clay davis + deerhunter's bradford cox = 30 seconds of heaven

SHEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIITTT-Lia

another instance in the saxophone resurgence

As mentioned on this here blog - right here - Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound fame prophesied a reemergence of the saxophone in popular music.

Sax Roberts Band?

Eh? Eh?

Also... NEW SAM ROBERTS BAND!!!

teach your kids to play the...

SAXOPHONE

No, herbiberous has not been possessed by Bleeding Gums Murphy and I'm not holed up in my apartment in a haze, listening to Murphy's seminal album, 'Sax on the Beach,' on an endless loop...

but I remember reading an interview with Deerhunter's Bradford Cox after the release of Halcyon Digest and his gushing over how the saxophone was going to be the wave of the future:

The song "Coronado" from Halcyon Digest features saxophone sounds inspired by the Rolling Stones' album Exile On Main Street. Cox recalled, "I wanted that sax on there because I was listening to the Stones' Exile On Main Street reissue a lot...I began to see a pattern forming. Saxophones are becoming this thing. That's why we did it early. Next year everyone's gonna have a saxophone on their record because saxophones are just cool.

(pulled from wikipedia cause I'm too lazy to find the actual interview...)

Not really the most well-defined or reasoned argument, but he does say that there will be more sax and while I wasn't thrilled with the out-of-place solo on Coronoda, maybe I'm tempted to side with him after hearing 'Chinatown' by Destroyer for the first time, earlier tonight. (Yes, Jung. Byron Crawford is now an essential visit every day. Happy?)

Not too shabby, that old sax, eh? Maybe you'll want to talk to your kids about sax while they're young. It might do them some good as they get older.

When I sit and really reflect on whether saxophones are appropriate in modern song, an overwhelming genetic impulse compels me to say, "Yes, they are." And that impulse comes from the area in the brain that controls annoying, thoughtless, inane play-on-word production. Listen to it and listen closely... Can you hear it? It's saying... BRING ON THE SAX PUNS!

UNRELATED NOTE:

I'm likely a little late with these guys too, but I saw Little Dragon last night at Il Motore and there are definitely a good handful of you out there who I'm sure would enjoy them. The singer was really great. (It dawned on me that I'd seen her when the Gorillaz were here this fall.)

We couldn't figure out where they were from last night. I googled them and, wouldn't you know it's Sweden. (Is everyone from fucking Sweden?) The band had elements of Battles, bjork and Animal Collective, but the only thing that I found distracting was that some of the songs sounded sort of like Mariah Carey tracks on speed. (And their songs always ended awkwardly.)

At the coal mine where I slave and toil, we ask references these long sets of questions about a job candidate all day and usually, if the reference is in a rush, they'll say something like: "Look, I'm about to go in on a conference call (read: take a shit) and I've only got a minute, so I'll sum it up by saying that I'd rehire Mr. Whoever." That's what I'm saying with Little Dragon: "I'd go see them again. Like I said though, I've got to go take a shit (er... dammit)."

Deerhunter in the taillights

I checked out a Deerhunter show about a month back with Patch and some buds and never got a chance to write about it. Days and time have been spinning past me like a warp-speed carousel, so there isn't too much I can recall, other than Bradford Cox was a sound alchemist with his pedals and self-recorded harmonies. He hit you like a wall. What else? The bassist looked like he was actively trying to get fired from his job. He showed no emotion. Nothing. It got to the point where my buddy the Lazer couldn't enjoy the show. He wanted to go up and punch the guy because he was consciously trying to look so indifferent.

Anything else? Oh yeah, we were standing outside the venue - La Tulipe - after the show. A couple of us were leaning on a van and then all we hear is "fuh dump-duh" and the van shakes a bit. We didn't think anything of it until Patch comes round to tell us that some guy got hit by a van. I walked around the van we were standing by and, sure enough, there was a guy (or girl, I couldn't see) under a coat and a blanket with people telling him (or her) to stay calm and relax. Shit. It was bad. Or it seemed bad. My immediate reaction was the person was dead, because, from what I saw, their face was covered with a blanket. From movies, I assumed that meant they were dead. There was a huge dent in van that had hit the person.

We were all a little shocked.

If anyone knows what happened to that person, please leave a comment.

Either way, great show, but the crowd was a little dead, probably because the bassist sucked the life out of them. (He also fucked up the bass line in 'Nothing Ever Happened.') We went to la Banquise for poutine afterwards, marking the third time me and Patch consumed the stuff in less than 20 hours.

continued

Almost a month. Yowsers.

How do I reintroduce myself after such a prolonged absence?

How about with my job title of the year?

I don't really have anyone to blame for the hiatus. Sure I've been working and it feels as if I've had a different guest every weekend and there has been a lot going on, but that shouldn't excuse me from scribbling nonsense onto this digital tableau every once in a while.

(Speaking of tableaus, or 21st-Century tableaus, don't you think we are going to look back at iPads in five or six years and just laugh. We'll kind of look around and ask what the hell we were thinking? Don't they seem bulky and sort of silly, like they are some uncreative compromise between a Macbook and an iPhone? Have you looked at a first generation iPod lately? They seem bulky and excessive and you almost tend to want to look at it with condescension. I feel that we'll all feel the same way about the iPad very soon, when there is some fourth-generation version of it that actually makes sense. The iPad kind of reminds me of the Segway.)

