had ever heard the term overwrought, and he said it with such conviction, such force, that it drove itself into my subconscious and nestled there for quite some time. I didn't ask him what it meant, or why he used it, because I knew right away.

The princess had been turned to stone by the evil witch, who lived not off food, but other people's anguish. When the witch grew tired of watching the prince cry over the stone princess, she presented him with an alternative. She wanted to live forever, so she needed to make sure the prince was sad forever. She told him that she would turn the princess back into human form, but he could never speak to her again, he had to treat her with the total absence of love, indifference. when he finally agreed, the princess was transformed, and he ignored her. He left to live in a cave, outside of Edinburgh for the rest of his life. the witch lived as long as he was in sadness.

I asked my dad after he finished the story (which more often than not ended unhappily) why the prince didn't love the princess. He looked at me in the eyes and said "He loved her more than anything in the world. He was overwrought with love."

Then he proclaimed abruptly "lights out".

And I was left to sit there, in my bed, not knowing what the word meant, or why he had used it, but what this world I had been so carelessly thrown into meant after all.

Thanks everyone for writing in! Here's a selection of some of the best ones:

My favourite word is Caracal, a kind of wild cat from Africa and Iran. I read about one in a ghost story when I was a kid, and couldn't imagine what it looked like. It sounds exotic and feral, and at the same time reminds me of being a kid with a book of ghost stories meant for an older reader. So uh, Caracal.

My favourite word of late is "doughty". Meaning steadfastly courageous and resolute, it is not a commonly used word nowadays. It has entered my lexicon recently as it is the last name of Sir Arthur Doughty who is the most famous Dominion Archivist of Canada (well, as famous as a Dominion Archivist can get... which is not very... outside groups of Canadian Archivists). He is an interesting character, who left us some inspirational words on the value of archives to society, but also has a darker side: there are stories of a wife who just disappeared and, shortly after, he married his secretary. Intrigue in the archival world! His 150th birthday was celebrated by me and my nerdy friends (sesquicentennial is another word I am quite fond of) with a party, buttons were made, a "Sir Arthur Stouty" was brewed - so Doughty has been on our minds and doughty has been in our vocabulary.

My favorite word is trifling. It do not think it matters why...

My favourite word: Admonish. (No explanation with this one, but I do think it is a really nice word.)

My favourite word is 'surreptitious'. It sounds like a very dark golden syrup, which is sort of how I imagine deceit would look as a substance - sweet, entirely bad for you, and very very sticky.

My favorite word: lozenge. Just as a word, not as thing. It is the most awesome word to say AND hear. It just makes me smile.

My word is "fey". It means something that is whimsical, strange and quaint - which are a few of my other favorite words too! It's got other meanings as well, such as "fated to die", but I tend to ignore that definition. There's this old-fashioned charm about this word I like and it is also the surname of one of my favorite actors - Tina Fey.

Miasma - Etymology: New Latin, from Greek, defilement, from miainein to pollute
Date: 1665
1 : a vaporous exhalation formerly believed to cause disease; also : a heavy vaporous emanation or atmosphere

2 : an influence or atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt.

My favourite word is Chysanthemum. I don't know why, but I love the way it rolls off my tongue.

Penetrative. Ridiculous but then seems to encapsulate most things. Penetrative. A beauty to get your gob around too.

Inkling is my favourite word. Not exactly sure why, but it has a rhythm to it and is in no way poncey. Also, it makes me think about baby inks, whatever they may be.

It's not a beautiful or a spectacular word but I'm French and I love The National since their very beginnings when they started with the french label "Talitres". I saw them grow up such as the band's audience.
The word "ribbon" echoes in my mind because of the lyrics of Matt Berninger ("I loved her to ribbons" on "Murder Me Rachael" and "So you can put a blue ribbon on my brain" on "Slow Show"). The lyrics get also mixed up with images of westerns I used to watch when I was young, in particular "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"... but I don't like John Ford so much now !

Incorrigible is my favourite word. Just imagine Alan Rickman saying it. That is all.

England - because it's where I'm from and my second favourite song on the album!

I guess if I had to choose one word, it would have to be an Irish one. I've a bit of a 'grá' for the ol' Irish, like. 'Suaimhneas', which means peace, is a beautiful word. It's not particularly unique or different, but whenever I hear that word I think of my grandparents. Their house is called Suaimhneas and, seeing as I sort of grew up there, it really resonates with me. It's possibly the first Irish word I was ever properly exposed to, and for years I didn't even know what it meant, but it still amazed me.

My favorite word: glissade. When I was applying to college, I actually wrote one of my essays about this word. In mountaineering (a hobby of mine), a glissade is a fall. It is not some accident or crash but is a controlled fall, a fall guided by the use of ice axes. Glissade is, perhaps, the only word that describes a fall that is not just controlled but intentional, as a glissade is typically used to gain a positional advantage on the mountain. My love of the word, however, stems mostly from the parallels I find with the meaning of the word and my own life. As clichéd as it is, our greatest triumphs are those that come after our falls. The ability to control your metaphorical "falls," to turn them into glissades, is possibly the most important characteristic of a successful and happy person. My mother once gave me a set of coasters that read "Life is all about how you deal with Plan B." One never wants to lose ground while climbing the mountain of life, but glissading to Plan B in order to rise up higher is one of the traits I value the most.

My favourite word would probably be "lethargic". Even the soft "th" sounds tired...

My favourite word is calcareous. it is the best word of all the words, and I know several. It is onomatopoeic...mm calcareous; chalky and biting with crunch, in a good way.

Example sentences that use 'calcareous':

The dentist cut my fangs into new shapes, my teeth were gritted. I counted the fibreboard ceiling tiles through an anaesthetic haze, the calcareous grit of my eroding teeth traced small deposits across my tongue.

I am exhausted and hungover at the fourth annual convention of long-sighted cartographers. I spied the president-elect face down in the punchbowl, i turned to Maude; my plus-one "take these" she smiled and passed me two Paracetamol tablets and another glass of ginger wine. In my torpid stupor I struggled to swallow them down, the calcareous residue however, was quickly diffused by a caustic warmth.

A haiku:

Embellish, don't lie
Calcareous, as a word
Has limited use

Thanks again everyone, and thanks to Annette at 4AD for helping put this together. Hopefully we'll have more contests like this in the future.

Arcade Fire, 2003.

2010-08-04T14:03:00.003+01:00

I apologise for the general lack of updates - I've just moved apartment, and it's all a little hectic. By way of compensation, I offer this video (found via UKK, of course) of Arcade Fire performing in Toronto in 2003, before Funeral. It's kind of stunning.

Stay tuned for the results of the High Violet competition this weekend.

they build it up

2010-07-22T08:43:00.006+01:00

Arcade Fire - Rococo (live at Oxegen)

So this is a new Arcade Fire song, and it sounds kind of like climbing down a great European mountain, one from which you can see cities, and tops of towers, the fires at the tops of lighthouses, and on a clear day, all the way back into the past, back to kings and queens and people on horseback.
It's got harpsichord, and little wavering notes and a single word repeated over and over, the significance of which is not really clear. Rococo is a style of architecture that originated back when the world was all palaces and empires and sprawling wild land, and it sounds a little like the chorus here, delicate but imposing, like great white clouds that settle overhead on a bright day. Amidst all this widescreen imagery, we see that Win Butler has changed his stance. He used to sympathise with the kids, but now he mocks them for eating out of his hand, and talking about things they don't quite comprehend, and his tone makes us uneasy, and this unease rolls over the great landscape like a shadow.

{Pre-order}

---

Don't forget to enter our High Violet competition! I'm enjoying the entries so far, so keep them coming.

Win A Signed High Violet Vinyl

2010-07-21T16:21:00.003+01:00

The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio

I'm not quite sure how they do it, but they seem to manage it every time. How much I love a National album the first time I hear it is always enough to get me to listen to it again, but never quite enough to convince me of its greatness. Gradually, like waking up in a new city and learning the backstreets, how to read the subway, beginning to grasp the local language, the songs open up. This is not a quick process, and it doesn't necessarily happen while I'm playing the record. It doesn't take long for one song to lead the charge, to set up camp somewhere in the back of my mind, and hum away while I'm busy, until it's part of my world, a new poem I can recite from memory, traced over repeatedly in my mind like fingers over braille, the meaning drawn out slowly.
On High Violet, the song is 'Bloodbuzz Ohio', a thundering cavalcade of drums and insistent piano that wants to carry you along, evoking the imagery of the chorus: "I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees". I don't know much about Ohio, and I've no reason to think of it as particularly romantic, but I love that image.
High Violet manages a miracle: after the wonder and emotional fireworks of Boxer and Alligator, it's no disappointment. It's not going to replace them in your hearts, but it's a success by any standard, with enough strong songs to take you in and make you happy.

Due to the people at 4AD being extremely and famously lovely, I have one signed copy of High Violet on vinyl to give away. Entry is simple: just send an email with the words 'High Violet' in the title, and tell me what your favourite word is. You can explain why too, if you like. I'll pick one at the end of the month, and that'll be that. So get started!

like a puppeteer

2010-07-18T19:52:00.005+01:00

Efterklang - Modern Drift {Oh No Ono's Cologne to Paris Remix}

This remix of Modern Drift (previously) is a little like what would happen if a simple-minded giant walked into the original song like a monster into a building, reducing it to bits, holding the pieces in his great hands, his face soft with confusion, and put it back together in a new way, the only way that makes sense to him. The walls and windows are in different places, and there aren't as many right angles, and the entire roof is missing, letting the light and the rain in, but it certainly sounds good.

{Buy}

Nils Frahm + Anne Müller - Let My Key Be C {Thriller edit}

This song, on the other hand, is what it sounds like when your house has been damaged, burnt or destroyed, rain blanketing your belongings, reminding you how delicate your shelter was in the first place, and how easily such an edifice can vanish. You're never far enough away from trouble, and when it hits you, you realise what you've always known: that someday it would be your turn too.

{Buy}

Twin Sister's Big News

2010-07-16T16:14:00.006+01:00

Good news everyone! Twin Sister, my favourite discovery of the last year, have been signed by Domino imprint Double Six. Both their stellar EPs, Color Your Life and Vampires with Dreaming Kids will be available as a double release, and, let me tell you, this will be an absolute necessity for anyone with ears.
Furthermore, it seems the band will be visiting our shores this autumn, and it promises to be a fine night of dreamed-up dreaminess.

Get your head around these gorgeous songs, and see here for a guest post from the band.

Twin Sister - I Want A House

Twin Sister - Milk & Honey (live)

Twin Sister - Lady Daydream (live)

You can buy Color Your Life here, if you can't wait until the physical release on September 3rd.

How to Survive Oxegen And Not End Up On The News

2010-07-08T15:50:00.005+01:00

A guest post, drawing on experience, by Jenny Decimal.

Bring containers for water, definitely plastic ones. Even if your tent blows up, Arcade Fire cancel due to plague related illnesses and it actually rains mud right out of the sky, you'd get by, but you won't have much fun passing out from dehydration in a moshpit.

