“LASTED”
[GO.]
Archive for December, 2010
25/11/10: Beach House
…finally, down near the Brighton seafront, and there I was, the lone coloured fellow in a crowd of pale, proudly unwashed hipsters. Despite the melanin gap, however, the outsider and the home crowd were waiting for the same thing: Beach House. The evening’s opening acts had got things going quite nicely. The combination of indoor heating and Lower Dens’ guitars provided much-needed warmth, on the first frosty day of this capricious British winter. The nameless Christian folk singer who preceded the Dens was less welcome, but he seemed to have a good time regardless. Back to Lower Dens, though – they’re good. I hadn’t heard of them before that night. Solid rhythm section, wonderfully-coordinated guitar and bass combos, and sparse, well-timed lyrics that serve more as another instrument than as separate from melody. All the acts that night came from Baltimore, MD, where this bit of magic is set. It must be something in the water. Or the crime.
The wait for Beach House was long. “It’s a friggin’ duo, how long could they take to get stoned and tune their instruments?” I muttered inaudibly to an under-aged stranger. My anticipation reached its peak, then nosedived into a pit of frustration, as I followed up my third Guinness with a tweet, snidely comparing Lower Dens to “a pauper’s Sonic Youth.” They deserve better than that. The lanky 40-something Yorkshireman spilled his drinkie. A typically obnoxious couple barged their way nearer to the front, earning the derision of everyone, and the retaliation of nobody. Another advantage of having a girlfriend, I thought. Another reason why escorts are so expensive (or so I’ve read).
And then they came on.
My pre-Teen Dream favourite, “Gila,” was first on the set list. The performance itself was immaculate, with the intimate Concorde2 venue lending prime acoustics to the airy gorgeousness issuing forth from our star duo.
Victoria Legrand – or to give her full name, French-Born Victoria Legrand – clearly has some prescient parents. She is indeed a great triumph. If you were to take her out, you wouldn’t order her food for her, would you? She knows what she wants. Her voice can get it, don’t you worry none. I’ve seen some sexy singing front-women in my time: Anaïs Mitchell, Alexis Krauss (of Sleigh Bells), Erika Forster (Au Revoir Simone… she blew me a kiss once!), Annie Clark (St. Vincent)… when she’s on that stage, Victoria beats them all. By a lot. When she’s not playing the organ, she moves her hands and body around a lot during the songs. It’s not really dancing, and it’s not got any functional purpose. But if you were performing those songs, you would move in that same way. The only thing, of course, is that it wouldn’t be sexy when you do it. That’s just how it goes.
Alex Scally’s backing vocals and guitar/keyboard work deserve great praise too, especially on the Teen Dream songs, which came across more rounded and complete even than they did on the album. In the best sense, Beach House’s songs make you want to sing along, even when you don’t know the words.
From the first wavering chords of “Gila” to the end of the encore’s “Take Care”, the risible crowd had faded into background nothingness, and it was Victoria, singing to me alone, my dream of the night before coming true. Well, apart from the chalet and the jacuzzi. Good things come to those who wait.
Beach House – I Do Not Care For The Winter Sun
Oh yeah, they also recorded a Christmas song.
I managed to write about Beach House without once mentioning the phrase ‘dream pop.’ It is actually possible, Pitchfork.
[Buy Teen Dream if you want to experience some sweet melodies this Christmas. Lower Dens’ Twin-Hand Movement is an underrated gem.]
The colour black means it’s time to die
Coming to Janelle Monáe with complete clarity, as if she were merely plucked from the very skies above us, it’s a troubling task to repress hearing in her music the trembling purity of the Mamas & The Papas, the grit-like foundation of anything and everything Alicia Keys may do right, the hopeful pacifism of a Sam Cooke, or the expressive bellowing of a younger Mariah Carey – when she had credibility, maybe.
This is an almost four-minute chest of strictly sumptuous music with soft delivery and exact production that exhales through to backing sounds for a walk-through memory, and a dazzling cloud of a synth oil spill – rapidly glittering and spitting tongue twisters.
And yet all the comparisons, for my incessant focus, are entirely unfair. This is not a compilation of tricks; it is entirely a sole offering. As long as she continues to flourish with her current collaborators – or those who will push her further, we’ll all hear the colour in the flowers. If the future of music were a lean neck then Janelle has hands of teeming veins wrapped and taking hold.
