music and notes : : notes and music

Dear Patty,

It's been years, I know.

I'd kind of forgotten about you for a while there, which seems almost inconceivable to me now, but it's been an eventful few years since we last hung out. I'll tell you about it over beers sometime.

Anyway. It's weird how I love you so much, when most country music brings me out in hives. I can't really explain why this is. I can't really explain anything when it comes to music, so it's confusing how I keep trying, but there we go.

The thing is.

We don't hang out that often. And, you know, I realise I neglect you a little bit, and for that I'm truly sorry. Because you're always there for me when it really counts.

When that perfect storm of sadness breaks over me, which it's apt to do from time to time, you're there. We hunker down on my shitty little craft made of twigs out there in the 50 foot waves and the howling winds, and we ride it out together. And then, when it's over and I'm cast, prone and exhausted and completely hollowed out, you make it all okay.

So, really, I just wanted to tell you: thanks. And I probably don't say it enough, but I think you're amazing, and I hope we see more of each other from now on.

x Kirsten




[Patty Griffin - MySpace]

Labels: Alternative, Country, Indie

This song has been haunting me for days.

Delicate and ephemeral, it moved in one night, and took up residence as a ghost in my head.

Now snatches of it will float up from the murky dross of my conscious mind to confuse and beguile me. I'll stop, look up, lose track of what I'm doing while I try to follow it home and find out what it wants.

Who are you, I ask? What do you want?

I never really get a straight answer.

It's like that dream you wake up from and can't remember, but the mood of it stays with you all day? It's like that.



[WarpainT - MySpace]

Labels: Folk, Indie, Pop

Today is all about harmony.

The two songs I'm about to play you are, on the face of it, very different.

They have one important thing in common, however: splendiferous, heavenly melodies.

So, put on your headphones, close your eyes, and prepare to be transported.

Here's "Buildings and Mountains" from The Republic Tigers and "Estupendo" from Arsenal:



[Arsenal - MySpace] [Arsenal - official website] [The Republic Tigers - MySpace]

Labels: Alternative, Arsenal, Electronica, Indie, Pop, The Republic Tigers

I must confess that up until now the career of Lily Allen has barely caused a blip on my musical radar.

I mean, I should preface that by saying that I do live under a rock when it comes to most major pop stars these days. I had heard word of Allen, yes -- but had pretty much written her off as a fake and a media whore.

Then I heard a snippet of her tune "The Fear" on the UK show Skins. Actually, I didn't even know it was her at the time, I just heard: "...I'm packing plastic, and that's what makes my life so fucking fantastic".

Intrigued, and with absolutely no idea who it was, I plugged the lyric into Google, and hey presto: Lily Allen.

Then, of course, I had to swing over to YouTube to have a listen to the track, and now I think I may have played it, hmmm, I don't know, maybe around 500 times? Today.

I f**king love this song.

It's the way she skewers our celebrity-obsessed culture in rhyming couplets (and a Brit accent), over a beat so goddamn bouncy and catchy you're hooked faster than someone can say crack.

It's a clever song -- funny, ironic, and bang on.

Guess it's fair to say my estimation of Allen has changed somewhat? Guess so.

Here she is then, with "The Fear":




[Lily Allen - MySpace] [Artist website]

Labels: Brit-pop, Lily Allen, The Fear

I fell madly in love with Anika Moa's latest album during the two weeks I spent back home recently.

It's a gorgeous, summery treat: a perfect accompaniment to a lovely (but oh so brief!) holiday with family and friends.

You know when you have the stereo on in the background, though, and you really only give half an ear to the music? It wasn't till I got home (having been gifted the CD by my brother's boyfriend -- such a nice man) that I took a closer listen to the album. And I am now, well and truly, without a doubt, under its spell.

The disc in its entirety is a beautiful thing.

But the last third of the album? That's really something else.

You know when you hear a song and it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Sends a frission right the way up your spine, and then down again?

