Larkin Grimm: Parplar

Dear Larkin,

Your latest album has been on some seriously heavy rotation lately (in more ways than one), but I already posted one song off Parplar, so this time I’ll only spread the words:

It’s funny how a privileged son so freely inflicts pain
How those who’ve known no suffering are carrying the stains
Of bitter, nihilistic hate, indifference and disdain
Long ago, I trusted you, I never will again
I’ve turned my little head against the wicked world you’re in

So there you are, I hope that you are suffering and lost
I hope you feel the hopelessness and you can’t bear the cost
Of being an ungrateful shit who never had a cause
Who never starved and never hid, ain’t never felt the frost
Of cold winds blowing on your face and you don’t have a coat
Of love that offers no escape and tightens around your throat

Your friends have all forgot your name, your lovers all denied
That you were ever part of them when they gave up and died
I hope you’re feeling powerless inside their grinding jaws
I hope you’re feeling helpless and I hope you feel their claws
I hope the wind has marked your face and you don’t have a hope
You’re drifting free above the ground gently stretching out your rope

Yes! Punish me! Rain your righteousness down upon me… wipe my conscience clean…

It’s often said that music is a healer. It’s not. But when you’ve been scraping the bottom with your teeth for a couple of years, the crushing weight of the idea of love straddling your back as your heart, a limp and impotently flaccid muscle, refuses to give as much as a flutter, a strong and confident woman singing and clapping the defiantly joyous refrain, «You’ll never get to Heaven when you die!» lifts you up, just for a moment. But a moment is all you need.



Not even after years of collecting transsexual tart cards did I question my heterosexuality like the first time I was in a room to witness Devendra Banhart
play—that most beautiful creature on Earth, his alien and inaccessible flow of mystic creativity hidden beneath that angelic face and inviting beard (just made for foetal nesting)… For the first time, I appreciated all the women dreaming of laying bare and laying down before the stars.

Then I heard you, Larkin, and I was unable to resist your calm intrusion. Just look at that photo at the top—across those vengeful Medusa locks and into those eyes, «psychotic» only because there’s no bottom as you fall into their dark wells, and people who fear a lack of boundaries take such endlessness to be psychotic.

But you and I know it’s divine. «Don't you pluck me out of your dear eye where I am curling up to die…» Who are you, Larkin, with your petty, devouring rage indiscernible from your magnanimous, enveloping love?

And I wonder, did I hang out with the same whores who you befriended, down in Bangkok? Did they protect you from violence? Did they turn on you and attack? Did they show you their secret places? Did they shed tears as they mumbled about being nothing?

Larkin, did you ever have to wait for some stranger to finally bring reality home to you—to feel at last the embrace of having the brutal truth, delivered so tenderly:

Who told you you’re going to be alright?
Who said that thing to you,
«You’re going to be all right?»
Well, they were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong
In my mind you are already gone

Could it really be? A woman to finally see through me?

And so I take all my hurts and dysfunctions, the lifelong rage and incurable loneliness, and I place them in the warm and clammy, filthy feral fist that is your paw, for you to crush, pitilessly and irreversibly—or do as you like. Then I’ll giddy-up and ride that cyclone all alone while you break my bones, ride it through the crack while you ride my back, ride it with love while you boil my blood… We’re all going to die anyway, so I’ll let you kill me nice, the music that your words take the shape of gently stretching out my rope.

And if anyone ever asks me why I've written this creepy review—because they've yet to appreciate what makes you stand apart, and miles above, all these other «creative people» dabbling in song—I'll just point out to them that none other could ever rhyme «Little Mother Mary riding on your unicorn» with «it's getting kind of hairy wishing that you'd never been born». Every strike of the hammer dulcimer is like the golden light that hammered truth into my head, showing me—in the sounds of strings and bells, desire and revenge that lures me into your universe—reality at last, only to find it's all a fantasy.

O mama, be my host!

