I worked as a production assistant on the Patrick Daughters’ directed music video for Two Weeks, which is on their new album, out in May sometime.  The video should be neat. Pyrotechniques, y’all!  I spray painted a mannequin, filled out paperwork, and swept up leaves.  Also hung about set helping distribute food and coffee, and talking to everyone.  Everyone was really nice, it was a really small shoot, and it’s amazing how fast everything goes when you have trained professionals doing their jobs correctly.

PICS OR IT DIDNT HAPPEN:

Because perhaps you need a special treat to get you through tonight.  Through secret back channels and the sharp eyes of an internet friend, I came across two new mp3’s from the Bill Callahan album, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle,  which doesn’t release until April 2009.  I think this album will end up being very personally important, and there isn’t much I love more than a Smog album.

I’m not even going to fill your long ears with tales about when the next Almanac is coming out.  It sits idle and indolent on my hard drive, at about an hour and a half.  My mornings are filled with my office job which I like, and then my afternoons and evenings with all manner of designing and manufacturing underwear.  Today I worked a twelve hour day, I think.  Good for the naturally indolent side of me, difficult though to adjust to that much work.   I have never been the sort of person to falter and fail at writing back to e-mails, I’ve always made time for everything, but on days like today, I just want to fall into bed.

Listening to these two, in the dark, especially Jim Cain, is sort of a lonely experience.  The violins at the end kill me, in the same way that every Bill Callahan song contains a moment so small it might escape everyone else, but for you, it is, and it is just what you needed to hear.

Jim Cain by Bill Callahan (removed by request of Drag City)

My Friend by Bill Callahan (removed by request of Drag City)

Season Three is hee-eeere. Forgive the usual small mistakes.  My tongue was tied and my hands were lead.  It gets better every day, don’t you worry.  This episode features no special guests, just my rambling.

Hong Kong Garden – Siouxsie and the Banshees
All Luck Ran Out – Sondre Lerche
Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud – Elliott Smith
Nikita  -   Elton John
Dying Breed -   Marissa Nadler
An Angry Blade  -   Iron & Wine
Old Fashioned Morphine  -  Jolie Holland
Lunar Sea  -  Camera Obscura

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My newest film is done.  We finished editing it last night, and I hold it here, in it’s case, the product of a few sleepless nights and quiet hours, but nothing of the soul-wrenching and life-threatening experience of the first.  The first was about community, and about people and loves that I don’t have anymore.  The second is about solitary seeking, I’ll find a way to post it soon.  It’s not as lush or beautiful as the first, but I love them both.  I think I just spent more time, period, with Belongings than I did with Twin Talk. 

To be a good woman is nearly as hard as finding a good man, but one needs the other, I think.  This song is simple, spare, and a somber thought.  I had such a strong feeling of affinity when I first heard it, I do want to be a good woman, with all the many things that means to me.  Chasny says in his Dusted review of the song: “Few songs have ever been written that are so bathed in compathia, which Octavio Paz describes as that state where love returns in a concentric circle to the beginning and another place further and washes away all the hatred for a person that only real love could create in the first place… It lives in the same company as “Boots of Spanish Leather.” Unlike most of the pathetic pleadings drowning the world that call themselves “love songs” but are merely made to mythologize oneself in the heart of the other through weepy melodramatics, “Good Woman” is a gift, not a trap.”

That line, ”a gift, not a trap” is astounding. 

I want to be a good woman
And I want, for you to be a good man.
This is why I will be leaving
And this is why, I can’t see you no more.
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love
This love forever.

I don’t want be a bad women
And I can’t stand to see you be a bad man.
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love
This love forever.
And this is why I am leaving
And this is why I can’t see you no more
This is why I am lying when I say
That I don’t love you no more. Cause I want to be a good woman
And I want for you to be a good man.

Cat Power – Good Woman (Acoustic, Live at KCRW) 

Cat Power – Good Woman

 

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Seein’ the New Porno’s tonight.

What’re you doin’?

 

I’ve listened to quite a bit of Hem, and with a new cd just out, I’ve had the chance to analyze their sound over a few albums.

Rabbit Songs was remarkable in the peaceful grace it offered, with No Word From Tom offering only a slightly edgier feel. Think of a ‘Prarie Home Companion’ version of edgy.  Rabbit Songs is a superior album, the songs being structurally sound, more complete and whole.

The new addition, Funnel Cloud is heavily laden with orchestral overtones, and lacks some of the simpler charm of Rabbit Songs.  While this album is still simple in ideology, the trappings have become more fixed.  Funnel Cloud begins to make both a stride forward while providing an aural recall to their early influences of lullabies, long walks in the lengthening twilight, and Southern infusion.

The gems on this album are few, (”He Came to Meet Me”, “Not California”, “The Pills Stopped Working”) with the rest being merely forgettable, pleasant background music suitable to a summer day party or inoffensive work hold music.  While perhaps the cd does not deserve that harsh criticism, the earlier Rabbit Songs, and even No Word From Tom had more verve and life to hold them together.

All in all, an album worth borrowing from a friend before purchasing.

If you like:

Iron and Wine
Neko Case
Loretta Lynn

Take a listen.
Amazon Listing Click Here

(crossposted at atomsandideas)