Let us not praise famous men, nor our fathers that begat us...

Thee Oh Sees Peanut Butter Oven
Thee Oh Sees Can You See?

Let us speak frankly now, because we're all friends here, and because I care... Now, with all due respect to Ian Svenonius, his contribution to popular music, and his lasting legacy as the one-time Sassiest Boy in America (and subsequent ignoble de-throning), I think Mr. Svenonius' creative output has gradually fallen, witness his painfully dated skewering of suburbia and economic progress. Fish in a barrell or the side of a barn - take your pick, Ian.

When did it start? Was it in 2001, when Ian Svenonius adopted the pseudonym David Candy for an extended, abysmal romp through kitsch? Did he give up after the International Noise Conspiracy & The Hives et al. purloined his look and approach whole-sale? The Scene Creamers? Weird War?

But then again, maybe high-concept garage rock that lifts heavily from the darker corners of post-Marxist thought & radical chic was never really meant to rock anyway. Maybe as close as we could get to that was the Yardbirds trashing their guitars in an Antonioni's Blow Up.

And thank God. I'm no purist - garage rock or elsewise, which is why Thee Oh Sees are such a god-damn revelation. Started by John Dwyer of Pink & Brown and The Coachwhips and from their ashes, rises a jangly, lo-fi phoenix. Or maybe a Griffon. If you're in Montreal for Pop, check them out this Saturday.

Thee Oh Sees at Pop Montreal
w/ Pink Noise, Golden Triangle, The Fresh & Onlys
Saturday, October 3rd
Sala Rosa

Check out the Oh Sees myspace page for more information.

Festival du Nouveau Cinema: Behind Jim Jarmusch

The French love Paul Auster and Jim Jarmusch. More than they love Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino, who are Italian and therefore beloved but not loved. Not in the gushy, Gallic fan-boy manner that Mr. Auster and Jarmusch are loved, at least. And that's fair - Paul Auster's post-Jungian mysticism is a lot cooler than Robertson Davies', and Jim Jarmusch has the right pedigree of Manhattan art-world cool, plus he's quiet. Still waters run deep. This is a nation that never turned its back on Mickey Rourke, and there's a consistency in that that must be admired. (This is also a nation that gave us Manu Chao, but I digress...)

French film director Léa Rinaldi shot Behind Jim Jarmusch over the course of three days, while Jarmusch was working in Seville on The Limits of Control, his most recent film, the poorly received and slow-moving absurdist crime film.

In this clip, Jim Jarmusch walks and talks about being lost, which when translated into French would be understood as "Lost. Being lost. What is this act of being lost? Are we ever truly lost? To be lost is... To be. To be lost is who we are."

Behind Jim Jarmusch is playing as part of the Festival du Nouveau Cinema on the following dates:

October 8th 1pm Cinema du Parc
October 15th 9:15pm Ex-Centris
October 18th 1pm Ex-Centris

If you miss it, the film will be featured as an extra on the DVD of Limits of Control when it's released in November.

Re-Ups: Crydajam, Plaza Musique, 45:33 Remixes, and Angie Dickinson in Opera Gloves.

It's Burt Bacharach's ex-wife, Angie Dickinson, and she's wearing opera gloves!

Crydajam Playground

Plaza Musique Magazine
LCD Soundsystem 45:33 (Theo Parrish Remix)

As many of you are probably aware, (those of you that aren't visiting to look at photos of Etta James or photos of Angie Dickinson in opera gloves), I've been using Yousendit to host mp3 files - with only 100 downloads available and traffic increasing to this blog (now that I'm actually updating it), it tends to run out before the 7 day period. I'll find a solution to that, but in the meantime, I'll start re-uploading some of the more popular and requested songs from the past couple of months.

Here are a trio to get us started. First, Crydajam's well-crafted bumping brass and organ-riffing house jam Playground was, for obvious reasons, gone in a second. Original Crydajam post here... Montreal's reigning rulers in the realm of sophisticated space-pop Plaza Musique have been getting a bit of attention (well-deserved, I have to say) from Anglo sources and beyond now that they're going to be opening for Os Mutantes this weekend at Pop Montreal. Original Plaza Musique post here... And finally, of course everyone's been looking to download LCD Soundsystem's 45:33 Remixes, with special attention to Theo Parrish's remix. Truthfully, I found the rest of the remixes snooze-worthy: Pilooski's remix of 45:33 was like being stuck in a k-hole of boring house. Zzzzz...

