Stray Marvels: Joanna Newsom - "Only Skin"

I meant to do a write-up for this before it auto-posted but I forgot to.

Anyway.

This is a great song. In fact, few can match it in terms of scale and pure beauty. Bill Callahan (Smog) even does backups near the end, his voice providing a lovely contrast to Joanna's.

I just hope she doesn't let Andy Samberg guest on her next LP.

Here's the download link:

Joanna Newsom - "Only Skin"

Enjoy.

Let Me Count the Waves

We must not look for poetry in poems.

—Donald Revell

You must not skirt the issue wearing skirts.

You must not duck the bullet using ducks.

You must not face the music with your face.

Headbutting, don’t use your head. Or your butt.

You must not use a house to build a home,

and never look for poetry in poems.

In fact, inject giraffes into your poems.

Let loose the circus monkeys in their skirts.

Explain the nest of wood is not a home

at all, but a blind for shooting wild ducks.

Grab the shotgun by its metrical butt;

aim at your Muse’s quacking, Pringled face.

It’s good we’re talking like this, face to face.

There should be more headbutting over poems.

Citing an 80s brand has its cost but

honors the teenage me, always in skirts,

showing my sister how to Be the Duck

with a potato-chip beak. Take me home,

Mr. Revell. Or make yourself at home

in my postbellum, Reconstruction face—

my gray eyes, my rebel ears, all my ducks

in the row of a defeated mouth. Poems

were once civil. But war has torn my skirts

off at the first ruffle, baring my butt

or as termed in verse, my luminous butt.

Whitman once made a hospital his home.

Emily built a prison of her skirts.

Tigers roamed the sad veldt of Stevens’s face.

That was the old landscape. All the new poems

map the two dimensions of cartoon ducks.

We’re young and green. We’re braces of mallards,

not barrels of fish. Shoot if you must but

Donald, we’re with you. Trying to save poems,

we settle and frame their ramshackle homes.

What is form? Turning art to artifice,

trading pelts for a more durable skirt.

Even urban ducklings deserve a home.

Make way. In the modern: Make way, Buttface.

A poem is coming through, lifting her skirt.

- Sandra Beasley

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

Here's the tracklist:

01. A Bureaucratic Desire for Revenge, Part 1
02. Seven Angels
03. Crooked Axis for String Quartet
04. Raiford (Felon Wind)
05. A Plague of Angels
06. Coda Maestoso in F (Flat) Minor
07. Engine of Ruin
08. Hell's Winter

And here's the download link:

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

Enjoy (and share).

A Few Thoughts On The Upcoming Election

There is, by all accounts, something supremely strange happening in Canada. What a month ago seemed like a pointless election has blossomed into something else entirely: an unprecedented opportunity to radically and permanently change the political landscape of the country that we live in.

From all manner of unexpected places we are hearing news of unimaginable upsets, bizarre turnarounds and shocking defeats. The people who never lose ground are losing it. The people who never gain ground are gaining it. People are starting to get strung out on hope again. It's exciting, and a little weird.

The fact is: there is no longer a clear leader in this race. For the first time in my voting life, no one knows exactly what will happen.

All bets are off.

As young Canadians we have a profound opportunity to make a wide-reaching and lasting impact on the future of our country. If we can manage to shake off our apathy and conquer our indifference then there is simply no imagining the Canada we can build.

You and I. Right now.

Moments like this are exceedingly rare. It is up to us to seize them.

Stray Marvels: Bob Dylan - "Blind Willie McTell"

Blind Willie McTell died in 1959, just a few years before Bob Dylan became an international superstar. Decades later Dylan wrote "Blind Willie McTell", a brilliant tribute to his blues hero. Though the song was recorded during the 1983 sessions for his 22nd album, Infidels, Dylan, for reasons which remain utterly baffling, decided to omit the song from the final album. Thankfully the track was rescued from non-album purgatory and released in 1991 to instant critical acclaim. It exists now as a cherished b-side, arguably Dylan's best song of the 1980s (which isn't actually saying a whole lot). Dylan later went on to record several covers of McTell songs, such as "Delia" and "Broke Down Engine", for his two early 90s covers records, Good As I Been To You (amazing) and World Gone Wrong (equally, if not more, amazing).

Despite hearing this song (and the covers) when I was still a teenager, it wasn't until earlier this year that I finally decided to sit down and listen to some of McTell's original recordings.

More fool me, I assure you. Astonishing stuff.

Thanks, Bob.

Bob Dylan - "Blind Willie McTell"

Enjoy.

Imagining Defeat

She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.

I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.

A bus ticket in her hand.

Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.

I reached under the bed for my menthols
and she asked if I ever thought of cancer.

Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead
in the distance where it doesn't matter.

And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,
so far behind his wagon where it also doesn't matter

except as a memory of rest or water.

Though to believe any of that, I thought,
you have to accept the premise

that she woke me up at all.

- David Berman

Jesse 2 [April 2007]

When I posted Jesse 5 back in January, I went into (glorious) detail about why and how I make mix CDs, chronicling the process from the moment of inspiration (not wanting to pay for actual gifts) right on through to the finished mix. I also talked about the different ways I approach each mix depending on the personality and tastes of person I'm making it for (without forgetting to pepper in a little of my own idiosyncratic leanings, of course). In doing so, I also explained why every Jesse-mix contained exactly 22 tracks (and just how hard it is to cram that many songs on one 80-minute CD-R). Well, as it turns out, Jesse 2 actually contains only 21 tracks (!) which, you know, pretty much makes my whole struggle for mix-CD uniformity a moot issue.

Sigh. It was a noble ambition, nonetheless.

Regardless, Jesse 2 is an excellent mix. I know I say that about every mix I post but, well... why wouldn't I be biased? The thing I really love about making mixes for Jesse is that I get to throw unity completely out the window and just cram a wildly diverse roster of artists onto one track-list, creating some fun juxtapositions along the way. From electronica and punk rock to folk and hip hop, Jesse-mixes tend to have a little bit of everything that makes music great.

I know, I know. Lucky you.

Oh, and side-note: today is actually Jesse Leclerc's 27th birthday. Please wish him well. He especially loves it when people post sappy messages all over his facebook wall.

So get on that.

Here's the track-list:

01. Thom Yorke - "Black Swan"
02. Rancid - "Nihilism"
03. M.I.A. - "URAQT"
04. Bob Dylan - "Most of the Time"
05. Islands - "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby"
06. The Hold Steady - "Cattle and the Creeping Things"
07. Xiu Xiu - "Bishop, CA"
08. Neutral Milk Hotel - "The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1"
09. Mission of Burma - "Nancy Reagan's Head"
10. Sunset Rubdown - "Three Colours"
11. Clipse [ft. Pharell] - "Mr. Me Too"
12. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - "Toby, Take a Bow"
13. The Velvet Underground - "Venus in Furs"
14. Modest Mouse - "Custom Concern"
15. Fiona Apple - "Parting Gift"
16. TV on the Radio - "Staring at the Sun"
17. The Clash - "Lose This Skin"
18. Menomena - "Muscle n' Flo"
19. Califone - "A Chinese Actor"
20. Junior Boys - "So This is Goodbye"
21. M. Ward - "To Go Home"

And here's the download link:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D72IIC09

Enjoy (and share).