The two songs that I'm about to play do exactly that to me. I am quite honestly -- and quite thoroughly -- floored by these songs.

Here then, and without further ado, are "Standing in this fire" and "Thinking about tomorrow":




[Anika Moa - MySpace] [Buy Anika Moa's music at Smoke CDs]

Labels: Anika Moa, Folk, NZ, Pop

Another day, another new year.

Another one? So fast? I swear, every year I sound more and more like my aged grandparents. (Before they shuffled off this mortal coil. Bless 'em).

Another new year, and some of you, my digital friends, are in a state of flux, what with moves to London, and to slow blogging, (which I wholeheartedly applaud. And intend to emulate. The slow blogging, that is, not the move to London. Although I wholeheartedly approve of the move to London, too.)

Others are jumping back into the fray, some are joining it anew, while others are blissfully and happily living their lives totally outside the interwebs bubble.

To all of you, I raise a glass: À votre santé!

And from the depths of this particularly (it seems to me) brutally cold, dark winter, I have a couple of musical delights to tickle your new year fancy. Or fancy your new year tickle, as they say.

I'll start by mentioning New Zealand's own Ladyhawke, who I've written about already, but who deserves -- and shall receive -- another post all of her own. (Up soon!)

The band I want to talk about today, though, is the Autumn Film.

Here's how the Onion describes them:

"Like a post-collegiate Fiona Apple jamming with Snow Patrol, The Autumn Film serves up a piano-drenched sincerity topped off with a voice that’s wise and heartbroken beyond its years."

Which pretty much sums up their sound nicely.

What I love most about the Autumn Film, though, is that they're into connecting with their fans directly.

Part of a project started by these very smarts folks, the Autumn Film are making their music available free to download, because "free is the new radio".

In other words, they're wanting to get their music heard, and making it easy for fans to get excited about their music and come to their gigs and get other people excited about the band too.

It's working for me so far.

I would love to know if it's working out for them commercially. I certainly hope so. I think it's a smart, creative move, and as a fan, it's pushing all the right buttons.

So here we go, here's "Sunstruck". Make sure to go check out the rest of their stuff.

And tell your friends.

The Autumn Film - Sunstruck:




[The Autumn Film - Band website] [Backstage]

Labels: Autumn Film, Indie, Pop

Montreal seems to have more than its fair share of angel-voiced men making dreamy, melodic indie pop (Patrick Watson, Alexandre Desilets, and Karkwa to name but a few).

You can go ahead and add Éléphantine to that list.

Like the aforementioned bands, Éléphantine are literate and assured, creating atmospheric, textured and emotionally intense songs.

So far they've put out just one EP, entitled Sous le règne des lampadaires. It's a slow burner, full of yearning and beautifully layered melodies.

If this is the entrée, I'm more than ready for the main! Luckily, the band are slated to release a full length album in the winter of 2009.

Here's a taste for now, then:

Éléphantine - "Un attente d'un moment présent"


[Éléphantine - MySpace] [Buy Éléphantine's music - Blue Tracks]

Labels: Alternative, Elephantine, Indie, Pop, Quebecois

(Clockwise from top left:) Sebastien Grainger, Tegan and Sara, Starfucker, Vive La Fête


When the whole world has turned into one giant, dirty, brown slushy what better way to kick off the week than with a playlist of guilty favourites?

Here they are, then, some old, some new, some borrowed, some blue:

---

Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains - "Ways to come home"

Sebastien Grainger was one half of the now disbanded Death From Above 1979. He's since struck out on his own and tours under the moniker Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains. I love the driving rhythm and the melodramatic vocals on this track, which comes from American Names EP. The song reminds me very much of Broken Social Scene, so now I think of it as having a quintessential Canadian sound. Which is rubbish, of course, because there is no "quintessential Canadian sound", but there you go.

