Lead or Radiation Poisoning?: Ink Spots

With descriptions of Bon Iver’s self-titled album forthcoming (word is: you should listen to it if you haven’t) I’m wondering what to recommend. Or whatever it is that we do.

In all truth, I’ve sort of lost my hipster-cred since working overseas. What am I listening to, then? Ink Spots. 1930s-50s Radio fuzz. Maybe it’s M. Ward’s fault that the AM radio sound is so perfect. Or maybe it’s the fault of the Fallout video games.

Can you believe the apocalypse sounds like an old-timey radio group? I’m totally serious here. If there’s one thing the designers got right when dismantling Washington D.C., it’s that they threw American culture back to the days of lead-based paint and white picket fences, to Stepford wives and golly-gee schooldays.

My obsession with Ink Spots may also stem from my grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary earlier this summer. I found myself in Iowa, in charge of putting together a slideshow of old photos of my grandma and grandpa, a book-keeper and truck-driver who have made their house a kind of central meeting point for my family. Whenever we’re in transition, we seem to end up back in North Richland Hills Texas, for a little while or longer. They’re an amazing couple, and I’m in awe that they’ve stayed together for so long.

All that said: Ink Spots was all over that slide show. They’d put together a mix of their favorite songs and sent it in (under some ruse—they had no idea we were putting together an event). Seeing them, surprised, in a railway-house-turned-party-hall, with that music, with pictures of them young, aging, growing, was something special.

Having grown up overseas, I’ve lived in a world where TV was far away, where furniture was decades past its prime, and sat around reading racially-insensitive comic books from the fifties. I can just imagine turning on a radio years back to hear Bill Kenny’s soft voice drift out and turn the world to a hazy yellow. I can see parents I might’ve had dancing in the kitchen in slow time to this music. I can see a whole other world where time mattered less, where life unfolded at a less frenetic, less worried pace.

Of course, I can also imagine myself tramping across radioactive wastelands fighting for survival, with nothing to keep me company but a lonely radio with 3-Dog and the Ink Spots. Same difference, right?

--Duke

mp3s:

Ink Spots - We Three (My Echo, My Shadow & Me)

Ink Spots: I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire

Concert Review: Yuja Wang at Hollywood Bowl

Event: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 + Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5

Soloist: Yuja Wang, piano

Conductor: Lionel Bringuier

Orchestra: L.A. Philharmonic

Venue: Hollywood Bowl

Date: 2 August 2011

Seats: Section H, Row 20 (“super seats”)

I do not play any instruments. I have not plumbed the intricate depths of music theory. I cannot tell you which recording and whose performance of such and such piece of classical music is the “best.” (Though a musically inclined friend of mine is convinced I have relative pitch.)

I do know one thing, however. Sergei Rachmaninoff composed music that, for me, constitutes the golden standard of aesthetic experiences. And so it should come as no surprise that when Rachmaninoff is being played in my vicinity, I’m there.

My boyfriend Dave accompanied me on this our first visit to the Hollywood Bowl, an outdoor venue situated in the hills of Hollywood. Its stage has hosted everyone from Frank Sinatra to Elton John (ala 5 grand pianos spelling E-L-T-O-N) to Dolly Parton. In the summertime, the LA Philharmonic Orchestra migrates to the Bowl from the usual venue, Walt Disney Music Hall. All of that is to say: I was beyond excited see one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, the “Rach 3” performed in such an unusual setting.

When 24-yr-old Chinese pianist Yuja Wang walked onto the stage in a tiny, firecracker red dress and 4-inch gold stiletto heels, gasps of delight (and of horror from the snooty types) emerged from the audience. Yeah, she’s hot, and she knows it. But how the heck was she going to pull off playing one of the most technically demanding piano pieces ever composed whilst wearing precious little clothing? Well, she did it... and she did it well. Of course I ‘bout died (in the good way) the instant she began tickling the keys, as the opening measures of the first movement are what drew me to Rachmaninoff so many years ago.