Larkin Grimm, I love you like no other.



Which is why I’m strongly urging anyone who’s read this far to go and purchase your masterpiece, Parplar, right this minute.

The Turner Music Prize 2007, vol. 4

OK, let's stop messing about with this 2007 business and get this blog started right. I've saved some of the best for last:

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2007, Vol. 4 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]


1. Mark Lanegan: «Man in the Long Black Coat»

There are no mistakes in life, some people say
It is true, sometimes you can see it that way
But people don’t live or die, people just float
She went with the man in the long, black coat

Mark Lanegan’s vocals could lend authority to just about any subject, so lived does his voice sound. Add to that the words of Bob Dylan, and you can’t possibly go wrong: «Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force / Somebody is out there, beating on a dead horse.»
From I'm Not There

2. The Angels Of Light: «Sometimes I Dream I'm Hurting You»
A quick glance at the title and you know what you’re in for. Nothing half-arsed with Michael Gira. This song showcases both why he soars miles above practically all other artists toying with words and music, and why he will never break through commercially. His unique perspective takes you from the gently picked melody to the desperate prayer for deliverance that propels both song and listener until it explodes in trance-like abandonment to music and self-obliteration: «COMEANDTAKEMECOMEANDTAKEMECOMEANDTAKEMECOME
ANDTAKEME!»
From We Are Him

3. Radiohead: «Weird Fishes/Arpeggi»
Not to denigrate their more experimental stuff, but with this song Radiohead finally seem to manage a balance between beauty and originality, their individuality something that just manifests itself now (rather than being forced) in a perfect slice of pop rock. «Hit the bottom and escape»…
From In Rainbows

4. Einstürzende Neubauten: «Die Wellen»

What should I do with you, waves, you who can never decide
whether you’re the first or the last?
You think you can define the coast with your constant wish-wash,
grind it down with your coming and going.
And yet no one knows how long the coastline really is,
where land stops, where land begins, and you’re forever changing
the line, length, lay, with the moon and unpredictable.

Consistent alone is your inconsistency.

Ultimately victorious since, as so often evoked, this wears away
the stones, grinds the sand down as fine as needed for
hourglasses and egg-timers, as required for calibrating time,
for telling the difference between hard and soft.

Victorious also because, never tiring, you win the contest who of us
will be the first to fall asleep, or you, being the ocean still,
because you never sleep.

Although colourless yourself, you seem blue
when the sky is gently mirrored on your surface, the ideal course
for being strolled upon by the carpenter’s son, the most changeable element.

And inversely, when you are wild and loud and your breakers thunder,
I listen between the peaks of your rollers, and from the highest waves,
from breaking spume, a thousand voices break away, mine,
yesterday’s ones that I didn’t know, that otherwise just whisper,
and all the others too, and in their midst the Nazarene.
Over and over again those stupendous five final words:
Why have you left me?

I hold my own, shout at each single wave:
Are you staying?
Are you staying?
Are you staying, or what?

From Alles Wieder Offen

5. Spoon: «The Ghost of You Lingers»
To call this a «song» is stretching it a bit, but that’s no reason to dismiss it as just a piece of indulgent studio experimentation. Sometimes a combination of lyrics and sounds come along at en eerily apt time to, well, haunt you. This may not be a song, but it's the inside of an idea, a sentiment, a hope.
From Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

6. LCD Soundsystem: «All My Friends»
In passing from youth into adulthood, whether you're cultivating hope for the future or indulging in a nostalgia for the past, in LCD
Soundsystem's «All My Friends» at least you've put resentment behind you. Encouraged by nostalgia to love them and permitted by hope to let go of them, the bitterness towards some of the people you used to know is replaced by a warmth towards all the people you now feel blessed and lucky to once have known, regardless of what subsequently transpired. When James Murphy repeats his mantra «Where are your friends tonight?», it’s a question out of curiosity and gratitude, not an accusation arising from disappointment and bitterness. But then, in seven-and-a-half minutes it's over…
From Sound of Silver