It's tried-and-true, so it's worth repeating - aim to fill up on water well in advance and preferably at night. It's the thinnest the queues will get, and you don't want to swoon like an 18th century noblewoman when Win Butler steps off the stage, calls you by your full birth cert name and offers you his guitar on bended knee. I mean, 18th century swooning would have been cool for Funeral, but we're kicking Suburbs stylee now. The point is, don't leave it until the very last minute or when your very favourite band is on to try and get water. That's invariably when squintymillion other people are in the queue in front of you and then the taps fail. This philosophy can also be applied to toilets - go when you can, so you won't need to when you can't.

Of course, if you're trying to spend a load of time in the pit, balance your need to actually live with your need to stay in the pit without having to pee, but either way it's better to have the water to hand if you need it. Also bring lots of bottle caps in your pockets. As you're entering the arena, take the lid off any bottles you have and stow 'em, or they'll take them from you. It's stupid, but do it. You are allowed bring cans and plastic bottles into the campsite, but no glass, and nothing into the arena itself. Pints of watery Heineken are ten bucks in there though, so be creative. There are variations on the idea of the "decoy can", but I'll leave the rest to you.

Wear clothes you're prepared to dump. Keep a couple of essentials - underwear, socks, facecloth, TOILETPAPERTOILETPAPERTOILETPAPER etc - wrapped in a little plastic bag, but whatever you bring you may have to carry - Make sure it's stuff you can't live without it. Get cheap ass toilet paper and lots of it - the less fluffy it is, the less space it takes up and the less mushy it'll get if it does get a bit damp. If you can pull the cardboard roll out of the middle to squish it further, all the better. The sensation of pulling on fresh, dry socks on a pissy day is better than sex with God. Savour it, protect it, mind those socks like you'd mind a child you're particularly fond of.

Bring snacks. Mars bars will fill you up and give you energy but are manky. It is possible to live off them for about three days without any ill effects, and I've done it, but I never, ever, ever want to see one again in my life. Muesli bars will fill you up and have a bit of texture, but are the world's single most depressing foodstuff. Salty things will satisfy a craving, but will make you thirsty and tend to take up more space than they deserve. Tinned fruit salad is heavy, but will make you cry with joy by day 3 - just make sure and get a ring pull one, genius and bring something to eat it with. Treat yourself to one hot meal a day, and choose it carefully.

Boozewise, remember that everything has to be in plastic containers. Bring something you enjoy drinking, not something that will get you drunk in half a second just for the sake of it. Beer is incredibly expensive in the arena, so do bring something, but bear in mind that a load of cans will make you want to pee all the time. Bring a spirit maybe, but don't be a knob and drink it all neat. I recommend Lidl's I Can't Believe It's Not Martini own brand Vermouth, it's cheap, summery, very drinkable and mixes well with lots of things. Likewise, but a little less so, for their gin. Avoid their rum at all costs, it is poison. The vodka sounds badass at the time, but just... don't. A festival hangover is not in the least bit fun, and has cost many people a fine Saturday's lineup. Regarding drugs - make your own choices, but make good ones. Don't show off, don't be an idiot, and don't spend two hundred and fifty euro to spend a weekend wrapped in your sleeping bag screaming at your own feet. Contrary to popular legend, a loud and occasionally rowdy music festival is not necessarily the best setting to embark on a new leg of your chemical adventure, so think carefully. The best advice I ever heard in this area was to write the words "You are on drugs, enjoy yourself" on the back of one of your hands, but this might present it's own problems when it comes to displaying your wristband to security. Drink or drugs, remember - You're aiming to get pleasantly and amiably buzzed, not on the news.

If you're bringing shiny new novelty flowery wellies, make sure they fit you like a handtailored condom. Too big or too small, they will mash your feet into weepy stumps. If possible, and if none of your neighbours can see into your house, wear them around over the next week to break 'em in. It might be worth bringing very light runners this year. Might. Cheap, light, disposable Primark runners, to give your feet a break from wellies. But only if it's dry enough.

Waterproofs might be a good idea, but anything plasticky next to your skin will sweat you and could chafe in all sorts of nasty places. Is it worth it to stay dry? Probably, but if the sun comes out you'll cook. If you can get one of those teeny little jacket type things that scrunch up to about the size of a fist, that could be cool. I don't know, to be honest, I can't decide. Umbrellas are a no-no for the audience. They're awkward to carry through a crowd, they obstruct the view, and they're too damn pokey. Might be worth stowing one in your tent for trips to the taps or toilets though.

Glowsticks make me profoundly happy generally, but they're also a handy lightsource that doesn't need batteries and doesn't care about getting wet. You can get the chunky ones in a toy shop for cheaper than you would in a camping shop, or the little glow bracelets are dirt cheap in a €2 Shop on Liffey Street. Do bring a little torch though, preferably a likkle maglite or similar. Glowsticks are a surprisingly effective back up, but they're no substitute for a proper beam. Strappy headlamp if possible - there are many entertaining and necessary things at a festival which will go more smoothly with both hands free. Your own light source becomes very important when the last act ends, and don't you forget it.

Baby wipes are a very, very good idea, but get ones that aren't too sickly sweet and won't leave you sticky. I prefer Simple, and Pennys very often have these in a two-for-one deal. Come to terms with the fact that you'll probably smell anyway. It's one of the only occasions in the year when that's cool, so embrace it. Reek with pride -but do bring some manner of deodorant, I mean, you're not a savage. A water bottle with a bit of shower gel and a sports cap on it can work as a manky knacker shower in a pinch, but be aware that if anybody sees you doing it you'll never quite have the same relationship again.

Your phone might or might not work with that much network activity, but all the same, it's well worth having a look in Maplins for one of those solar phone chargers or one of the ones that uses AAA batteries. Arrange a landmark to meet your mates at when/ if you get separated. Sounds lame, sounds mammyish, it works and it has saved me a lot of unpleasantness in the past. The first big, visible thing that you see, that's your meeting point should things go arseways, and make sure everybody knows it. It is not funny trying to find your mates in an emergency when there are thousands of other mud covered gobshites wandering around just as aimlessly and nobody has a working phone. Don't bother with walkie talkies - some MENSA candidate always has this idea, and drags the bastard things there, only to realise all he can hear is 32 types of parking attendant traffic and one other stranger who's also had the same idea and can't get hold of his friend either.

Lastly, the obvious stuff. If you're camping, walk through fire to camp next to people you know. Don't camp on the edge of the site, or somebody will piss on or fall into your tent before the night it through. Don't leave anything valuabe in your tent. Get a decent tent with an outer and an inner skin. Those 10 quid ones that are only one skin are crap, but you can get decent ones in Argos for a decent price. Make sure it's the right size - if anything is touching the inner skin to the outer skin, you'll get a wet tent. Set it up as soon as you get the chance, early in the day before it's dark and before the only place left is the bit of the field everyone else calls "the shitehole", right next to the molotov-juggling heroin-dealing gunsmugglers. It's worth figuring out your tent before then, so maybe try setting it up once or twice this week.

Don't camp close enough to the toilets to smell them, don't camp far away enough that you can't make it there in a hurry. Don't camp on the outer edge of the site, or on the edge of any path to anything, ever.

I think that's pretty much all I can think of...

Oh, don't let Win Butler mind your basketball, you'll never see the bastard again.

if you have to go

2010-07-06T22:53:00.004+01:00

{via}

Peter & The Wolf - Safe Travels

I know that I've written about this song before, but I have come to feel that I should underline to once more you just how good it is. I've been playing it quite often lately, remembering the effect it has had on me, trying to figure out exactly where or what it reminds me of. I've been following it round my head trying to see where it goes in its few minutes.

There is a certain sense of safety to this song, not just in the title, but embedded in it the whole way through, like the rings of a tree trunk. This song may be the only thing you need to take with you as you travel, something you would keep in your hands carefully. When Red Hunter sings "Know how to climb a tree? I assume you do," he's welcoming you into some club, where you know nobody, but you don't care.

Maybe it's because I've uprooted myself recently, but it feels like this song knows where I want to go. It's not perfect, yet it gives me an idea of what that perfection might be like, something like looking at sunny palm-tree adverts in the window of a travel agent. Even if you don't get there it's okay, because it's not going away. This song is the one your friends would sing, unexpectedly earnestly, at you're going-away party. You'll never see them again, but there it is, with its sad raindrop guitar-plucked notes, its steady pace (like a bus!) and mournfully happy group calls. This song accomplishes all it should. It feels like goodbye.

{Buy}

this is beautiful

2010-06-23T21:08:00.003+01:00

This is Villagers' new single, 'Ship of Promises'. As you can see, it's about something amazing, and clearly, this song is the key to unlocking a fantastic new world if you let it take you out to the countryside.

Villagers - The Meaning of the Ritual {demo}
Villagers - Becoming a Jackal {live on Later...}

songs of the decade: part five

2010-06-21T21:55:00.006+01:00

62. Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows

This is the product of a hot night's drinking, of that much I'm sure - though I'm not sure what kind of boiled-in-the-sun, distilled-by-a-madman whiskey you'd have to fill yourself with to come up with something this violent and fun.

61. The Antlers - Two

If, like me, you've found yourself staring out your bedroom windows lately wondering how to make sense of such massive accumulations of snow, and such unrelenting cold, here's a song to help. This is what it would sound like if the snow talked back, and showed you all the fun to be had, finger-numbing cold or not. It's -17°C outside, but my friends tell me about the best hill for sledding, and where the best snow is to build big snowmen. That's what this song reminds me of: a little like if snow came with instructions for use. This is how music helps us make sense of new things that seem big and overbearing, snow, or love or other weird natural phenomena like that.

60. My Brightest Diamond - We Were Sparkling

It's the ice that sparkles here, holding the vocals tightly, misting around them as they breathe, cracking a little with the warm tears that flow at the song's end.

59. Fionn Regan - Hunter's Map

This song sounds like Ireland to me, but I don't know what it sounds like to the rest of you. It's pretty spot on, except there are no cities.

58. My Morning Jacket - Lowdown

I don't think I'd ever get away with using the word 'lovedog' to describe the object of my affection, but the rest of this song is something I can subscribe to. The way the mournful background vocals paint a blooming new night sky over the daylight, it's like the sun is setting with a broken heart, going to sleep alone.

57. Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes

Straight out of the wilderness, bounding into your front room, standing there beckoning you towards your own wild will - this is a song that means what it says, and what it says is this: if you feel like changing something, this right now is the moment.

56. Basement Jaxx - Romeo

You know when you've first been hit by the fireworks going off inside your chest for someone else, and you're walking home after the first night you both looked at each other like that, and there's a little festival going on inside you, with people dancing in the streets? Well, Basement Jaxx know exactly what that sounds like.

55. The Spinto Band - Oh Mandy

Well, no, I actually don't have any poetic reason for loving this song, but there's only so many times you can write about perfect pop, so instead I will direct you to 2.20 and let you describe it to yourself.

