emily, miss bronte if you're nasty

I don't really know what I did last night but something seriously fucked up my left shoulder. If you saw me do anything that looked painful (besides karaoke with stevens seagalll which merely sounded painful) be a friend and let me know what it was. Maybe it was from that dude at filibertos touching my shoulder and referring to me as "the secretary from the saloon, shaking your fucking rump. What's your name? Emily? Emiliah." That was pretty painful. I'm so obviously a librarian, GAWSH. Or maybe it was from stevens calling me "sugartits" in front of my mom. Maybe I hurt myself trying to teach 'Stina's cat circus tricks. There's a lot of possibilities because I like to live on the edge.

Anyway, for a while there's been buzz around water coolers other than the ponygirl water cooler about a band called Fleet Foxes. I'm not really sure how to feel about that. There's a new Blogotheque video of them performing "White Winter Hymnal" and it's very pretty but they just don't excite me. It's a strange thing, this it sounds good but it doesn't move me feeling. I have this feeling that they'll be one of those bands that everyone will either forget in three months or turn on when/if they put out a second album. This video makes me want to like them more.



I can't explain it. Pitchfork gave it a 9 but they also want us to like Animal Collective so, you know.....
I can tell you what I hate. This scary animated video for the same song.



I really wish people would stop thinking shit like this is cool. Claymation is creepy and unacceptable.

To cheer you up, here's a video of the Dodos from the very same night playing "Fools".



Feel better now?

l'histoire

For a while now, I've had a steadily growing desire to learn the violin. Owen Pallett is probably the guy who's responsible for first kindling my desire. Final Fantasy Has a Good Home really got me excited about the possibilities of the violin. When we saw Horse Feathers I felt the prickle of that desire growing. Or maybe I left my cell phone on vibrate, you can't expect me to remember everything. But what has finally made me decide it must be done?



Okay, before you get your mustache in a twist, I know Gaspar Claus here is playing a cello but the techniques are similar and he is making sounds come out of it that don't even seem possible. That shit is like some shoegaze cello. I am so serious that I intend to abstain from the purchase of any new frocks until I have a violin in my hands and lessons funded, which shouldn't be too hard actually considering everyone I work with just went back to school and I didn't. Overtime, here I come!

Gaspar Claus did a series of videos for La Blogotheque with flamenco guitarist Pedro Soler. The two of them drive around the border between Spain and France looking for lonely places to sit down and play music together. In the first two videos, they kind of chat with each other about music and shit and it's really cool to see how they each bring the perspective of their generation but without getting into a really intense "kids these days"/"shut up dad" kind of fight (I think it's called "respect"?). But it's in this last video where they visit the cemetery where Walter Benjamin was buried that I really feel the melancholy power of their collaboration and the importance of art, of music, of ideas. You have to have eight minutes somewhere in your life that you can dedicate to watching this.



Human history is so big and terrible. How could you not care? How could you not want to make some noise?

living in a tree

For reasons that are hard to explain, I have a serious boner for music that's recorded live or otherwise shittily. When I hear something and it hits the little "over-produced" mark in my head it's dead to me. I don't know what exactly sets me off, but I'm not talking about artists who use their studio time to polish their sound in an idiosyncratic way. I have no problem with things being mixed well, but I feel like a lot of people do too much. But what do I know? I like it when I'm listening to music and I hear somebody cough or mutter or a door slam or somebody fucks up. Y'all know I love shit like the daytrotter sessions and black cab sessions. Arcade Fire playing in an elevator? Fuck yeah!



I want to be the guy who tears up the magazine. If anyone needs a guy like that in their band, just shoot me an email.

Anyway, that video comes from a place called La Blogotheque. Their website is in a bunch of damn French but it's not hard to figure out where the videos are and several stories specify that they are en anglais. One of their latest featured "Concerts a Emporter" (take-out shows) is a pretty lady with a really pretty voice named Priscilla Ahn.



I fully support doing your job in your pjs.

Watching her, I wish that this was a teaser for some musical shot in black and white about either a city girl fleeing to the country to find her self or about a country girl running away to the city to realize her big dreams. Or maybe some combination, like country girl goes to the city, hates it and goes back home, like a modern Wizard of Oz story. Or her and Zoey Deschanel could play sisters who roam the countryside and sing for a living. I would pay the full price of admission to see any of those hypothetical movies. Film makers, get on it.