Oh, Maker is the perfect appetite creator – and the ArchAndroid, the album, is the filler. The answer. Furthermore, it’s to know that there’s more left in pop music. Just when we thought it was forever stuck in the cyclical, up sprouts an entire universe of extensions and flirtatious choice. “Perhaps what I mean to say is that it’s amazing that your love was mine.” [This is a cold war.]
I always feel like running. Not away, because there is no such place.
…running will be the way your life and mine will be described.
As in, the long run or
As in, having given someone a run for their money or
As in, running out of time.
When do we stop? When does it calm down? When do these hurried years slow down and wait for you to make up the distance and meet them by the fountain in the park? I don’t know. A childhood friend, Alistair, ran ran ran. I begged him to walk, pleaded that he breathe deeply, asked him to envision a snail in the downpour of a rattling thunderstorm and how slowly it slithers in the midst of chaos. I was young. I was wrong.
Who thinks these thoughts? Athletes in hundred meter sprints, muscles and ligaments sweating through their skin. Homo sapien housebodies quiet by the dining room fireplace, partners handing them mugs of decaf coffee to sip on while the room is bare; the air, silent.
When do you think these thoughts? In your waking moments, blurred-eyed and disinterested. In your sleeping moments, abruptly shaken from film noir night terrors. In the seconds you hesitate before saying, “I do.” In the seconds you contemplate before leaving the room. In your living room thumbing through chocolate biscuits, crumbs sticking to your skin, watching Swedish films with taglines like Att fly är livet, att dröja döden (To flee is life; to linger, death). In uncertainty. In every breath. [I’m new here.]
Gil Scott-Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
On June 18th, 2071, at 12:34am: televisions will turn off. Monochrome sets. Colour sets. High definition, three-dimensional sets. Television screens across the planet will hum, black out, leave a minuscule circle of despair in the center of the frame. People will stop, look at each other, pull their arms from the shoulders of those next to them. Feel uncomfortable. Scrape the musky bottoms of their brains for conversation, for something to say. The wires will fray and burn. Satellites will tumble quietly from the midnight sky. Some people will make salami and cheese sandwiches. Some will rifle through cupboards for one of few straggling paperbacks. Some will riot and revolt and kill. Some will stop, sigh, use their thumbs to pull down their eyelids, die. [What remains of all the pieces of a man.]
The cities we live in could be distant stars
When I graduated from college, my friend’s mother gave me a pen, 10 monogrammed cards, and the advice that a handwritten message was the most important form of communication. At the time, I nodded in that way you do when you’re 21 and too overwhelmed by the future to comprehend any significance in the moment. Now, however, I’m inclined to agree with her even though I posses the penmanship of a sugar-bombed toddler.
I suspect Win Butler would also nod, but in a genuine way. He overstates the case – “Now it seems strange / How we used to wait for letters to arrive / But what’s stronger still / is how something small could keep you alive” – but less so than you might think. Think of the emails you could whip off in the time it takes to relay a charming anecdote or express sincere appreciation, then to track down an envelope, a stamp, a physical address. Love in $.44.
This isn’t a rant against technology or the pace of life or alienation in the time of Wikileaks. Electronic communication works wonders; I’d rather run than walk; transparency is vital. But Arcade Fire wrote the best album everyone heard in 2010 (sorry, Kanye) because they set out to achieve simple goal. “2009 / 2010 / I want to make a record for how I felt then,” Butler sings on “Month of May.” They succeeded in taking What It Means To Be Alive Today and transferring that onto a record that’s desperately urgent.
“We Used To Wait” is a vital track in the persuasive appeal of the 16-song whole. But when taken in a vacuum, it’s much closer to timeless. It’s a letter that reaches you eventually, not a time-stamped packet of zeros and ones that demands an immediate response. Take a second, uncross your arms, and write back. [Happy Holidays!]
