My Favorite Love Song.
When you think about love songs, chances are you’re thinking about songs that create a mood. Al Green, or Marvin Gaye, maybe. Roxy Music’s Avalon album has always been good for “results” in my experience, to get my euphemism on. If you want to get adventurous, I’ve always thought the prettier, less-clangy moments of My Bloody Valentine are fairly sexy. With that said, none of those artists or their songs are my favorite love song. In fact, my favorite song about love has almost nothing to do with creating a mood. It’s a trebly, fuzzed out, punk rock song by a group that would get famous years after the guy who wrote and sang this song left the band.
The song is called “Ever”, and it’s one of the earliest songs that The Lemonheads ever recorded. It hails back to their nascent days as a punk rock band, and instead of Lemonheads mainstay Evan Dando being the feature, on this track it’s founding member Ben Deily who both wrote the song and sings it. Deily left the Lemonheads within a year or two of this song, leaving the band with just Dando as a songwriter. Back in those days, the band were punks in every meaning of the term. They were young, brash, snotty, somewhat goofy dudes. They covered the Patsy Cline song “Strange” on a lark. They did the same with “Luka”. By any reckoning, they seemed like guys who were happy to not care about anything. (Above you’ll see the cover of the album “Ever” first appeared on, and it gives a good feel for the exuberant, pissy irreverence of the early Lemonheads.)
That’s what informs the song “Ever” and makes it so special to me. Here’s a song by a bunch of bratty kids, and it’s played loud and fast, and you’re thinking you know how this is gonna go…
…and then Ben Deily’s plaintive, begging, nasal vocals come in on the first verse. “We hit the highway in the shimmer glare of summer”.
That’s the first line of the song. Go read that line again. Now, I may not be much of a writer myself, but I know good writing when I see it. That line, folks, is a line that songwriters across the spectrum of pop music for the past five decades would have loved to have written. That one line, gorgeous, evocative, so perfect; you can feel the temperature of the day, smell the ashtray in the car, see the wavy lines of heat coming off the distant pavement, and see a young couple with their lives stretched out ahead of them, taking a trip. Somewhere.
Thing of it is, if that first line was all “Ever” had going for it, it would be an outstanding bit of songwriting. Deily manages to top that in the second verse, after a line about washing dishes together in the “curtain drifting twilight”. I mean…find me more songwriters who are capable of a phrase like “curtain drifting twilight”, will you? I want to discover them. As if that wasn’t enough, when the song turns for home, the final verse and chorus are naked statements of love so innocent and pure they’ll break your heart. I hear those lines and I remember the first time I truly tumbled head over heels in love…and it felt like that last verse, with all the hope and excitement chased with confusion and insecurity expressed so brilliantly here.
Here, dig you some “Ever”.
Lyrics:
We hit the highway in the shimmer glare of summer
And past the window all the trees moved by behind her
She tuned the radio ‘til music was around us
A rushing calm around my heart I knew had found us
It feels so good to me
I have to make you see
Why does this ever have to end?
I know commitment is not the trend
Don’t misunderstand what I intend
When I say this doesn’t have to end
We washed the dishes knowing everything was alright
And then together in the curtain drifting twilight
I know your laughter shouldn’t make me feel so scared
How could I doubt you? I know how much you cared
I hear it when you sigh
But I still don’t know why
Why does this ever have to end?
Why can’t I give you my heart and hand?
I think you’re too scared to understand
This doesn’t ever have to end
I see you standing by a window in the hall
Our eyes collide without a single word at all
The record asks: will you still need me when I’m 64?
I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t need you more
Too many tears to cry
I just won’t let it die
This doesn’t ever have to end
Life is so long and my heart won’t mend
You are my lover, you’re my best friend
This doesn’t ever have to end.
It should probably be no surprise at all that when Deily left the Lemonheads, he did so to attend Harvard University, where he graduated cum laude with a degree in English and American Lit. A brief foray into a film-making career ended up with him writing ad copy; his wiki page mentions he’s won multiple Clio awards for his work.
He also has his own band, called Varsity Drag. If you go see ’em live and beg enough, occasionally they’ll do “Ever”.
