Net Nuggets 28: Radio Free Indie, or: How I Learned to Stop Dancing and Love Indie

This toilet guppy has been going through a period of unprecedented, almost insolent optimism and enthusiasm lately. Those of you who
received the annual winter compilation CD will have heard a two-and-a-half-year staring contest with the abyss condensed into one utterly bleak, unlistenable CD (for which I do apologise), vomited out, leaving yours truly purified at last! (I win, Abyss!)

Worry not; like anything else it probably won't last, but the days of this being a downer death trip blog may just be a thing of the past. And as the best music is usually somehow negative (sorrowful, aggressive, perverted, or trying desperately to clamber to the top that is transcendence), that means the future of this blog hangs by a thin thread indeed. There's still music to post before I call it quits, however, and since today is Sunday—that grey day of nothing I used to find so heavy as a child—I'm grabbing the opportunity to share some of the self-indulgent, misery-guts music that's left in the ol' iTunes library…

Indie's a mixed bag. The flashes of brilliance—and they are brilliant—are almost swept away by an insufferable tide of collegiate, sensitive artiste blandness or knowing trendiness. It's enough to make you hate the guitar. And singer-songwriters. And the middle class. And suburbia. And institutions of education. And hipsters (if one didn't already hate them so). And hairdos. It makes you want to do extreme sports, or commit a heinous crime that would make even your own mother spit you in the face.

But it's not all navel gazing mediocrity or overly cerebral, sexless wankery with all the passion of a bong-hugging slacker—although you might be forgiven for thinking so from perusing websites such as Pitchfork (Rolling Stone for the noughties' discerning, computer literate hipster) or Internet radio station Daytrotter. But for every dozen or so Sufjan Stevenses, there's a Devendra Banhart; for every ten Pavements there's a Blonde Redhead, so don't lose heart!

Over at Daytrotter, there are so many sessions by so many artists to download, all for free, that navigating it is an autist's dream come true. Naturally, Toilet Guppies has only listened to a fraction of the sessions, but that doesn't stop me from compiling a best-of primer.

The problem with indie becomes apparent at times during this sampler, but that's due to indie overload more than the quality of the songs, which all bear the Toilet Guppies stamp of approval. And worry not, I've sorted away the trite campfire songs (so that you wouldn't have to—you're welcome). So, rock out to Black Lips, grieve to Spoon, dance to High Places, dream to Elvis Perkins, whistle to Grizzly Bear, and (try not to) weep to Will Oldham. Terrific stuff.

WARNING: You may still want to go listen to something like this afterwards, just to regain your equilibrium, libido, sense of humour and overall lust for life… In the meantime, fold your brittle, little self into a foetal position and indulge:

V/A: Contemporary Indie for Dummies—Daytrotter Sessions [.zip]:

1. Jana Hunter: «Pinnacle»
2. Marissa Nadler: «Salutations in the Dark»
3. Grizzly Bear: «Shift»
4. Department Of Eagles: «1997»
5. Deerhunter: «Heatherwood»
6. Spoon: «The Ghost of You Lingers»
7. The Dodos: «Horny Hippies»
8. The Walkmen: «Yellow Kid»
9. High Places: «From Stardust to Sentience»
10. Elvis Perkins: «Good Friday»
11. The Cave Singers: «Seeds of Night»
12. Bonnie «Prince» Billy: «The Sun Highlights the Lack in Each»
13. Rodriguez: «Sugar Man»
14. Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson: «There Will Be Mud»
15. Akron/Family: «The Land»
16. The Entrance Band: «Lookout!»
17. Black Lips: «Take My Heart»

All tracks are in 128 kbps (Daytrotter download standard). Hundreds, if not thousands more mp3s are freely available over at the gracious Daytrotter site.

