Avril Lavigne: Alice (Underground)
The magic of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: All that wild “eat me”, “drink me” growing and shrinking. Mind-bending, awareness-raising, full of wonder, essential. Alice is entertained, but completely unphased: “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” she says, and lands back in the safety of happy summmer days. In Through the Looking Glass she […]
OK Go: This Too Shall Pass
The new OK Go video doesn’t have them dancing. Instead, it’s all a fantastic machine of falling dominoes and rolling marbles and levers moving handles to open latches, tipping seesaws that release springs to shoot balls into the air that, falling, trigger further chain reactions, like water running through tubes and pouring into vessels that […]
Joni Mitchell: Night ride home
Joni Mitchell: Night ride home Once in a while In a big blue moon There comes a night like this Like some surrealist Invented this 4th of July Night ride home Hula girls And caterpillar tractors in the sand The ukulele man The fireworks This 4th of July Night ride home I love the man […]
Spoon: Who makes your money
Spoon “Who makes your money” from their new album “Transference” has a chorus that sounds like “Who makes you mine?” Interesting little twist. At this concert in January, lead singer Britt Daniel introduced the song to the audience, saying: “Got a new record coming out tomorrow. To-mor-row! Was a lot of work. Anybody head it […]
Charlotte Gainsbourg: Heaven Can Wait
Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, won best actress Cannes 2009 for Lars van Trier’s totally horrifying “Antichrist” after having gone through brain surgery (9/2007). These doubtlessly destabilizing experiences have gone into her collaboration with Beck on her album IRM. The “Heaven can wait” song video (Keith Schofield) gives us “the dregs […]
Animal Collective: What would I want? sky!
The sky’s the limit. Red (sky) at night, sailor’s delight. Red (sky) in the morning, sailor take warning. If the sky falls we shall catch larks. (1670 English Proverb) The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass. Knock on the sky and listen to the sound. (Two Zen […]
Grizzly Bear: While you wait for the others
Grizzly Bear‘s beautiful album Vekamtimest: The more I listen to it, the more it grows on me. For Shelly. Language notes: Sometimes idioms in German and English are quite similar: to leave someone high and dry – jmd auf dem Trockenen sitzen lassen to wait something out – etwas aussitzen to make your way – […]