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Releases I’m Looking Forward To In 2013, Part 1.
Hey all, sorry for the lack of updates over the last few days (Seriously, I’m actually trying to write a thing or two a day here), but the combination of being on deadline for a writing project and finally getting that flu bug that’s been going around kind of knocked me flat over the weekend.
Feeling haler and heartier today. A bit. So just a quick post right now to mention that last week two of our favorite bands here dropped updates that they’ll be releasing new material soon-ish.
First, it’s the Leisure Society, who have a new album called Alone Aboard the Ark. It’ll be their third album, and first since 2011’s Into The Murky Water. Here’s a quick tease:
Release date is April 1. You’d be foolish to give it a miss. (Yeah, that’s bad.)
Dear Leisure Society: please come to the US and tour. Please?
Also, Medway heroes The Len Price 3 announced that they’ve finished a new record for release “shortly”. I love the Lens so much, and this is welcome news. I thought their last record, Pictures, was fantastic and showed them continuing to evolve their sound. Having not heard much from them at all in 2012, I was worried that maybe things had gone wobbly with them, but they’re going to be back. No idea if the new record will be on the seemingly-dormant Wicked Cool label in the US; Little Steven seems to have turned his attentions elsewhere from that. No firm release date as of yet, but I’ll take ’em at their word on “soon” and hope we see this new one by summer.
Finally, since Mardi Gras and all the attendant amateurish, “first time I’ve had a drink in public in ten years” garbage comes today, I’d like to throw a shout out to our UK readers and hope they had a lovely Pancake Day, which is what the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday (Shrove Tuesday in the Anglican, I guess) is across the pond.
In honor of Pancake Day, and to tie it back to the Leisure Society, here’s them doing one of their very earliest songs, a number called…well, “Pancake Day”.
RIP Rainbow Quartz?
Every few weeks or so, I’ll go spinning through some old music-related bookmarks, just to see if favorite bands/labels/performers of mine have something new coming out I might’ve otherwise missed. As such, I can’t tell you how sad I was to visit one of my favorite label sites last week–Rainbow Quartz–and discover a domain name placeholder there instead of the actual site itself.
RQ has been a sort of zombie label for a while now, actually. From its heyday at the turn of the millennium when releases came fast and furious and with some amount of promotion, over the past few years things have clearly scaled down. Bands who remain going concerns had left the label in search of release partners who could better serve them with a stronger social media and promotional presence. Still…they kept soldiering on, kind of. In 2010 and into 2011 they seemed to make a strong promotional push involving a handful of new releases. There was a label showcase at CMJ in 2011, and new releases that year. A little detective work turns up that a favorite band of mine from back in the day, the Three 4 Tens may have been recording a record for release in 2012 with RQ. I think I last visited the site in December of 2012 (around the holidays maybe) and it was still there, and still selling music.
I suppose this was inevitable. Record labels are expensive entities to run, and require something of a time and financial commitment to the artists you work with, and both of those things were clearly slipping away from Rainbow Quartz over the last few years. Times have changed too; entities like Soundcloud and Bandcamp are frankly able to give new artists looking for an audience as much exposure (and access to potential revenue) as was RQ. Rainbow Quartz seemed a bit slow to come to grips with the way listeners today listen to and buy music digitally.
All that said, I come here to praise Rainbow Quartz, and not to bury them. If this is indeed the end of things, it’s been a hell of a run. Some of my favorite discs over the last 15 years have been on RQ. I salute them for bringing me Cotton Mather, The High Dials, The Grip Weeds, The Telepathic Butterflies, Deleted Waveform Gatherings, Broadfield Marchers, The Asteroid #4, and Outrageous Cherry. So many good records over the years, so many songs worth hearing.
I don’t know that this is the end, I’m just assuming it to be so; if you have a record label and it falls to domain name squatters, you’re probably all done. If it’s the case, I hope those folks who still had working agreements with RQ (like Deleted Waveform Gatherings, whose September, 2011 album was the last thing I think I bought from the label) find safe landing spots. In the meantime, I’m going to pour out a 40 on the sidewalk and listen to some Jessica Fletchers, or maybe something by The Lackloves, or perhaps some old Asteroid #4 and remember fondly a terrific record label that put out some great tunes.