Wang demonstrated a strong yet elegant command of the keyboard—she managed to make even those thunderous, dramatic chords near the end of the first movement seem like child’s play. Of course, some folks in the audience clapped between movements (a pet peeve of mine), but otherwise it was an A+ experience from beginning to end. The famously epic finale was indeed quite epic—especially when Wang immediately leapt from her seat upon firing the final note. The audience showed their appreciation with a lengthy standing ovation. My favorite part? The fact that Ms. Wang did not take herself too seriously. She approached the Rach 3 with appropriate respect and sensitivity, allowing the piece to speak for itself. I think Ms. Wang knew that, in the end, even her itty bitty red dress and glitzy shoes could not overpower the profound beauty of this beloved piece of music.

Following the intermission, the L.A. Phil performed a rousing rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 5^thSymphony. Unfortunately, a very distracting “ticking” noise was emanating through the speakers during the performance, perhaps a feedback issue? But at that point, I didn’t really care, for I finally got to see the Rach 3 performed live.

Photo credit: Los Angeles Times

Timber Timbre

Everyone I know hates Timber Timbre. I don't know why, exactly. Spend time with this song and let it seep through your every pore. In my opinion, this is the perfect halloween music (accompanied by Sixtoes). Not that it's really that close to Halloween. On my way to the second largest Ikea in North America I saw a Halloween store open, its banner fluttering in the breeze like a flag in hell. So, in my opinion, creepy music is a year-round thing.

I've got some great memories walking down autumnal Wheaton on Halloween weekend 2009, letting Timber Timbre float along behind me. The experience was surreal, and I swear I saw a ghost on the walk, floating just behind this one tree on Madison. The elaborately decorated yards, the jack o'lanterns--everything about it was Halloween, and purely Halloween.

Timber Timbre - Bad Ritual from Arts & Crafts on Vimeo.

Is it Taylor Kirk's weirdly sensual baritone or the Inland Empire-esque lightshow that makes this little gem of terror so effective? I'll let you decide. Either way, I'm digging into the new album as I write this. And it's digging back. Like with zombie claws. And uh, stuff.

--Duke

Back in Black

Duke here. We're trying to iron out some details and get into a regular schedule of posting. We've been listening to some crazy good music lately and can't wait to share it with you!

Pray For Daylight Album & Lyrics

From Chris Kiehne himself, a link to Pray For Daylight. Included below are the lyrics, as well. Give it a spin.

(The Link)

http://www.mediafire.com/?69bjtkep3ama1ar

(The Lyrics)

SISTER BLACK MARIA
Shine on, Sister Black Maria;
let your raging dark be my holy home.
Seal my eyes with your storms and shadows.
Let me rest in the warmth of the scars that I’ve sown.

Shine on, Sister Black Maria;
I can still remember the night
that I found your beautiful grave
and how I sang from the shore
until the cold waters parted
and how you were dancing
like a rose at the bottom of the lake.

DIOMEDEA
They rose in the dark from the furious ground,
and, with their poisonous claws, they laid our fathers down.
There’s no hope for us there in that reservoir town.
The streets where we’d lived are scarlet rivers now.
Diomedea, come and carry us home. Brace our willow arms.

The wind off the lake comes and rattles her ribs,
and I hold back her hair. I do simple things,
but the whites of her eyes have turned black and red,
and the ghost in her veins speaks in silences.
Diomedea, come and carry her home on her wicker throne.

THE WALKING DEAD
(Instrumental)

RACHEL LIED
Baby’s the fawn at the vine.
Baby was shot down in flight.
Rachel was here, and she lied.

Baby was born with burnt eyes
and a razorblade cut for a smile.
Rachel was here, and she lied.

PHAEDO
Little One, I will lay your bones in the ground
and pull the atalanta out of your mouth.
All the silences will sound, and your body will turn.

Little One, there is dawn rising up from the night
and boundless swarms of sparrows born from the fire.

Little One, there are ghosts rising up from your eyes.
We will quit this bed of wires, and our bodies will turn.
Heather and fern, the breath of the wolf, the heart of the dove.

Little One, I will lay your bones in the ground.

PRAY FOR DAYLIGHT
From a house on the water, while watching the silences scar your perfect face,
I pulled the moths from your mouth. I collected their wings.

I had dreamt of your father, alive, with your brothers, wrapped up in sheets of flame.
When I awoke, your heart rang, but your colors had faded.

