The Shower Playlist...and other oddities

don't worry, I can see it too

I shower with my laptop. Yes. Well, not in the actual shower of course, but I bring it with me so that I can have some music while I'm in there. Yes, some people have a radio. In my apartment, we don't. So laptop it is. You know how tough it is to figure out what you wanna listen to for 15-20 minutes when there's nothing you can do about what's playing? It's one thing to make a playlist (believe me, I have a couple), and it's something totally different to choose an album to throw on. 

You have to be picky. If it's a morning shower, what can you play that's gonna get you excited for the day? If it's a late-night shower before bed, what are you gonna play that'll help wind the day down? If it's something you enjoy, is it gonna be too quiet to even hear over the fan and the running water (I'm looking at you The xx)? If it's something that's best played loud, is it gonna be to the point that you're gonna start annoying your roommates? These are all the considerations that must be made for The Shower Playlist.

Sometimes though, you luck out, wake up at 11am on a Monday like this, your roommates are gone for the day, you have nothing to do but study for your final exam tomorrow, so you jump in the shower and turn up We Are Wolves' electro-rocker of an album Invisible Violence. 

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...but The Shower Playlist is only the lead-in to this post. What I really wanted to do was two-fold: I originally wanted to highlight "Reaching For The Sky" from that album, but then I was just listening to "Something Hiding For Us In The Night." from The Wooden Sky, so I figured I'd tie those two together somehow. They're both on the longer side of their respective albums (The Wooden Sky's comes from If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone), and as I've made clear on here before, I'm an absolute sucker for a longer song that's done well. If there's two pieces of music that are equally good, but one is 3 minutes long, and the other is 5, wouldn't you rather the longer one? That's my attitude at least.

So anyways, I was giving The Wooden Sky's tune a spin like I was saying, and I noticed it was a great slow-builder, so I went and checked, and it clocked in at 5:29. I scrolled up a bit in my iTunes library, and there's the We Are Wolves track I wanted to feature...also checking in at 5:29. So I figured that coincidence was as good as any reason for creating this post.

I was initially tabbing "Reaching For The Sky" because for all of We Are Wolves' immediate, chugging rockers (like my can't-stop-spinning-it-right-now favorite "Paloma" - check that one out at the end of the post), it's one that sounds more LCD Soundsystem-like in its cadence, quickly building up with an undercurrent of a jive, adding electronic bloops and bleeps, drum machine hits, some deft keyboard work, a crunchy guitar after about a minute, then finally some vocals. It takes its time though, not rushing things along, almost recalling some of The Who's sprawling rockers if I'm really gonna make a reach for comparisons (around the 2:20 mark though, tell me you can't hear it too).

We Are Wolves - "Reaching For The Sky"

Like LCD Soundsystem's more outstanding grooves, "Reaching For The Sky" really hit its stride at 4 minutes in, just when you think you've settled into a monotonous rut. There's no real chorus here...just good old fashioned dance-punk done with We Are Wolves' own great twist.

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On the other end of the music spectrum lies "Something Hiding For Us In The Night." (alright, maybe acid jazz or death metal actually lies on the other end, but humour me here). It's a great, slow ballad, kept alive for the first few minutes by the faster-than-usual-paced percussion and expressive vocals. The latter seem to be The Wooden Sky's hallmark - pensive lyrics delivered with sincerity and an underlying power to them. 

The Wooden Sky - "Something Hiding For Us In The Night."

Around 3 minutes into this one, the cymbals crash here and there, and the vocals raise in intensity and volume, before mellowing for a verse or two, coming down to a level even quieter than the intro, hitting a nice little guitar solo...then bam! exploding into a pained-sounding chorus, which - whether this is just a case of the file I have, or the actual mixing of the album - sounds like it's going to burst out of the speakers.

Either way, that's two great slow-burners, from very different areas of (Canada's!) alternative music. And two more to add to my ever-growing list of great long(er) songs.

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As promised, We Are Wolves' raucous affair: (bonus points if you know what the hell he's saying...I'm pretty sure it's Spanish, but from a Montreal-based group that has some Francophone songs on their albums, it's a strange direction to be sure)

We Are Wolves - "Paloma"

there is a mountain of snow, up past the big glen...

Dan Deacon. The one innocently-named artist I would never think to share with any of my friends -- at least the ones I want to maintain a semblance of a relationship with. His music isn't necessarily abrasive; it's just that it's "batshit-crazy pop music" as I've seen it described. Sadly, that's probably the best and most apt description for his brand of songs. From earlier release Spiderman Of The Rings to 2009's Bromst, Dan Deacon has kept his class of glitchy, impossibly-catchy electronic music going, and has even managed to reach a world audience larger than the ones he entertains in his native Baltimore. His up-close-and-personal shows should come as no surprise -- any idea that Dan Deacon is the least bit sane is smashed as soon as you listen to any one of his tracks.