Breaking little boys’ hearts
David Bazan – Harmless Sparks/God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Daytrotter)
I remember my first joke in college. We were paired up, two by two, to help us find a friends among our fellow freshmen and to complete a scavenger hunt. I looked at my partner, some 25-year-old guido named Tony. “Oh man, I feel all nervous, like I’m on a blind date. Like gays must feel when they meet their new roommates.” I’m pretty sure crickets had invaded that hallway and chose exactly that moment to chirp. Tony coughed and looked out the window. I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. “Well, uh, shall we start?” I stuttered, looking at the list of shit we were looking for. Friendship wasn’t explicitly on the list, but I knew I’d failed to find that.
I remember my second joke in college. Navigating my tray down the cafeteria hallway, I reached the soft drink station. I overflowed the short cup with Sierra Mist bubbles and foam, the excess spilling down my wrist. Then, because half had poured out, I overflowed it again. I glanced over at the security guard watching me. “I got a scholarship for spilling Sierra Mist,” I deadpanned. He chuckled.
Beaming, I strolled into the dining hall. Looking over the full tables, I recognized no one. I sat down next to strangers who gave me a disgusted look and ignored me. My beef quesadilla tasted burnt and my drink flat.
Will you kindly kill that doll for me?
Party.
Opening as the provider of solace, Fiesta’s saxophone breathes grace into saluting lungs, and assists the ease of such with plumes of waltzing bass. It is a firm liar. An opening scene twist through restless guns.
Off they charge!
The song barks into the life of a virile orgy with fanciful instrumentation and bleating drives of drunken babble fodder – of times and moments had. “Come all you rambling boys of pleasure and ladies of easy leisure.” The swift strumming of guitar accompanies prancing accordion through an entire rush of musical ecstasy before coming to cartoon conclusion. “There is a minstrel! There! You see?” Fiesta is sheer electricity, without flinch and without apology. It leaves no time for thought or for the now; it is a call to reaction and the faster pulse. Pure pleasure. [Charge.]
Skin’s blistering; violent females
Violent Femmes – Blister In The Sun
“It’s heroin music,” Sara croons, linking her fingers with his, sidling up against him. “Heroin music?” he asks, eyebrows raised. “Were they on heroin when they released this?” She laughs. “No – well, I don’t think so. It’s just so addictive.” She kisses his cheek. “Let me go ooooon! / like I blister in the sun / let me go ooooon!” Tightening her grip on his fingers, whispering. “Big Hands, I know you’re the one.” [Cornucopia.]
** Wait, before you leave: Sara never sleeps with Big Hands.
(illustration by Kim Sielbeck)
News clippings from across America
Iron & Wine – Walking Far From Home
1. Utah – According to my sources (idle gossip from my friend Jon), Mormons have a practice called “floating.” Pre-married couples will strip, penetrate, but then just hold each other instead of using friction to induce orgasms. It’s how they avoid sex before marriage without avoiding sex before marriage. Allegedly, the couple then can discuss religion and their relationship, with the penis “floating” in the vaginal cavity. Back when I was a kid, when we wanted to skirt the line, we just blew each other.
2. Texas – In the Lone Star State, it is still legal to smoke in bars. After driving two days straight, my brother texted me the address of Page Pub and had me meet him there (he is the second one I’ve visited on this trip to direct me to a bar before his or her home). On the tables, turned upside down, sat little black ashtrays. My eyes lit up. I’m not much of a smoker – whenever I run out of (now-illegal) cloves, I generally go several months without before I find some more – but smoking in bars is nostalgic for me. When I was first starting, sneaking off to dive bars to escape the frigid Michigan cold and judgmental roommates, I would tap out my ash next to a glass of beer or onto the floor at shitty local-band concerts. My brother’s friend Richard handed me a Marlboro Red. I hate Reds and I hate most non-clove cigarettes, but this one tasted like the frozen air in Michigan, my visible breath and the smoke escaping my mouth in one dense plume.
3. Tennessee – People in Murfreesboro actually say “y’all.” I mean, you figure the stereotype is based in reality; you assume people in Canada might say “eh?” slightly more on average than Americans. But it’s still startling when the waitress has a thick Southern accent and sing-songs, “Y’all come back now” as you bluster out the door. The expression is so tied to insults about illiteracy and inbreeding that I guess I didn’t really believe people used it any more.
I don’t think I’ll come back after all.
[Buy the single.]