54. Son Lux - Break

Deep down, I always think of the start of this song as a car crash, violent, rough, oddly compelling. Then those amazing drums kick in, and the whole scene rewinds, until we're sitting with someone at the wheel of their car, wondering what will happen next, waiting noiselessly for the serenity to give way to chaos.

you were young

2010-06-11T18:57:00.003+01:00

James Vincent McMorrow - Follow You Down To The Red Oak Tree

Don't start out until night. Where possible, stay in the shadows, underneath trees, seen only by owls and other nightly eyes.
It helps if you wear dark clothing, but please wear at least one red garment so we can recognise you and let you in. Important: do not be distracted by people calling your name, or the names of your loved ones. They do not know what they are talking about.

Once you reach the end of the road, climb the gate, and walk straight on, even when the path disappears. When you come to a pile of ash and embers, put on your headphones, and listen to the song. Walk in the direction of the dimmest light, and don't stop until the song is over. That's when we'll open the door. We'll hear you singing.

This album is widely being described as the product of an Irish Bon Iver, but there's more to it than that. Live especially, he's a revelation, channeling a Jeff Buckley that never was, with a voice that blankets the room.
You can buy Early in the Morning right here.

it was moved enough to sing

2010-06-10T15:43:00.004+01:00

Villagers - The Meaning of the Ritual

My love is selfish, and I guess I didn't really know this until a few years ago. I thought different things, and wanted different things, but that was then, and they went away. It was summer, now it's autumn, and all the white light comes down staining through wizened tree leaves like church glass. I talk differently, I drink differently. I wandered through parks like a child, now I walk through them hurriedly.
My love is selfish, and I guess that yours is too. I didn't know that until a few tears ago. I still dream endlessly of summer days, you standing beneath the great oak, your face lighting up, your eyes smiling brightly. There are so many things I try and decide at night, sitting in my bedroom, but the dawn always lights up the same thing. I want to tell you not to worry. I want to get on the train to work, and for once have figured out everything by the time I get off, instead of stumbling over the same crooked thoughts like someone else's character.

My love is selfish, but I trust it, and it trusts you, and when I see you smile the way you do sometimes, softly, almost imperceptably, the smile that is meant for me, that's when I remember everything again, and it no longer seems childish to run, and sing, and stay up late doing nothing.

This song is from a stunning Irish album that you should all have heard by now.

the kids have always known

2010-06-09T20:34:00.005+01:00

The band are playing a show in a Quebec parking lot shortly - you can view the stream right here.

{Edit}

The stream has been cancelled, unfortunately, but the band have unveiled some rather sweet invitations to the gig on their site, in video form. If it worked right, then tonight there were people wandering through the suburbs watching a video on their phones and iPods, and finding one of the best concerts they'll ever see at the end of it.

Also, some more excellent quality live recordings of new songs have surfaced, thanks to a taper at UKK. Here are two of my favourites. 'Rococo' still contains some of the bombast of Neon Bible, but it's far sweeter than anything on that record. 'Ready to Start' has already been discussed here, and it's still wonderful, and 'City With No Children' sounds disconcertingly upbeat for a song with that title.

Arcade Fire - Ready to Start {live in Sherbrooke}

Arcade Fire - Rococo {live in Sherbrooke}

Arcade Fire - City With No Children {live in Sherbrooke}

There are a lot of rumours that the band will be playing a secret show in Toronto this weekend, so keep your ears open.

New Arcade Fire

2010-06-07T20:02:00.005+01:00

Arcade Fire - Ready to Start {live at St. Margaret's Home for the Incurables}

Here's a snippet of a new Arcade Fire song, 'Ready to Start'. For those of you who were slightly dismayed by the apparent lack of similarity between their two new songs and their first two records, this should soothe your fears a little. It's got a melody that instantly grabs hold of you, and a beat reminiscent of 'Black Waves/Bad Vibrations'. Also, it has awesome synths, which is nice.

{Edit: here are some more new songs!}

As always, these are via the lovely Us Kids Know forums.

---

Something else I've been staring at in this-is-ridiculously-good disbelief today is this video of Conor O'Brien standing and strumming on a quiet London corner. There's so much going on in this song, it's not like he needs anything else.

Arcade Fire announce new album

2010-05-27T11:02:00.007+01:00

Well, this is interesting.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

You can pre-order the record now. I'm really starting to enjoy their new Seventies aesthetic, and while I haven't quite made up my mind about 'Month of May', I love 'The Suburbs enough to be convinced that this will be a rather fine record. Also, in Arcade Fire's usual playful way, there's a little fun to be had with the lyrics on their website.
There are still some unconfirmed rumours - is it a double album? Could it possibly be a triple album? Apparently the band have recorded 38 songs. Quite probably, all will be revealed later on today when brothers Will and Win Butler answer questions on NPR.

the suburbs / month of may

2010-05-26T22:51:00.005+01:00

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Arcade Fire - Month of May

The most notable thing here might be that neither of these songs sound particularly like Arcade Fire. 'Month of May' is a little less punk than had initially been assumed, but it's still a bit further down Thunder Road than they've gone before. 'The Suburbs' is my favourite right now, just for that gorgeously autumnal piano, and that chorus, that seems almost ill-fitting, like an aerial attack on the rest of the song. You know?

For more on this release, see Joel's blog.

keep the clouds at bay

2010-05-24T13:21:00.005+01:00

Cathy Davey - Bad Weather

Sunday is gloomy, and Monday's not much better. The sun has rolled away into a pocket again, and at work the chairs are empty and waiting, and there's not many things to fit into the time between now and then. But there's a day, and maybe time to listen to about fifteen albums if you really dedicated yourself.

The year's been rather fine so far. Just last week I bought two consecutive number one albums, and as a friend remarked, it's pretty unusual to be buying two consecutive number one albums in this country. It's even more unusual that they're both Irish, and doubly so that one of them is without the benefit of a label. And by the time you get to the fact that the pair of them have topped both the mainstream and indie charts, and the fact that one of them plays on both records, the unusualness of the whole situation has been doubled, tripled and folded back over on itself so often that there's no understanding it at all.

Cathy Davey's The Nameless is quite possibly my favourite of the year so far. It's an impressive step onward from her past triumphs - as much as I love the heart-on-her-sleeve romance of 'Sing for your Supper', the fact that there's not much of that on the new record doesn't detract one bit from its finery. It's an odd album, and interesting mix of concept and confession, an exploration of the presence of death in the lives of the bereaved, and an expression of the lovelorn grief after an ended relationship.

Cathy Davey - Gloomy Sunday (live)

The troubled heart of the record is 'Bad Weather', a song about a couple watching love disappear down a crackling phone line, separated by seas and borders. It's heartbreaking, and grows directly from the soft patter of songs like the above 'Gloomy Sunday', a Billie Holiday cover.

Villagers - The Meaning of the Ritual {demo}

This last week, it's Villagers' debut, Becoming a Jackal that's been continuing the wave of Irish triumph. A charming mix of songwriter craftsmanship and sheer originality, it demands to be played as a whole, working its magic through its gorgeous lyrics, eery aesthetic, and gentle emotional persuasion. I need to get my head around it some more before I figure out exactly what I love about it, a task that will surely be made simpler once the new recording of 'The Meaning of the Ritual' stops moving me to tears on the train. The old demo version is less shivery, and more celebratory, so let's listen to that one for now, and hope it's a good week.

this is a beautiful thing to watch before sleep

2010-05-19T22:34:00.001+01:00

I've written about Villagers before, but I've been listening to the album almost non-stop since last week, and I can't quite begin to describe how much I love it. I'm certainly not going to manage it with a handful of sentences, but hopefully I'll be able to get a handle on it soon.
Until then, get a copy of your own, and watch the above performance. It's a thing of wonder.

Arcade Fire presents 'The Suburbs'

2010-05-13T22:22:00.004+01:00

Last night someone began working on redesigning Arcade Fire's website ahead of their new tour, and the above words were seen for a while, as reported by both Joel and Pitchfork. But if you've been paying attention to the band's moves lately, a preoccupation with all things suburban is nothing surprising.
First, there's the above picture, previously to be found here after their last redesign, now vanished. That picture is from a 1973 collection entitled Suburbia, by photographer Bill Owens. I guess it could be the album cover, but that would be the first time the band haven't had a cover specifically designed by Tracy Maurice.

There's also the single promo image that accompanies the new live announcements, which is certainly in a similar vein. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there's Scenes from the Suburbs, the band's collaboration with Spike Jonze.

Obviously, this is mostly speculation. But it seems likely that the album may be titled The Suburbs, and that it may, in its subject matter and aesthetic, deal with that kind of world. It would be an interesting change for Arcade Fire. Until we know more, I recommend that you check out some of the photos from Suburbia, they're really quite brilliant.

when you want me to stay

2010-05-09T23:57:00.002+01:00

Mixylodian - Make Me

I've been listening to Mixylodian for a while now, but this is the first time I've heard sex in one of their songs. It seems like something I don't hear too often from the kind of musicians I favour, sex free of any catches, no doubts or reservations, just a kind of impulse that needs to be followed, the question on your lips that you want to put on someone else's. I think they get it right here, too, the weird mix urgency and love, gentleness and passion. There's the ticking beat, the softly insistent vocals, the frantic guitar at the close, everything in the right place.

This is the first song on Mixylodian's new record, Wild in Church, and it's stunning. You can buy the album right here.

---

Unrelatedly, that business with IMRO led to a meeting last week, between them, we three bloggers, and an extremely capable and helpful solicitor. You can read more about the meeting here, but the main thing is that IMRO were quite willing to engage with us, and it went well. Keep an eye on the Facebook group for updates.

Cathy Davey - Army of Tears

2010-05-02T19:39:00.004+01:00

I've been listening to The Nameless for almost a week now, and I think I'm finally ready to say that Cathy has truly outdone herself, making an album of beauty and complexity that surpasses even Tales of Silversleeve. There are songs here that show a mastery of a range of styles and ideas, from the misty-eyed longing of 'Bad Weather' to the pocket pop of 'Happy Slapping'. The record unites the common strands of her previous two albums, displaying a real identity and personality all her own. This is what a Cathy Davey album sounds like, and it's spectacular.

I'll have more thoughts on the record to share in the next few days, but for now, get yourselves over to Cathy's Facebook (or MySpace, if you're so inclined) page to stream some songs from the record, like the glorious 'Army of Tears', which you can stream above.
The album is out Friday.

On Hot Press and My Place In The Real Economy

2010-04-30T23:29:00.007+01:00

The business between IMRO and music blogs like this one has ramped up a little in time for the weekend. Following the sending out of notices, there's been an article on the Guardian, a hive of discussion over at On The Record, a veritable frenzy on Twitter (including a comment by that great and distressingly tall Irishman Graham Linehan), a petition, a Facebook group, and tonight an article on Hot Press.