Hang on, Little One. The fever is not in your blood; it will break with the sun.

From a house on the water, we watch as their bodies rise up from out of the waves.
Their emerald eyes will not take you from me.

As they rage through the darkness, I beg for your silence, you shout their cursed names
and when I offer my arms, you call them your grave.

Hang on, Little One. The fever is not in your blood. It will break with the sun.

THE WIND THROUGH YOUR WOUNDS
The wind through your wounds will give us away,
and they’ll tear the breath from out of your body.

A burgundy grin and a ravening stare;
this town we’d loved is a cradle of bees
and we’ll all fall down in waves, like sparrows.
A hundred million bloodstained angels.

You would not believe the things you’ll do to me.

The darkening woods and the ghosts on your face
and the terrible things calling you towards the lake;

the merciless dawn will deny us its grace.
No mighty arms are going to save us.
We’ll all fall down in waves, like sparrows.
A hundred million bloodstained angels.

You would not believe the thing you’ll do to me.
Nothing is released.

A SPECIAL PROVIDENCE
I left you lying in the reeds.
The worm was at your skin,
and as your desperate, caterwauling screams
rose and silenced in the wind,

the blood crept out from you in wings.
The sparrows hit the sea,
and, though I’d said a million things,
I just left you lying in the reeds.

The rain fell hard into the church
as they hammered down the doors.
They barreled in and you were first.
You pulled me, laughing, to the floor.

You’d torn your dress out in the woods
and your teeth were caked with dirt.
You said, “I think you’ve lost the war,
but I promise this won’t hurt.
You’re still young enough to learn.”

SISTER BLACK MARIA PT II
Shine on, Sister Black Maria;
let your raging dark be my holy home.
Seal my eyes with your storms and shadows.
Let me rest in the warmth of the scars that I’ve sown.

Shine on, Sister Black Maria;
I can still remember the night
that I found your beautiful grave
and how I sang from the shore
until the cold waters parted
and how you were dancing
like a rose at the bottom of the lake.

A BASKET OF BONE
In a blanket of bone, I followed you home.
I watched as you slowly stepped out of your skin.
You slid round the room with the loveliest grin,
and your throat was slick and sweet.

You offered it to me.

We slipped into the woods and you took off your shoes.
You dirtied your feet in the October leaves
and we happily chewed all the bark off the trees.
You fed me honey wine and covered me in night.

In a basket of bone, I carried you home.
I fixed you a crown out of old chicken wire
and we sat on the shore as the river caught fire.
The freshwater ghosts carried into the night.

Your father was there.

He gave you his eyes, and you saw me as a boy.
Though I swore that I had grown, you knew it was a lie.

Creepy All Night 3

Story Time. My freshman year I joined WheatonImprov and, in one practice, I recall Brendon Culhane stopping a scene, shouting, waving his hands madly in the air. "No, no no no no! I want to see just ONE scene where you do something normal!" he yelled. I looked blankly at the corner of the room. He took a whiteboard marker and wrote "Creepy All Night" in the middle of the board, and then a line out, down to the lower corner. "See! This is where you are right now!" he said, pointing. "And this is where you WANT to be," he wrote in each corner "Real Life", "Human Experience", and "Meaningful Relationships".

Fast forward to the end of the semester. My soon-to-be best friend Steve was sharing music. I told him I wanted new music and he asked, "What kind" and I shrugged and, with a grin, he began to scour his iTunes. Within moments he had compiled a list of terrifying, haunting and appalling songs which, over the course of the proceeding summer, would sink me in a mire of creeped-out despair. It was a thick-lipped gem of subtle, slow-moving terror, consisting, amongst others, "John Wayne Gacy Jr" (which forever turned me off from Sufjan Stevens), "Song of Joy" by Nick Cave, and "Elephant Woman" by Blonde Redhead.

I was impressed. The mix has set a gold standard for me, by which all my mixes have been measured since. I created, within my limited ability, a "Creepy All Night 2" the year after, which was a much more aural, ambient creature, and altogether more "overtly" creepy, though vastly inferior to the original.