---

Tegan and Sara - "You wouldn't like me"

More catchy than herpes (okay, yes, that's gross. So let's just say: very, very catchy). Listen to this a couple of times, crank it up, and then try and resist singing along loudly (while playing air guitar). I think it may actually be humanly impossible to hear this and not want to sing along. Go on, then, try it. I dare you.

---

Starfucker - "Rawnald Gregory Erikson The Second"

This song makes me very happy.

That is all.

---

Vive La Fête - "Noir Désir"

The chronicle of a messed up, twisted love affair from Belgian couple Danny Mommens and Els Pynoo, otherwise known as Vive La Fête.

Messy. Neurotic. Twisted.

Play it loud.

---

[Sebastien Granger and the Mountains - MySpace] [Tegan and Sara - MySpace] [Starfucker - MySpace] [Vive La Fête - MySpace]

Labels: Electronica, Indie, Pop, Sebastien Granger, Starfucker, Tegan and Sara, Vive La Fete

Photo by Jodi Corbett


It's been snowing here for over 12 hours straight now.

A trip from downtown to home, which ordinarily takes around 20 minutes in the car, took us nearly two hours tonight.

It's beautiful out there, though. Quiet. Big, soft flakes suspended in yellow haloes around the street lights.

Here's a song, then, for watching the snow fall. Preferably from some place warm and snug.





[Silence - Jamendo]

Labels: Ambient, Electronica, Instrumental, Silence

I saw the new James Bond movie this weekend. And I can quite honestly say I don't remember a single thing about it.

Oh -- other than the theme music, that is.

Now, I don't usually make a habit of caring about the theme music for the latest James Bond flick.

But "Another Way to Die" had me at the get go.

From the very first opening bars I was prompted to sit up a little straighter in my seat. "Who’s this?" I thought. And, "What’s going on here?" The song has the requisite Bond sound: orchestral and menacing. But suddenly, right before your very ears, it's tackled head-on and wrestled to the ground by towering White Stripes power chords, all the while being wooed and severely compromised (but in the most delightful way) by hip hop vocal stylings.

It's all wrong. But somehow, so right -- a monstrous slab of genre-busting awesomeness.

Too bad the movie itself couldn't live up to that heady opening.

And it is a shame, because I loved Casino Royale (not having been much of a Bond fan before that). Daniel Craig is a very physical actor. Or, to put it another way: he is intensely physically present as an actor. He lends his Bond an explosive, feral quality that is really quite -- how shall I say? -- beguiling.

This latest Bond vehicle unfortunately manages to entirely squander his brilliance. The film has been edited to within an inch of its life, leaving us stranded in a morass of confusingly murky, choppy fight scenes, car chases and explosions. And, just to add insult to injury, there is nary an emotional payoff -- nor flashy gadget -- in sight. Quelle horreur.





[James Bond - Quantum of Solace official website] [Jack White and Alicia Keys - MySpace Video]

Labels: Alicia Keys, Jack White, James Bond, Quantum of Solace, Video

The Jezabels don't actually write their name with an exclamation point, but that's how I say their name in my head every time I think about them, because every I think about them, I get excited. The Jezabels!

Their music has that effect on me.

Hailing from down under (not the down under I'm from, but the other one -- I don't hold that against them, though), the Jezabels started out when band members Heather, Hayley, Nik and Sam met at Sydney University.

As far as I can make out, the band is not signed to a label yet. But it can't be that far away, though, surely? Since they are, quite simply and as Sia would say, magicpants.

I love the messy chaos of their music. In an odd way, they remind me of Sleater Kinney or Montreal's Land of Talk. At first it's like just so much noise (maybe even a little off-key?) but soon their songs needle their way under your skin like a tick, until you're destabilized and feverish with the need to listen to them over and over again.

There are all these separate elements in their music that shouldn't work, but do. There'll be a discordant piano refrain or a meandering baseline that you feel certain will tip the song over into irritating, empty noise doodling. But somehow all the parts coalesce into something not only cohesive, but packing a hefty emotional punch.

I don't know how they do this. But I like it. Very much.