IMRO have delayed in answering some of our questions, and have promised to unveil an FAQ shortly which will clear up any confusion to everyone's general satisfaction, I'm sure. In the meantime, they've offered to meet with us next week, with the same aim in mind. This is a good thing.

Before I turn to the Hot Press article, let me dwell on another development from today, one concerning the fine new Dublin band, The Cast of Cheers. That's the cover of their new album you see above, made available as a free download on Bandcamp. It's a very good album, and the band, being the people responsible for it, have been praised accordingly, winning countless new fans and supporters.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://thecastofcheers.bandcamp.com/album/chariot"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Goose by The Cast of Cheers&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

The band were due to play an IMRO showcase tomorrow night, but have cancelled. In a way, this is because of another group of Irish music do-gooders, Dublin label The Richter Collective. I have yet to mention them much here, a lamentable oversight on my part, and one I intend to correct. They've helped bring much fine Irish music to many fine Irish ears, and they too deserve the praise they've gotten. So it comes as a surprise that IMRO, who consider themselves "synonymous with helping to showcase emerging talent in Ireland", have informed the label that they don't have the right to upload songs recorded by their artists to their own website - at least not without the same licence they recommend we buy.

This, I'm sure I don't need to tell you, is ridiculous. This is why The Cast of Cheers pulled out of the IMRO show: "in a show of support for us", as the Richter Collective tweeted.

Anyway, let's put an end to the digression and turn to Hot Press and their article.

It's a bad article.

It's unfair and inaccurate. There are a few classic hallmarks of bad journalism in there: the fact that it's written about people who weren't once contacted for comment, the scathing, unfounded and unchallenged remarks from anonymous contributors, the opening assertation that the piece presents both sides of the story.

It opens with the line: "Hot Press has been talking to people on both sides of the online music payment divide." Yet curiously, none of them were the three bloggers contacted by IMRO. Presumably they're referring to Michael Roe of The Richter Collective, who in fairness, is given space to put his point across quite well. But he's not speaking as a blogger.

IMRO CEO Victor Finn is quoted, restating that people need permission to make songs available, but not revealing whether or not he agrees that band's have to the right to give that permission - one of the key issues at the heart of this debate. Musician Declan De Barra makes a fine defence of this right.

There are a few odd comments inserted throughout the piece. They mention that some sites are ad-free, and essentially run on enthusiasm, but they don't mention that two of the three concerned sites fall into this category, preferring instead to list the ads recently seen on Nialler9. Most notably, two anonymous sources are quoted, making rather contentious comments about blogs and advertising. Firstly, a nameless advertising industry insider describes these ads as "a handy little earner," though they go on to note that "[o]ne of the weaknesses of blogs is that they tend to be frequented by a small number of people who create a disproportionate number of page impressions, so for obvious reasons no one is willing to pay much to be on those kind of sites."

Instead of a quote from me, or one of the other concerned bloggers, who were deemed uninteresting and unessential to the task at hand, we are given this conjecture, which adds nothing to the debate, and is not based on any knowledge of any of our sites. I'm not sure what relevance it has, but it certainly sounds bad. I imagine a lot of readers would like to know what our reservations about the licence are, but I guess the anonymous source was more reliable.

The second anonymous contributor is the one with the best lines, though. Named only as an IMRO songwriter, he declares:

Look, it isn’t exactly a popular thing to say, but the fact is that bloggers are part of the real economy. In lots of cases they're looking for and accepting payment for advertising. And to generate the traffic which attracts advertising they're indiscriminately using other people's music – often international music and often by big name artists.

I’m all for people being able to waive any royalties they might be due, if they want to. I might do it myself. But that’s different from someone deciding they’ll take whatever music they want, and do whatever they feel like with it with no permission from anybody.

This blog does not look for payment for advertising. Neither does Asleep on the Compost Heap. That's two of the three concerned blogs. Any regular reader will have surely noticed that I frequently fall behind on posting, conduct ill-suited to a blogger trying to generate traffic - and when it comes to the "international music" (what? Is foreign music especially popular or something?) and Big Name Artists, well, I may as well not be trying at all.

None of the concerned blogs are known for being the kind to "take whatever music [we] want and do whatever [we] feel like with it with no permission from anybody." The quotation is superfluous, and that unrelated assertation should have been challenged.

One thing I will agree with, however. Some of us do have a place in The Real Economy. Not because of the streams of euro flowing from my laptop to my bank account, though that surely helps. Not because of the protection money I beat out of poor Irish musicians while they carry me home from a day's carousing. It's because of the promotion the bands get. It's not everything, and it's not a lot compared to what the likes of Hot Press could do. But it's the difference between The Ambience Affair being heard on U.S. television, and not. It's the difference between The Richter Collective eschewing an advertising budget for free online promotion, and not.

I've already made it clear I'm in favour of artist's getting royalties, and I'm open to getting a licence. But there are problems with the system IMRO are trying to enforce, and we need to talk about them, instead of getting distracted by whether or not blog traffic is disproportionate, or other blogs use Big Name Artists. We need to focus on the important things.

On IMRO and Irish Music Blogs

2010-04-28T23:55:00.002+01:00

Some of you will have seen this on The Irish Times, or on Niall's blog, but if not, I'd appreciate if you'd take the time to read it, because it has the potential to affect music blogs everywhere.

IMRO is a group which represents songwriters, composers, music publishers in Ireland in the fields of performing right in copyright. They collect and distribute royalties arising from the public performance of copyright works. Recently they reached an agreement with YouTube on paying royalties for songs streamed on that site in Ireland. This week, they turned their attention to us music bloggers. On Monday, they emailed Nialler9, yesterday they contacted me, and today it was Darragh of Asleep on a Compost Heap. There will be more.

Bypassing for a moment the massive leap in scale in going from YouTube to my site, here's what IMRO are looking for. They want everyone who is offering songs for download or stream to pay for a licence. There are price bands, and there are different options, viewable here.
I'm all for artists getting more money, just as I'm all for them getting more promotion, and I know for a fact that my site has helped both these causes. These licences have a place, and it makes sense that sites with ad revenue, ranging from YouTube to State, should have one. IMRO have differentiated between sites that make less than €7,000 per year and those that make more, and that's good - but shouldn't they differentiate between those that make less than €7 a year, and those who make more?

I make no profit from my blog. I've never done it for money, I've done it out of a love of music, as cliché as that may sound. I must be doing something right, because I receive hundreds of emails a week from bands and PR sites hoping that I will share an mp3 of theirs.

IMRO's claim with regard to music blogs is based on two ideas: first, that bands are not entitled to allow a blogger share a song with their permission without IMRO getting into it looking for royalties, and second, that any site with streaming music or downloads that can be accessed from Ireland must have this licence. I know for a fact that there are IMRO musicians unhappy about this first assertation, and with good reason: it's IMRO deciding they know better than the artist. This after one of the best weeks ever for Irish music online. After an Irish band was featured on a major US television show because their music was available on a blog.

The promotion available in this online community is a real thing, with real benefits for musicians. If we are forced to pay this kind of money, we'll simply have to stop writing about music this way, and that helps no one. The fact is, if a friend in a band wants me to write about their song and share it with my readers, that should be their choice: not mine, not IMRO's, and nobody should be assuming that I have simply conned my friend out of what I owe them.

I repeat: I have no problem with bands earning royalties. But to make no distinction between a profit-driven site and one that, with no financial gain in mind, provides a valued promotional service, is misguided. To assume of bloggers and artists that we haven't worked out any agreement between ourselves is unfair. This kind of action will not improve the lot of Irish musicians: it will lead to sites like this one being unable to continue. And since only Irish blogs are being targeted, it puts Irish bands at a major disadvantage online. IMRO need to reconsider this, and listen to what we're trying to say.

----

For more info, I recommend the FAQ Nialler has put together from the answers IMRO have given us so far. I am waiting to get more answers, there are still many things that need to be cleared up.
You can contact IMRO, if you like, and let them know that you don't like this. Irish music blogs have been around for five years now, and I know that this has done good things for Irish bands.

wait outside

2010-04-27T20:55:00.003+01:00

Handsome Furs - Radio Kaliningrad

Have you ever had a day when nothing really worked out? When your expectations of life have been so dramatically lowered that just listening to one good song and then getting a few hours sleep is a relief? I have. Today was a day when fate stumbled out of bed after me, burning my toast, straining the flavour out of my tea, making me run for the bus in a very undignified fashion. But tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow will be better.

{Buy}

songs of the decade: part four

2010-04-25T18:47:00.005+01:00

76. Passion Pit - Sleepyhead

Crash! Bang! This is ten minutes of fun packed into three.

75. JJ72 - Algeria

An Irish song, straightforward and powerful. There was a reason people expected great things from JJ72 - they could assemble perfect power pop songs packed with verve and feeling, and crown them with a chorus as frantic and glorious as the one here.

74. Modest Mouse - Float On

Overplayed, overrated, and ever so slightly unoriginal? Undoubtedly. But I bet you anything your head still bops when that dream drum beat kicks in, and I bet you still sing along at the end.

73. Animal Collective - My Girls

There is a moment here - 1.27 in - when the song starts up like someone has lit a fuse. After that it becomes something incredible, the sound of beautiful melodies battling in space, and even though that's paired with a simple declaration of a father's love for his family, it seems to fit perfectly. To the moon and back.

72. Mountain Goats - Get Lonely

How can a song that starts so easily, and with such a normal and familiar set of sounds, get so intensely sad? I feel bereaved just listening to it.

71. Thao Nguyen - Bag of Hammers

Well, this is a fine song. This is a song with guitars like scissors, drums like paper, and vocals like glue! Or like a big shiny cocktail with ice-cubes that you have to drink for a straw, and the ice is knocking of the glass in a weird rhythm while melting. And yes, the whole thing sounds a little drunk, but drunk with the weight of the world, and the joys of it, and possibly whiskey too.

70. Blur - Out of Time

I've never been a huge fan of Blur, but I do love how they manage to make a song so perfectly happy and sad at the same time. I can't imagine ever tiring of this one.

69. Laura Barrett - Robot Ponies

This is an amazing song - the lyrics depict a future Christmas, with bizarre gifts and creeping authoritarianism. The music adds to this, the eerie melodies, and the beautiful weightless sound of the kalimba (an African instrument like a xylophone played with the thumbs) producing a feeling akin to being locked out of your family home on Christmas Eve, and staring in the window. You'll love it.

68. Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out

I still remember the first time I heard this, on the radio, on the bus. I remember buying the album, bringing it home and playing it to an emptying bottle of whiskey, and I remember reaching over as soon as this track was over, and putting it on repeat, just to hear that tempo change again. And again.

67. The Cay - Don't Go Out Tonight

My heart breaks to this song, and I can't understand why. There's no big moment, no emotional finale, no lyrics of loss. There's just a steady expression of joy at the little things, the little things that love makes so important and worthy: I just want to sleep for a while / till the morning comes when we will rise. That's all, and that's enough.

