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Archive for the ‘Constellation Records’ Category

Barack Obama–The Audacity of Hope (2006)

Posted in Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Constellation Records, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Digression, Feu Therese, History, Kraftwerk, Le Fly Pan Am, Memoirs, Political Humor, Politicians, Shalibi Effect, Smarty Pants, The Walrus on October 22, 2008| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: FEU THÉRÈSE-Ca Va Cogner [CST049] (2007).

I struggled ever so much over what disc to attach to this book review, thinking that any disc would be seen to have some correlation to Obama.  So, why not just go all out: a Canadian indie band that sings in French!

This is Feu Thérèse’s second disc.  It comes from Constellation records, home of noisy, lengthy, downbeat records.  In fact, Feu Thérèse is chock full of some of the big names in the Montreal underground: Alexandre St-Onge plays with noisy bands like Shalibi Effect and Jonathan Parant comes from noisy bands like Le Fly Pan Am.  So, how did all of these factors possibly unite to make this disc?

Ca Va Cogner sounds like a analog synth party from 1980!  The whole ensemble would be completely and utterly cheesy if the secret ingredient (which I cannot identify) did not make the whole thing work so well.  The whole disc seems to be washed over with these groovy synths. I want to make comparisons to Kraftwerk, but that seems a little too cold.  All of these songs are warm and soft, there’s even a children’s chorus on one of them.  Other songs are instrumental, or have minimal singing.  And “Le Bruit Du Pollen La Nuit” has a wonderfully smutty sounding spoken word track that recalls, of course, Serge Gainsbourg at his naughtiest (although I have no idea what this song is actually about).

I think what saves the disc from just being an 80’s French Europop band is the guitar and bass interplay.  Those two guys take a lot of the sounds that they’ve mastered in their respective bands, and play them beneath all of the synths.  It undercuts the intentional cheesiness of the keyboards with some awesome textures, and really brings everything to a remarkable whole.  This probably won’t be anybody’s favorite disc, but it is very enjoyable, and worth tracking down, especially if you’re a Francophile.

[READ: October 15, 2008] The Audacity of Hope

Since I’ve been for Obama since the beginning, I figured I ought to read his book.  It seemed especially apt now, since the McCain campaign is saying that we don’t “know anything about” Obama. Well, if you read this book, or, I suspect his OTHER autobiography, you could learn quite a bit about him.  Unlike some other people who don’t grant interviews, hmmm.  Okay, I had thought I would be able to review this book without referencing the current campiagn or the upcoming election, but it is simply impossible.  Please deal with my Partisan Review. (more…)

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Lewis Padgett–“Mimsy Were the Borogoves” (1943)

Posted in C.L. Moore, Constellation Records, Fantasy, Funny (strange), Henry Kuttner, Lewis Carroll, Lewis Padgett, Marianne Faithfull, Short Story, The Last Mimzy, Wikipedia on October 16, 2008| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: HRSTA-Ghosts Will Come Down and Kiss Our Eyes [CST048] (2007).

Hrtsa has another record out from Constellation.  This band is the brainchild of Michael Moya.  Moya writes some really fantastic melodies with interesting and unusual instrumentation.  The first song contains a pump organ, I believe (the liner notes don’t go into any detail).  And throughout the album, whether the songs are long or short, either the guitar lines are great or the different instruments creates atmospheric swells that are really something.

My only problem with this record is the singing. There is occasional singing.  On my first listen, I thought the voice was a woman with a deep husky voice like Carla Bozulich or Marianne Faithfull.  On the second listen I realized the voice is probably that of Moya, making it a reedy tenor voice.  At times he sounds a bit like Gordan Gano from the Violent Femmes.  The problem is that his voice doesn’t really have the power to pull of the songs.  The voice often gets lost in the mix or just distracts from the instruments.  This disparity is heightened even more because there are a number of fantastic instrumentals on the disc.

I certainly enjoyed the disc, I just would have preferred no words or a more interesting singer.

[READ: October 2, 2008] “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”

Sarah and I watched The Last Mimzy a few weeks ago.  I didn’t know it was based on a short story.  I also had never heard of the author.  Well, it turns out that the author is a pseudonym of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, two other authors I also hadn’t heard of.  This edition of the story comes in a book attributed to Henry Kuttner (originally published as The Best of Henry Kuttner, but released now as The Last Mimzy). Phew.

So, where was I?

Well, if I didn’t know that the story was the basis for the movie, I never would have guessed.  The only thing relating to the story is that two kids find a box full of inexplicable toys which behave in a manner that is unlike anything on earth. (more…)

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Jeffrey Eugenides–“Great Experiment” (New Yorker, March 31, 2008)

Posted in Alexis de Tocqueville, Books about writers, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Garbage, Jeffrey Eugenides, Mary Margaret O'Hara, New Yorker, Political Humor, Record Labels, Short Story, Silver Mt. Zion, Smarty Pants, Vic Chesnutt on September 25, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: VIC CHESNUTT-North Star Deserter [CST046] (2007).

The only thing I knew about Vic Chesnutt before this CD was that he was the songwriter for a benefit CD called Sweet Relief II: The Gravity of the Situation (1996).  I bought it mostly for Garbage’s “Kick My Ass” and Mary Margaret O’Hara’s “Florida”, not for Chesnutt, who I’d not heard of before then.  Usually if you get a CD of covers of an artist that you like, it’s hard to remove the cover from the original.  An album of covers by someone you don’t know is much easier to parse.

I got North Star Deserter because I’m a fan of the Constellation record label based in Montreal. They’ve released some great stuff over the years.  Recently, they’ve diversified their lineup to include some unexpected artists.  Like Vic Chesnutt.