This Is What Europeans Do, This Is How They Are.

Vangelis Let It Happen

Vangelis Let It Happen (Beatfanatic Remix)
Lindstrøm & Solale Let It Happen
F.R. David Words

Vangelis' Let It Happen is a blissful, dreamy proto-Balearic song from his third album, Earth, (1973) with a bass-line that wouldn't be entirely out of place in an Air France song. Vocals were provided by F.R. David, who would score big with the pleasantly pleading Euro-synthpop song Words, also available above.

Beatfanatic's remix turns it more into a Still Going-style sitch: layering it with four-on-the-floor disco beats and letting the bassline carry you through an 8 minute expansion from the original. Don't hold his poorly chosen moniker against this Swedish boy ("I am your BEAT MASTER!" "I'm gonna cook up some funk in my groove kitchen!" "Take a trip through my rhythm garden!").

For his Late Night Tales mix (released in July 2007), Lindstrom tweaked Let It Happen into a darker and more sinister affair, the expansive original is now a constricted straight-jacket of a song that pops and stutters with a hammering bass-thump instead of our beloved bassline and decaying acid arpeggios... The vocals are provided by long-time collaborator Christabelle Solale If the Vangelis original calls to mind Meditarranean islands, Lindstrom's version is the musical equivalent of driving your 1980 Ferrari 308 GTSI in the abandoned city centre of Tokyo at night, during a rainstorm.

Grab Demis Roussous' version from the always amazing American Athlete blog. The gargantuan Grecian chanteur began his career in the psych-group Aphrodite's Child along with Vangelis and went on to greater, schmaltzier fame as a solo performer and, memorably, a birthday boy terrorist hostage to Lebanese hijackers in 1985. Mr. Roussos has a new album out in February of next year, two songs of which you can preview on his Myspace page.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is a Sex Symbol.

Ken Jeong as Senor Chang on NBC's Community

"Why you, teach Spanish?"
"Building a wall that you can see from outer space."

&

"I don't want to have any conversations about what a mysterious, inscrutable man I am."

Joe Russo and brother Anthony Russo (of Arrested Development fame) have a new show out, it's NBC's Community and it's pretty much a dud. Our title character, a charasmatic manipulator of a lawyer who must go to community college to save his career is played by Joel McHale, who is distinctly uncharismatic in his role, and as much as I want to give a man who gave me such joy in Fletch a little bit of love back, Chevy Chase is not-so-hot either. There are a couple of sparks in the darkness, and it's obvious that there are some smart people working on this (hampered as they are by the damp hamminess of Mr. McHale), but for the most part, it doesn't work. The scenario: a rag-tag-group of misfits pulling together, and being led by a flawed figure who needs redemption (whether he's aware of it or not) is ten times more stale now than it was when it was used in the Bad News Bears...

But... The one shining bright light in the whole thing has been this scene in the second episode, where Spanish professor Senor Chang (played my real-life MD turned comedian Ken Jeong) explains his own pedagogical impulse in a physical and dynamic monologue that I'd like to see more of. Seriously, 1:48 seconds in, and just watch. It's amazing...

Crazy People

Zenas Winsor Mackay's The Centaurs (1921)

Winsor Mackay, the possibly Canadian but entirely talented creator of the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, also might have been as crazy as his spiritual successor, Henry Darger, if one imagines what we aren't able to see from this baffling animated short from 1921. A family of centaurs in the forest, huh? Check out the rest of the footage and marvel at what once was and now will never be.

Pour mes amis Quebecois

Dude might have been another jerky separatist who could barely contain his racism, but at least he gave us the above genius piece of film. RIP, M. Falardeau

Comparing Losing Political Situations to Hotel California is Superior to Calling Them Quagmires

Chris: We should go out and have mai fucking tai's this weekend

Sent at 1:41 PM on Friday

Girls Hellhole Ratrace
JJ My Hopes and Dreams
Tanlines New Flowers
The Deele Body Talk

Well, it looks like my weekends going to be spent with a pack of fashion magazines and Style.com, but it's probably going to be good to get some brain-work in before the physical work-out and flurry of activity that is Pop Montreal begins, sparing no liver or ear-drum or bank account. So, some bits and pieces, then...

