Anyone's Ghost

Some days, when nobody else is home, when the TV has exploded and the internet has run out of interesting, I start to go a little weird. Skittish, I guess. High strung. The amazing human cello. I'll pace around the house a few times until I'm certain that yes, I have in fact gone mad. So I'll go for a walk.

It calms me, like a drug would, and I find it strangely fun. It's always night, there's always a road and a road always goes somewhere. Sometimes I purposefully take the way I'm least familiar with until I'm half-lost in the suburbs, kicking leaves and tripping sensor lights. Sometimes I spy the big hill behind the railway station and think to myself, "I bet the city looks alright from up there."

And yeah I guess it did, but that's not really why I walked there.

The National have been a favourite band of mine for a long time, thanks to a chance encounter in grade 11, roughly a thousand years ago. They have a new album, High Violet.

I don't go walking anymore.

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A Flower In A Glove

I fucking love Frog Eyes. I really do. So much that I named my blog after them. So much that if I were to ever own a cat I would call him Matthew's Cat, Who Has Cast Of His Shackles And Become Glorious Patriarch Of All Cats. I'm not exactly sure what it even is that gets me hooked. The ramshackle and strained rumbling. The seemingly tuneless maple syrup guitar. The whole air of pointlessness. The feeling that Frog Eyes have fought in some great medieval battle and have been mercilessly defeated.

Even Carey Mercer, who must surely be from another world, has struck a strange chord with me. He writes a very occaisional blog called Clouds Of Evil, which I stumbled upon amid his recollection of some crazy bender party called Shitmix '96. It was all alcohol, all energy, all pandering. Somewhat unexpectedly I found myself thinking "now here is a man to admire," around the same time that I decided that Frog Eyes was definitely music I could admire.

So, a new album. Paul's Tomb: A Triumph. The most elegant 4 word introduction to a band I've ever heard, because that name is pure Frog Eyes. And guess what! They've even made an album for everyone! It's full of catchy pop hits and 4 minute love songs!

No I'm just kidding. The first track is nine minutes. And it is a truly glorious thing, one of their very best, but it's looking like Frog Eyes aren't trying to make any new friends here. Mercer has always dangled the flashy carrot of brilliance, and in a way that could be seem as extremely frustrating. Those choruses are there, they are right fucking there! And they will be given to you one minute into a song and never heard again.

The whole idea that a song should be tidal, moving in and out from a big yellow beach that someone can lie on and listen has been totally ignored. Instead, anyone trying to grab a tan and meet some hot-bodied other better get out of the fucking way or they will be pummelled by a grey-water torrent of endless, relentless ramble.

Basically, I have no idea how this band has any fans. But I am one. I believe there is something in there, some great idea that I cannot describe, and I think this album is fucking brilliant. It is a very different beast from their previous effort, but it is still very much a beastly thing.

But it's harmless, really. You know how some people keep ugly rats for pets? Yeah, I love Frog Eyes.

Life Coach

The internet is really great sometimes. It's a bottomless pit of everything, and especially bottomless when it comes to music. For example, it helps you discover legions of bands you would never normally hear of. Like Fang Island. Sometimes, though, it all goes a little bit wrong. Just little things. Ok, just one little thing.

Stop saying epic.

I mean it guys! Yes, language is an evolving thing, no, it's not in any way for me to say what's right or wrong for anyone to say or not say. But we've ruined it! "Oh man that was an epic breakfast." No. It was breakfast. You didn't feast for days upon the juicy hearts of all those who have wronged you. You had muesli and toast.

Ok ok I guess I better explain myself. Why the sudden rage over the use of a single word. Isn't this supposed to be about music? Well yes, and this is where my problem lies. Fang Island's latest (self-titled) album is awesome. I mean, really really awesome. And now I have to try and tell you about it WITHOUT saying that it's epic. Because that word is now in the bin.