66. Stars - Ageless Beauty

This is the kind of song that would never marry you, so you'd have to elope.

65. Swan Lake - All Fires

Even aside from the compelling instrumentation here, my adoration for this piece of music boils down to the lyrics, describing perfectly the tragedy of a flooded town:

One thousand people did what they could /
They found the steeple and tore up the wood

Five hundred pieces means five hundred float /
One thousand people means five hundred don't.

It's both astonishing and devastating in its subtlety.

64. Bell - Chunk

For solid weeks and weeks this song echoed around my head like a piano in a lonely locked room. It sounds and feels like looking out of a window over your cold city, and you can almost feel your fingers pressing the dark and white keys like they have some answer in them.
The main melody here, that's the great bit. It's got a countless number of emotions tied in there, like someone starting to cry, and it could be joy or happiness. The last note sticks out, a thorn on a rose, a hand waving goodbye from a train - the f against the E major. It works on you, and I don't know what it does to you, but it makes me feel like the oldest 24-year old in the world.

63. Sunset Rubdown - We Got Broken Eyes {demo}

This song isn't on any of Sunset Rubdown's albums. I had difficulty deciding between this and 'Stadiums and Shrines II', but this just took it in the end, by virtue of the tremendous push forward evident when those drums crash in, and the slight, and patient dismantling of the song at the end, while he's still singing it. It's worth hearing over and over and over.

by all accounts

2010-04-21T22:09:00.003+01:00

This song affects me, but I can't really say why. I mean, I love the aimless wander of it, it's kinda gorgeous, but that's not it. I love the melody of the chorus and how it grows on me, but that doesn't explain it. I love how the reedy guitars sound like white summer sunlight, but that's not it either. I think it's the way three minutes in, the different strands of the song seem to come together all at once, of their own accord, and all turn at once to face you, hitting the same notes, saying the same thing. It's jaunty, moody, and somewhat cerebral, but above all, it's an excellent song.

Inlets' new record Inter Arbiter is due April 20th via twosyllable Records - you can currently stream it online here. It's very, very good.

don't be afraid

2010-04-17T11:21:00.004+01:00

Sufjan Stevens - The Sleeping Red Wolves

This song is all daylight, colours streaming through the air, a citywide celebration. It's the death of something, and all the fear and hope that comes with turning to the future. The chord changes are corner-sharp, they turn quicker than Sufjan's previous work, they have a metallic tinge to them, something burning on the air. There are great cars flying through the landscape here, with no one in them. It's a little like folk music for machines. And it's really good.

This is taken from the very fine BQE, which you can buy here - or at your local record store, given the day that's in it. Happy Record Store Day everyone!

sleeping state

2010-04-16T11:08:00.005+01:00

This song grows on you like creeper, unnoticed, irresistible. After one listen, the chorus has found its way inside your head, even if you don't notice it at first, not until you wake up a few days later, and you find that your inner monologue has a new favourite saying, one that you don't remember coining: "I was a dreamer..." And after this it's a short step to this song soundtracking your sleeplessness, like a patient lover waiting outside your window to be let in. I'm listening to it every day now, and the way it builds, from the slow opening, to the final refrain, it draws me in every time. Just this week I missed my stop on the train because of that last minute.

This acoustic version too, somehow manages to wind the whole single down to one voice and guitar, without losing any of its presence and forcefulness. It's spectacular, and shows why there's so much being said about Mr. Conor J. O'Brien. It might be a little early to say, but all signs point to it being the summer of Villagers.

{Buy + Previously}

come home

2010-04-13T21:46:00.004+01:00

Arcade Fire - William Pierce (demo)

If every song works best in a particular setting, this is one for sitting on a train, watching others walk home through unsheltered streets and deciding you want to walk home that way too. It's for seeing the same faces wander past you day by day like absentee housemates, and picturing their lives and loves. It's for figuring out the best way back to your bed, or the person waiting for you, and watching it get closer as the sun passes through the sky.

shooting stars

2010-04-10T15:47:00.005+01:00

Peter Broderick - And It's Alright

Well. That was a great week.

{Buy}

Sing for your Supper

2010-04-08T23:28:00.008+01:00

On Tuesday night, a small crowd convened in our sitting room, and listened to two of my favourite musicians, DM Stith and Cathy Davey, as they quietly took their seats and played beautiful music.

There was wine and gingerbread, and Cathy's dog Rex, and his ridiculously cute ways. The atmosphere was that of the friendliest little birthday party you could imagine.

The response to this little concert has been great; it really seems like everyone had an amazing time. There were some definite highlights. For me, the best songs were David's 'Thanksgiving Moon', and Cathy's 'Sing for your Supper', both of which seemed to grow and grow and fill the whole room, and make a home out of our house for everyone in it.

A surprising amount of people came to wish happy birthday: the only thing nicer than the terribly apt GI Joe 5th birthday card I received was the bottle of champagne, which really helped us bring the night to a close. Finding our kitchen packed with people chatting and making themselves tea was nice; as was seeing John Kelly wandering in from a local pub. And it was fun seeing everyone's reaction to our secret special guest: including the two young latecomers who knocked on the door in the middle of her set, setting Rex off in a little protective barking frenzy, much to their shock and embarrassment.

It was a great night, and it's definitely an experience we'd all like to repeat. Thanks to everyone who came and made it great - thanks especially to David and Cathy (and David C!) for playing, Ian for the gear, Paddy for the photos, Karl for manning the door, and Sue for the gingerbread and hostessing. We'll do this again sometime, and we've got no intention of waiting for the blog's next birthday. Stay tuned!

DM Stith - Be My Baby
Cathy Davey - Little Red (demo)

You can see more pictures here.

songs of the decade: part three

2010-04-05T19:16:00.007+01:00

91. Tapes 'n Tapes - Insistor

Ohne zu ahnen, ohne lange nachzudenken - einfach hart, und gut so.

90. Bikini Atoll - Desolation Highway

The start is here is homely and simple, like watching someone paint a landscape, a nice way of filling up a great empty weekend. It grows from this into something unexpected, simultaneously like a friendship that blooms out of nothing, and the way you head out on a warm day and find yourself happy to see everyone, almost surprised they're there. You're reminded of how hard it is to ever be far away from people you don't know - even in your bedroom, or your kitchen, strangers are only a shout away. And here they are, and you all head into sunset together.
When the song stops, three minutes in, it's something strange, as if the sun goes down - but immediately rises again, by popular demand, like God's encore. Everything everywhere continues, tinged in heavenly red, and everyone gets Utopian. I don't really know how people can create this much joy with only three or four chords, but I'm glad they can. (Also - that drum beat is fucking legendary.)

89. The Streets - Weak Become Heroes

This song is on the list because of one moment, when Mike Skinner, having built up the scene in details and glimpses for the whole song, breaks the illusion and acknowledges the looping piano as being the heart of the whole thing. It's like a conversion.

88. Ash - Shining Light

Ash and their effortless knack for singles is almost enough to make me want to stop listening to albums, and start worshipping at the altar of the chorus.

87. The Rosebirds - Blue Bird

This song is all warm things: scarves, firesides, bare skin.

86. The Killers - Mr. Brightside

If you forget some of their other lyrical transgressions, and pretend you're a little tipsy, you'll remember what it was like when you first heard this song: all the insistence and forcefulness of the melody, the way it seemed kind of astonishing, in the original sense of the word.

85. Snowden - Anti-Anti

This song brings something else to the party. Fuzzy feelings, and a strong desire to shake it, but not quite... That riff!

84. Gemma Hayes - Back of My Hand

I don't know if anyone else feels the same way about this song, but to me it sounds absolutely like driving through little Irish country roads late at night, eyes out the window, headlights bouncing across ditches and fields, little gated-off boreens. Slowly, streetlights emerge, then footpaths, then people, and then you're there, you're in town, you're in the city.

83. Jens Lekman - The Opposite of Hallelujah

Ah, love. Come here and put down that knife. You don't mean it, I know. We'll be fine.

82. Explosions in the Sky - The Only Moment We Were Alone

With this song in the background, you can imagine things you'd never really think up otherwise. Being stuck in a bathysphere with someone after a nuclear attack, steadily sinking to the sea bed, living off supplies for weeks until the worst of the fallout passes, and eventually realising that you're both in love, bittersweet and heavy. These are the places your mind goes when you listen to music like this.

81. Weezer - Island in the Sun

Hey, hey. I hope you don't mind if I go ahead and label this as maybe the best and easiest blueprint for pop musicians to follow.

80. The War On Drugs - Taking the Farm

If you want a song that seems to plant the band in front of you, stuttering away, stammering out their notes, a song that grabs you and swings you around like a child, this is it. If you want a band that sound like your best friends almost immediately, that's The War on Drugs, and their album, Wagonwheel Blues, has been rushing through my head for some time now. It's full of songs like this that sound like you've been listening to them since you were little, that make you want to stamp and shout and dance and be an adult at the same time. It makes you want acting like a child to be taken seriously. It's a lot of fun.

79. Spokane - Proud Graduates

A long time ago I wrote about a song, and said life was made for two, a bed too big to keep warm by yourself. But this song, this one is what happens when it gets cold, and it's just some of the softest and saddest noise ever to be made with guitars, and violins, and two sets of throats with lumps in them, and everything is only barely touched and played and whispered for fear of disturbing the delicate loneliness that reigns over the whole thing, like a layer of dust.

78. Department of Eagles - No One Does It Like You

Like wandering through golden rooms, filled with wonder, amazed by every little beat your heart takes, every little glistening detail, everything hidden underground, like some rich dead maniac's tomb. This might be the best thing this band ever does, and I don't think anyone could be disappointed if it was.

77. Kocani Orkestar - Siki Siki Baba

The language barrier shouldn't be a real problem in music, but it often is. It takes a little effort to get through to the Other, especially when the music is almost as foreign as the lyrics - but this song is so undeniable that by the time it ends you'll be converted.

songs of the decade: part two

2010-04-01T20:38:00.008+01:00

{Part one is here.}

98. The Decemberists - Engine Driver

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.

97. Bell x1 - Eve, The Apple Of My Eye

I have a weird relationship with this song, and this band. I can never properly decide how I feel about them. I find much of what they do uninspiring. I saw them live once, and immediately regretted it. And nevertheless, every now and again they get things so right that I immediately forget any previous disappointment.
'Eve' is like that. At first I loved it, then I grew tired of it. And then one night, one of those nights full of held hands and long gazes, we wandered past a busker singing the chorus, sad and sweet, and I don't think I'll change how I feel about this song again, after that.

96. Kings of Leon - King of the Rodeo

I don't really like this band, but I have to admit, when they get it right, and put a song together just so, it's undeniable.

95. Turin Brakes - Mind Over Money

It's some achievement, this chorus. It seems so big and so world-conquering, it's like a little miracle that they only use it twice.

94. Beach House - Master of None

Christmas lights all year round. Having fun in the dark. Your first drink since you stopped counting. I don't know what the song is really about, but any of the above will do for me.