...And I thought I had a fucked up childhood dealing with Pentecostal Christians and post-60s California paranoid communal living (it creeped up the West Coast... Joan Didion's selection of essays, The White Album, is one of my favourite books and also chronicles the intense disconnect and anxiety that not just followed the Haight & Ashbury period, but was at the core of it). Girls' Christopher Owens had it way worse than I, growing up in some backwards universe in a Children of God family and emerging from it with a demo and a supremely solid album of music that, on first listen, sounds like Elvis Costello fronting Spiritualized, with lo-fi digressions.

Swedish super-secret-studio creations JJ you probably already know about, but if not, the back-story is the absence of a back-story. From their album on Sweden's Sincerely Yours label, also home to The Tough Alliance, Air France and other similar-minded Nordiques.

Tanlines also on the bill with Plaza Musique and Os Mutantes for Pop Montreal. Saturday, October 3rd at Le National. Don't sleep on that.

A new album by Chromeo is due next summer (too long!), but in the mean-time, check out their crate-digging skills on their recently released DJ Kicks compilation, which includes songs from long-time Goldkicks favourites Kano and Carmen (Time to Move, rather than Throw Down - difficult choice). If you register on the K7 site, they'll send you an mp3 of Chromeo's cover of the Eagles' I Can't Tell You Why. And yes, a vocoder harmonizing on the chorus is way better than Glenn Frey and Don Henley.

A couple of years back, Chromeo put together Le Mix for Turbo Recordings, which included amongst a number of high-lights (I can name at least four DJs who play Chemise's She Can't Love You, sing along to it and do weird hand-gestures regularly, to say little of my general peer group's love for Gino Soccio) The Deele's Body Talk, which I've posted above. Babyface was in The Deele. BABYFACE!

Is The Chronicle of Higher Education predicting that roving gangs of high school drop-out meth-heads may soon take a page from Mao's Little Red Book and attack the cities from the countryside, taking specific aim at the previously departed "achievers" and "high fliers?" Let's say yes. The next Khmer Rouge may be North America's poor white underclass.

Bixi Pop

Synergy
(but not exactly)

New Chromeo song "Night by Night"

Chromeo Night By Night
Jan Hammer Crockett's Theme (Miami Vice soundtrack)

The last we caught up with Montreal's premier R&B electro-funk duo, they were jamming with Darryl Hall of Hall & Oates in his restored colonial-era farmhouse. Now they've got a new song which skews more Moroderian Hi-NRG with its galloping bass-lines and guitar and keyboard solos that wouldn't be outta place on the Miami Vice score. Sweet. To cool down a bit and get into a moody Michael Mann mood, I suggest you follow it up with Crockett's Theme from the Miami Vice soundtrack, and maybe take a long walk on a white beach with appropriate pastels and linen pants.

Quick Fix

Natassja Kinski, One From The Heart

The Shirelles Baby, It's You (1961)
The Beatles Baby, It's You (1963)
Smith Baby, It's You (1969)

~
From the pen of Burt Bacharach, Baby, It's You was always a bit melancholic, but Smith turns it into a minor-key bluesy stomper that actually kinda works with a killer bass tone...
~

Joseph Smith Hustled, Brigham Young Was a Baller

Sports jackets, dookie chains, ball caps, and acid-washed jeans
2 Live Crew in the basics.

Young Black Teenagers First True Love Affair
Jimmy Ross First True Love Affair
Tag Team Whoomp! (There It Is)
Kano I'm Ready (Spank Rock Edit, Fabriclive 33)
2 Live Crew Pop That Pussy
Billy Stewart Summertime
Eazy E Gimme That Nut

Wrongly maligned by history for their poor name choice and remembered (if at all) for Tap The Bottle, the Young Black Teenagers deserve another look, especially considering production duties were handled by Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad. Good enough for Public Enemy, good enough for me. Time To Make The Dough Nutz, which samples Rush's Tom Sawyer is not the place to start, but listen to First True Love Affair above, which samples, you guessed, Jimmy Ross' First True Love Affair, which was produced by the friendliest face of Italo-Disco, Kano. Kano's back-catalogue has been cherry-picked for samples, (and recently nickied by Spank Rock for their Fabriclive mix), from way back in my grade 8 days by Tag Team (Miami Bass from Atlanta?) for Whoomp! (There It Is). I always found it a bit strange that, because of the Jock Jams compilation or whatever else, there was a substantial and ready-made fan-base for Miami Bass amongst the Mormon basketball players in my high school.

