Penguin City Cafe Street Orchestra Blues

Here's an interesting thing, then, that keeps me on the fence: Penguin Cafe Orchestra, so mediocre sometimes of a band that they are repeatedly filed under 'New Age' or 'World Music' - never 'Experimental' or even 'Pop' -, are blowing my mind. The past week or so they have been my default listening-to band, even while sleeping! and I never listen to music when I sleep!

What they sound like [and are sometimes] is the really pleasant but not quite intellectual violins and maybe guitar music in the background of commercials. What they do is pretty much the same thing played for the duration of the song with minimal differentiation. They do this in a very nice-sounding way, alternatingly buoyant, tense, naive, inventive, mixing things up, keeping moving, even during the tempoless slow numbers.

The early albums have the best stuff on it (The Sound of Someone You Love Who's Going Away And It Doesn't Matter, Penguin Cafe Single) and some of the worst stuff on it (2 minute sketchest that really just interrupt) good albums for sitting there and trying to sort it all out. The later albums are a good mix of pretty and background, probably the best ones for sleeping.

So there's nothing great here, but its still consuming my days and nights.

Guillemots, though, are fucking brill.

Alternative DC Currents of Strength! Absolute Monarchy of Shut The Hell Up!!!!!!!!

Today I took off work about an hour early and caught a bus to campus where I attended the art program's Open Studios Day, which happens once per quarter. Usually its just the same old shit, photo students taking pictures of their friends on couches as if their commitment to their craft was the same as my commitment to literature, 'let's just see how this works out if I don't care about it but jump into it nonetheless'. You know, point the camera, point the canvas let what happens happens and if art happens well, then, great. Same as my -point the fingers in Microsoft Word, read to page thirty-, great.

But today I went to Open Studios, of course as usual not expecting anything, a few topless photos here and there, maybe a few goofy sculptures, but I walked away a conflicted man. I'm not going to get specific here because my ability to describe art in a concrete way is about as good as a cat's ability to log onto the internet; if it happens, it happens as a cute accident. But what I witnessed was some ridiculous quantum leap in terms of this artist's artistic achievement, some 'good to see you!' kind of homecoming that one hopes for in old friends but usually can never connect with, especially in the realm of one's work. In this case I had seen each piece before, but never in this context.

So I find the room that the 'painting' is supposed to be in and sure enough there's plenty of paintings, people's attempt at capturing the same unimaginative shit as the photo classes, 'hey, lets find my friends on the couch, brush-to-pallette-to-afterschool-hours-and how much of a pinnacle of human achievement are they? do they become? so much!!', you know colors and "Style" and all of the normal deviations from the standard white-on-white, basically RUBBISH and anybody could do this with a few lessons on perspective and color wheels. But the collection in question was a bolt out of the blue, not even in the same medium as the other standard nothing-on-canvas.

I observed this piece (God, how I hate people that "observe" "pieces", the "piece" right next door being some Che Guevara homage or some uselessness) for maybe half an hour, taking distance to watch others watch her art, and who cares what they think, the important thing is that I have something to talk about next time anybody asks.

It was some sort of sum of self-criticism and that's the craft that we should all be closest to, because what is BEING but being hopefully better the next time you try and what is _TRYING_ but the collective effort towards failing and for the recognition of that to be the cause for to be better the next time, suggests that nothing can become of art but the attempt towards art.

Now here I have to admit my bias. I have been closest friends with Vanessa Waring for about four years and continuing. But this does not change the fact that we are both highly intraverted individuals who could give a fuck about anybody else (of course there's exceptions) as long as we are constantly checking up with ourselves about ourselves, you know, talking out the daily routine, journaling, obsessing over dreams; because you know that dreams are the most important thing that happens in your life.

My biggest fear is that some artist that I see in everyday life: be it photo, music, painting, dance, whateverthehell, is going to best me. And today I walked about five or six miles or the rest of the night up until now after realising that yeah, Vanessa, you have bested me and I'm so thrilled for you.

Wendigo - Your Melting Heart Will Wash Away With The Snow

This weekend Conner and I recorded an album. There are three songs on it and it is thirty minutes long. Two of the songs are partial successes and Wendigo, the title track, is a success I think. I'm in this kind of state of mind where I'm not sure what to think about it. The results are very impressive to me at this time, because I know that a good portion of these songs were done in a 24 hour period and there are some musical things that I'd never done before.

I'm very sleep-deprived and thus I am very charming right now. I'm not sure if we're done with the album right now, but you have a time to wait to hear about it anyway. I'm planning on releasing four albums in 2006, each spaced three months apart:
January-Continental
April-Cavalier
July-Wendigo
October-Colossuses
So Wendigo doesn't really have to be finished until July. The other two songs on the album suffer from same-ness, I could probably keep the first part from them, but I might want to re-do at least parts of them if I'm considering releasing this seriously.

The best part of recording for me is how I get when I'm working. After finishing the largest amount of work on 'Wendigo' I listened to the other two song files and thought that there was no way anything was happening with them, but then twenty minutes later I was three pages into writing the lyrics for one of them. I got into this great zone and spent from about 8 pm to 3 am yesterday/this morning in some sort of crazed place where nothing mattered except for the notes and chords and words and how to put them together.

