Look away

Hey you! This is a private blog! Nothing to see here. Except, of course, for a fine selection of songs from some lovely Canadian types.

Track list:

1. Tagaq - auk/blood - hunger

Comments: Occasionally I like to break away from the usual and play something a bit artsy and experimental. This would be one of those times. Reveen only wishes he could relax you like this does. Also, Tagaq's voice is much prettier than Reveen's... and her backing musicians are more talented too. There's no comparison here, really.

2. The Ferris Wheel - the ferris wheel - i hear skeletons

Comments: Mr. Bones feels rattlin', ha ha, that's a good one. Doot doot doot - this CD proclaims that it was "recorded at Sean's," which just impresses the hell out of me. I realize everyone's doing it now, but man, so many people are just doing it wrong, you know?

3. Pete Samples - the jumper cables - bobby raindrop

Comments: I personally think it's the new "we are the world" - it's that sing-along chorus, whoa-oah, whoa-oah, it gets me every time! This is frankly quite gorgeous. And apparently his mom created his album art! I love that. My mum has an embroidery setting on her sewing machine too. She doesn't usually include velcro though. Kudos, Momma Samples.

4. Ghost Keeper - and the children of the great northern muskeg - cruisin the chev

Comments: Look out ladies and gentlemen, ghost keeper is out on the town, and I believe every single member is wearing leather pants and swaggling their hips suggestively. It is highly rock n' roll of them.

5. 4d - l'equanimite - les morts-vivants sifflent

Comments: The zombies are whistling?! Awesome. Is it like, some sort of all-zombie version of West Side Story? OH NO WAIT ACTUALLY - would it not be AMAZING if somebody made West Side Story as the tale of star-crossed lovers, one zombie and the other non-zombie? I vote for lady-zombie, and uninfected dude. I see... Kristin Chenoweth, maybe?

6. The Coast - expatriate - killing off our friends

Comments: Metaphorically I've been doing alot of this lately. You know how it is, you move to the suburbs and suddenly it gets so hard to bother to hang out with anybody. Not that I was doing tons of it before. It's just now it's pretty much absolute.
This song makes it sound kind of glamorous and fun. Thanks, coast!

7. Hills Like White Elephants - himalaya - gulls

Comments: They're building up to something here, I can tell. Sort of sounds like they're setting up a massive party in an airport hangar, but they're not letting any of the plebes in yet because the 40-ft amps are still being rolled into place.

8. Hilotrons - hoppymatic - lovesuit

Comments: David Byrne is going to call you up and ask when you snuck into his apartment and rifled through his funky loop drawer, hilotrons. And you should answer, "ha, two can play the funky loop game, Byrne; also, let's hang out and be awesome together, okay? Thursday at six good for you?" I am just making suggestions here.

9. Language-Arts - language-arts - either way

Comments: Funky, funky funky. And they're going to be playing right by my house, and the Beanstalk festival in Port Coquitlam! I love it.

10. Young & Sexy - the arc - the fog

Comments: A little weather-appropriate music for you. Next week I'm going to the lake, and on my first day there it will be thirty degrees and sunny, aka bathing suit weather. DAMN.

Messing around with playlists

You could probably listen to some songs here.

delightful noises

Hello all, welcome to today's blog about the show, wherein I will list the songs played on Singing with Barbra and give my immediate impressions, whatever they might be.

Just an introduction, in case you're new.

I find you intelligent and charming, with just a hint of jaw-droppingly gorgeous, have I mentioned?

Track list:

1. Team Building - upon st. lawrence - upon st. lawrence

Comments: This is a lovely song, which reminds me greatly of drifting on water. Successful songwriting, that! Quite beautiful, really. It's a bit of a musical journey through a Canadian landmark, if that's your thing.

2. Videotape - my favourite thing - night lights

Comments: This has an awesome culvert-recorded sound, like David Bowie's Heroes, a bit (it always comes back to Bowie for me). Distant vocals, and there is something very nostalgia-inducing about that particular sound. Have you noticed? Anyway, it's also danceable, in a very nice way.

3. Statues - terminal bedroom - husbands and wives

Comments: Dee dee deedeedeedee DEEEEEE! DANCE DANCE DANCE! If only there were a ballroom in my basement full of bedazzled friendly people, I would play them this song. And they would enjoy it heartily.

4. Culture Reject - culture reject - inside the cinema

Comments: Is that... a harmonium? Delicious. Creative percussion also. Always appreciated.