Looped samples of cymbals crashing, piano hits literally too fast for a human to play, chipmunk-y voice filters, fantastical lyrics, droning synthesizers, Casio-centric effects and a whole gamut of other noises, sounds and beats proliferate Deacon's work. This is definitely the kind of stuff you have to be in the right state of mind to listen to; if you're having a bad day, this isn't going to cheer you up. On the other hand, if your day is going inexplicably wrong, and you're largely confused as to how it all turned out, then you may find a bit of salvation in these songs. Nothing seems to make sense, whether it's a three-minute burst of energy, or an 11-minute rendition of nursery-rhyme-like fantasy like the tune featured below: (accompanying lyrics here, cause heaven knows I needed them to figure out what was being said)

Dan Deacon - "Wham City"

As mentioned though, those I hold dear can barely stand my electronic music choices as is, and they're a relatively pedestrian outcropping when compared to even Deacon's least-abrasive content. Over the Christmas holidays, I thought I'd throw on "Wet Wings," a slow-building and almost tribal-sounding track bubbling with emotive female voices layering themselves a capella over each other, but alas, I was shot down when my sister asked "what the hell is this? turn it off" and my mother commented that it sounded like women mourning at a funeral. 

Was it really that bad? No. Was it really that weird? Yes. And that's probably the biggest reason I can't share my Dan Deacon tunes: he's just too weird. Unfortunately, being blessed with the ability to make catchy, crazy pop music out of anything and everything is a bigger detriment than you'd think.

SuzieQ, I've got a List Of Demands

Wow, it's been just under three months since I last wrote anything on here. And to be honest, I'm only writing now so that I can get some practice in before I start writing a myriad of papers for university. But also, I've been listening to a ton of music in that time (I mean a lot of music; since my last post I've had the following fill up my iTunes: Stars, Bon Iver, The Avalanches, Shout Out Out Out Out, Pink Skull, HEALTH, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Yeasayer, Dan Deacon, Dinosaur Jr., Interpol, The Ghost Is Dancing, The Mantles, The Weakerthans, Do Make Say Think, Broken Social Scene, The Besnard Lakes, Los Campesinos!, Neko Case, Neutral Milk Hotel, Islands, Hockey, Fucked Up, Slow Club, Liars, Free Energy, Crystal Castles, Thrush Hermit, The National, The Antlers, Camera Obscura, Hawksley Workman, and today's subject, Gonjasufi) and obviously, my mind's been thinking of possible subjects I can talk about on here.

So whether this is trivial or not, I thought I'd take a quick look at the subject of sampling. I'm not talking about like, old soul samples, the kind Kanye West worked to perfection back before AutoTuning himself to death. I mean the kinds of samples where it's a simple riff taken from one song and placed as the backbone of another. I know a few examples I've only heard of, but none that I've been able to experience first hand, i.e. having both songs in my library. This happened to come up though as soon as I delved into the new album by Gonjasufi, A Sufi And  A Killer.

I had no idea what to expect from the album, even after I'd read Pitchfork's favorable review. Maybe some "head-nod" music, but "what is that anyway?" I thought. The sixth track, "Suzie Q," piqued my interest however. Now, after giving it a few listens, this is an album I've explained to friends sounds like a mix of rock, hip-hop and jazz. There's stranger combinations, but I've never heard anything that sounded so...listenable while having that many influences. "Candylane" is my personal favorite, but I'll leave that one for another day and subject. Today, I want to look at how "SuzieQ" samples the crunchiest bits of Saul Williams' "List Of Demands (Reparations)" from his acclaimed self-titled 2004 album.

You may recognize "List Of Demands" from some Nike SPARQ commercials that ran a few years ago, and indeed that's where my first exposure to the song came from. It's a powerful song, both musically and lyrically, which made it a great song for Nike to use in promoting its then-new line of training equipment. For the sampled part in question, I'm not sure that it's a guitar, because it seems bouncy and synthy in a way a guitar never really is. But whatever it is, on "SuzieQ," the effect is replicated by what most likely is a guitar. Now it's not just that the "SuzieQ" reinterpretation sounds vaguely similar -- it's exactly the same, right down to the pace of the sample.

One thing that intrigues me is whether or not Gonjasufi's producer, Gaslamp Killer, took his cue directly from Saul Williams' tune, or even if Saul took the sound from another song that came out even before his. That's where this investigation kind of stalls. But in the meantime, take a listen to both the tunes, and judge for yourself the similarity.

Gonjasufi - "SuzieQ"

Saul Williams - "List Of Demands"