Video Void: Wolf Parade - "I'll Believe in Anything"

The first Wolf Parade album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, is a real wonder. It's one of those great rock albums that somehow manages to simultaneously sound both classic and forward-thinking. Along with "Shine a Light", "I'll Believe in Anything" is the album centerpiece. Spencer Krug is just a flat-out brilliant songwriter, and it's incredible that even here, on his first album, he's playing at the very top of his game. Most bands take a while to develop a sound and style of their own, but Krug and his cohorts set a high watermark with this release that they never quite managed to reach again.

I'm not really sure what, if anything, this video has to do with the song, but it's a lot of fun nonetheless. Despite seeming humorous at first, the clip ends on a melancholic note that, if not lyrically relevant, matches the longing mood of the song. I really love the cannon duel at the end, which reminds me a bit of Barry Lyndon (but with cannons instead of pistols, obviously). I'm not sure where it was filmed (nor can I seem to find it out via a brief internet search) but, well, it's all surprisingly legit-looking, which just makes the whole affair even more surreal.

Plus: cool wigs.

Here's hoping that their recently announced "indefinite hiatus" isn't actually code for "broken up" as many suspect.

Enjoy.

People Fall Off Buildings Presents: An Introduction to... Spoon

"I had a feeling from the start of it / You could let me go if you wanted to."

"Outside between the bands / Everything comes back out / It's hard to put down / What you can't hold back / And this is like being alive / It flows right out of your mouth.

"I'm just a user / I don't make any of this stuff."

"You'll know by the look on their faces / When they pass you / You've been dropped off on the Texas highway."

"Don't want to be your victim for life / Don't want your exclusive right / I just want you to change my life / Change my life."

"I go to sleep alone / But think that you're next to me."

"One day it'll take / And they'll start to make / Shirts that fit right / Til then I suppose / I still got Dad's clothes / And that's alright."

"We go through all the same lines / Or sell out to appease / But go to sleep in a bed of lies / I made my own more than once or twice."

"We got out in stormy weather / We rarely practice discern / We make love to some weird sin / We seek out the taciturn."

"Religion don't mean a thing / It's just another way to be right wing."

"We could go kick down some doors together / Stay out til morning / Sharp as knives / The new war will get you / Will not protect you / But I will be there with you when you turn out the light."

"Now all I need is a crew / One that can act as if / One that can slay on cue / And sneeze and sniff / Uh-huh, alright / I'm going back to the water / Been landlocked too long."

"When I turn my feelings on / I turn my feelings on inside / Feel like I'm gonna ignite / I saw them stars go off / I saw them stars go off at night / And they're looking alright."

"Clubs and sticks and bats and balls / For nuclear dicks with their dialect drawls / That come from a parking lot town / Where nothing’ll live in the sun."

"I had a nightmare / Nothing could be put back together."

"I wanna forget how convention fits / But can I get out from under it / Can I cut it out of me / It can’t all be wedding cake / It can’t all be boiled away / I try but I can’t let go of it / Can’t let go of it, nuh uh."

"All of the people you used to run into but never do now / They took off for the mystery zone."

"I know nothing was planned, you just can’t help yourself / Some people are so easily shuffled and dealt / If there was only one of us you truly felt / We’re getting your all and it feels real good / But only briefly like high school poppers would / Where you lose a bit of yourself."

Here's the track-list:

01. All the Negative Have Been Destroyed
02. Waiting for the Kid to Come Out
03. Car Radio
04. Advance Cassette
05. Change My Life
06. Everything Hits at Once
07. The Fitted Shirt
08. Anything You Want
09. The Way We Get By
10. Jonathon Fisk
11. Paper Tiger
12. The Beast and Dragon, Adored
13. I Turn My Camera On
14. Don't Make Me a Target
15. The Ghost of You Lingers
16. The Underdog
17. The Mystery Zone
18. Written in Reverse

And here's the download link:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=V0N5DE6C

Enjoy (and share).

All My Pretty Ones

Father, this year’s jinx rides us apart

where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;

a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,

leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber

you from the residence you could not afford:

a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,

twenty suits from Dunne’s, an English Ford,

the love and legal verbiage of another will,

boxes of pictures of people I do not know.

I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.

But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,

hold me. I stop here, where a small boy

waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come ...

for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy

or for this velvet lady who cannot smile.

Is this your father’s father, this commodore

in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile

has made it unimportant who you are looking for.

I’ll never know what these faces are all about.

I lock them into their book and throw them out.

This is the yellow scrapbook that you began

the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly

as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran

the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me

and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went

down and recent years where you went flush

on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant

to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush.

But before you had that second chance, I cried

on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died.

These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places.

Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now;

here, with the winner’s cup at the speedboat races,

here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow,

here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes,

running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen;

here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize;

and here, standing like a duke among groups of men.

Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,

my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.

I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept

for three years, telling all she does not say

of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,

she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day

with your blood, will I drink down your glass

of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years

goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.

Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.

Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,

bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.

- Anne Sexton

Margaret [Early 2007]

My friend Margaret isn't really that into pop music. She's a composer, so she's more into compositions and string quartets and atonality and other weird things like that. You know, highbrow stuff. I seem to recall her thinking that James' Best Songs of 2007 was a good workout mix but, generally speaking, we're both into fairly different music. She can write a mean string arrangement, though, which might come in handy (for me) somewhere down the line. And, even though she's friendly and nice, she writes some scary-sounding stuff, which also works out well for me, given my recent fondness for minor-keys and drone notes.