7. Animal Collective: «Safer»
A showcase for Avey Tare’s sense of urgency and flight of fantasy, dig the way this piece morphs from fear into love, like a story going from
the empty present back into a golden past…
From «Peacebone» single

8. The Soulsavers: «Kingdoms of Rain»
OK, so it may sound like some American motivational speaker’s mantra, but the title of the album this song’s culled from says everything: it's not how far you fall, it's the way you land. The voice that makes your knees go wobbly and your eardrums quiver with masochistic enjoyment here is that of Mark Lanegan, who the Soulsavers happen to be covering on this very same track, adding soft textures and careful details to the sparse original arrangement (the key point beginning at the 2:14 mark).
From It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land

9. PJ Harvey: «Grow Grow Grow»
Arguably PJ Harvey’s most accomplished (or at least original) album, I could never listen to White Chalk. Not because it isn’t good, but because it’s too good. Unbearably, almost impossibly bleak, Harvey would’ve had to stare into some serious abyss making this one. But like Mark in «Peep Show» says, «I'm looking into the abyss… I don't like the look of the abyss!»
From White Chalk

10. Devendra Banhart: «I Remember»
I think the most beautiful things happen to be ugly things; most people find beauty in the mediocre. But then Devendra Banhart comes along and proves to us all that beauty is simply the beautiful. Trust Banhart to craft a melody to perfectly convey a tristesse that doesn’t wallow. This song’s atmosphere is a lesson; there is such a thing as blues without self-pity! A pure sadness, within which the sweetness that sprouted into bitterness remains intact. You realise that loss is never total, which works against the bitterness…
From Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon

11. Flight Of The Conchords: «I'm Not Crying»
«I’m Not Crying» is exactly what you need when you are, in fact, crying. Only, of course you’re not.
From «The Distant Future» EP


12. Marissa Nadler: «Bird on Your Grave»
Nadler may come across a little precious, but she doesn’t pussyfoot around. Unlike most contemporary folk females, she eschews faux-childlike naïvety; and unlike so many young performers, she actually manages to convincingly convey the sorrow contained within her songs. (As opposed to composing songs that pretend to be world-weary and -wise—like a Bob Dylan composing «Blowin' in the Wind» and «The Times They Are a-Changin'» at 22-23, straining to make his voice sound like that of a hardened 60 year-old labourer, making up politically correct words that sound good but which are only based on ideas lifted out of a couple of books.) Greg Weeks’ disharmonic guitar keeps Nadler’s perfect singing from infecting the song with too much prettiness. With lyrics such as these, the music can't be too agreeable.
From Songs III: Bird on the Water

13. Elvis Perkins: «While You Were Sleeping»
Lullaby or funeral march? The Dylan-derivative lyrics are overly poetic and, it seems to me, either meaningless or dense beyond interpretation. Yet obscured beneath the kind of lofty imagery that Leonard Cohen was the last writer in the history of literature to get away with, you'll find some tender essence well worth indulging in. Besides, who can resist the Tex-Mex charms? «Uh-oh…»
From Ash Wednesday

14. Fire On Fire: «Hangman»
«You got to have a friend!» Ain't that the truth… And some days, this
song is it.
From «Fire on Fire» EP

15. José González: «Down the Line»
Quite literally nothing wrong with this track. González comes in and says what it is he wants to say, then quits—all with beautiful melody, infectious rhythm and a coda like a lifebuoy.
From In Our Nature

The Turner Music Prize 2008

I was burning CDs for this guy—impoverished and starved for new sounds as this wandering stranger was when I first took him in—compiling playlist after playlist that all seemed, ironically, to contain only '60s music, when it dawned on me that he must think I suffer from a bad case of Obsessive Compulsive retro Disorder. Suddenly, I was gripped by a fear of becoming one of those people who grumble about no valid music having been made after 11:20pm on 6 December 1969.