Another good thing is how quickly we are able to acheive these results; though Conner and I are essentially in musical hibernation during James Rabbit albums (with a bunch of exceptions, but its WAY different), we snap to it in an instant. He'll get those drums set up and all microphoned and I'll get some bassline written and its done!

So I'm happy and super super tired. I'll probably listen to these songs later when the sting of pride has removed itself from these bones and write something completely different.

You And I - We Are Colossuses

I'm going back to Fresno this weekend maybe for the starting recording of another James Rabbit album. I have about three songs written which is enough to keep me occupied through the weekend. Conner probably has work and band practices to keep him occupied/instruments away from me, so there's a chance that nothing will get done, but we'll see about that. I'm pretty excited about these songs that I've written. They are all very jaunty and 70s Teen Bubblegum sounding, plenty of room for wonder - so we'll see how badly I can screw this up.

I have yet to release Cavalier, which is a really good album, at least as I remember it. I haven't really heard it since January, but I keep on thinking of certain songs. "Build It Up" gets me through tough times and "Dancing On Air" gets me through the boring times and "Don't Sleep" pops up in my head every once in a while when I'm supposed to be writing something else. We still have to make a cover for it and some liner notes and there might be one tiny set of overdubs that we have to do to make my brain not crazy anymore.

Work is going ridiculously well. I'm finding that my rock and roll energy is better expended helping people.

I Need A Raincoat For This Weather - And This Traffic

The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea. Usually with albums that I know I'm going to be listening to for a while (ones that do not immediately make me sick) I go through this process of non-enjoyment elimination where I will first locate the songs on this album that I love instantly (I'm In No Mood, Teach Me Sweetheart, Waiting to Know You, Police Sweater Blood Vow, Nevers, Benton Harbor Blues) and I remove those from the playlist, because if I already know I love them then what's the point in listening to them? So then I take the songs that I like a lot but don't love yet (In My Little Thatched Hut, Bitter Tea, Borneo) and remove those too. So now I'm left with Black-Hearted Boy, The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry, Oh Sweet Woods and Whistle Rhapsody to listen to and digest. Oh Sweet Woods comes to me pretty easy, its one of these talking it through kind of songs where you just have to listen to it paying attention to love it. Black-Hearted Boy is nice and slow-moving, another thing to get adjusted to. Whistle Rhapsody is one of these grandma songs, but Matt's singing it, its pretty nice as a last 'real' track. Vietnamese Telephone Ministry I still have problems with, at first I liked the beats and the backwardsness but now its kind of distracting (kind of like "Forty Eight Twenty Three Twenty Second Street" from Rehearsing My Choir where the MIDI percussion halfway through was initially one of the only things that my brain had to grab on to, but now I find it kind of irritating), but at the 3:45 mark the song becomes more natural feeling to me. So that's kind of how I feel about this past week-and-a-half's process of whittling down.

And like every Fiery Furnaces album, it is my favorite. This album finds them going places for a reason, where on Gallowsbird's Bark they'd just kind of be somewhere dealing with it, here Eleanor goes to the pier to see if her love is there yet, she is at her little thatched hut for the purpose of waiting for her lover to come row-boating back, she goes to Borneo to gamble with butterflies, bicycles to the mini-mart in winter, everything seems like it is starting to have a purpose; their travelogues no longer being empty postcards. They fill out like atlases, where every place has a relation to the other. And even though this is probably their album with the least natural flow to it (even their singles collection feels more solid), it is the album with the most outstanding songs, so it feels like a tape you made for your friend to impress them - but not by just putting the best songs in a row, but by putting okay song - great song - okay song - okay song - great song - great song - etc so the order just wallops you in secret after a while.

The lyrics are the best they've ever been. The pining lyrics, like 'See the smoke from your kiln-- pine boughs burn the bricks dead hard in their fog as I stand cold with my back broke by the bog.' from "Black-Hearted Boy" or 'It's not for me to fill the blue sea with tears' from "Benton Harbor Blues" just crush you and the goofy lyrics like 'Why not come up through the hall of butterflies and past Lane 170 into our Dragon Protector Layout and try some bitter tea?' or '"Let me tell you why I think I love her: She knows you always take the bye week dome home team to cover."' seem so precise and studied and wacky that you just have to bow down in reverence. Way to go, I OFFICIALLY have no idea what you are talking about! But these words wrap around you like blankets as Eleanor again takes a step away from reciting the lyrics like they are cross streets for bus stops and isn't getting paid enough.

Because they are no longer locations, they've been boiled and melted into something grand, and the Furnaces seem to take flight themselves and I just can't wait for either of Matt's solo albums or the next Fiery Furnaces album and until then I wish right now that I had some sort of car and drive around the country with all sorts of weather because it is a beast for all seasons. But like Eleanor I lounge and I look, I lounge and I look, I lounge and I look - for my own true love to return. Perfect Score.