Ok, so you gotta bear with me here. Music is mountains. Over there on pop mountain it's always sunny, on metal mountain there's lighting and on gangsta rap mountain there's lots of drive-bys. So here we are on Fang Island mountain. And here's Larry with the weather:

OH SHIT GUYS, you might wanna stay indoors for this one. I'm pretty sure the sky is full of ENORMOUS HAWKS! They are exacting their HAWKY VENGEANCE onto anything that dare opposose them. The only thing standing up to the hawks are the ROBOT DINOSAURS, who seem to be using the enormous hawks as AWESOME SURFBOARDS and shooting lasers at all sorts of shit. I'm pretty sure the moon just FUCKING EXPLODED! You might be stuggling to hear me over the sounds of WICKED GUITAR played by THOR HIMSELF. Oh, did I mention the guitar was AFRICA? Also, there are angels riding the robot dinosaurs. And it's raining money. Back to you in the studio!

This concludes our tour of Fang Island mountain. Back to planet boring. I had to go to all that nonsensical effort because a bunch of 14 year olds ruined the one word that sums it up completely. If the internet keeps taking great words away from me I'm just gonna have to make up my own, and nobody wants that.

Fang Island. A sklubtastic band, a pharlicious album.

A More Perfect Union

I'm not American. I never will be, even if I moved there. I don't understand the place enough, how somewhere can hold such normal mellow people and such absurd caricatures, the fictional and non-fictional riding the bus together every day. I don't know if it is a place that I would like to live in, but goddamn if it isn't fascinating to watch from some nearby safe haven. Like Canada.

You only have to go so deep to realise the place isn't really completely full of zealots and dumbasses. Some of the music coming out of there is pretty fucking incredible, even if their TV is a little bit shit. Blindfold random grab, reach down into New Jersey and pull out Titus Andronicus, specifically their second and newest album The Monitor.

This isn't even music, it's straight up education. It's taught me that whatever happens, I can never wake up feeling as truly, deeply disappointed as an American can. And it's taught me that a disillusioned American is the angriest motherfucker on a mission you ever did see. There's some kind of civil war allegory in here somewhere, as if American history itself has got both its middle fingers all up in your face. How about that, a glorious 'Fuck You' from Abraham Lincoln himself.

And of course let's not forget the most important historical American of them all. Yep, even God's in on it.

The angst drips off the album, seeps through the speakers and puddles on the floor in a disgusting mess until we're all swimming in it. A rage packed cannon shot straight into the Atlantic ocean. So what the hell do I care? Well it makes for some entertaining music, that's for sure. You'll learn a lot. The comedown is a real chill out. It's good to let it out, otherwise who knows what's boiling up inside us. The whole thing burns itself down in flames quite spectacularly.

Oh and there's bagpipes at the end. Awesome. Give me more. Give me liberty or give me another fucking whiskey.

I'm American.

Better Times

I've never really understood hammocks. I just don't find them very comfortable. I can't float on my back in the pool, I sink straight away. If it's a bright sunny day on the beach, I'll be inside, pacing around for no real reason. When I go on holiday I power around every single day and get off the plane back home completely exhausted. Relaxation is a foreign concept to me.

Even the music that I love can't sit still. All shaky hand-claps, wired whelping and a tweak rocker shuffle. Anxious Allistair & The ADHD All-Stars. So what kind of Ritalin would I have to be popping to stick up a picture of a dream-pop album. Surely it's just white noise to me. A 50 minute confusion that does not compute. But there it is, Teen Dream by Beach House.

Well, it turns out I can relax. It just takes the musical equivalent of T-Rex tranquiliser to do it.

And suddenly, I understand. You incense weirdos were onto something all along. Teen Dream is my only introduction but it's enough to make me want to sell all my clothes, pack a tennis raquet case full of wine and go find a Mexican beach to sleep on. Matthew is a tired concept. From now on you can call me Alejandro. Antonio Banderas will play me in the film about my life. Beach House will provide the soundtrack. Everything will be in slow motion, it's gonna be great you should totally go see it.

For all you jittery types: don't take my splendid summer comedown lightly. If you value your twitcher habits then you have to stay the hell away from this album. It will give you a tropical hammocking you won't soon forget. You could wake up in a silent snowy forest, or a Japanese zen temple.

And you will love it. You have been warned.

White Sky

It must be just awesome to be an infectiously nice person. Your entire life would be completely bipolar: everyone you meet will immediately either swoon around you or desperately want to punch your smarmy little face in. Every handshake is a coin toss, every greeting is a question. You'd never be bored.