I've had a Creepy All Night 3 playlist in my iTunes since 2008. Songs have come and gone, and I've tried on various arrangements. For a while there was a "Carousel" theme that was (rightly) scrapped. I recently sent out emails to some friends asking for creepy songs--specifically "theatrically" creepy music, which yielded good results overall. As I set to compiling the play order, I messed around with themes--carnival, swamp, ambient, whatever. Several of the songs my friends sent me were so good, I knew I had to use at least a few. Eventually I settled on a Side "A" that was mostly voodoo swampy-sludgy southern-tinged tunes, and a Side "B" that, as it evolved, became a weird portrait of a serial killer. Rather than try to mash them, I've left them as Sides A and B, which works in my opinion, as a good mix should. I've even made album artwork.

Now, of course, to actually get this bugger uploaded with my crappy third-world connection.

Tracklist:

Side A

Danse Kalinda Ba Doom - Dr. John

Weight of the World - Patrick Watson

Swimming in the Swamp - The National Lights

Judgment Day - Beat Circus

One Morning Fair - Erland and the Carnival

Salt Sack - Ramona Falls

Mr. Grieves (Live) - TV On The Radio

Side B

Dark Eyes - Devotchka

Underbelly - Wild Beasts

The Reggae Song - SixToes

The Electrician - The Walker Brothers

What's He Building? - Tom Waits

In The Room Where You Sleep - Dead Man's Bones

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - Nina Simone

(Thanks Babs, Ryan and Blade for the tracks! I may or may not amend this listing. Keep posted for an actual link to a download SOON. And of course, comments expressing how intrigued or impressed you are will only make this more worth it.)

Chris Kiehne

(Originally on my other blog)

I want to tell you why you should listen to Chris Kiehne. As the one listener on Last.fm with (currently) about half of his total plays, I’d say if any one person has the right to do this, it’s me.

I was first acquainted with Chris Kiehne on some backwater forum that discussed the chilling and gratuitous The Dead Will Walk, Dear by The National Lights, a weird meeting of beautiful, quiet folk and, well, the bastard love child of Buffalo Bill and John Wayne Gacy, Jr. I followed some links, ended up on megaupload, and eventually had five tracks of the as-yet-unfinished Pray For Daylight, Kiehne’s first “full” album which, after a devastating hard drive crash, was more or less abandoned.

So, knowing this, I dumped them into my iTunes, plugged in my headphones, and began listening. What I found was something entirely beautiful, clean and unassuming. I’d had a similar experience with The National Lights’ album—yet the songs he’d written for Pray For Daylight didn’t mask or belie any sort of underlying vitriol. The album seemed, almost, to be mourning itself as I listened. Chris said that if The Dead Will Walk, Dear was about killing [and then eating/raping/burying] your girlfriend, Pray For Daylight was about trying to save her.

And it is. I latched onto the music, for whatever reason, and, in keeping with my mild OCD tendencies, I just put the album on repeat and let it grow on me. I ended up sending a message to Chris on last.fm, got to talking about his album, and found out he was thinking of going back and finishing the project. I asked him for lyrics and we started talking about the whole thing—what the album was doing, what it wasn’t, what it was about, and everything else. Pray For Daylight’s lyrics were surprisingly cohesive, building a strange picture of zombies, teen romance and loss. Yeah, zombies. Don’t worry, no brains, no blood—just scattered images, invocations of dead or undead love, and loads of beautiful guitar backed up by Sonya Cotton’s breezy, otherworldly voice. Kiehne paints marriage as an invasion--literally battering down the door--and love as a sickness amid the bloodied ruins of the American Midwest. It hurts so good.

All that said, Chris finished Pray For Daylight and released it on his website for a whopping five bucks. He’s currently working on The Western Throne—a denser, fuller body of work that, from what I’ve seen, has pushed beyond the territory of Pray For Daylight’s breezy, mid-tempo folk to more dynamic, literary material, drawing heavily on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, from what I’ve heard. He’s got loftier aims this time around and a lot more to say, which manifests itself both through his matured vocal performance and the busier song arrangements that populate the album.

Dunno when The Western Throne comes out, but you can bet I’ll post it here. Also, if I get his permission, I might stick up an mp3 somewhere. As it is, here’s the gorgeous Diomedea from Pray For Daylight.

Chris, man, you gotta coat this album in venom and stick it to those pricks at Pitchfork.