Jon from Worlds of Possibility with an introduction to the Dead C in ten steps. All I know about them (I have never heard a single note of their music):

• They are from New Zealand.
• They are supposed to make Sonic Youth sound like the Beach Boys.

Mp3 (live at Ted's Wrecking Yard 2002) and lyrics.

This is one of the songs which you think you have heard before when you listen to it for the first time. It's an infectious irresistible tune sung by Joel Gibb, the leader of the Hidden Cameras from Toronto.

Gibb's voice is rather high-pitch in the same vein as Jimmy Somerville from Bronski Beat or the Gibb brothers from the Bee Gees. It is full of soul and melody. The guitars, keyboards, drums and the xylophone are just providing the perfect rhythmic bed for this incredibly beautiful voice blossoming like a rose in winter.

P.S. Thank you for making me discover this, koalarama.

P.P.S. Over at Said the Gramophone there is another (slightly overproduced) version of this song and Sean wrote about it and a concert he attended.

I Love Music thread revival of the day (yesterday to be honest): malkmus: PIG LIB: 1% of one

MeFi thread on Rembetiko with some more links (including mp3s) on the blues of the Greek refugees from Turkey, especially Izmir (Smyrna), after Ataturk's victory in 1921.

I just saw Sofia Coppola's movie in the original. It's a nice film though a tad stereotypical on Japan in places. For example in the beginning when the Japanese director talks and talks and talks and the interpreter translates it into just one phrase: "Look into the camera". Or the scene in the night club where the owner chases a guy who tries to start a fight with a kind of machine-gun. Does this really happen to you in Tokyo? I somehow doubt it.

Bill Murray and this young blonde actress are a weird couple. They seem to be lost in translation too. Everyone seems to be in this film. Murray and his wife take the cake with telephone conversations where Murray just says "who?", "hello", several "ok's" and "bye".

Some nice music. I think I have never heard a My Bloody Valentine track in a movie. Sofia Coppola didn't pick the worst with Sometimes from Loveless. Quite sad though that Kevin Shields excellent new composition City Girl only gets played at the credits at the end. Bill Murray's dry and deadpan karaoke interpretation of Roxy Music's More than this isn't bad neither.

P.S. Some infos on the extras of the DVD over at largehearted boy.

(aus dem Aphorismus 103 Heideknabe der Minima Moralia von Adorno).

I didn't buy a lot of new music last year. Only 19 full-length CDs. Whereas I purchased about 50 CDs which had been released prior to 2003. I suppose that means that I am not too hot on contemporary music. There is not even one newcomer in my top ten. So if you know of a 2003 album which you could imagine I could like given that I like the following please tell me in the comments.

Excellent:

• Robert Wyatt - Cuckooland
• Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
• Yo La Tengo - Summer Sun
• Cat Power - You Are Free

Pretty good:

• Massive Attack - 100th Window
• Howe Gelb - The Listener
• Jay Farrar - Terroir Blues
• Bonnie Prince Billy - Master and Everyone
• Go-Betweens - Bright Yellow, Bright Orange
• American Analog Set - Promise of Love

Honorable mentions:

• Calla - Televise
• Swell - Whenever You're Ready
• Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Pig Lib
• Neil Young - Greendale
• Added: Rickie Lee Jones - The Evening of My Best Day

Einen Gruß an meinen 159. Subskribenten, kinomu. Ihren URL mag ich und den folgenden aus dem Zusammenhang gerissenen Auszug aus Ihrem Weblog ebenfalls, der zumindest auf mich gelegentlich schon zugetroffen hat:

The capsule review of the new Paul Auster in The New Yorker sounds like a return to form plot wise:

And I haven't even started The Book of Illusions which came out in 2002. Can it be that Auster has accelerated his writing pace? I surely have slowed down my reading speed of his books. To be honest none of his novels after The Music of Chance impressed me much.