"GOLDEN UNWORLDLY SILENCE"

Gojira + "The Heaviest Matter Of The Universe"

What God wrote, when He reviewed this single, was "This is SO FLIPPING GOOD." And as He wrote He continued the business of saving mankind's souls, He directed archangels, He buried Atlantis a little deeper, He gave Dan Brown another free ticket, and He pondered the impenetrable mystery of the existence of flaccid donuts served through a brick wall in cities and villages across Canada. And He hasn't even heard the rest of Gojira's album yet.

Business is going to blow His mind.

POPE SLOAN

Sloan + "Ill Placed Trust"

Most obviously there are the the big blocky henges of sound making up "Who Taught You To Live Like That?" and then, of course, there's Jay Ferguson's solidly AM tenor on "Right Or Wrong," and it would be awkward, and impossible, to duck the flashily-baited hooks of "I've Gotta Try" and "Can't You Figure It Out?". But for me, the smooth opening confessional followed by the jarring choruses of "Ill Placed Trust" are the reason I love Never Hear The End Of It and the reason I listen to Sloan. The group has always been a milk-and-cerebral Beatles band, but hardly more so, and more pleasingly, than on an overlooked gem like the twenty-first cut off their 2006 release. Yes, I realize that singling out a song from a concept album of this calibre is like playing king's jeweler to the Hope Diamond, but spare me your curses, I've got to try.

"Ill Placed Trust" is one of the very few power-pop songs on a mainstream release to use a chorus that reflects and advances the narrative of the song. The drums punch out the opening beat. The guitars are right there. Around 0:22, Patrick Pentland's voice rises up and pulls the music along with him. "People tell me that I take it too far." Which, ironically, fittingly, is when the chorus breaks up the forward train of the music and the song staggers back and starts to chug. Let's say Lutwidge is talking to Alice. You don't know Lutwidge, I don't know Alice, but why not? Everything Alice does, Lutwidge is also planning on doing, he's got mirrors, he's writing her down in a book, he's making her out to be ten feet tall. Alice is appalled, she starts backing away from the obsessed narrator. Ludtwidge feels betrayed, he doesn't realize that he's responsible for Alice's reaction, he lapses into paranoia, his openness gives way to a vicious call-out: "Can you feel it? Ill placed trust? I can feel it." Alice backs away faster. The sad truth is that the obsession only grows, and as the song crashes into repeat, the voice of the narrator is continually out-chorused by his failure to realize what he's singing about. "Ill Placed Trust" is about self-delusion. "Promises rust"? No promises were made. So the sound must seem an echo to the sense. The smooth wailing opening and the continual turn-away response perfectly mirror the compartmentalized heart of the narrator. Sloan is making more than music here, dammit, this is seamless, this is art.

MESSIER, NOISIER, BURNING

So Bert says, he does, he says, "In the past, we've always kind of brought pop sensibility into heavy rock, but this is going to be all that much more tantalizing and brutal. Our songs are ten times messier and noisier than they've ever been." And then he and the boys release a cover of the only single the Talking Heads ever cracked the Top 10 with and that would be "Burning Down The House," so, yeah. No doubt about it, the next three bands or singers to be covered by The Used will be The Jackson 5, Hall & Oates and, of course, Kelly Clarkson. BAD ASS!

CRAZY SANE IN A SANE CRAZY WORLD

Kneel Knaris + "Two Women (Night And Day)" The chorus hits at 0:57 and it's gold, or maybe pyrite, not quite gold but shiny shiny shiny. "I'M IN LOVE WITH TWO WOMEN." And I love the end, I can't figure out whether this guy ad-libbed in the studio or not, "It's okay, it's alright, Starbucks Guinness all day all night. I got it all worked out now!" He doesn't stop there, you can see him moving through the crowd, bobbing his head, sometimes he throws his free hand up, invents gang signs on the spot, he's harmless but that doesn't mean he's not on his game. He's probably wearing a Brewers jersey, but don't worry about it, his rules are straight as the lines between the bases, this is his game and he's speaking the truth in rhymes, he's so pyrite now, so gold.