One song not so easily adopted by the Mormon ball-palmers in Miami's greatest contribution to music would have to be Pop That Pussy, by genre-definers 2 Live Crew, which features a spectacular re-working of the Billy Stewart's Summertime. DJs, follow that up with Eazy E's Gimme That Nut for maximal libidinal labial dance-floor expression. By the way, does anyone know where the hell that songs from? I found it on a CD five years ago and have no idea where it came from.

HBO's Bored to Death

I watched the first two episodes of HBO's Bored to Death last night. It's the Jonathan Ames scripted half-hour comedy-drama starring Jason Schwartzman as Mr. Ames' alter-ego: a failed writer, recently dumped, scribbling here-and-there for Ted Danson's character, addicted to white wine and pot, who decides to advertise as a PI on Craigslist, against the warnings of his pal Zach Galifianakis. Ensuing complications and plot-twists, you get it. Well, it couldn't be any worse than Californication, right? Few shows could be. There were a couple of out-loud laugh moments, but it's what you'd expect from the principles - the flip-side of the loud-and-quiet Will Ferrel/Vince Vaughn dynamic - mannered performances, chuckles, and the low-level thrill of recognition. It was great to hear the Young Marble Giants in the first episode, but Christ, whoever was responsible for music supervision was playing it a little bit heavy-handed, y'know?

Download the first two episodes via torrent here
(Caveat emptor: screener files have an obnoxious HBO logo over-lay)
Bored To Death Side-Line

Young Marble Giants Brand New Life

Nancy Franklin of the New Yorker on HBO's Bored to Death.

Neglected Greek Children Favour Bixis

Children of Greeks ghost-riding Bixis on a Saturday evening on St. Viateur in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec.
photo: Chris Clark

Playground's A Battleground

Another Bad Creation Playground

I'm sorry to ruin the whole week for you just as it starts, but I guarantee this is the best thing you'll hear all week. Discovered by one of the Bell Biv Devoe guys, Atlanta's Another Bad Creation had a glorious outta-the-gates start with a couple of singles, an appearance on the Meteor Man soundtrack, and a New Edition cover. Not much after that, though. An sophomore slump, and an indie flop. Still, if all they gave to the world was Playground, well, they've done their part.

And check out that video! Pie in the face, and some old white fogey trying to keep the most junior members of the Rhythm Nation down. Quick question: does it really get cold enough in Atlanta to warrant those gigantic down-filled jackets these kids are sporting?

Every Pop Song is a Celebration or a Complaint

~celebration~

Herb Alpert This Guy's In Love With You
Dusty Springfield This Girl's In Love With You
Fleetwood Mac You Make Loving Fun

~complaint~

Otis Redding Security
Etta James Security
Steely Dan Dirty Work

...

....or else it's a story about a mysterious hotel that you can check into, but never check out of.

A Drum Beat 21 Hours a Day

Photo by Jacob Ring, Bianca Chang or Nikolaus Kaiser. You guess which one.

Black Moth Super Rainbow Roller Disco
Black Moth Super Rainbow Lost, Picking Flower in the Woods
Laura Burhenn Just For The Night (Black Moth Super Rainbow Remix)

I don't like Boards of Canada, and I don't think I ever will. Klaus Schulze, Sinoia Caves, other spacey synth-based music I love, in fact, but there's something distinctly un-musical (to my ear) about Boards of Canada. In their weirder moments, it makes me think they were exposed to Jeff Mills at too young an age and for too long a period of time. In Boards of Canada's more accessible moments, (Dayvan Cowboy, let's say) they sound like trip-hop elevator music for a Zen shopping mall populated by soul-less yuppies with a sci-fi twist in a CBS mini-series from the mid-90s. Or more appropriately, it sounds like coming down off some seriously bad drugs, feeling depressed and praying for sleep. I didn't grow up on electronica, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin or anything like that, so it's all beyond me, and seems to exist in a realm where I can't comprehend the musical touchstones or signifiers, with inside jokes that don't make sense to me and genre conventions that are equally as baffling.

But, were you, Hypothetical Fan, to describe in a short couple of sentences the sound of Boards of Canada to me, I would be very interested to hear it, but actually, in my mind, that band would sound like Black Moth Super Rainbow, who belong just as much to the mythical Jungian life-force as they do to wherever the hell it is in Pennsylvania they were born.

I first came across Black Moth Super Rainbow when they put a Sonicbids submission in to Pop Montreal for the 2005 edition and, while the showcase I ended putting on drew, oh, about 15 people, you can chalk that up to my own incompetence, and the fact that no one knew just how good this group was. And damn, they were good, even to a crowd of 15 people in Petit Campus.