Anyways, I suppose the main reason I didn't feel like writing much was that I didn't feel very funny or at least that I'd be able to write anything funny. Any idea I came up with wound up circling back to some deep sense of nothingness. I think I battled away nihilism this summer. I'd honestly get up in my 40 C room panting and all-sweated-out and wonder if the impending day would be any different from the day that preceded it and then I'd wonder if it even mattered.

See, pretty dark stuff.

Not that I was depressed or anything, but the summer was just odd. I don't think I'm used to such heat and to a summer season that lasts more than a month and a half. In Yellowknife, you are conditioned to go out and take FULL advantage of every semi-decent day. In Montreal, you don't really have to because there is a steady stream of days that seem to go on for like four or five months. Yet there I was, rushing out to soak up every sun beam and I think I burnt myself out a little bit.

And I'm convinced my head shrunk this summer. I've got a full set of hair, which is probably the longest it's been in years, yet the hat I've been wearing for the past year can't seem to stay on my head. I wore it on gusty cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Iceland and during winter days on rooftops at work in Quebec City, but when I run across a street, my cap threatens to leap off my head. I think this fact bolsters my claim that my brain evaporated at some point this summer.

(By the way, I think government officials from the defense department should start studying the chemical properties at work on my ball cap. It does not get wet. Rain beads right off it. I'm not sure if it's a year's worth of living and hair grease and dive bars and snowstorms, but it's the most impermeable object I've witnessed.)

I'm doing well, but as I've previously mentioned, I think I need a change. It's not so much a change of scenery or career or anything, but I think it's mainly a change in philosophy.

It's funny how something small, said to you very innocently, can knock you on your ass and make you examine your life and the way you are living it.

Last week, I was having lunch with a couple buddies from work and the conversation turned to poop, like it seems to do at least once every noon-hour (I should say, 2-hour.) We were all talking strategies and making jokes until someone said that I take the stinkiest deuces in the office. I laughed, thinking this guy was just breaking my balls, until two of the other guys I was eating with piped in and agreed in all seriousness. I was shocked and after lunch I kind of became paranoid about my celebrity.

All of the famous stinky dump-takers I've known throughout my life - friends' dads, severely obese dudes at different job sites or tiny, junk-food fiend kids - had one common characteristic: they were all very unhealthy. At my computer desk, surrounded by cups of coffee and empty Pepsi cans, I resolved to eat better and live healthier.

Two days later I was using a friend's 2 for 1 Big Mac coupon at lunch. I tried.

Fun fact: A friend tells me when you are living healthy and eating well, a crap should require very little - to no - wipage. I think I've covered this on the blog before.

But no, I think with winter on the way, there will be less distractions and I'll be able to focus a little more on writing. Really, since my friend Eli quit work in August, I haven't written down a single idea. We used to exchange stories or rants each Friday. She was much better at doing that than I, but at least it forced me to write.

For now, on this here thingamabobber, I might just write self-obsessive tomfoolery to rid the detritus clogging up my neuro-pathways until a nugget of a concept can shimmy its way through to the surface of my consciousness. Seems kind of narcissistic, but hey, what's a blog for then?

And I'm really feeling energetic at the moment, listening to the new Deerhunter album, Halcyon Digest. The thought of picking up the album actually got me through the afternoon and I walked through a rainstorm to get it. It was the first real album I've bought in a long while.

I asked my big boss at work where the nearest metro was to the HMV on St. Catherines. She said Peel. I'm pretty sure I knew this, but I was so zonked from ceaseless callbacks at work that I couldn't think for myself. I got off the metro and got to street level and walked down to St. Catherines. I looked right and didn't see the store, but I walked on even though the sky had opened up and I got absolutely soaked and I kept walking and still I saw nothing. Shouldn't it be close? I cursed my boss under my breath. Why didn't I look where it was myself? Another set of lights and nothing. I kept going and no HMV. I walked like 12 blocks all the way to Atwater, pushing ahead irrationally until I stopped and snapped out of it. It couldn't be that far. I turned back. The rain had stopped. (Some homeless guy asked me for "change for a coffee." Who needs a coffee at 6 p.m.? I wanted to ask him)

I walked back to where I'd gotten on to St. Catherines and continued back East and there was the store, a block away.

I got home and made some pesto shrimp spaghetti and lima beans and tossed on the album and the soaker was worth it.

Deerhunter -- Little Kids

This song owns my brain...

This song has been on my tongue since I first heard it this spring. I whistle it. I hum it. I sing it while I walk around. It´s in my dreams.

And all this time, I never really knew what the words were... (it´s a pathological problem with me.)

Here they are:

Kids drinking gin on their front lawn
Little kids see that man walking down, the dirt road
These kids see this guy
And they think of him dressed in flames
Kids walk behind, slowly stalk, that old man

To get older still (x4)

These kids followed him in, into his shed
where he turns on the radio, and smokes a cig
these kids cover him in gasoline, and they strike a match

to get older still (repeat)



Holy Jesus.

I never knew the song was so evil. I love it even more now.

famous last words

Famous last words?

I've jumped on Deerhunter late, I think. But at the same time, they're a band I've always enjoyed. They're callin' out vampires right here, baby!