The Elephant Stone Review
Here’s a confession that a Beatle-phile like myself is loathe to make readily: until about 10 years ago, I kinda hated the sitar as an instrument, especially as a rock instrument. It was right up there with bagpipes for being a musical sound I didn’t really want getting anywhere near my rock and roll.
I can absolutely pinpoint when my attitude towards the instrument changed, and I actually posted it yesterday. It was on the debut album from the Montreal band The High Dials. The Dials had a bassist named Rishi Dhir who added sitar on a few songs, and they were remarkable. On the Dials’ next album a song called “Our Time Is Coming Soon” has a sitar bridge on it that can only be described as magical.
I was a little bummed when Rishi left the High Dials after that second record, but was pleased when he formed a band of his own, The Elephant Stone. I was even more pleased when I heard their debut album. It was a little uneven, but the highs (“Bombs Bomb Away” for instance) were spectacular. They quickly followed that with an EP that was even better–“Strangers” and “Yesterday’s Gurl” are as good as any guitar pop songs that came out in 2010.
It’s been a wait then, for something to follow on from that promising start. In the intervening years, Rishi’s played sitar with a few other folks, and also put together a more permanent and formal band to comprise the Elephant Stone (I gather the initial group was more of a casual thing put together to record the songs as something of a trial balloon.)
So here we are in February of 2013 and we finally get the sophomore album, a self-titled affair. I’m pleased to say that it continues the band’s progression of increasing excellence. Rishi and his cohorts know their way around a three-minute pop song as well as anyone, and display that ably on songs like “Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin” and “Hold Onto Yr Soul”.
They’re also interested in plumbing a more psychedelic influence, and the eight minute jam “The Sea Of Your Mind” manages to be interesting enough to be worth that time spent. Better yet is “A Silent Moment”, a swirling, sprawling number that manages to go deep into Indian culture while staying totally accessible to my western ears. Here, check this video out:
Let me be clear here: I have zero frame of reference for Indian culture and music, pretty much. That song from the opening credits of “Ghost World” was cool, you know? And so if you’d have told me two weeks ago that my favorite song so far in 2013 was going to have a guy named Vinay Bhide singing classical Indian vocals over a swirl of tabla, organ, and drone, I’d have thought you were nuts…but damned if that song doesn’t just crawl into your brain and take up permanent residence.
That’s the great and amazing takeaway I’m getting from this record, then. The Elephant Stone were always a band with a great ear for hooks and sounds…but on “A Silent Moment”, “The Sea Of Your Mind” and “Sally Go ‘Round The Sun” they make a fantastic case for the cultural influence that Rishi’s self-description of their music as “Hindie Rock” has always hinted at.
Which brings me to the closing of the album. The penultimate song is the 8-minutes plus opus “Sea Of Your Mind” mentioned above. It is a song of beauty and noise, a song that turns the neat trick of being both easily accessible and challenging to the listener. It closes with an absolute raveup of bawling guitar claxons, clanging sitar, and squalling feedback over a fantastic beat. It’s wonderfully noisy. It’s gloriously cacophonous. It’s like being tossed about in a tiny boat on an ocean of dense and thunderous psychedelic waves that threaten to swamp everything.
And that song gives way to the album’s closer, “The Sacred Sound”. Powered by a sweetly bowed string section and perhaps the most gorgeous melodic hook Rishi Dhir’s ever written (seriously, those strings are freakin’ heartbreakingly beautiful) the album brings you out of the storm and guides you gently and safely back home. It is a brilliant bit of album sequencing here, one that wraps the entire record up with a lovely and satisfying conclusion.
Way too many times, a record I’ve been eagerly anticipating for a long period of time ends up disappointing my over-elevated expectations. I’d no reason to think that it wouldn’t be the case with this album, either. Imagine my surprise then, that the second long player from The Elephant Stone has not only been completely satisfying, in many ways it’s exceeding anything I had any reason to expect. This is an early contender for record of the year, y’all. Highly recommended.