Love (Pt. 3), or, Hope of the Hopelessly Romantic

«Buckets of Rain» versions [.zip]:

1. Bob Dylan (original Blood on the Tracks pressing)
2. Marissa Nadler (live on Phoning It In)

Are you in love? Maybe with an artist? Or a writer? Or a punk? A hippie? A stripper? A singer? A foreigner? A free spirit? A cult follower? A pagan? A teacher? A student? An introvert? An exhibitionist? A sister of mercy? A delicate romantic? A fearless sex beast? A wild child, kept alive inside a feral woman dripping in blood and pheromones? A hedonist? An Adventist? An innocent pervert?

And does this person make you feel blessed? Lucky? Beautiful? Joyous? Saved? Sacred? Scared? Helpless? Top of the world? Like you want to be better? Loved?

But is this object of your desire unavailable to you? Living in another country, perhaps? Or maybe on holiday on the other side of the world? Wrapped up in the world of work? Is the person of your affections lost at sea, trapped in a mine, on an expedition in the jungle, repairing a satellite, taken hostage by terrorists, or already married—to a ruthless drug lord with a decidedly jealous, no, let's make that paranoid streak? Or has she been married off to some snot-nosed would-be patriarch who keeps her in house arrest in some inflexible Muslim country to perform household chores and reproductive duties in his mother's home, controlling her communication with the outside world? Is your soulmate so wrought with issues and dysfunctions he or she is all but impossible to deal with? Is the person in a coma—dead, even?

Or is the feeling simply not mutual? The impossibilities are endless, but whatever the scenario, Bob Dylan has you covered:

Like your smile
And your fingertips
Like the way that you move your lips
I like the cool way you look at me
Everything about you is bringing me
Misery

Thank you, Bob Dylan, for writing a lullaby for the unbearable tension of nursing a crush on someone who may or may not be approachable, available, attainable—like when there's just no way of knowing yet! When infatuation makes your mojo grow and you can see the light of happiness glow right there in front of you, almost within reach, and you once again feel alive and like a member of that human race that writes schmaltzy love songs, cheesy rom-coms and queesy Valentine's cards that are otherwise so detestable. You can hardly follow a conversation, let alone work or sleep. Flights of fancy, daydreams, niggling hopes and nagging doubts dog your every move as you commute between Ecstasy and Despair (both perfectly imaginary). All productivity goes out the window, your rationality hanging by a thread of strenuous effort to maintain some sort of self-discipline, lest you turn into some incoherently raving stalker howling pathetically beneath the window of the hapless object of your affections.

In the long run, there really is nothing worth pursuing quite as much as love, but right now, in that endlessly suspended moment where you still don't know which way that obscure object of desire will swing—does this other person (and I do hope you're in love with a person, or else you're in for a wild but doomed ride, friend), does this seemingly irresistible someone actually feel the chemistry and the electricity, or is the connection not noticed by him or her and hence not a connection at all, but a cruel fiction invented by your own excitable self? Right now this uncertainty is torture. «Misery.» The wait for some sort of resolution seems endless, time crawling infuriatingly by, and nothing can quiet the swirling thoughts that amount to just one thought, really, repeated ad ridiculum: «Does s/he feel the same?» Until the answer is given, nothing else seems to matter. Food, friends, hobbies… Even though your mind's entirely one-track, you still can't think straight. In bed, you've been tossing and turning for more hours than are left before you need to get up for work, when those words of Bob Dylan's rise up from the depths of your memory (or is that your downstairs neighbour's flat?), to calm you right the fuck down.

Buckets of rain
Buckets of tears
Got all them buckets comin' out of my ears
Buckets of moonbeams in my hand
You got all the love, honey baby
I can stand

…

Little red wagon
Little red bike
I ain't no monkey but I know what I like
I like the way you love me strong and slow
I'm takin' you with me, honey baby
When I go

Aw, Bob, thanks! One listen to «Buckets of Rain» slackens that knot within. It's a pep talk for those ravaged by the sweetest thing there is. And because it's the sweetest thing, everything seems to hinge on it. (It doesn't, you know.) What you need is time out. Something to take you out of your tunnel-of-love vision. Like the recognition that this shit happens all the time, everywhere, so don't sweat it:

Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must
You do what you must do and ya do it well
I'll do it for you, honey baby
Can't you tell?