There are nice guys, and there is Vampire Weekend. With almost no public fanfare, the collared New York Cityzens poked their heads out from behind safe university walls and said "Hey we're Vampire Weekend" in that adorable accent of theirs. And the world fell in love. Well, half of it did.

Luckily, since I'm such a positive guy and all, I was a swoonig like you wouldn't beleive. I say luckily because otherwise, in the alternate universe where I like to kick kittens, that band's second effort Contra would have gone by completely unnoticed. My friend, believe me when I say this: the world would be a much less nicer place without this album.

Ezra is right there, right up in your ear. Like he saw something amazing go down in the old town centre and he just has to tell you. A 40 minute deep-breathe-in. A wistful narrative spoken through trumpets, bongos, autotune and the rolling waves of a west African coastline. This album, I beleive, is a true scrapbook. Slices and snapshots of some other place, some other time, some other feeling.

Apparently I'm swooning so much that I can hear colours, because this album is so yellow that it hurts my eyes. If you give it a go, and your head feels a little bit funny afterwards, don't worry. The haters haven't punched you in the face.

Your cheeks just hurt from smiling.

Fireworks

Don't hate what you create. There's a motto for you. Would even make a great tattoo, in Latin or something. Esperanto. Maybe Klingon. Something nobody can read but you, because you're special. You exist, and don't you know it. Like nobody else does. Another fucking LEVEL, man! If only everybody thought like you did, gosh, the shit we'd get done. World peace! Free drugs! Sex for breakfast! If only...

If only what? If only everyone listened to more Animal Collective, for one. Yeah whatever the concert was a few weeks back now, but I'm a busy guy. Stop living in the present. I've got corrupt regimes to dismantle and one man revolutions to tell everyone about. Also, I've only just now recovered the full use of my ears. They took a right purple pummelling, all swirled up and spun out to shells of themselves.

If you put a leaf to your ear, you can hear the forest.

Imagine if you found a fairy bouncing around in your garden. After some careful consideration you asked her the secret to eternal happiness. But the flashy little gnomette just gives you a recipe for some coconut cupcakes, and yes they were pretty good, but it's a 10 minute window of bliss we're talking here, 25 tops. Little fucker is stoned to high heaven, you'd get more sense talking to a dead lizard.

Now, pump up the strobe. I mean really pump it. With a pump. More! I'm talking Berlin New Year, with the powerbox on the fritz. Drei! Zwei! Eins! Glückliches Neues Jahr!

Yep, that pretty much covers it. I went to an Animal Collective show. So did you, IN MY MIND!

Us & Now

Joy Division. Joy Division! Joy Division Joy Division Joy Division Joy Division! Are you still reading? Good. You get it. You get that sadness is the world's greatest art form, and that Michelangelo only painted the Sistine chapel roof because he couldn't cry upwards. So get a strong grip on the wasteland of reality, put on your blackest mittens and abandon all hope.

It's not going to be alright. This is Former Ghosts.

Almost a supergroup, the ghosts are primarily the outlet of Freddy Rupert, because This Song Is A Mess And So Am I just wasn't depressing enough, or something. When Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) and Nika Roza (Zola Jesus) join the party, well, let's just say that all the happy kids have gone home. Alone. To an empty house on a windy evening. Also, their fishies have died.

Fleurs isn't an album that is going to swerve around like a drunk bus driver; if you are in for track 1 you are in for track everything. On one level its almost a pop album: there are plenty of catchy songs, it never really tries to fuck your brain over and everything is always rather simple. Musically it all feels very similar, like they mapped white noise to a keyboard and played it with a dentist's drill. Hell, some moments can only be descibed as downright cute. So, apart from all the droning reverb, sounds perfectly accessible yeah?

Ha, excuse me while I cry wine into a cup and drink it in front of you.

The sadness, I beleive, doesn't lie directly in anything you can hear. It's the feeling, the soul destroying hollow empty feeling. Like if you've ever known anyone who has been fucked over really bad, and they still come to your parties and they look ok on the outside, even smiling and laughing sometimes, but you just know. Their heart has been shredded into pretty pink ribbons and their eyes are like looking into an oncoming truck. You just know.

That feeling is this album, in 12 bite size peices. It smothers the music and haunts every corner of every song. In a ghostly way, a sad way, I find it really beautiful. As if everything is somehow reversed if you only think to embrace the hollow. As if everything will be ok.