93. The Innocence Mission - Brotherhood of Man

This song always starts playing in my head whenever I'm in an airport. I think this is because airports make my head all funny. My mind moves onto some other level, and starts thinking thoughts that usually seem too heavy for it. It's the waiting, and being surrounded by people you're not talking too, inventing their pasts and futures, wondering who is leaving a loved one, and who is returning to someone else's arms. I sit back and think about how things have changed since I last wandered from country to country. I wonder what all the old incarnations of myself would be thinking, and I wonder what will be happening the next time I sit on the floor at the gate, watching people queue for a fixed-seating flight. And despite all this introspection, which usually does no favours for my mental state, I always enjoy the experience. The gap hours between flights, in a total limbo, as far out of your real life you can possibly get without fucking it up. It feels like pressing pause and saving, sometimes.

92. St. Vincent - Now. Now.

If those noises at the start are anything, they are bright colours which have come unstuck from whatever they covered, hanging now from tight guitar plucks, or whatever the hell that is that sounds so good. This whole song, the drums that are close enough to what you've heard before and yet unreal and unhinged enough to be a pure product of your mind. This song has ingredients, and side-effects, and they're wonderful. Synths that feel like floating, enough of a chorus to make this song epic though it really shouldn't be - listen!

dress for success

2010-03-31T19:11:00.003+01:00

The Holy Roman Army - Here

This is a song to listen to on the way home from work. It's one for the flow of tired faces, reeds swaying in the wind, examining each one for the feelings that have been held in check the whole day long. It's a song for hard times, and for getting a little more honest with yourself about your life, and what it is and might be. For all this, and for the way her voice wavers, down and down, it's something beautiful.

This is from a new covers EP by The Holy Roman Army. As well as this song, it also features covers by Bon Iver and Peter Broderick. It's really good, and free to download.

songs of the decade: part one

2010-03-26T21:27:00.014Z

Here we go! As always, there is some arbitrariness. The list is of 112 songs, but not for any particular reason. And it's not definitive, it's a list of songs I love the most: no more than one from each band, in order. They're all really, really good.

112. Shearwater - Leviathan, Bound

This is for the kind of person that would rather swim with sharks than dolphins, and be confronted with the terror of physical beauty.

111. The Futureheads - Decent Days & Nights

I think this is how you square a circle.

110. Bowerbirds - In Our Talons

After the opening lines are cast here, the band suddenly decides not to wait, and sings, all at once, and all as one - a bird's song, a song of the north, of cold and community, and damn! but you wish you could sing with them. But even if you can't it's okay, because this chorus is there for you, and you remember how music is for you and your friends. This music is for special friends, ones who fight but still help each other, more like a family than a gang, tumbling along to rattling drums and a dark pushing accordion. This is a song sung by nightfall, and it's about what happens to people then.

109. The Cloud Room - Hey Now Now

I read somewhere that this song was written over one horrible week, while the singer waited on the results of an HIV test, and his doctor flew abroad on holiday. I'm not sure if it's true, but it sounds about right: this whole song is about worrying things better, wishing so badly for the good things in your honest little life not to be outweighed by anything else that you'll do anything.

108. Xiu Xiu - Muppet Face

There's an irrational feeling that overwhelms this song, an incongruous mix of emotions. Maybe it's the same kind of phenomenon that makes unhappy people sometimes look really, really good. Like being awkward and alone at a party, and happily putting away hard little drinks, seeing the room twist and blur in the strobe lighting, stumbling over the feet of strangers, heads turning. Nights like that, where your only real hope is of finding a corner to collapse in with someone else - someone equally as faulty in the way they work, and willing to admit it.

107. Jape - Floating

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh.

106. The Carrots - Ladies of Givens

You can sing a song about your heartbreak, and make a point of not sounding heartbroken. That's something the Carrots seem to be expert at, and that's part of the reason I hold onto their songs as tightly as I do.

105. Broken Records - Kathy (demo)

This song is warm and moving with a kind of nervous joy, the seconds spent waking up after a night where great things happened, when your mind rushes to remember everything again, as if you're catching up with your heart, beating heavily, getting ready for the next step.

104. Cat Power - The Greatest

Someone once used the words "failed strongman" to describe the feeling behind this song, and it's always stuck with me.

103. MIA - Paper Planes

I know she's talking about robbing people, but this song is just so damn chirpy that I can't really believe it.

102. Clinic - Distortions

There are days when you find yourself so wound up with happiness that everything you behold seems to be emblazoned with beauty, and seems to fulfill all promises made by life. This is a little like one of those days, spent somewhere normally grim and austere, like an apparition in a rundown housing estate.

101. Burial/Four Tet - Moth

This song is for dancing, but also for flowing drunkenly down a street, walking beneath the streetlights of East Berlin, looming like soldiers, spilling yellow onto the street, oil and light mixing by the footpath. You look ahead and see young men crouched by a wall, writing something indecipherable. You stumble on the cobbles, and notice the beat in this song, hidden in some basement club. You want to dance with someone, but you've been alone all night.

100. The Libertines - Don't Look Back Into The Sun

It's the intro that gets me here, the folk chord progression held up and banged like a drum, the fuzzy guitars that break in, and the earnest this-is-a-song-I-wrote vocals.

99. The Chalets - David Boring

I don't think this band ever properly realised the potential hinted at in their finer moments, but damn, those moments were very very fine indeed. This song takes you and descends, going deeper and deeper until you're somewhere new, at the lapping edge of the sea underground.

98. The Decemberists - Engine Driver

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.

97. Bell x1 - Eve, The Apple Of My Eye

I have a weird relationship with this song, and this band. I can never properly decide how I feel about them. I find much of what they do uninspiring. I saw them live once, and immediately regretted it. And nevertheless, every now and again they get things so right that I immediately forget any previous disappointment.
'Eve' is like that. At first I loved it, then I grew tired of it. And then one night, one of those nights full of held hands and long gazes, we wandered past a busker singing the chorus, sad and sweet, and I don't think I'll change how I feel about this song again, after that.

96. Kings of Leon - King of the Rodeo

I don't really like this band, but I have to admit, when they get it right, and put a song together just so, it's undeniable.

95. Turin Brakes - Mind Over Money

It's some achievement, this chorus. It seems so big and so world-conquering, it's like a little miracle that they only use it twice.

94. Beach House - Master of None

Christmas lights all year round. Having fun in the dark. Your first drink since you stopped counting. I don't know what the song is really about, but any of the above will do for me.

93. The Innocence Mission - Brotherhood of Man

This song always starts playing in my head whenever I'm in an airport. I think this is because airports make my head all funny. My mind moves onto some other level, and starts thinking thoughts that usually seem too heavy for it. It's the waiting, and being surrounded by people you're not talking too, inventing their pasts and futures, wondering who is leaving a loved one, and who is returning to someone else's arms. I sit back and think about how things have changed since I last wandered from country to country. I wonder what all the old incarnations of myself would be thinking, and I wonder what will be happening the next time I sit on the floor at the gate, watching people queue for a fixed-seating flight. And despite all this introspection, which usually does no favours for my mental state, I always enjoy the experience. The gap hours between flights, in a total limbo, as far out of your real life you can possibly get without fucking it up. It feels like pressing pause and saving, sometimes.

92. St. Vincent - Now. Now.

If those noises at the start are anything, they are bright colours which have come unstuck from whatever they covered, hanging now from tight guitar plucks, or whatever the hell that is that sounds so good. This whole song, the drums that are close enough to what you've heard before and yet unreal and unhinged enough to be a pure product of your mind. This song has ingredients, and side-effects, and they're wonderful. Synths that feel like floating, enough of a chorus to make this song epic though it really shouldn't be - listen!

91. Tapes 'n Tapes - Insistor

Ohne zu ahnen, ohne lange nachzudenken - einfach hart, und gut so.

90. Bikini Atoll - Desolation Highway

The start is here is homely and simple, like watching someone paint a landscape, a nice way of filling up a great empty weekend. It grows from this into something unexpected, simultaneously like a friendship that blooms out of nothing, and the way you head out on a warm day and find yourself happy to see everyone, almost surprised they're there. You're reminded of how hard it is to ever be far away from people you don't know - even in your bedroom, or your kitchen, strangers are only a shout away. And here they are, and you all head into sunset together.
When the song stops, three minutes in, it's something strange, as if the sun goes down - but immediately rises again, by popular demand, like God's encore. Everything everywhere continues, tinged in heavenly red, and everyone gets Utopian. I don't really know how people can create this much joy with only three or four chords, but I'm glad they can. (Also - that drum beat is fucking legendary.)

89. The Streets - Weak Become Heroes

This song is on the list because of one moment, when Mike Skinner, having built up the scene in details and glimpses for the whole song, breaks the illusion and acknowledges the looping piano as being the heart of the whole thing. It's like a conversion.

88. Ash - Shining Light

Ash and their effortless knack for singles is almost enough to make me want to stop listening to albums, and start worshipping at the altar of the chorus.

87. The Rosebirds - Blue Bird

This song is all warm things: scarves, firesides, bare skin.

86. The Killers - Mr. Brightside

If you forget some of their other lyrical transgressions, and pretend you're a little tipsy, you'll remember what it was like when you first heard this song: all the insistence and forcefulness of the melody, the way it seemed kind of astonishing, in the original sense of the word.

85. Snowden - Anti-Anti

This song brings something else to the party. Fuzzy feelings, and a strong desire to shake it, but not quite... That riff!

84. Gemma Hayes - Back of My Hand

I don't know if anyone else feels the same way about this song, but to me it sounds absolutely like driving through little Irish country roads late at night, eyes out the window, headlights bouncing across ditches and fields, little gated-off boreens. Slowly, streetlights emerge, then footpaths, then people, and then you're there, you're in town, you're in the city.

83. Jens Lekman - The Opposite of Hallelujah

Ah, love. Come here and put down that knife. You don't mean it, I know. We'll be fine.

82. Explosions in the Sky - The Only Moment We Were Alone

With this song in the background, you can imagine things you'd never really think up otherwise. Being stuck in a bathysphere with someone after a nuclear attack, steadily sinking to the sea bed, living off supplies for weeks until the worst of the fallout passes, and eventually realising that you're both in love, bittersweet and heavy. These are the places your mind goes when you listen to music like this.

81. Weezer - Island in the Sun

Hey, hey. I hope you don't mind if I go ahead and label this as maybe the best and easiest blueprint for pop musicians to follow.

80. The War On Drugs - Taking the Farm

If you want a song that seems to plant the band in front of you, stuttering away, stammering out their notes, a song that grabs you and swings you around like a child, this is it. If you want a band that sound like your best friends almost immediately, that's The War on Drugs, and their album, Wagonwheel Blues, has been rushing through my head for some time now. It's full of songs like this that sound like you've been listening to them since you were little, that make you want to stamp and shout and dance and be an adult at the same time. It makes you want acting like a child to be taken seriously. It's a lot of fun.