This is mix I made for her a few years ago---I'm guessing around early 2007, but I can't really remember. Margaret makes me mixes sometimes too. Mostly experimental compositions, sound collages, bird noises, treated instruments. Stuff like that. I actually hope to post one or two of them in the future (with her as-of-yet unreceived permission, of course). I think it's a good idea for artists to step away from what they know and explore other, less-familiar styles and ideas. I imagine Margaret feels the same way, at least to some extent. I doubt either of us will be switching teams anytime soon, though.

Rock and roll forever.

Here's the tracklist:

01. TV on the Radio - "Tonight"
02. Modest Mouse - "Lives"
03. Bright Eyes - "Hot Knives"
04. Liars - "Drum Gets a Glimpse"
05. Bloc Party - "Compliments"
06. Deerhoof - "Matchbook Seeks Maniac"
07. Spoon - "Chicago at Night"
08. Bjork - "Alarm Call"
09. Herman Dune - "My Friends Kill My Folks"
10. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - "Roberta C"
11. David Bowie - "Everyone Says 'Hi'"
12. Thom Yorke - "Harrowdown Hill"
13. Broken Social Scene - "I'm Still Your Fag"
14. Xiu Xiu - "Ceremony"
15. Pink Floyd - "Brain Damage"
16. Frog Eyes - "Bushels"
17. Rock Plaza Central - "We've Got a Lot to Be Glad For"

And here's the download link:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P35LSHR2

Enjoy (and share).

Stray Marvels: Operation Ivy - "Missionary"

Back in September, I went to a wedding in Timmins (hometown of country-pop superstar Shania Twain) with my girlfriend and her parents. I hadn't met any of this side of the family before (including the soon-to-be married couple) but all were very pleasant and welcoming. To make a long story short: the service went well, the food was good, and before I knew it we were back in the car for our 9-hour return trip to Toronto.

Fast forward to a week or two ago when we received a letter informing us that the recently married couple was intending to sell off all their possessions, leave their comforts and dedicate their lives to spreading the word of God in Mali (an African country where the population is already 90% Muslim). The letter ends by asking for donations to help support the trek.

When I heard the news this song immediately popped into my head. It sort of sums up my problems with missionary work more eloquently than I ever could.

Operation Ivy - "Missionary"

Enjoy.

Video Void: Portishead - "Only You" [Dir. Chris Cunningham]

If I were to make a list of the music video directors I would most like to work with, Chris Cunningham would definitely rank highly. Granted, his style probably wouldn't mesh too well with my more upbeat, lyric-heavy alt-country-folk-rock band, but I know for certain he would be a good match for my other, darker pursuits.

Ah, the dreams we dream...

Cunningham has made some great videos over the years. In fact, this probably isn't even my favourite clip of his. Which isn't to say that I don't think it's stunning, I do, only that he has several videos of equal or greater genius. Still, the underwater effect employed here is such an incredible idea, and really compliments the haunted nature of Portishead's sound. Apparently he had Beth Gibbons sing the song in a water tank, slowed the whole thing down, and then digitally inserted the shots into a darkened alley, adding a surreal and sinister overtone to an already suffocating clip.

Plus: creepy dancing boy.

Enjoy.

People Fall Off Buildings Presents: An Introduction to... Smog

"Anyone who's ever had a hole in the heart / Knows how hard it is to start a new day."

"Well, you're a wild horse / On a collision course / With the sun."

"I'll never be a Bowie / I'll never be an Eno / I'll only ever be a Gary Numan / I'll never be a rock and roll saint."

"When I was seven / My father said to me / 'But you can't swim' / And I've never dreamed of the sea again."

"Prince alone in the studio / It's three a.m. / Prince hasn't eaten in eighteen hours / Dinner's burned on the stove / But Prince / He doesn't even know."

"Well I rode out to the ocean / And the water looked like tarnished gold / I rode out on a broken horse / Who told me she'd never felt so old."

"All your bridges and bras / Your cotton / And gauze / All your buckles and straps / Releases and traps / All your screws / And false nails / Oriental winks / And Egyptian veils."

"What cries home / Where cries from / A blood red bird lies in the woods / Weeping into dead leaves / With wing torn and jutting bone."

"Jean jacket and tie / Feel like such a lie / When I go to your house / I feel like I'm / Casing the joint / In the grocery store / In line behind a mother and a child / I'm going to take take that child."

"I lay back in the tall grass / And let the ants cover me / I let the jets fly / Not wishing for their destruction / Born to black in a perfect blue sky."

"And I swore I'd never lay like a log / Bark like a dog / I was a teenage smog / Sewn to the sky."

"I was raised in a pit of snakes / Blink your eyes / I was raised on cake / I couldn't memorize a century of slang / Or learn to tell the same story again and again and again."

"I route for the underdog / No matter who they are / Like the bank-robber / In the getaway car."

"And when winter comes / We'll borrow some / From the nearest washing line / And when summer comes / It's almost impossible / Not to have a good time."

"Oh god, can you feel the sun on your back? / Oh god, can you see your shadow, inky black / On the sand? / Oh god, can you hear the saltwater drying on your skin? / Oh god, can you feel my heart beating in my tongue?"

"We are far from flowers / Cut and dried / So let us thrive, let us thrive / Let us thrive, let us thrive / Just like the weeds / We curse sometimes."

"I saw a gold ring / At the bottom of the river / Glinting at my foolish heart / So my foolish heart / Had to go diving / Diving, diving, diving / Into the murk."

Here's the track-list:

01. Hole in the Heart
02. Chosen One
03. A Hit
04. Bathysphere
05. Prince Alone in the Studio
06. I Break Horses
07. All Your Women Things
08. Blood Red Bird
09. Ex-Con
10. Held
11. Teenage Spaceship
12. Hit the Ground Running
13. Justice Aversion
14. The Hard Road
15. Permanent Smile
16. Our Anniversary
17. Rock Bottom Riser

And here's the download link:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VJQKZ1CJ

Enjoy (and share).