Yeah, like fuck it will.

Repeaterbeater

No more stories/Are told today/ I'm sorry/ They washed away/ No more stories/ The world is grey/ I'm tired/ Let's wash away.

That's the title. Really. It gets better: totally inspired by my lemon flavoured slice of internet, you score yourself the new Mew album, settle down in your fancy computer chair and fire it up. 3 minutes and 14 seconds later, you ring me up on my HOME PHONE (who does that?) yelling "Matthew, track one is fucking backwards! What kind of bullshit are you trying to pull?!" and then 4 seconds after that you ring me up AGAIN (mobile this time) apologising profusely and promising flowers and chocolates to make it up to me. As well you should, because you hurt my fucking FEELINGS! Also that song rocks.

We are that couple from the TV shows, the one that fights and swears and rips clothes, and then kisses passionately, runs into the bedroom and slams the door. And Mew is the perfect soundtrack. There has never been a more sugary sweet apocalypse, never a more violent honeymoon. It sounds like the absolute last thing anyone would ever want to listen to, and that's wrong too. It's awesomely indescribable. It's a new primary colour.

So, then, what the hell do i write about it? All i can say for sure is that if i wrote a song about being stuck in a washing machine, and then recorded it while stuck in a washing machine, it would be as close as i'd ever come to Mew.

This wasn't my first taste, though. And The Glass Handed Kites, Mew's previous effort, is...well... it's different. To this. In that it's the same. I mean, it had more straight-up-and-down rock songs, but No More Stories is a more straight-up-and-down rock album. But Mew are in no way straight-up-and-down. YEAH WORK THAT OUT! IT'S LIKE I'M REVIEWING MY OWN MIND!

I think Mew is my ignorance. All of it.

My point is: who gives a shit. I obviously can't tell you a damn thing about this album. Whatever it is, i like it alot. Give it a listen, call me a loony, grab some furry red shoes and your favourite flute and meet me at the end of the world. Where the world begins. I'll be the one stuck in a washing machine.

Don't call me at home anymore.

Race For The Prize

That's not the clearest of pictures, so i'll let you choose your own adventure: You're in a rock band thats had moderate worldwide success and a handful of critically acclaimed albums, and tonight you're headlining a festival in Byron Bay. You've got 15,000 people and one hour, so what do you do?

a) Carpet bomb the entire crowd with confetti at every opportunity
b) Ride around on the shoulders of a man dressed up as a Yeti for no apparent reason
c) Make your entrance to the stage out of a giant pulsing vagina of pure energy
d) All of the above

If you answered d, well too bad it's been done before. If you didn't, well then you just aren't trying hard enough.

I don't think I'd ever been to a musicshow that was entirely not about the music until i saw The Flaming Lips. It was one of those surreal moments where you want to stop the world. If God rang me up right then and said "Hey Matt, what you doing?" I would say, "God, I haven't the fucking foggiest, also how did you get this number?"

I think there were guitars involved, maybe even words. There was a man with a megaphone and everyone was yelling, or, there was a megaphone yelling and the man was everyone. There were dancing frogs screaming "Motherfucker" like it was a newly discovered colour, and someone next to me looked like he got lost on the way to the post office.

Then I woke up, but there was confetti in my wallet, so I guess it really happened.

Idiot Heart

All those years ago, when I still went to the beach, I used to love the feeling of laying in bed after a day of swimming. A few hours in the waves meant that by the time I lay down, my bed was a boat that rolled over the swelling ocean like the gentle hills of a golf course. Its been a really long time since I even remembered that feeling, but music can do all kinds of weird things to your head if you let it, and so the nostalgia is dragon-shaped in the form of Sunset Rubdown's glorious new album.

When your favourite band releases a new album, the first thing you notice is change. Random Spirit Lover threw an entire orchestra in a blender (with a healthy dose of electricity) and spread it all over every single song. Dragonslayer is more careful in it's approach, each song has a particular instrumental focus, paired so lovingly with Spencer Krug's lyrical whimsy that it conjures images of those weird cousins you know, who touch each other a little too much. But hey, they're happy right?

