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Yup, another Girlpool track. You don’t often hear voices in unison singing the same notes, unless it’s a massive singalong. But I love how the women in Girlpool use this to great effect: it’s a song about the loss of love—friendship? Something more?—and the voices weave in and out, usually settling on the same notes and words, creating a united front for the good of companionship.
You can find Before The World Was Big in all the usual places, but why not buy it right from the band’s label?
For the last 15 years or so, I’ve been making mixes on a semi-monthly basis. Through various moves across the country I’ve lost or broken most of them, but occasionally I come across one in a box or a pile or tucked into a book. They are never perfect; far from it. They are always works in progress, like small snapshots of what I thought I might like at the time. Sometimes I immediately hate them and never listen again. Other times they become well-worn favorites. I figured that enough time has passed that I could dissect a few here and there on the site. For this second entry, we go to early summer of 2007. I don’t have an exact date but that’s roughly when this thing came from.
If this were 2005, those naive early days, I would’ve arrogantly demanded that the band let me post an mp3 of their song “Choices” off Scatter, because holy crap is that a song. It’s also the most 2005 song I’ve heard in ages and would’ve given the Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm a run for its money, which is no easy feat. Simply comprised of a drummer and a guitarist, both from South London, Crushed Beaks are everything I’m a sucker for.
And don’t worry, “Overgrown” here is a fine song – one of the best on the album – but their album definitely puts me in the headspace of a foolhardy young blogger and that’s totally what I would’ve done because I was a dick like that. We grow and we learn!
ANYway, you should get their album because it’s awesome.
This is one of the most promising demos I’ve heard in ages. I’ve been listening to it on repeat all morning and I’ve resisted the temptation to listen to the rest of Carnivore Bones‘ demos for fear they’re not as good as this. It’s so good!
It is a shame this is on YouTube. This belongs at the end of Side 1 of a cassette, slowly letting you down after a long ride. It shares DNA with indie four trackers from the old days, like Ben Lee — that feeling of privacy you get from a home recording. At first listen this doesn’t appear to owe much to Girlpool’s Los Angeles surroundings but then they hit that note in “Realize” and I am instantly transported to downtown LA. I can’t really explain it.
Point is, I love this song in all of its melodramatic young person glory. Love it.
Kids, jobs, school, blah blah blah. There are lots of reasons that Mark and I don’t post as much as we used to. The main reason? We post things because we want to, and not because we want to stick to some kind of schedule.
Now, I definitely could be listening to a lot more music than I have been, but the simple truth is that I haven’t heard anything as great as St. Lenox in a long, long time. St. Lenox–whose alter ego is award-winning violinist Andy Choi–has put out a record that I cannot stop listening to. The fact that it’s a debut makes it all the more impressive.
10 Songs About Memory and Hope came out on January 20, and it’s great. Choi sounds like some kind of Rufus Wainwright-Adele love child, and his larger-than-life vocals are the perfect foil for his songs’ minimal arrangements. And those songs–hoo boy. John Darnielle said it best: “feeling really evangelical about just how good a lyricist Andy Choi is. real vision and feeling.”
Some days there is nothing more at stake than three goofballs farting around on a porch, and that is a beautiful sentiment. Perfect video for a perfect song.