Don't this make you just wanna like move in place? But, you know, gotta be careful though, can't spill my drank, nah, don't spill my drinks, nah, don't, can't, don't, can't, yess, yess.

Love the Big Willy style intro. Will Smith + Snoop Dogg = Kneels Knaris. In the best possible ways.

"WE NEED YET ANOTHER," SAID AKELA

First there was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and then, later, Fox N'Wolf and then Wolves In The Attic and then The Wolf Sisters and also Peanut Butter Wolf and also AIDS Wolf and also, um, let's see, Wolf Parade and also We Are Wolves and also Wolves In The Throne Room and also Destry Hampton And The Wolves From Hell and also Wolfmother and also The Good Wolves and also Raised By Wolves and also Wolf'n'Wax and also Wolf & Cub and also Peter And The Wolf and also Wolf Eyes and also Teen Wolf and also Cry Wolf and also Guitar Wolf and also , yes, don't forget, me, also Among Wolves and also James King And The Lone Wolves and also Le Loup.

I'm not at all certain that Le Loup are French.

[photo source]

DON'T U PUT ME ON THE BACK BURNER-R-R

Not content with rejecting the double-page displays proffered by the anxious editors at DC, DARKSEID started writing and pencilling DMZ at Vertigo. Not that his writing had anything to do with DMZ or a war-torn New York City, of course, e.g. this stuff—

Chorus:

Some people think you're cruel and harsh. Maybe you're just an asshole.

Solo:

But isn't it irresponsible NOT to draw judgements and red-letter conclusions? Acceptance is key, sure, but if that was the only combination on the safe, cats and dogs could steal our valuables and party all night. Maybe only half-a-night with my treasures. Nothing is more accepting than Fido and Whiskers. The animals don't care about my looks or lack of them, don't mind that I got drunk and punched a hole in the wall, lashed out at my friend and threw a plate across the room, crashed thru the bsmnt window and ruined the waterbed. Animals don't give me high-fives about sleeping with that girl, don't leave me nasty notes about me being a slut, could care less whether I stick a needle into my body. They're not even upset if I give them the silent treatment. And that's easily one of the biggest reasons why I need better friends in my life than a cat curled up on my pillow or a dog at the door. If I have any friends worth giving a damn about, they'll care about me putting myself and them through hell. What kind of solipsistic friends would they be if they didn't care more about me than a damn cat would? Don't my friends want to see me behaving better? Do I have the kind of friends who find terrible raging acceptable? I guess as long as I don't abuse them personally, they're fine with me being this generation's greatest living asshole. Well, thanks, Groucho, and I don't care to belong to a club that would have me like that. The cult of acceptance has gone too far and, at best, it's self-preserving relativism, beastly selfish. From whom should I accept criticism if not from friends? Where's the ancient common sense of things? There are times I need a doctor, I don't know what's wrong with me, I can't heal what I can't see, can't lance what I can't feel. I need friends to judge me and highlight conclusions from those judgements. I don't want to hear strangers judging me, don't want to feel the burning lancets scalpels trocars bayonettoes slicing through my soul. Love wouldn't let me behave badly forever. Where's the way out? Show me the way. Don't leave me, draw me an escape route. I need pictures, diagrams, arrows, I need my friends to love me enough to hurt me when I'm sick and heal me back to health. Otherwise they're just dogs, cat-hearted, unable to open doors.

DARKSEID out.

"The Ancient Commonsense Of Things"+ Bishop Allen Why is no one Buddy Holly rave-on-ing about this album yet? Call it Beatle-mania, I guess. Most of us can take or leave most of The Beatles' songs because the excellence of The Beatles music is so high that if you miss it you can shrug and wait for the next excellent Beatles track to pop up on your player. Whatevs, right? Bishop Allen is writing and recording at an amazing level of craftsmanship right now. This song is not my favourite off the new album out this March, but it is the most neccessary song on the album in terms of representing Bishop Allen and what their songs stand for. There is the customary nostalgia for the past, a nostalgia rooted in the questioning of today's weaker, softer ideas. The past grants an understanding of the troubled times of today. And today becomes a little more bearable as it becomes a little more rooted in the past.