The basic sound of this CD comes in two ways: acoustic guitar with world-weary singer,  and acoustic guitar with world-weary singer and the baking cacophony of what is essentially Thee Silver Mt Zion Orchestra and Tra La La Band.  It works surprisingly well.

The first song starts out with basically just Vic and his guitar.  He sings in a raspy weathered voice.  It’s a short acoustic song full of passion.  What threw me off here is that you expect that the whole album will be like this: short, passionate, acoustic songs.  The really unexpected part comes with song three, “Everything I Say,” when the backing band kicks in loud and hard.  Silver Mt Zion, for those unfamiliar are an offshoot of sorts from Godspeed You Black Emperor.  They have a great variety of instruments in the group, and much like Godspeed… they play grand, sweeping orchestral works. Unlike Godspeed, they have vocals.  And while backing Vic, they pull out all of the stops: cellos, contrebass, choruses, Casio keyboards, the works.

Perhaps my favorite song of the bunch is “You Are Never Alone.”  The premise is simple: Vic sings some very stark verses (“It’s OK, you can take a condom; It’s OK, you can get an abortion; It’s OK, you can get a quadruple bypass and then keep on, keeping on.”), and then the chorus slowly builds with first the men, then the women harmonizing and then finally everyone singing beautifully “You Are Never Alone.”  It’s 5 minutes of mesmerizing beauty.

And the rest of the album continues in a similar vein: stark, humanizing lyrics and alternating spare guitar or great swells of music.

Overall, I feel like the album runs a little long (or maybe it’s just exhausting to listen to).  But I can’t think of anything to get rid of; the two longest songs are actually two songs that I really like.  “Splendid” is a slow building song, where you don’t realize that 5 minutes have already gone past.  And then there’s “Debriefing.”  The first two minutes are noisy and brash, they settle down into a short sparse verse and then crash away for two more minutes.  Off and on like that for 8 minutes.  Cathartic to say the least.

The strangest thing for me is that I find Vic’s voice to be similar in tone and style to Matthew Sweet. There’s a few songs where you might even think that it’s Matthew Sweet singing.  But this Matthew Sweet sounds not like the pop singer of “Girlfriend” but like a man who has been beaten down by life for a little while.  It’s a voice that you instantly listen to to see if you can learn anything.

I’m not sure if this will make me get any more Chesnutt discs, but I’m glad I got this one.

[READ: September 15, 2008] “Great Experiment”

Jeffrey Eugenides wrote The Virgin Suicides, a great book notable for its use of first person plural narrator (!).  He also wrote Middlesex, which is on my bedside right now (and which I learned today was an Oprah pick).  But in the interim I just read this short story.  It’s my only exposure to Eugenides aside from Virgin Suicides, so it’s a nice change.

This story centers around Kendall, an over-educated, hyper-literate poet who is making a living working for a non-profit company.  This particular non-profit was founded by Jimmy Dimon, a former porn king who apparently grew a heart and decided to publish great books at a loss.  Kendall’s current assignment is to edit down Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America‘s most cogent ideas into a small pocket version called Pocket Democracy. (more…)

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Millard Kaufman–Bowl of Cherries (2007)

Posted in Carla Bozulich, Constellation Records, Consumerism, Diamanda Galas, Egyptology, End of the World, Funny (ha ha), Geraldine Fibbers, Godspeed You Black Emperor, McSweeney's, Millard Kaufman, Silver Mt. Zion, WMDs on March 15, 2008| 5 Comments »

bowl.jpgSOUNDTRACK: CARLA BOZULICH-Evangelista [CST041] (2007).

carla.jpgThis record comes from the mighty Constellation label. Don and Ian are super nice guys in Montreal who release some fantastic music. I have been a fan for years, and I have all of their releases. I get them sight unheard, because I know they release good, quality music with great packaging. They came to my attention through Godspeed You Black Emperor, a fantastic instrumental band, and their spinoffs (A Silver Mt. Zion, etc.).

Initially, they released pretty much only bands that had connections to each other (to see who plays on each others’ records, you’d need a spreadsheet about ten pages long). They have since branched out to include some really notable musicians like Vic Chesnutt (!) and Carla Bozulich.

Carla Bozulich was the singer for the great band The Geraldine Fibbers. gfib.jpg She has a very strong voice, and sounds not unlike Diamanda Galas, meaning she can hit the high notes, and the powerful notes, and the screechy notes, and tends to be a bit scary from time to time. In the context of the Geraldine Fibbers, it was really an amazing thing to behold.

They were a sort of country-punk band, and they were really tight. Carla’s vocals could scream or soothe depending on her mood. And working together, they were pretty great.

I mention this band because Carla’s solo album is a little too free-form for her own good. She thanks the producers for letting her get out things that have been inside. And I’m sure that was cathartic. However, I find that her voice needs the stabilizing force of a solid backing band. This solo album has very erratic (and very interesting) music, but when combined with her voice, it’s just a little too much chaos. With the Fibbers, the grounding of the backing band and structured songs really made her voice shine. On this one, there’s just so much going on that it’s all a bit of a mess.

The music itself is actually pretty great. It’s very unusual, with strings, and staccato sounds. Her voice also sounds great. After all, it’s been a few years since the Fibbers broke up, so it’s nice that she can still hit the notes. It’s just that the off-kilter music really competes with her off-kilter voice leading to an overall unsatisfying experience.

She has a new one coming out with a full band called Evangelista. I’ve listened through once, and it sounds much more cohesive. I think the solo record was just something to get out of her system.

[READ: March 10, 2008] Bowl of Cherries

McSweeney’s published this book. And the only story behind this book that you may have heard is that the author is old. Really old, not just old for McSweeney’s old, but like nineties old. It’s something of a shame that this was the first (and pretty much only) thing I heard about this book. And yet it is an interesting background in and of itself. (more…)

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