79. Spokane - Proud Graduates

A long time ago I wrote about a song, and said life was made for two, a bed too big to keep warm by yourself. But this song, this one is what happens when it gets cold, and it's just some of the softest and saddest noise ever to be made with guitars, and violins, and two sets of throats with lumps in them, and everything is only barely touched and played and whispered for fear of disturbing the delicate loneliness that reigns over the whole thing, like a layer of dust.

78. Department of Eagles - No One Does It Like You

Like wandering through golden rooms, filled with wonder, amazed by every little beat your heart takes, every little glistening detail, everything hidden underground, like some rich dead maniac's tomb. This might be the best thing this band ever does, and I don't think anyone could be disappointed if it was.

77. Kocani Orkestar - Siki Siki Baba

The language barrier shouldn't be a real problem in music, but it often is. It takes a little effort to get through to the Other, especially when the music is almost as foreign as the lyrics - but this song is so undeniable that by the time it ends you'll be converted.

76. Passion Pit - Sleepyhead

Crash! Bang! This is ten minutes of fun packed into three.

75. JJ72 - Algeria

An Irish song, straightforward and powerful. There was a reason people expected great things from JJ72 - they could assemble perfect power pop songs packed with verve and feeling, and crown them with a chorus as frantic and glorious as the one here.

74. Modest Mouse - Float On

Overplayed, overrated, and ever so slightly unoriginal? Undoubtedly. But I bet you anything your head still bops when that dream drum beat kicks in, and I bet you still sing along at the end.

73. Animal Collective - My Girls

There is a moment here - 1.27 in - when the song starts up like someone has lit a fuse. After that it becomes something incredible, the sound of beautiful melodies battling in space, and even though that's paired with a simple declaration of a father's love for his family, it seems to fit perfectly. To the moon and back.

72. Mountain Goats - Get Lonely

How can a song that starts so easily, and with such a normal and familiar set of sounds, get so intensely sad? I feel bereaved just listening to it.

71. Thao Nguyen - Bag of Hammers

Well, this is a fine song. This is a song with guitars like scissors, drums like paper, and vocals like glue! Or like a big shiny cocktail with ice-cubes that you have to drink for a straw, and the ice is knocking of the glass in a weird rhythm while melting. And yes, the whole thing sounds a little drunk, but drunk with the weight of the world, and the joys of it, and possibly whiskey too.

70. Blur - Out of Time

I've never been a huge fan of Blur, but I do love how they manage to make a song so perfectly happy and sad at the same time. I can't imagine ever tiring of this one.

69. Laura Barrett - Robot Ponies

This is an amazing song - the lyrics depict a future Christmas, with bizarre gifts and creeping authoritarianism. The music adds to this, the eerie melodies, and the beautiful weightless sound of the kalimba (an African instrument like a xylophone played with the thumbs) producing a feeling akin to being locked out of your family home on Christmas Eve, and staring in the window. You'll love it.

68. Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out

I still remember the first time I heard this, on the radio, on the bus. I remember buying the album, bringing it home and playing it to an emptying bottle of whiskey, and I remember reaching over as soon as this track was over, and putting it on repeat, just to hear that tempo change again. And again.

67. The Cay - Don't Go Out Tonight

My heart breaks to this song, and I can't understand why. There's no big moment, no emotional finale, no lyrics of loss. There's just a steady expression of joy at the little things, the little things that love makes so important and worthy: I just want to sleep for a while / till the morning comes when we will rise. That's all, and that's enough.

66. Stars - Ageless Beauty

This is the kind of song that would never marry you, so you'd have to elope.

65. Swan Lake - All Fires

Even aside from the compelling instrumentation here, my adoration for this piece of music boils down to the lyrics, describing perfectly the tragedy of a flooded town:

One thousand people did what they could /
They found the steeple and tore up the wood

Five hundred pieces means five hundred float /
One thousand people means five hundred don't.

It's both astonishing and devastating in its subtlety.

64. Bell - Chunk

For solid weeks and weeks this song echoed around my head like a piano in a lonely locked room. It sounds and feels like looking out of a window over your cold city, and you can almost feel your fingers pressing the dark and white keys like they have some answer in them.
The main melody here, that's the great bit. It's got a countless number of emotions tied in there, like someone starting to cry, and it could be joy or happiness. The last note sticks out, a thorn on a rose, a hand waving goodbye from a train - the f against the E major. It works on you, and I don't know what it does to you, but it makes me feel like the oldest 24-year old in the world.

63. Sunset Rubdown - We Got Broken Eyes {demo}

This song isn't on any of Sunset Rubdown's albums. I had difficulty deciding between this and 'Stadiums and Shrines II', but this just took it in the end, by virtue of the tremendous push forward evident when those drums crash in, and the slight, and patient dismantling of the song at the end, while he's still singing it. It's worth hearing over and over and over.

62. Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows

This is the product of a hot night's drinking, of that much I'm sure - though I'm not sure what kind of boiled-in-the-sun, distilled-by-a-madman whiskey you'd have to fill yourself with to come up with something this violent and fun.

61. The Antlers - Two

If, like me, you've found yourself staring out your bedroom windows lately wondering how to make sense of such massive accumulations of snow, and such unrelenting cold, here's a song to help. This is what it would sound like if the snow talked back, and showed you all the fun to be had, finger-numbing cold or not. It's -17°C outside, but my friends tell me about the best hill for sledding, and where the best snow is to build big snowmen. That's what this song reminds me of: a little like if snow came with instructions for use. This is how music helps us make sense of new things that seem big and overbearing, snow, or love or other weird natural phenomena like that.

60. My Brightest Diamond - We Were Sparkling

It's the ice that sparkles here, holding the vocals tightly, misting around them as they breathe, cracking a little with the warm tears that flow at the song's end.

59. Fionn Regan - Hunter's Map

This song sounds like Ireland to me, but I don't know what it sounds like to the rest of you. It's pretty spot on, except there are no cities.

58. My Morning Jacket - Lowdown

I don't think I'd ever get away with using the word 'lovedog' to describe the object of my affection, but the rest of this song is something I can subscribe to. The way the mournful background vocals paint a blooming new night sky over the daylight, it's like the sun is setting with a broken heart, going to sleep alone.

57. Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes

Straight out of the wilderness, bounding into your front room, standing there beckoning you towards your own wild will - this is a song that means what it says, and what it says is this: if you feel like changing something, this right now is the moment.

56. Basement Jaxx - Romeo

You know when you've first been hit by the fireworks going off inside your chest for someone else, and you're walking home after the first night you both looked at each other like that, and there's a little festival going on inside you, with people dancing in the streets? Well, Basement Jaxx know exactly what that sounds like.

55. The Spinto Band - Oh Mandy

Well, no, I actually don't have any poetic reason for loving this song, but there's only so many times you can write about perfect pop, so instead I will direct you to 2.20 and let you describe it to yourself.

54. Son Lux - Break

Deep down, I always think of the start of this song as a car crash, violent, rough, oddly compelling. Then those amazing drums kick in, and the whole scene rewinds, until we're sitting with someone at the wheel of their car, wondering what will happen next, waiting noiselessly for the serenity to give way to chaos.

53. Bright Eyes - The First Day Of My Life

Listen to this, turning a globe in your ends, dotting the places you've been: I was born here, here and here.

52. Uzi + Ari - Don't Black Out

I've noticed I tend to be quite partial to anything that concerns itself thematically with the link between falling asleep and the cold. I'm not sure why, maybe some sort of Hibernian affinity for the idea of hibernation, or maybe because I'm lazy, or maybe because my family name actually means 'the sleepy'. Anyway, I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, and that kind of thing is exactly what Ben Shepard does here, and he does it brilliantly. This song sounds like it was dreamt up, written and recorded in the midnight hours before slumber overtakes us. It's like a bed I keep coming back to.

51. Feist - 1,2,3,4

One, two, three, and four, like my four children surrounding me, gazing with whatever smile it was that won me, their mother's smile, maybe, simple and homely, and mine.

50. Múm - Green Grass of Tunnel

I cannot listen to this song unless it's dark outside, unless I'm somewhere sleepy and warm, and I can properly appreciate the way the singer here, here voice sounds like a blanket.

49. Efterklang - Cutting Ice to Snow

This song tries so hard to be cold. Look at that title! Hear the piano being tapped at like water dripping from icicles. Still, the sun keeps everything bright, glazing off in the distance, melting snow, warming hearts.

48. The Knife - Heartbeats

This song speaks about one night, but it's the same one night that everyone finds themselves going out looking for, a night of closeness and shared breath and warmth and feeling that we want to seek out. This song gets it so right, it could almost be shorthand.

47. Arms - Shitty Little Disco

A song which seems, when you really turn your head and listen to it, to be put together like some kind of constellation, guitar lines and streaking synths laid out and drawn together against a sparse black background, soft and big and beautiful, and telling some simple story ...in which Todd goes out, gets moody, drunk and sick, but ends up with a girl whose name he kinda forgets. This is the kind of story that sounds much, much better in a song, and he knows it, so he gives the story guitars that are angry yet catchy, vocals that are gentle yet insistent, and a beat that just won't fucking quit.

46. Page France - Say Wolf in the Summertime

Happy but not naive. Poppy but not cliched. Bouncy but not silly. Brilliant!

45. Peter Broderick - Games Again

This is the closing song to one of my favourite records of this year. It takes a melody first played in the album's first moments, and wraps itself up in it, making it bigger and bolder. It's like putting your little imprint on an apartment you've found somewhere when you move in, when you push your furniture at angles to the wall, when you've filled the kitchen with your food, when you've put up your posters and left your books on desks, when you've slept in your new bed until it's no longer new - and then the day comes when you leave. You pack up these things in boxes, tight and full and pressed down, like the feeling you get when you hold back tears. You pick up your clothes, and use the key a final time, and you undo all the things you did with such simple joy. You shut the door a last time, temporarily homeless. You bid farewell to a place you made part of you.

44. The New Pornographers - Myriad Harbor

This song in particular is really something, just for the way that opening melody has the strange effect of both knocking you off your feet and raising you up. It's an incredible piece of songwriting, and as with most Bejar songs, there's nothing good enough I can say about it.

43. Outkast - Hey Ya!

Don't let the laughter here fool you - this song is beautifully put together, and it pulls you together when you need it, with a chorus like a surprise party.

42. Frog Eyes - Bushels

This song is a country all of its own. It must be, because it doesn't sound like anywhere where regular people would live.

41. Sigur Ros - #4 {Njósnavélin}

Like sailing tall ships made of snow invading the sun, to borrow a phrase.

It's time I bought you a suit

2010-03-25T20:20:00.005Z

Twin Sister - Lady Daydream (live)

I get up for work at ten minutes to six. Outside, the sun strains through what remains of the night, sleepy and hazy. It pushes on, dreamy and undecided, and slowly, as I move from one train to another, the cold morning becomes day, and I reach my desk.