So drop your romantic urgency and desperate possessiveness for now, because that's not love anyhow. Be thankful that when thinking of others, you do not only feel regret, resentment, suspicion and disappointment, but something to make sense of your inborn impulse to be with other people. If Hell is other people, Heaven must be, too:

I been meek
And hard like an oak
I seen pretty people disappear like smoke
Friends will arrive, friends will disappear
If you want me, honey baby
I'll be here

Now that's luv, Bub.

RIP Brittany Murphy, Back in the River of Dirt

Marissa Nadler: «River of Dirt» (Planet Claire acoustic session) [mp3]

Net Nuggets 19: Blonde and Golden Hookers

Larkin Grimm: «Live on WNYC Soundcheck» [.zip]

More's been written about Larkin Grimm here on Toilet Guppies than can be convincingly held to be healthy. Yet her performances deserve to be heard—more than most, in fact.

This particular recording—performed on WNYC radio show Soundcheck on 9 December 2008—consists of the songs «Blond and Golden Johns» and «Be My Host», both to be found in multi-instrumental versions on Grimm's extraordinarily brave and honest (and not a little titillating) 2008 release, Parplar. (Which Toilet Guppies cannot recommend highly enough.)

«Blond and Golden Johns» is purportedly about the gloriously decadent phenomenon that is Paris Hilton, but inspired by the «Feminism» of Frida Hyvönen, who Grimm refers to in the radio interview as «the Elton John of Sweden»(!). Whether this comparison is due to Hyvönen's '80s sounding piano balladry or her ill advised dress sense, she doesn't say, but Grimm seems to have taken some sort of cue from Hyvönen in construing Paris' sexual power grip on the masses as one variant of Girl Power.

Psychologists Cindy M. Meston & David M. Buss recently published Why Women Have Sex—Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between), in which they list 237 reasons in total. After love, pleasure, procreation and pity, that would leave, oh, about 233 motives to do with power, in some way or other. Perhaps Girl Power is in there somewhere among them.

As far as the sex symbol and Hilton heiress is a multi-millionaire who flaunts convention and does whatever the hell she pleases, Paris is empowered. But I suspect Grimm (or Hyvönen?) is confusing Feminism with Individualism here, as it's doubtful whether Hilton is any more solidaric with her «sisters» than your average psychological terrorist conniving against her sexual rivals in the most manipulative manner imaginable. Hilton can resort to her sexuality to gain power because she's attractive enough, an option not open to the majority of her gender. Hers is Narcissist Power.

As for Hyvönen's perceived politics, perhaps an American's Feminism is just a Swede's conformism. After all, the current strain of Scandinavian Feminism is only the politically correct paradigm in those countries, anyway, and its firm foundation in Puritanism ensures that it desperately lacks the sexuality (and so honesty, truth) inherent in Grimm's own work (not to mention that of Paris Hilton!). But hey—if one of Grimm's most evocative compositions came out of all this, who's complaining?

«Be My Host» is also an homage, Grimm has said, this time to troubadour-threnodist Marissa Nadler, an uncompromising talent in her own right. No one makes a dysfunctional obsession with death and heartbreak sound as pretty as songbird Nadler does, and it's easy to see why Grimm would be in awe of her.

Personally, I felt very inspired when recently I watched this during a sleepless night in front of the TV, after years of isolating myself from contemporary mainstream music (and branding campaigns—er, music videos):

If only it were an instrumental. At least we can safely ring up Lady GaGa to tell her she's not needed after all… And if she resorts to that «subversive liberated gay icon» spiel, have Peaches punch her in the tits.

But I digress. Go buy some Larkin Grimm, already.

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