[Jezabels - MySpace]

Labels: Indie, Jezabels, Rock

Beautiful tortured man, bold of gesture and blessed with an absurd amount of talent, who can resist Rufus Wainwright?

Because, let's face it, who else can get away with lyrics such as these:

I have suffered shipwreck against your dark brown eyes/I have run aground against your broken down smiles/Believe me when I tell you I have no place left to roam/But to go where the wild flowers grow and the stone gardens bloom....

And make us think, not of some lonely teenager writing bad poetry in his small cramped room smelling of smeg and socks (good lord, did I just write that?), but of Yeats or Shelley. It's not the overblown lyricism so much, as the yearning, weary, melancholy way he sings the words.

The group Supermayer have taken Wainwright's song "Tiegarten" (about his then boyfriend, and named for the public park in Berlin) and given us something shining and new. It's still quintessentially Rufus, with his magnificent theatricality intact, but they've transformed his original song into a glittering, forlornly hypnotic ode to love.

I first came across this version of the song thanks to the folks at Good weather for airstrikes. That blog is now defunct because they've decided to start a record label. Oh, reckless optimism. It's a wonderful thing.

So here's Rufus through the lens of Supermayer:





You can hear the original here.

Labels: Electronica, Remix, Rufus Wainwright, Supermayer

Here in these parts, things have taken a sharp turn for the froide.

L'hiver is breathing icily down our necks, but I have a trick to keep away those winter blues.

It's called Alfa Rococo.

Alfa Rococo have been making all kinds of waves here in Québec -- winning awards and generally charming the socks off folks left, right and centre.

They specialize in inordinately catchy, absurdly enjoyable pop confectionery.

So here's a taste -- I swear it'll make you long for the beach, flip flops and a cool beer on a hot summer day...





[Alfa Rococo - MySpace] [Alfa Rococo website]

Labels: Alfa Rococo, Pop, Quebecois

Take flight through Montreal as a papillon...

A stunningly beautiful song, and equally mesmerizing video, from über talented Montrealer Alexandre Désilets:

You can see the 'making of' here. Well worth checking out. Love all the little Montreal details.

[Alexandre Désilets - MySpace]

Labels: Alexandre Désilets, Electronica, Pop, Quebecois

Autumn in Montreal is hallucinatory.

Colours burst and flare: all savage reds and giddy, velvet golds. Achingly blue skies pitch overhead; leaves tip and wheel drunkenly to the ground.

The air is so crisp it hollows out a permanent cavity in your diaphragm. You breathe in and breathe in, but it never feels quite enough and the world spins in glorious, dizzying colour around you, causing a vertiginous elation and a corresponding unspeakable desolation.

Which leads me to Philip Glass.

Philip Glass is autumn in Montreal. Or, at least, his piano solos are...

The most melancholy, sublime, perfect accompaniment to la saison d'automn.




[Philip Glass - Website]

Labels: Autumn, Philip Glass, Piano

You know that whole trend of modern bands mining past decades for their sound (and sometimes even their dress sense) and, as a byproduct, milking the nostalgia factor for all it's worth?

I'm down with that. I am. Milk away, I say.

It's working for me.

Even by saying, "I'm down with that," I'm probably marking myself as aged and decrepit (I'm over 30 for god's sake: utterly irrelevant), but whatever. Holler at your ... girl. And all that.

Because it seems like grunge is working its way back around again, and I'm all for it.

Here is where I need to segue seamlessly into the fact that Noir Désir are one of my all time favourite bands, even though I came to them a decade late, never saw a video until today (thanks YouTube), didn't understand their lyrics at first, and only heard of the tragic story concerning lead singer Bertrand Cantat and his then girlfriend Marie Trintignant fairly recently.

Noir Désir were huge in France in the 90s, but like I said, I caught up with them a decade late.