So, beginning in 2007, I started keeping tabs on newfangled music by adding to a playlist freshly released songs whenever one caught my grubby little ears. About this time last year, I was going to send an end-of-year compilation to this hapless victim of mine, but I proved too lazy, and if other people wanted some new sounds as well, I wasn't about to send out three-CD sets every which way.

The bloke's name was Turner—and to my knowledge still is, even though he just got engaged (congrats, Dave!)—and there's a prestigious (if ludicrous) annual art award called the Turner Prize. So here you go: The first disc of my 2008 round-up of great music—my out-of-touch guide to modern sounds, all designed to impress upon some fellow music lover that I am not a crackpot!

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2008, Vol. 1 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]

2008 was a p-r-e-t-t-y good year—in music. Hell, it was pretty damn great. A lot of moody noise was recorded, and on some days as I listen to the music on this first volume, I daydream that it was all to vanquish the inanity that besets our beleaguered world. Then I got a job working on the Norwegian pre-contests anticipating the international Eurovision Song Contest.

1. The Black Angels: «Mission District»
Their ’60s psychedelia/Native American drone’n’roll schtick is a tad corny, perhaps, but the Black Angels have bottom. There’s groove and balls, two qualities there's a desperate shortage of in contemporary rock’n’roll (the combination of which is even rarer). And DAMN! is that scuzzbucket fuzz bass nasty!
From Directions to See a Ghost

2. Endless Boogie: «The Manly Vibe»
I don’t know what’s going on «in the basement,» but listening to this pub blues rock gone horribly wonky, I wouldn’t go down there if I were you. (Actually, I would—and especially if I were me.) I don’t know if «Manly Vibe» refers to some sort of masculine essence or just a butt-plug. Whatever it is, I’m feeling (practically smelling) it. This is bearded, sweaty, bear music—what Kings Of Leon would sound like if they weren’t such pubescent pussies, but bald and furry and subjected instead to something David Lynch wouldn’t touch…
From Focus Level

3. The Fall: «50 Year Old Man (pt. 1)»
«I’m a 50-year-old man / What you gonna do about it?» Whoever said rock’n’roll is a young man’s game? Just because most rock’n’rollers slink off into irrelevance after a couple of albums doesn’t mean everyone has to follow the precedence set by Sirs Mick, Paul, Elton and Cliff. On this monster, rock’s foremost maverick coot, 51-year-old Mark E. Smith, slobbers and rants about the advantages of getting to that age where it only makes sense to give the whimpering ageism of obsessive mortals two crooked fingers up: «I’m a 50-year-old-man / And I like it / I’m a 50-year-old man / I’ve got a three-foot rock-hard-on». No wonder he likes it! (This track is an edited excerpt from an 11-minute-plus opus that degenerates into a banjo ditty. I thought it best to keep it short and sweet—unlike that three-foot erection.)
From Imperial Wax Solvent

4. TV On The Radio: «Halfway Home»
Hand claps! And «ba-ba-ba-ba-ba»s!
From Dear Science,

5. Goa: «Au dessus des nuages»
GLORIOUS NOISE! Everything about this track is primal. If they'd had video games back in the Stone Age, this is what they would sound like. Grit yer teeth and enjoy!
From Goa 3

6. Dan Friel: «Ghost Town (pt. 1)»
Imagine what all the pop hooks that have persecuted the populations of this planet could have sounded like with a little bit of drugged-up disco balls? Thankfully, you need strain your imagination no more; here’s a little taste.
From Ghost Town

7. Portishead: «Machine Gun»
Sadness, anger, loathing, hopelessness and a sense of foreboding; respect to those very few who aren't only able, but willing to stare down depression long enough to convey it. Portishead announced, shortly before the release of their long-awaited and hotly anticipated third album, that it would be a bit of a «fuck you» to all the chill-out muzak their insipid imitators have long since turned into a widespread genre afflicting anyone wishing to go out for a cuppa joe. This track's a destroyer, alright, merciless but righteous!
From Third