Great Music In 2013: The Elephant Stone
Today marks the official release of the second full-length album from Montreal psychedelic pop group The Elephant Stone. Yes, they’re probably named after the Stone Roses track. Or maybe they’re named after a carving of the Hindu God Ganesh. Or something. At any rate, I’ll have a full review up tomorrow, but for today we have some stuff to illustrate why you should care about this.
The Elephant Stone are the brainchild of former High Dials bassist/sitarist Rishi Dhir. If you read this blog regularly, you surely don’t need me to remind you of our love affair with the Dials. We’re also huge fans of Rishi’s newer group, and figured we’d give you some video evidence of why that is.
First, here’s a “fan-made, official” video from a track off the album that was done this past summer. The band invited folks to film them playing the song “Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin” and then submit the footage so it could be cut into an actual video. Here’s the result:
As mentioned, Rishi plays bass a lot…but also plays sitar, as befits his family heritage. Here’s one of my favorite High Dials songs with him playing a sitar lead. Imagine a sixties mod pop thing with a George Harrison feel…and also fat Memphis-sounding horns poured over the top:
And here’s Rishi last year joining Beck onstage and absolutely tearing it up on sitar to a song everyone knows the words to:
For the time being, the new Elephant Stone is being streamed here:
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2013/01/stream_elephant.html
It’s an outstanding record start to finish. In fact, as lovely as I’m finding the noise of M B V, the closing track on this Elephant Stone lp, “The Sacred Sound” is even prettier.
The Most Interesting Interpretation Of MBV You’ll Hear.
I don’t know much about Rachel Zeffira except that she’s apparently a very talented pianist and soprano who performs a lot of classical music, and is reasonably well-known and respected in that milieu.
She’s also, she says, a My Bloody Valentine fan. As such you get this, which is an amazing way to kick off a Tuesday:
If you want to hear the original performed live, here you go, for reference:
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Springfield Calling
I went to school at the University of Missouri, and one of my friends there was a guy named Matt. Matt was GM at the student radio station for a bit, liked cooler music than I did (Matt and his friends Robb and Stephanie were the first people to play me music by Spacemen 3, The Flatmates, My Bloody Valentine, and Galaxie 500, and I owe them much for the introduction.) Matt was and is a Springfield, Missouri guy, born and raised and active in that city’s always-lively music scene.
And so in addition to some cool music from the UK, Matt also introduced me to the Morells (who sort of morphed on and off into The Skeletons), the now-legendary band from his hometown that featured Lou Whitney on bass and D. Clinton Thompson on guitar, and sometimes (if they were touring/recording as The Skeletons) Bobby Lloyd Hicks on drums.
Those Morells/Skeletons folks are still active in music, playing and producing and all that. Lou Whitney’s engineered artists at his Springfield studio of great breadth and diversity, from the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, to Wilco, to Steve Forbert, to Exene Cervenka, to Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. (I promise I’ll get to the point of this post in a sec, but seriously listen to this album from a year ago by D. Clinton Thompson with Whitney helping out and understand it’s the product of two southern Missouri boys, one of whom is over 70, and the other in his mid-fifties at least. Realize that neither you, I, or anyone we know will ever be as cool, ever, as D. Clinton Thompson and Lou Whitney are right now.)
To get this back on the rails, I’ll get back to my friend Matt. He’s still active in the Springfield, MO music scene, still playing in bands and stuff, and he’s a friend of Lou Whitney and drummer Bobby Lloyd Hicks from way back when in the 1980’s. Today he posted this:
“I just learned from Bobby Lloyd Hicks that, in 1980, he and Lou Whitney were watching The Clash at the Palladium from the wings. They had received backstage passes from the record company they were playing for at the time. Throughout the show, Clash bass player Paul Simonon was having trouble with his bass guitar, ’til he finally had enough. Took his bass off and started smashing it onstage. At that moment a photographer quickly moved them out of the way and snapped this photo”
“This photo” would be this photo:
Matt later added: “P.S. Lloyd also said the bass DIDN’T break. Fender quality.”
Popnarcotic 