I guess you could characterise their sound as garage rock (with elements of grunge, or alternative rock), but their oeuvre has a passion, social awareness and immediacy that is rarely as present in the music of their stateside counterparts. (Think: Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, et al. When I revisit their albums now, they still pack a visceral punch, but their incessant self-absorption sets my teeth on edge.)

In another stunning segue (or, if you prefer: non sequitur), this is where Zero come in.

Zero are -- according to their MySpace bio -- a Franco-German rock band, formed in Berlin back in 2001.

They have one demo EP, are now based in Paris and played their first live show in April 2008.

They're very green, and relatively unknown, but on the strength of their single "Les Suicidés", alone, I think they are more than worthy of donning the mantle of Lords (and Lady) of rock français, the coveted spot once occupied by Noir Désir.

Zero are picking up that mantle and running with it, like delirious, naughty children.

There are shades of a harder-edged, darker Karwka in their sound. And a definite whiff of Cobain, too.

Are they a decade too late?

Needless to say, I don't think so.

But then again, what do I know? I'm aged and decrepit.




You can download their tunes over at Jamendo. So get on over and check it out.

[Zero - MySpace] [Zero - Jamendo]

Labels: Alternative, French, Grunge, Noir Desir, Rock, Zero

It's a funny thing.

If you've ever had anyone close to you die, you may have noticed that in the first year or two after their death it's the anniversaries that can really lay you low. (Their birthday, your birthday, etc.)

But after a few years, (at least, this is what I've found) anniversaries no longer hold quite the same sway over you -- their meaning or significance has ... perhaps faded ever so slightly with time? Your feelings haven't faded, it's just that they'll overtake you at seemingly quite random, surprising moments.

Sometimes there might be a trigger. Like an old song buried deep in a now rarely used playlist.

I have this one song -- it's a very personal, very old favourite. I don't know if anybody else in the whole wide world knows this song, except the extraordinary being who created it, (and perhaps a few of her especially intense fans.)

I've always found this song exquisitely sad. And profoundly hopeful. And very, very, beautiful. (A bit like grief, I suppose: Sorrow and hope (and beauty) intricately intertwined.)

Here we are, then, (and thank you Ms. Hersh):

Labels: Alternative, Indie, Kristin Hersh

F*cking awesome.

That is all.




[Amanda Palmer - MySpace] [Dresden Dolls - MySpace] [Who Killed Amanda Palmer - Amazon]

Labels: Amanda Palmer, Experimental, Indie, Rock

Hailing from Paris, France, Etyl is (to all intents and purposes) chanteuse Eglantine Hermand.

Hermand has two albums under her belt so far -- La Tortue from 2005 and Les Souris, which was released in March of this year. (And which, unfortunately, stinky old iTunes Canada does not carry.)

Ranging in influence from pop, to electronic, to jazz, Ms. Hermand has a thoroughly distinctive voice and style and I, for one, am hooked.

I guess maybe I'll have to go hunt for her album the old fashioned way? Like in a store? Where they sell you a little box with a shiny disc inside? Crikey...

You can always go and check out her MySpace page, and I would, if I were you. It's well worth it.

Meantime, here's "J'me Fais Mal" from Les Souris:

[Etyl - MySpace]

Labels: French, Indie, Pop, Video

Midnight Juggernauts started out as a couple of blokes from Melbourne, Australia.

They first made a blip on my musical radar with their awestastic remix of Dragonette's "I get around".

Then they went and put out a gleefully bombastic blast of awesomeness called Dystopia. And now they tour with the likes of Justice, Crystal Castles, Klaxons, Holy Fuck, etc, etc.

Anyway.

They have that dirty, woozy, spiraling sound* that always makes me feel slightly drunk and stupidly ecstatic. (Or ecstatically stupid?)

Either way, it's good times. Here's "Tombstone" (the Popular Computer Remix):





*First honed to perfection by Vitalic (<-- And you follow that link at your own peril. You have been warned.)

[Midnight Juggernauts - MySpace] [Band website]

Labels: Club, Electronica, Indie, Psychedelic