Black Moth Super Rainbow's music is tuneful, layered, interesting, bringing up sunny summer days in the woods just as much as space travel and star dust and intergalactic flights, forward-looking and slightly whimsical, but not kitschy, although they did release an EP with a scratch-and-sniff cover...

The Just For The Night remix posted above is from last year and slipped under my radar. Ms. Burhenn is a singer-songwriter with a who appears to have some tangential connection to the Dischord post-hardcore & indie scene in Washington, DC, but a voice that's more closely related to Sarah McLachlan or, in the case of this song, Alison Goldfrapp.

VGA or Super-VGA

Toro y Moi Human Nature (Michael Jackson cover)
Toro y Moi SadSams2 (Demo)
FM Attack Sleepless Nights
Real Life Send Me An Angel

By popular demand and for a limited time only, more from Chaz Bundick, known to most now as Toro y Moi, including his cover of Human Nature from Michael Jackson's Thriller album.

FM Attack is the nom-de-chanson of one Shawn Ward, from Vancouver, BC, supposedly newly signed by Tiga (although I can find scant mention of that). This is from his debut album Dreamatic, half of which sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack to the Canmore, Alberta-filmed 80's BMX film Rad (like Real Life's Send Me An Angel), the other half of which brings to my mind a toned-down Designer Drugs (octave-jumping bass-lines, synth stabs, and those tight mid-80s LA tom fills). Slow-dancing BMXes were the height of mid-decade romanticism, I think.

I'd like to make an early Christmas request: a Cat Power & Sade duet, please, and preferably nothing too blues-y.

Sondre Lerche in Montreal

Sondre Lerche Good Luck

Jenn Wong's favourite Norwegian songster (and now Brooklyn transplant) Sondre Lerche (even more than Kurt Foss!) is in Montreal tonight along with his rollicking songs for a solo electric performance at Cafe Campus. I assume he'll be mostly playing songs from his new album Heartbeat Radio, but I'd like to hear personal favourites Sleep on Needles & On The Tower. Requests, respectfully. The song above is from the first on his new album, and doesn't the trailing guitar line and accompanying crescendos remind you of Destroyer? No? The near-overwhelming string arrangements were provided by Sean O'Hagan of The High Llamas.

Leaked LCD Soundsystem 45:33 Remixes, early Lifelike .WAV files, Misheard Can Lyrics, et plus

Neighbourhood Romeo No, You Call Him
Fatback Band Yum Yum (Gimme Some)

Despite its giant floating plastic vortex twice the size of Texas, is my preferred fish provider and general all-around ocean. So, here's a little something from the close-to-the-coast duo Neighbourhood Romeo, comprised of Calgary, Alberta's Wax Romeo & Neighbour. Fun and crisp funk with a up-pitched Loleatta Holloway vocal sample that helps buoy oil city's reputation as a fine producer of super-slick sleeper funk hits. Grab whatever you can from these guys. Neighbour will be in Montreal performing at Studio Just For Laughs on Thursday, October 1st as part of Pop Montreal's Red Bull Mega Hurtz alongside Grahmzilla (of Thunderheist), Hovatron (aka Phil Aubin), Lunice, Megasoid, and uh, some sort of weird Burning Man hippie-techno-alien-rave DJ named JELO. Don't know who programmed that...

Okay, so the Fatback Band (later Fatback) were never from the West Coast, but they sound like it. Good enough.

THEO PARRISH 45:33 REMIX OF LCD SOUNDSYSTEM AVAILABLE HERE

LCD Soundsystem's 45:33 remixes got leaked. Eight in total, from Padded Cell, Pilooski, Riley Reinhold, Prins Thomas, Trus’me Prince Language and Theo Parrish. Stream them in 320 kbps on Feel My Bicep.

Vancouver's always generous promoter & DJ U-Tern puts up some .WAV files of early Lifelike vinyl-only releases. Thanks! His new weekly The Terrace is every Thursday at Republic Nightclub (958 Granville Street), which is great news - something to do during my next visit to Vancouver.

"Animal Collective in the house!" Dam Funk to sparse and skeptical East Coast funk fans, as reported by the New York Times.

Misheard Can Lyrics/Misheard Damo Suzuki lyrics must be collected into one archive for the betterment of mankind and an increase in human understanding.