Twin Sister - Milk & Honey (live)

On the way home, because I don't really get enough sleep, I've started finding it hard to stay awake on the train. I push through, trying to keep my eyes open, sleepy and hazy, dreamy and undecided. I often decide that I should go to sleep as soon as I get home, but it never happens.

This week, sitting on the train, I've been listening to a single Twin Sister radio session over and over. It's gorgeous, and perfect for that kind of sleepy setting. I'm of the opinion that this band has the potential to do amazing things, and I've yet to hear anything to convince me otherwise.

--

Unrelatedly, two things of importance:

One - if you're in Dublin, you might like to come see DM Stith, and
Two - We're nominated for 'Best Music Blog' at the Irish Blog Awards this weekend. Fun times ahead!

DM Stith in Dublin

2010-03-23T20:16:00.006Z

DM Stith - Braid of Voices

In our sitting-room, actually. It's going to be fun. It's going to be cosy, and intimate, and really, really good. There will be candles, looping, and beautiful music. There will be wine and beer, and good company. Also, there'll be free buttons.

How often do you get the opportunity to see one of the most original and talented musicians of his generation play to a few lucky people in a little house by the sea? Not often enough, we say. So we want you to come along.

If this sounds like the kind of night you don't want to miss (and if you're reading this blog, it almost certainly is) just email me with the words 'DM Stith' in the subject title, and I'll get back to you with details. The house is in Monkstown, a minute's walk from a Dart stop, and fifteen minutes away from the city centre.

It's going to be wonderful. See you there.

favourite songs of the decade

2010-03-22T23:38:00.007Z

This list was tough. I'm not even sure it's finished. There's more than a hundred songs on it, and I'm not sure I've written about some of them properly yet. Many of these songs mean a great deal to me, and I don't want to get it wrong when I try and figure out why.
The blog's fifth birthday seems like the right time to look back over the last ten years, from a numerically handy point of view. Also, it's kind of fun. It's going to take a couple of weeks, and many of you can probably guess the top five, but I hope you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed writing and rewriting it.

Before I start the whole thing proper, here's a song from the top twenty that seems appropriate:

Architecture in Helsinki - It's 5!

And thanks for your kind messages everyone.

happy birthday us!

2010-03-21T21:54:00.004Z

This blog is five years old today. That's kind of a long time. It went from being something I started as an excuse not to study (with a badly-chosen name, I might add) to the kind of thing I put on my CV. Along the way, I've been lucky, interviewing some of my favourite musicians, getting them to review things and write about music, selling clothes and badges, getting great guest articles, compiling those fun end of year lists, and just doing generally fun things. This weekend, I was nominated for Best Music Blog at IBA10, and that's pretty cool.
I feel pretty lucky that people read this blog, and keep coming back even when I don't find time for it. So thank you, dear readers. I hope you stick around, because I have no intention of quitting. In fact, I'm currently organising some of the most fun things I've ever done with this blog, and I can't wait to tell you about them. So stay tuned this week. And thanks for reading!

(look up at the sky)

2010-03-19T17:57:00.003Z

via

Arms - Heat & Hot Water

Sometimes, the experience of ending your working week feels a little weirder than normal. Fridays are like every other day, coffee breaks, emails and routine - but afternoon arrives, and all of a sudden you kind of fall out of it. Everyone else is laughing more than usual, and you're not sure what will happen - the night is beckoning you to come out and celebrate this temporary respite, a lull in the fighting, a ceasefire between you and work.
This song is a little like that. It starts out regular and conventional, and it's not that there's a key change, or some weird time signature surprise, but it's more like the chorus gets there, and you realise you've been waiting for it for the whole song. It's finely made, like all ARMS songs, and it's part of a free EP which is very worthy of your attention, a little step on from 2008's excellent debut album. It's worth celebrating.

filling up your heart

2010-03-17T20:52:00.005Z

Twin Sister - All Around And Away We Go

The demo for this has been floating around for a while, but it's astonishing how much of a progression the band has made with this song. It still sounds a little like wandering around a city while looking at the sky, but now that sky is full if images, of flickers of paper falling from above, not manna from heaven, but the revolution taking hold over skyscrapers. That kind of simple dream, the kind you trip into when you're tired, and then jerk awake from. That's the kind of dreamy that Twin Sister have put into this song.

This is the first single from their forthcoming EP, which is one of my most anticipated releases of the year. It will be a big deal, I tell you. They're also playing SXSW, should you be in the neighbourhood.

overground

2010-03-15T23:57:00.003Z

Beat Radio - Golden Age

Beat Radio are back, and this time they've picked the sunset out of the sky and strung it onto this song. Golden light spills across guitar frets and kick drums, and everything is all set to get together, like the sunset is going to lead to a brighter day, instead of a deep dark night. There's something fine and astonishing about this kind of songwriting, when the light hits it just right.

{More}

Efterklang and their mini tour documentary

2010-03-14T14:06:00.002Z

This is the kind of thing I want bands to do more often. It's a really simple idea - the same song recorded and performed in a few dozen different ways, spliced together to make a video that serves as a shot of life on the road. It shows fans that the band earnest though they are about their music, needn't always take themselves too seriously. And it's another reason to love Efterklang.

Efterklang - Modern Drift

Magic Chairs is out now, and it's great. Incidentally, for Dubliners, you can get Peter Broderick's beautiful album, Home, for less than a fiver in Tower Records. You might want to get on that.

dear readers...

2010-03-09T23:50:00.002Z

If you're going to watch any video before going to bed, make it this one. It's stunning.

Arcade Fire to headline Oxegen

2010-03-08T23:11:00.004Z

Arcade Fire- Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son (France Gall, live)

Arcade Fire have just been announced as the headliners for Oxegen 2010. I might go. Yes, I'd rather they played Electric Picnic, and I think it's distinctly possible they might confirm more dates, but either way, things are going to get a little exciting. Remember how much fun the run up to Neon Bible was? There is joy ahead.

i did not pull away

2010-03-05T20:35:00.006Z

Sharon van Etten - Much More Than That

I want a day at the beach with you. I want walking with drinks in our hands, and sleeves pulled up, and being stuck together at night when the power is out. I want to be with you when we've missed the last train, and we're left wandering around in the cold. I want the look on your face when we realise we've paid more than is sensible for the wine at dinner. And right now, I want to listen to this song with you, because I think it's just about perfect enough.

{Buy}

---

Meanwhile:
My review of the fine new Joanna Newsom record is up on State now. I'm happy with it. The National have announced details of their forthcoming album, High Violet. And should you not have been paying attention, you may not know that Arcade Fire are preparing to announce shows soon, including some secret "fun" shows that will be announced on the day. Prepare yourselves.

Cathy Davey and her new album

2010-03-04T00:33:00.004Z

Cathy Davey - Little Red (demo)

Any longtime reader will know that Cathy is just about my favourite Irish musician, and that her last record, Tales of Silversleeve, is one of my most-loved albums. It is with much rejoicing then, that I share with you the following news:

1 - The new album is to be titled The Nameless.
2 - It will be released on the second of May.
3 - There will be a single, 'Little Red' - this will be released on April 21st.

The album was recorded in Kildare, with Conor J O'Brien and others lending a hand. From what I've heard of it, it's truly beautiful. The demos that Cathy shared with us last year have flowered into something deep and sincere, and noticeably darker than Silversleeve, which had some dark moments of its own. There's some gorgeous string work courtesy of a guest quintet, and the album brings to mind a whole bunch of disparate influences, from the classical to modern songwriting, and oddly enough, France Gall's finest hour. That last one might be just me, though.

You can read an interview with Cathy here, and hear demos of some of the new material here.

New Villagers

2010-03-02T13:43:00.002Z

Another reminder why 2010 is set to be a very exciting year for music indeed: Conor O'Brien's outfit have a full-length coming up on Domino Records, and this is the lead single. It's quite jaunty, and as with all Villagers songs, has a melody that you'll be humming long after your first listen.
'Becoming a Jackal' will be released on 7" vinyl on April 17th. Villagers are playing SXSW and the UK this month, with Irish dates set to be announced.

for monday

2010-03-01T23:32:00.004Z

Tony Fahey - Brand Upon Brain

You might sing this song if you'd just moved into a house on a cliff, knowing that inevitably, it would one day fall into the sea. Or if you were involved in love with someone who couldn't stay. There's a kind of fatalism here, the kind of heavy resignation in which so many Irish towns are steeped, from the steady tidal pull of emigration that gets stronger as your children grow, or the small seaside towns where the sons disappear each day, coming back as little lights in the dark, or not coming back at all. You just have to live with it, and that's what people do.

Tony Fahey {email} is an Irish songwriter, currently recording material for a release.

Efterklang's 4AD Session

2010-02-27T14:21:00.003Z

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.

Efterklang - Modern Drift

They play Whelan's in Dublin on April 25th, and I can't wait to see them. You can buy Magic Chairs here.

it's the weekend

2010-02-26T18:04:00.004Z

Shout Out Louds - Fall Hard (Passion Pit remix)

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.}

darkness and forest

2010-02-25T20:23:00.002Z

Midlake - Young Bride

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}

not for men to know

2010-02-24T14:58:00.005Z

David Turpin - The Red Elk {feat. Cathy Davey}

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.

no matter what I do

2010-02-24T00:54:00.006Z

My Brightest Diamond - ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ {DM Stith}

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.

My Brightest Diamond - Something of an End

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.

My Brightest Diamond - To Pluto's Moon (Son Lux remix)

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.

the heart that you call home

2010-02-23T00:28:00.007Z

The Decemberists - Engine Driver

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.

{Buy}

moderation in all things

2010-02-19T13:18:00.003Z

Hunter-Gatherer - Nerve-Ending 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.

{Buy}

don't be afraid to waste it

2010-02-15T19:45:00.005Z

Ava Luna - Past The Barbary

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.

in our eyesight

2010-02-11T21:49:00.003Z

Peter Broderick - And It's Alright (Nils Frahm remix)

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...

2010-02-09T23:48:00.004Z

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.

Peter Broderick - Games Again

i've been running

2010-02-08T23:56:00.003Z

Arcade Fire - A Change is Gonna Come {Sam Cooke, live}

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.

a lot of effort went into this...

2010-02-06T13:42:00.003Z

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}

from the corner

2010-02-05T14:01:00.005Z

Ava Luna - Black Diamond I

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.

read at night

2010-02-03T18:36:00.006Z

Inlets - Bright Orange Air

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.

Inter Arbiter is out in April on TwoSyllable records.

later in the day

2010-02-03T01:06:00.003Z

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.

Benefits for Haiti

2010-02-02T23:42:00.004Z

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.

Hunter-Gatherer - Nerve-Ending Love

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 efforts made 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.

Villagers - Pieces

You can read more about the other side of the international reaction to the earthquake here.

St. Vincent covers The National

2010-01-31T14:25:00.003Z

I think I'd almost forgotten what an amazing song it is.

The National will release their new album in May, accompanied by dates in London, Paris and Berlin. You can read more here.