I stand still

Porto, 2015

she comes from somewhere

probably from the bellybutton or the shoe under the bed, or maybe from the mouth of the shark or from the car crash on the avenue that leaves blood and memories scattered on the grass.
she comes from love gone wrong under an
asphalt moon.
she comes from screams stuffed with cotton.
she comes from hands without arms
and arms without bodies
and bodies without hearts.
she comes out of cannons and shotguns and old victrolas.
she comes from parasites with blue eyes and soft voices.
she comes from under the organ like a roach.
she keeps coming.
she's inside of sardine cans and letters.
she's under your fingernails pressing blue and flat.
sh'es the signpost on the barricade
smeared in brown.
she's the toy soldiers inside your head
poking their lead bayonets.
she's the first kiss and the last kiss and
the dog's guts spilling like a river.
she comes from somewhere and never stops
coming.

me, and that
old woman:
sorrow.

C. Bukowski, what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

It's gonna be swell

Peter Kernel - It's gonna be great

The Big Pink - Velvet

Beyond the sea

  

Croatia, 2014

Tristesse Contemporaine- Daytime, Nightime

Raphael Saadiq- Go to Hell

I got my degree in demonology

Swilson - Demonology

Na putu

To M.

Slovenija, 2014

Basement

Apparat- A bang in the void

She's scared to jump, but terrified to stay

Beograd 2013

Cold War Kids - Golden Gate jumpers

It's all so quiet....shhhh...shhhh.

I sometimes feel like I'm listening to a new Thee Oh Sees album every other month. It's not far from being true, these guys are stakanovist AND punk at the same time, a pretty neat combination. 

But for once, Drop is giving me the feeling something is changing. I still don't know what to think about this (and I wish somebody would tell whether to love it or burn it to the ground), but I'm confident the next album, presumably to be released within 6 months, will give me an answer. In the meantime, let's try to figure this Drop thing out.

It starts very normally, with a weird Penetrating eye piece: not only the title (I hate violence against eyes in general) but the mayhem of guitars and distorsions sounds bursting at once after a sweeet little tune played on a oldschool keyboard seems highly Theeohsees-esque. This and the hypnotic chanting, rendering everything blurry as to where the sounds stop and the music starts.

We then go to Encrypted bounce, also a good ol'classic garage piece, with half-sung, half whispered lyrics and a bass line in the pure style of what can be found on The Master's bedroom. Here and there, crying guitars are shattering the soft surface of sound and creating little messy areas of caterwaul like contemplation. 

Put some reverb on my brother, apart from being an awesome title, is starting fine but growing into something much harmonic, very 70's like and making a soft, but indubitable transition to something much more tamed and easy on the ear than what I'm used to.

Camera (Queer sound) is in this regard rather normal: guitars working together, harmonies all over the place, choir singing in the back. King's nose is then almost beatlesy.

The lens is letting us go on a peaceful tune, backed by a deep cello bass and next to no other instruments then an extra brass during chorus and a little trumpet line at the end. Softspoken lyrics about -if I'm not mistaken- being together ( well ariving at the same time) make it all so smooth it's kind of scary.

Why so scared then? The same way you get scared when knowing that somewhere there's a monster in the trunk: the few silent minutes before it comes out are when the absence of noise is daunting, sending chills down your spine and the more it lasts, the more you expect the next BANG to be a horrifying one. I will sure be very careful with the next TOS record I get my hands on. Might be bloody.

Der amerikanische freund

If you hate lazy fuckers backpacking around Europe like it's the ultimate trip, trying to pronounce local names with an unbearably lousy accent and being all offended at the fact that not everyone is understanding their stupid gibber-jabberish sort of english, this movie is (kind of) for you. 

Two friends set out to go on a round-the-globe trip and, of course, to document everything (like it's really an original and never-done-before kind of thing). Unfortunately, after getting laid in Paris (that's apparently all we do down here: getting drunk, having philosophical conversations about life and drinking wine late in the night; sure, we never work or do anything that's useful) one of them become sick. Got what was coming, I reckon. So he starts to do strange stuffs: some cool (like jumping super-high and breaking rocks, though I fail to see the use for that except in Europe, where we don't do shit anyway) some weird (puking like on a permanent springbreak binge) and some downright uncool ( burning in the sun and having his eyes poping out of his head). 

Instead of going to a doctor (dude! free healthcare!) they draw the conclusion that he's simply turning into a supernatural creature (I'm not gonna say which one, so as not to spoil eventual future viewers suprise). From that point, it pretty much degenerates into a kind of horror road-trip back to Paris with a super violent ending.

No, but seriously, I like to tease and deprecate my fellow Lonely Planet people, but it's just tough love. Same goes for the movie: it's actually not bad, and the hand-held camera which can be so annoying in the genre doesn't go overboard. Some of the nightvision shots are really creepy and the transformation process is extremely well put. There's even a bit of ontological questioning at the end (between two frantic slaughters). Not bad at all.

I guess it's just a modern disease

EMA / 3Jane

Do the beast

To be perfectly honnest, I had no idea who the Afghan Whigs were untill recently. Listening to Algiers in preview, I had the feeling of a War On Drugs -only less whiny and raunchier - kind of thing: gently weeping on a folk guitar, with increasingly thicker sounds in the background and a greasy guitar coming in from time to time. But altogether, it sound definitely utterly like a fresh new band.

Because I'm a conscious person, I've done my research and this band has been here for YEARS! And nobody told me about it before now! How sad! Well, my excuse would be that their last album was released when I was 13 and still crying over the fallout of most of the boysband of my youth while listening to bad RnB.

I'm currently catching up with their whole discography and am thoroughly delighted. In the meantime, I won't hold back about Do the Beast, which is just humongous. It begins with a badass rock piece, the one you smell on the back of the parking lot of a dirty dive-bar in Arkansas, Parked Outside

But then it goes to much more soft songs, including the Algiers that fooled me and other amazing stuffs. It kills is a kind of bittersweet breaking up song, almost whispered  with a piano base and background vocals that would look ridiculous anywhere else (think Diana Ross), but its weird mix is somehow bewitching.

Lost in the wood is probably my favourite song - probably the closest to the WOD kind of feeling I had at first. The inclusion of big cellos, expanded into a minor mode bridge is moving the core of the melody from just another love song to a much deeper and darker register.

Car rova is another changing song: from an Arcade Fire "let"s take a car and run" start, it explodes into an almost disco beat suddenly, yet it's totally coherent and logical. I have not idea how they do that.

And then there's Royal Cream, that's mostly reminding me of my good old day of grunge/rock/whatever. It's muddy with roaring despair - yet there's a violin in the distance (or is there?).

Lost in the woods

The Afghan wigs- Lost in the woods

Angel Olsen - Unfucktheworld

The Bony King of Nowhere - Night of longing

Death in Vegas - Killing smile

Arcade Fire- Neighborhood#4

Mutual Benefits- Advanced falconry

Matt Eliott- Reap what you sow

Bon Ive- Stacks

Isobel Campbell/ Mark Lanegan- Somehting to believe

Steve Earle- This city

Tom Waits- I wish I was in New Orleans

Ray Charles- I can't stop loving you

Mark Lanegan- Autumn Leaves

The Chemical Brothers- The pills won't help you now

The Haunting Idle

 

Rome, 2014 

The War on Drugs - The Haunting Idle

Driving around in circles

Explosion in the sky