SOUNDTRACK: WOLF PARADE-Expo 86 (2010).
Wolf Parade is a strange band, no doubt. Both singers can craft super catchy songs, but they like to layer them with odd sounds and lots of song parts making the songs more challenging (and better in the long run).
“Cloud Shadow on the Mountain” starts the disc off with drums and an eccentric voice. And the lyrics? “I was asleep in a hammock/I was dreaming that I was a web/I was a dream-catcher hanging in the window of a minivan/Parked by the water’s edge./I’d say that I was all alone.”
The song has some loud guitars, some great guitars riffs and (the most notable feature on the album) retro sounding keyboards. On this song the keys play an alternate melody that compliments the song very well. There’s some heavy rocking sections and a slowed down drums and vocals section. It’s fairly exhausting how much is in this one song. By the end, he’s repeating “you will never be born as a scorpion.”
“Palm Road” is a more straightforward and catchy song, although it’s certainly offbeat. “What Did My Lover Say” opens with a cool guitar riff an counterpointed keyboards. As with most of the songs on this record headphones or at least good stereo speakers really make a difference. The rest of the album is hard to speak of in different terms because each song is unusual with angular guitars and interesting vocals. The keyboards also provide unsettling atmospherics. None of the songs are easy to sing along to, until one day the shifts in melody and phrasing sink in and it all sounds wonderful.
What I find notable about these songs is that they are all long (most are around 5 minutes) and they feel long–not in a dragging out way (although maybe “In the Direction of the Moon” drags) but in a–so much has been going on, this song must be really long kind of way.
Some other highlights include “Ghost Pressure” with its great keyboard riff (that feels not unlike The Cars). Speaking of The Cars, the keyboards on “Oh You, Old Thing” have the great spacey Cars sound from the 80s. “Pobody’s Nerfect” melds the catchiness that the guys are capable of with just the right mix of unexpectedness. And the closing song “Cave-O-Sapien” seems to combine all of the best qualities of the above songs in to one–a great riff, catchy “oh oh ohs,” and bizarre lyrics, “I had a dream of a gorilla.”
This album is definitely not for everyone, but multiple listen reap big rewards.
[READ: July 8, 2012] Happy Birthday, Wanda June
I have been chugging along nicely through Kurt Vonnegut’s oeuvre. My plan was to read all of his novels and then read his short stories. And then maybe read his plays (I wasn’t sure about that last bit). But as I mentioned yesterday, reading a simple play can be a delight (and can be a very quick read, too).
Vonnegut opens the book with a prologue about how and when he wrote the book. It was originally a play called Penelope, and he thought it was terrible. Fifteen years later he kept the basic idea and rewrote it as Happy Birthday, Wanda June. And the idea is straight out of Homer. In the Odyssey, Penelope is Ulysses’ long-suffering wife. When Ulysses came home from his travels some twenty years later, he was feted as a hero and the world (well, his world) rejoiced (except for Penelope’s suitors, of course).
So in this play, Harold Ryan is a loud, manly hunter and soldier, ready and happy to kill anything in his way. He has been on an expedition for eight years–his plane went down and he is presumed dead–even Mutual of Omaha thinks so. His wife, Penelope Ryan believes him to be dead and has been entertaining two suitors–Dr Norbert Woodly, a pacifistic doctor and Herb Shuttle, a vacuum cleaner salesman. The only person who doesn’t presume him dead is their son Paul Ryan, who bristles not only at the thought of his father being dead, but even more so at these wimpy suitors. Although Paul is too young to ever have rally known his father (he’s 12), he keeps hopes alive that his father will return one day.
What I like about the play is that it maintains Vonnegut’s voice right from the start. It opens with a speech from Penelope:
My name is Penelope Ryan. This is a simple-minded play about men who enjoy killing–and those who don’t. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: BAND OF HORSES-Live on KEXP , April 13, 2006 (2006). 
nd of Horses played KEXP in 2006. They had been around since 2004 but their debut came out in 2006. Since they are a Seattle band, they are treated as yet another Seattle band, which is kind of funny as they would be huge not long after this release (okay technically in 2007). This show takes place about a month after the debut album came out (although the DJ says they’ve been playing them for a while).
I Just Read About That... 