5. Ghost Keeper - and the children of the great northern muskeg - solid gold

Comments: ghost keeper, feeling a little bit country, a little bit rock n' roll. But mostly country. And also some disco, I guess, what with the 'solid gold.' Well, that's what I always think of. Solid gold... jumpsuits! Is that a leap of logic I'm making alone? Oh well.
This is excellent, by the way. Swaggerin.

6. Koak - morningtime stumble - y knot

Comments: This is the song I would play if I was returning to my hometown after a fire had gutted all of my favourite childhood haunts, just to set the mood. Those arc-ing, twangy guitars would punctuate my turning over of bits of wood, and discovering scorched street signs and old rags, and other detritus, with a pained look on my face.
Call me, T-Bone Burnett, I long to be your understudy.

7. Ruby Coast - ruby coast - brittle bones

Comments: Beeps and bleeps done right. Tugging at the heartstrings and pleasuring the eardrums with synthesizer - it's not easy, is it? I mean, so many have tried and failed. It must be a bit of a daunting task, all told.

8. The Hung Jury - 'the windsor scene' live at cjam fm - except the whiskey

Comments: Slightly belligerent songs about liquor consumption, I adore you! This one is predictably fun and mildly mournful, all at once. Oh, you know it's kind of a country song. Please, obviously.

9. Hills Like White Elephants - himalaya - a sword in the circle

Comments: Jangly and slight. Atmostpheric! Echoing and moody! Adjective adjective adjective! I do love a good adjective.

husband soup

New band name: husband soup. Right? It's my favourite thing. Not that I'm into cannibalism, I just like it when he cooks. So I figure the idea would appeal to people, therefore tricking them into buying the album. Or into making soup for their spouse. Win-win, yes?

Track list:

1. Statues - terminal bedroom - lifting fingers

Comments: DANCE DANCE DANCE! WOOO! It's been a long day. This is eminently jiveable. Thanks ever so, statues.

2. The Jealous Girlfriends - the jealous girlfriends - machines

Comments: The guitar in this, it's gorgeous. It has a lovely grinding industrial feel, by which I do not mean to imply that it's metal. It's just beautiful and very joyously electric. Ladies, you know what you're doing.

3. Videotape - my favourite thing - dancing on the sound

Comments: A journey, a gradual journey through a varying soundscape, toward dancing, dancing daaaaaancing! Love that.

4. Japandroids - lullaby death jams - darkness on the edge of gastown

Comments: Heyyyyy, your future is bleak! Dark and all, but also kind of amusing. The juxtaposition of the "heyyyyy!" and "you will never amount to anything" kind of phrases is interesting. Like if the Fonz were an embittered guidance counsellor.
Sorry, got a bit sidetracked there. This is a heady, emotional song with awesome local implications. I will say that actually, all of Gastown is looking a bit sad these days.

5. Cinderpop - a lesson in science - boomerang

Comments: Pleasantly fluffy, with organ... or keyboard? I'm no professional when it comes to these things. Oh, it says keyboard in the liner notes. I like the irregular drum beat, a bit like my heart after a tennis match. Ah youth. How I miss it.

6. Jellyfiche - tout ce que j'ai reve - source infinie

Comments: I will play you, Quebec artists, I don't care who you are or what you did as long as where you're from is the french part of eastern Canada. Grrr.
This is dark and brooding, and then soaring and optimistic! Just like all of my favourite David Bowie songs. WIN! WIN! WIN! The bassist is having a hell of a good time, also.

7. Horses - horses - gasoline

Comments: Let me just say that I have now played 'the catwalk' a few times, but this is my first experience with 'gasoline,' and I am not disappointed. This is just plain awesome. I'm doing the head-bop dance, and I don't care who sees.

8. Mattress - heavy duty - pollution

Comments: Just as I feared, there ain't no solution to the pollution. We're all gonna die, so, as my husband so charmingly put it last night, why don't we just go live in a box and do heroin. No reason to guard ourselves when death is so inevitable. And now he's making soup! His optimism always comes back to haunt him like that.
This is kind of bitchin' mournful electronica. Buck the system, yes!

9. The City Streets - concentrated living - mastodon

Comments: The packaging of this CD makes it all seem much more bleak than it actually is. The city streets may feel a bit discouraged, but their instruments don't know it. Sort of a 'jump around and cry' number. I approve.

10. Bil Hetherington and the Asian Tigers - bh and the at - leaders in the know

Comments: Pretty. I want to write all about it, but I'm being ejected from the studio. Well, I can't live here or anything, that wouldn't do. But really, this is lovely.