Grace Note

When life becomes less about logistics and figures and checkboxes, then our eyes are light, our hearts tickle, and our day becomes a vision of the beauty that surrounds us, and indeed that is within us, and indeed the music of all that we are a part of, and indeed playing.

"Grace Note" by W. S. Merwin

It is at last any morning

not answering to a name

I wake before there is light

hearing once more that same

music without repetition

or beginning playing

away into itself

in silence like a wave

a unison in its own

key that I seem

to have heard before I

was listening but by the time

I hear it now it is gone

as when on a morning

alive with sunlight

almost at the year's end

a feathered breath a bird

flies in at the open window

then vanishes leaving me

believing what I do not see

Record Club

Beck, the living legend, has an amazing little thing going on called "Record Club", which his website describes as "an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. The songs are rough renditions, often first takes that document what happened over the course of a day as opposed to a polished rendering. There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens."

The album which is the object of the latest installment is Skip Spence's "Oar". We've got a team of Beck (of course), Wilco, Feist, Jamie Liddell, and others lending a hand. (Sweet!!)

Favorite Songs of 2009

January is always a weird month in music. The shadows of the past year still hang heavy, and no great bands want to release an album the first month out of the gate (unless you're Animal Collective, then you can pretty much do whatever you want). A little late for a year end list? Perhaps, but it's never too late for great music.

Grizzly Bear: Two Weeks
Dirty Projectors: Stillness Is The Move
Animal Collective: Bluish
Monsters of Folk: Temazcal
Cass McCombs: Executioner's Song
Phoenix: 1901
Bill Callahan: Too Many Birds
Sufjan Stevens: You Are The Blood
Bon Iver: Beach Baby
Yeah Yeah Yeah's: Dull Life
The Decemberists: Sleepless
The Big Pink: Velvet
Dirty Projectors & David Byrne: Knotty Pine
Tiny Vipers: Dreamer
Matt & Kim: Daylight
Throw Me The Statue: The Outer Folds

In The New Year

Proof of Love

I expected that Christy would have posted this long ago, but she hasn't...so I will do it for her. A few months ago Milo spit up on Christy's pants. It was clearly some sort of theophany, like the virgin appearing in the browned face of an unbuttered toast. Doesn't it just melt your heart?

The Best Button

Someday I hope to write beautifully, like Ada Limón does here in The Best Button.

Now, off to listen to some Van Morrison.

Colouring of Pigeons

Could it be possible that the best song of the year has already dropped? Check out the eleven minute monument...

The Knife: Colouring of Pigeons (streaming live from their website)

Favorite Albums of 2009

15. Ramona Falls - Intuit

Going Once, Going Twice (mp3)

14. Anni Rossi - Rockwell

Las Vegas (mp3)

13. Bowerbirds - Upper Air

Northern Lights (mp3)

12. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career

Careless Love (mp3)

11. Atlas Sound - Logos

Sheila (mp3)

10. Beirut: March of the Zapotec & Realpeople: Holland

La Llorona (mp3)

9. Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca

Two Doves (mp3)

8. Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest

While You Wait For The Others (mp3)

7. Throw Me The Statue: Creaturesque

Ancestors (mp3)

6. Bill Callahan: Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

Eid Ma Clack Shaw (mp3)

5. The Mountain Goats: The Life of the World To Come

1 John 4:16 (mp3)

4. Cass McCombs: Catacombs

Harmonia (mp3)

3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It's Blitz!

Skeletons (mp3)

2. Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Lisztomania (mp3)

1. Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavillion

Summertime Clothes (mp3)

Lyricist #1 - Will Sheff

I follow the blog of the poet Ada Limón, and she posted recently about an assignment given to her by Indigest Magazine to interview an artist who works in a different genre. She chose Will Sheff of Okkervil River. And I'm so glad she did. He is a truly brilliant lyricist. He rhymes without sounding compromised or cheesy, he uses repetition without it turning to filler, he can use tricks without sounding forced or contrived. He chooses his words so carefully. The lyrics read brilliantly on their own, but are understood more deeply when coupled with the music (not always the case with good lyrics). There might be a danger to approaching songwriting in too literary a manner, lest the words overshadow the song and melody itself. But whether his songs are whispy or loud he always maintains a balance. Will Sheff, a lyricist himself adored by poets.

Here are two examples:

"A Stone" is sad & superb. The narrator doesn't give any reasons why this girl should love him instead of this stone. He doesn't vow to lay her down in a bed of roses, so to speak, or raise her up so she can stand on mountains, as it were. He just flays her with this indictment of misdirected love. The end just kills.

