It's been so long since I've heard anything from Antony and the Johnsons that I nearly forgot about them. I was really excited to find out Antony duets with Bjork on her next single, "Dull Flames of Desire",
to be released later this month. He is a rare talent who can hold his own next to Bjork; they each embody the definition of unique, the realization of being fully and only themselves. This video was made by three
contest winners, who each got a chance to direct one third of the video. The final third creeps me out, but the song itself is awesome:
It's been three long years since the release of Antony and the Johnsons' breakthrough album I Am a Bird Now, but he released five new songs yesterday on the Another World EP. The title track is somber, mournful, dark, but gorgeous as ever. If you click on the video below, do it when you have four minutes to listen to Antony sing to you. Better yet, stop what you're doing and put on headphones. Listen to the timbre, the melody, the catch in his beautiful voice.
To celebrate the EP release, he's playing two very special shows accompanied by a 20 piece orchestra: 10/14 at the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and 10/16 at the Apollo theater in Harlem. If you have a chance to see either of those shows, you should go.
I'm getting my music recommendations from really weird places these days. I don't listen to the radio or watch TV and rarely check in with music blogs or music magazines. The promotional CD fairy has flown away since I'm not actively writing about music. And when I listen to music, it's usually from my own collection or from something I've intentionally sought out on Rhapsody.
So where am I hearing about new stuff? One source is (non-music) blogs.
I've recently, and extraordinarily late in the game, started regularly reading Dooce's very famous blog. (For my friends who read this blog who are not SF Web 2.0 know-it-alls, Dooce got fired from her job for blogging years ago and now basically feeds her entire family from her blog empire. The woman's a true pioneer and a phenomenal writer to boot.) Turns out she's got pretty great taste in music too, even though music is hardly the focus of her blogging.
Dooce tipped me off to Kings of Leon's new single "Sex on Fire" in this post. Now, I tried to like the toothsome brothers in Kings of Leon when they first came out, but something put such a bad taste in my mouth for them that I have written them off ever since. Then Dooce's description of the song piqued my curiosity: "Holy God, this song is so good. One morning last week it came on the
satellite radio when I was taking Leta to school, just as we were
pulling into the parking lot, and I totally made her sit there in the
backseat so I could listen to the whole thing. And she kept rolling her
eyes at me AS IF SHE COULD JUST SIT THERE AND IGNORE ITS BRILLIANCE.
WHATEVER." and (via her Twitter) "'Sex on Fire' is on the radio in the car right now, and yeah, I'm actually humping the dashboard."
After that recommendation, I had to listen to determine whether I disagreed with Dooce's taste in music or whether KOL had actually recorded a song I could like. Turns out they recorded a pretty amazing song; it's not going to change my life, but it is phenomenally catchy and passionate, and those brothers sure are growing up to be fine specimens. Caleb's voice breaks and squeaks in just the right ways, like he's giving you all he's got.
The official video for the song exploits the brothers' attractiveness in a very satisfying way, and is worth watching for that reason, but their ignorant record company has disabled embedding the video (and you know how I feel about that). But here's a great live version:
There's something kind of retro about this song - it's exuberant and not ironic. It's straightforward, not trying to be clever. Reminds me of the sincere delivery and giant choruses of old Pearl Jam. The chorus - "your sex is on fire" - is dumb as a rock; but isn't that the point sometimes?
In all those ways, this song - from Only By The Night which was released this week - is a perfect specimen.
I've been listening to Lykke Li's Youth Novels, thinking I might need to add it to my Best of 2008 albums list. In the meantime, as I've been digesting the record and feeling captivated by Lykke's voice and melodies, I've also been captivated by the way she moves.
Watch this performance of "Breaking It Up" from Late Night. You can't take your eyes off of her:
That's not pop choreography, that's her voice and music moving through her. She's feeling it.
She likes to dance:
"Having troubles telling how I feel
But I can dance, dance, dance
Couldn't possibly tell you how I mean
But I can dance, dance, dance
So when I trip on my feet
Look at the beat
The words are, written in the sand
When I'm shaking my hips
Look for the swing
The words are, written in the air
Dance
I was a dancer all along
Dance, dance, dance
Words can never make up for what you do..."
Are you enjoying what you're doing? Or are you overwhelmed, at a loss for words? Show me some stomps, some shimmies, put some angles in your elbows.
I'm counting down the minutes until dance class tonight.
A few Sundays ago, I sat with a group of friends at a bar before we all headed to the same show. Three of the five of us hadn't heard much from the band we were about to see, so they asked me to describe it.
Me: "Well, they're not going to change your life --" Friend: "Why do you say that? You said that when you were describing another band, too."
I say that because most of the music I truly love does change my life. The highest calling for my most beloved musicians is that they touch my ears and my heart in a completely new way. They open up new worlds of possibility in my imagination. Their work can make me feel new sensations, emotionally and physically. When I hear, for the first time, an artist whose work will change my life, it's one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever known.
Accordingly, it's not often that I find an artist that affects me this way. This is not to say that I don't enjoy a lot of music. In fact, I regularly discover new artists and uncover artists from the past whose music I love and who I rave about and recommend. But my life-changers? I only run across one of those artists once every year or two.
How did I find them? I was making a rare visit to Stereogum, paging through post after post about bands I don't care about -- new bands that are covered mostly because they're new and heaven forbid Stereogum not cover the next big [blank] -- when I saw My Brightest Diamond listed in one of the posts. Thinking it would take me to a live performance or news or a video by My Brightest Diamond, I clicked through only to discover it was a post where Shara Worden, aka MBD, talked up "a couple of her recent favorite outside sounds" in a series about bands from Sweden.
(A word of advice: whenever you get a chance to get recommendations from an artist you love, listen to them. It's the best kind of word of mouth.)
Wildbirds & Peacedrums are Mariam Wallentin (vocalist) and Andreas Werliin (drummer), a married couple from Sweden. Much of their music consists of spare arrangements of drumming and singing with only the occasional embellishment from another instrument. There isn't a whole lot written about Wildbirds & Peacedrums yet (at the time of this post, they have less than 3000 MySpace friends), but what's out there includes a whole lot of comparisons. You can drop names like The White Stripes (another two-person band), Joanna Newsom (it's just an occasional similarity in timbre), Karen O (I don't hear this one really) or PJ Harvey or Feist, but I promise you've never heard anything like Wildbirds & Peacedrums before.
"We had no musical ideals to trust or lean on, so we just had to believe in ourselves and each other"
Their album Heartcore is high art: it doesn't follow convention, it finds its own way, makes its own strange sense. It's not easy, but it feels right. It rewards the careful listener, blooming brighter with each successive spin. There are no signposts here; the terrain changes from one song to the next so you must be willing to get lost with them. Wallentin's voice is a universe unto itself, a true original.
After reading Shara's words about them that Friday night, I woke up the following morning and made a rare trip to Amoeba to buy their album. Thank you, Shara, for the tip, and thank you Amoeba for having one copy of Heartcore on vinyl.
I cannot wait to see this band perform live. Until then:
Who still has cassette tapes anymore?
Keep the dream alive: send a photo of yourself holding a cassette tape to kteeger AT yahoo and I'll add it to the gallery.
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