But while the music has been turned down to 5, said lyrical whimsy has been cranked to 11. This is an album of words, it's heart and soul made from random grabs of Greek mythology, American history and the ever-pitiful human condition. It's sometimes happy, sometimes sad and sometimes darkly funny. It always punches, but never painfully. Like the stupid inflatable hammers you get in a showbag, squeaking harmlessly off the head of a very stern father while he tries to read the paper. International Business (Squeak Squeak Squeak) could be the alternate title for every song on the album.

When the guitar is in charge, you can almost forget about the words and rock the fuck out to the musical equivalent of a Christmas cracker going off in slow motion for 6 minutes at a time. But why would you read the blurb and say "Yes what an accomplished novel." Its a cookbook you knob. The music is the possibility, and Krug's wandering vocals give it an unreal reality.

And unreal it is. He doesn't sing about bringing in his bins, or chatting up someone at the library, or doing his tax return. Spencer Krug is a dreamer, because dreams are better. I have a favourite everything, Sunset Rubdown is my favourite band because dreams are better.

Icarus and his idiot heart are more real than anyone you will ever know. Paper lace is better than designer denim. A black swan outside the palace is better than a brick letterbox outside your boring grey apartment. The ocean is better than my shitty cream coloured room.

I like it alot. Case dimissed. Order in the court. Squeak Squeak Squeak.

Radio Kaliningrad

Handsome Furs have crossed a line. Their first album was a very quiet achievement. Withdrawn and reserved, it was sweet in a way that you would never say was sweet to save face. Well, fuck my face i thought it was sweet. It was never going to shift continents or collapse governments, and i like that. Everything in its right place.

So earlier this year they released Face Control, their second album. It was supposed to be sweet. It was supposed to be peaceful. It was never supposed to have some badass dog on the front, and it was certainly never supposed to be this fucking cool.

Face Control is written for Russia, and played with the kind of flair that this decade finds most unfamiliar. Its the guy that doesn't need friends, he'll have the party on his own. You just can't hate that guy. Or the girl at the train station with enormous headphones, dancing around as if possessed until you can't help but go tap her on the shoulder and say "Excuse me? Hello?"

But she'll never even look at you. She is too busy dancing. And it kills you.

How can anyone possibly be jealous of a song? And yet here i am, what a sad situation. I mean, who wouldn't trade dull computer desk dreams for a military cap, several litres of vodka and a tank that won't start.

Don't lie you've thought about it too. At least now we can live it for a while. This album should be sold as therapy, escapist medicine. Red Sqaure for one hour. Even the KGB can't resist this, if Putin gets wind then Russia will have 12 new national anthems. Or more likely he'll play it to his girlfriend, in some hotel room while dancing in his underwear for her enjoyment. Because this album has the power to make that happen.

Long live Moscowdisco, comrades.

I wanna go to Russia.

http://www.myspace.com/handsomefurs

Cryptograms

I saw Deerhunter last week. It was all very swirly, songs never seemed to stop, they rolled. Pleasantries weren't exchanged, they were taken. Wikipedia says noise rock and shoegaze, but that doesn't seem to go far enough. They did nothing BUT play noise, and your shoes were for nothing BUT to gaze at. There was no show at the music show, you didn't even have to be looking at the stage.

Floor rock. Overhead ceiling pipe tangle rock. But never check your phone rock, or what time is it rock. The support, well yeah they may have well played their shoes, but Deerhunter, somehow, did it better. They did it right.

Everyone likes new things. New drugs, new lovers, new ways to smile, new ways to fall asleep. New ways to chill out, new ways to hear the same thing, new ways to talk about something that only happened once. I have a new way to relax, a new place to bury bodies and a new place to go. And it only cost me 40 dollars.

Isolation tank rock.

I read somewhere on the internet that your brain has a weird instant replay function, something to do with short term memory. That's why when someone says something and you say "what" you know what they said before they repeat it. If it takes about half a second, its someone calling out your name in a busy room. If it takes 2 hours, it's a Deerhunter show.

Magic ear puzzles. Audio illusions, all blurry nonsense and useless static, but give it a bit of time, concentrate enough, and FUCK ME its a dinosaur!

Thats what i'll tell anyone who asks me what kind of music they play. And if anyone asks what i did last saturday, i will tell them i did nothing. And it was incredible.

http://www.myspace.com/deerhunter