The orchestration on this song is superb.

THE TIGER-FORCE AT THE CORE OF ALL THINGS

Not a lot of people understood that DARKSEID was emotionally vincible—

Understand me, internets and fifty-two universes, I know you don't care anything about me and, yes, I'm bitter—oh so bitter, bitter plus bitter-er, bitter put into the table of elements, bitter pure—and I don't care about you, either, except that I do. Don't you understand that you not caring about me hurts me caring about me? The mirror gets all fuzzy, I don't see just myself anymore, I see chairs, furniture, a glass container of morticoccus, the books behind my head. I guess I'm looking in the mirror in the hallway. And here I thought I was talking to myself in the bathroom mirror. I don't know where I'm at any longer.

DARKSEID out.

"Hurt Feelings" + Flight Of The Conchords So the new season is wildly uneven, looks a little like a llama, etcetera, whatever. We can still say something nice about their profiterole new rap, can we not? Catchy, funny, surreal—"tears of a rapper" plus Biz Markie's outfit from the video equals a nice night in Absurdistan—and well worth the wait. I've scrolled for hours through Hype Machine and thought myself well-rewarded for one, maybe two, solid mp3s, and I don't mind sitting through an hour-and-a-half of FOTC if it means hearing something as good as "Some people say that rappers are invincible, WE'RE VINCIBLE". Jemaine's form on the first verse is killer, btw.

[photo source]

I GUESS WE'RE TUNING TO YOU

Not for me the weight of nine to fourteen songs cracking open the hour. Not for me sixty or seventy minutes with Led Zep out in the garage, lifting those old Shur Grip weights, rolling the heavy disks across the floor and bolting another fifteen pounds on the bar. Or, in my case, five pounds. Not for me the ritual of the album, the sitting on the couch in a silent house, evening drawing on or a low dazzle of afternoon sunlight, maybe a favourite drink on the table, dense and bubbling in a tall glass with a few thick-rinded slices of lime under the ice cubes. I look for gemstones, not piled treasure, the Koh-i-Noor and not some sloppy shipwreck off Sicily or Spain. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing is perfect. Only moments matter.

"Corazon" + Bishop Allen Bishop Allen is a singles band. Like The Beatles and every other band on the side of pop music—as opposed to flat-out rock—Bishop Allen is concerned to make every second of a song cedar-scented with emotional impact. "Corazon" is my favourite of all their singles. The first time I heard this song I wanted to cry big fat salty stupid tears. Even now, when the lead singer unregretfully sings, "I guess we'll tune in to you," I can feel my heart turn around and put a hand on its forehead. I can't control my heart because I don't know my heart. Bishop Allen doesn't know this piano, either, but they sense the strings and the pulse in the abandoned beast, they sense the valuable heart's blood and great rusty worth of the discarded instrument, maybe not yet knowing what they sense. As the song progresses, the singer realizes he is not some noble hero swinging above Alphabet or Empire City, but an unknowing unknown victim, like the piano is an unknowing victim, and that he will have to relearn everything ever all over again and what he will learn will come from what he was rescuing.

For piano, of course, substitute girlfriend, boyfriend, old neighbour, angry teacher, anything at all that was ever important.

[photo source]

LUCILLE BLUTH, NOW CALLED

Tabitha Wilson, is back and spitting on 90210 and that might be enough to keep me watching. Probably not—but it makes me hope for the movie. BTW having Tilly and the Wall singing "Pot Kettle Black" on a mainstream soap is—worlds collide—inexplicable.

Little Pictures kills with "I Wish I Could Keep You" over on Fluxblog.