"Unless it Kicks" is a tour de force. How many songs have we heard over the years about the trappings of rock and roll, and life on the road, etc.? None is more forthright about "living the lie" as Sheff is here, but through shared experience Sheff is able to find some jubliance, some wonder, some meaning despite the doomed nature of the whole affair.

A Stone (mp3)
Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy (2005)

Hot breath, rough skin, warm laughs and smiling, the loveliest words whispered and meant - you like all these things. But, though you like all these things, you love a stone. You love a stone, because it's smooth and it's cold. And you'd love most to be told that it's all your own. You love white veins, you love hard grey, the heaviest weight, the clumsiest shape, the earthiest smell, the hollowest tone - you love a stone. And I'm found too fast, called too fond of flames, and then I'm phoning my friends, and then I'm shouldering the blame, while you're picking pebbles out of the drain, miles ago. You're out singing songs, and I'm down shouting names at the flickerless screen, going f*&%ing insane. Am I losing my cool, overstating my case? Well, baby, what can I say? You know I never claimed that I was a stone. And you love a stone. You love white veins, you love hard grey, the heaviest weight, the clumsiest shape, the earthiest smell, the hollowest tone - you love a stone. You love a stone, because it's dark, and it's old, and if it could start being alive you'd stop living alone.

And I think I believe that if stones could dream, they'd dream of being laid side-by-side, piece-by-piece, and turned into a castle for some towering queen they're unable to know. And when that queen's daughter came of age, I think she'd be lovely and stubborn and brave, and suitors would journey from kingdoms away to make themselves known. And I think that I know the bitter dismay of a lover who brought fresh bouquets every day when she turned him away to remember some knave who once gave just one rose, one day, years ago

Unless It Kicks (mp3)
Okkervil River - The Stage Names (2007)

What gives this mess some grace unless it's kicks, man - unless it is fictions, unless it's sweat or it's songs? What hits against this chest unless it's a sick man's hand, from some midlevel band? He's been driving too long on a dark windless night, with the stereo on, with the towns flying by and the ground getting soft.

And a sound in the sky, coming down from above, it surrounds you and sighs and is whispering of what pulls your body down, and that is quicksand. So climb out quick, hand over hand, before your mouth's all filled up. What picks you up from down unless it's tricks, man? When I've been fixed I am convinced that I will not get so broke up again.

And on a seven day high, that heavenly song punches right through my mind and just hums through my blood. And I know it's a lie, but I'll still give my love. Hey, my heart's on the line for your hands to pluck off.

What gives this mess some grace unless it's fiction - unless it's licks, man, unless it's lies or it's love? What breaks this heart the most is the ghost of some rock and roll fan, floating up from the stands with her heart opened up. And I want to tell her, "Your love isn't lost," and say "my heart is still crossed!" I want to scream, "hey, you're so wonderful! What a dream in the dark - about working so hard, about glowing, so stoned, trying not to turn off, trying not to believe in that lie all on your own."

Lyricist #2 - John Darnielle

For almost 20 years John Darnielle has crafted intense, uncompromising, original music. Whenever you hear the Mountain Goats you know it is them and not another. As far as vocals go I've never been his greatest fan, but I've come around the long way to that nasal deadpan delivery. And when it comes to lyrics there aren't many musicians out there that can even come close to John Darnielle. He is also staggeringly prolific. The first thing I ever heard from the Mountain Goats was "The Sunset Tree" in 2005, which by that time was already pretty far along in the discography. It marked a departure from his earlier material in that it was the most confessional collection of songs he'd ever released (and I am a true sucker for the honesty that accompanies that sort of thing). A large part of the album's subject matter deals autobiographically with Darnielle's relationship with his abusive stepfather. At one point he sings about a fantasized confrontation with the man, "I'm going to get myself in fighting trim, scope out every angle of unfair advantage. I'm going to bribe the officials. I'm going to kill all the judges. It's going to take you people years to recover from all of the damage." (!). By the album's end, however he seems to be coming to a sort of reconcilliation with the stepfather, and closes it out with this little beauty:

Pale Green Things (mp3)
The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree (2005)

Got up before dawn. Went down to the racetrack, riding with the windows down, shortly after your first heart attack. You parked behind the paddock. Cracking asphalt underfoot. Coming up through the cracks. Pale green things. Pale green things.

You watched the horses run their workouts. You held your stopwatch in your left hand, and a racing form beneath your arm. Casting your gaze way out to no man's land. Sometimes I'll meet you out there, lonely and frightened. Flicking my tongue out at the wet leaves. Pale green things. Pale green things.

My sister called at 3 AM, just last December. She told you how you'd died at last. At last, that morning at the racetrack was one thing that I remembered. I turned it over in my mind like a living Chinese finger trap. Seaweed in Indiana sawgrass. Pale green things. Pale green things.