8. The Notwist: «Alphabet»
A weird rhythm and bits of noise scattered here and there, with a static, psychotic, high-pitched synth drone throughout and something that could be a skipping CD broken up with intermittent jazz drumming. These fragments and more come together to form a whole that is, inexplicably, frail and vulnerable—some kind of magic trick.
From The Devil, You + Me

9. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band: «13 Blues for Thirteen Moons»
Where to start? The tense strings? The releasing noise? The funky drumming? The sexy riff? The plaintive vocal, stretching into a hoarse indignation, the vocal cords cracking with anger to the point of silence? Upon hearing this band—the heirs to Nina Simone’s badass activist attitude—most recording artists should and surely would hang their heads in shame. «No heroes on my radio!» yells Efrim Menuck, something I’m trying to do my bit to correct by putting this piece on here—one of the foremost musical accomplishments of 2008. (No «indie rock creeps» with personal stylists and sycophantic press here, castrating the legacy of early '80s post-punk for the teenage demographic.) Q: How do you spell «relevance»? A: S-I-L-V-E-R-M-T-Z-I-O-N.
From 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons

10. Megapuss: «Sayulita»
«Dancing whore / Dirty floor…» (Could easily have been the other way around.) This song makes me want to curl up into sleep, the sound of being too tired to feel depressed gently, distantly guiding you into the weird and wonderful world of dreams, where the miracle of consciousness, and so reality, unravels and is revealed in all its unfathomable illogic, taunting the pretensions of science and rationality (if you could remember such things). And just as you no longer have any awareness of self, nor any understanding of the senseless imagery you’re not apart from, but merged with in this non-place where nothing carries meaning nor bears any consequence, you recognise just about the only intelligible words falling out of Greg Rogove’s lazily sorrowful mouth—the mutterings of someone talking in their sleep suddenly clear now, tender, and content at last, as it sings the wishful thought: «I am where I want to be…»
From Surfing

11. Larkin Grimm: «Blond and Golden Johns»

I’ve been accused of all sorts of witchcraft and told that I am a perverse and disturbing influence, and have been kicked out of churches, schools, hippie communes, and the town of Skagway, Alaska…

So says Larkin Grimm, one of those people who's All Woman. Eerily backed by Fire On Fire, «Blond and Golden Johns» may or may not be inspired by Grimm’s time spent with the prostitutes of Bangkok: «I got no hooker’s heart of gold / My hooks are sharp, my heart is cold.» Say what you will about her intensity and unconventional perspective, in a worldful of crooners passing themselves off as sensitive singer-songwriters and menstrual folk girlies dabbling with «eccentricity», how refreshing it is to hear an artist with a different vision—one who takes risks, who has an edge, who gives things a slant, who sees it her way (not yours). Finally. She has arrived. «This mouth has wrapped around something / More delicious than the songs I sing…»
From Parplar

12. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: «Hold on to Yourself»

Well, cities rust and fall to ruin
Factories close and cars go cruisin’
In and around the borders of her vision
She says, «Oh woah woah woah»
As Jesus makes the flowers grow
All around the scene of her collision

Oh, you know I would
I would hold on to yourself

It’s in the middle of the night
I try my best to chase outside
The phantoms and the ghosts and the fairy-girls
On 1001 nights like this
She mutters, «Open sesame,» and Ali Baba and his forty thieves
Launch her off the face of the world

Well, you know
One day I’ll come back
And I’ll hold on to yourself
You better hold on to yourself

Aw, babe, I’m thousand miles away
And I just don’t know what to say
’Cause Jesus only loves a man who bruises
But darling we can clearly see
It’s all life and fire and lunacy
And excuses and excuses and excuses

Well, you know if I could I would
Yeah, I would lie right down
And I’d hold on to yourself

From Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!