Jacksonville City Nights - Ryan Adams & the Cardinals (Autumn Records 2008)

Jacksonville City Nights

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
Lost Highway Records.

SCQ Rating: 90%

Dear John,

Not a single note from this record belongs anywhere but in Autumn, that Autumn, when our street was cast in a month of harvest colours – an eternity by Fall’s clock – and I felt these songs kick up like dust from the front lawn. There wasn’t a whole lot else on my agenda, anyway; I’d work the weekdays in the concrete gutter of freight trucks and forklifts, then wander home beneath the glow of evening century trees. Most of all, I hung around waiting for you, sitting by the bay-window and collecting bottles like they were worth something to anyone else.

I don’t live there anymore, in case you ever wondered. Wherever I am now feels continents and persons removed from that street or the way I walked then. You can’t run from that, so who could bother trying. You only hope to find enough miles of distance from yourself that the two yous can live their lives without ever meeting again. Maybe that doesn’t add up to you, but I bet I’m still kicking somewhere round that red bungalow, cities away, listening to ‘Hard Way to Fall’s sad-choirboy chorus, and making myself sick. Still staring out at the roadside hills to the pedal-steel sighs of ‘Games’, still catching my reflection, long-haired and pale-faced to the slow pilgrimage of ‘Peaceful Valley’. When I hear these songs now I know that part of me’s still there waiting.

You know I could borrow my brother’s car, head down that barren highway and look in those windows. I could tap my wheel to ‘The Hardest Part’ or ‘Trains’ all the way through the small towns and wide farmland divides till I’m right there, on the drive, staring at the blackened windows you could’ve burnt out with me. Pull that dirty piano bench and pen a few of ‘Silver Bullets’ lonely keys that still play, find the back-shed empties that were whiskey to the veins of ‘My Heart is Broken’. Or turn out the light and listen for creaks in the house, aches in the walls, any step on the stairs that could’ve been you. But it’s ‘PA’ all over again, and the same news through the floorboards I always tried to ignore. You were gone.

I’d toss Jacksonville City Nights like the rest but lord it feels good; each song a separate rustling of leaves, each lyric a cut I’m proud to bare. You always said Love is Hell was your suicide letter, but it has nothing on this. Or me. We really lived for awhile, John. We really grew up together.

xo.

You Forgot It In People - Broken Social Scene (SUMMER 2008)

You Forgot It In People

Broken Social Scene
Arts and Crafts.

SCQ Rating: 93%

In the Spring of 2004, as ‘Almost Crimes’ was topping campus charts all over Canada, I was beginning my first and only bout of Summer School – a studio art credit to make up for a year of anthropology naps. Living in my student house without a roommate to speak of, I’d wander home from my nightclass to find every window black; an apartment waiting for someone to give it life. As fate would have it, this particular night found a burned copy of You Forgot It In People, scribbled over and tucked within a makeshift envelope, waiting under my door as well. In the coming weeks, each project my friend and I undertook – whether it included shoebox cameras, paint and canvas, or pencil sketches – were all completed to the Toronto collective’s breakthough effort; its endless flow from one song to another fit perfectly to the art we were creating.

The raw edges of ‘KC Accidental’ and ‘Almost Crimes’ slide euphorically into ‘Looks Just Like the Sun’ and ‘Pacific Theme’, the latter an impressive centerpiece that gradually proves far better than its elevator-inspired source material. What really makes You Forgot It In People a spectacular summer album isn’t the wonderful memories I’ve attached from that art-affected season, but the sun-kissed freedom it implies with each plucked banjo-string (‘Anthem for a Seventeen Year Old Girl’) or distorted Sonic Youth riff (‘Cause=Time’). No BSS-associated record has proven their power in numbers like this one, as each song melds styles, influences and instruments that only a focused troupe of so many could tightly pull together.

Despite the aforementioned euphoric sensations, You Forgot It In People erupts from a dark and slightly disturbed mindset. You can hear the drone beneath and between many of these sunny tracks; the dense hum of strange voices that cry under ‘Pacific Theme’, or the cathartic ramblings that litter ‘Shampoo Suicide’. If in doubt, look up some lyrics. Like the best works of art, You Forgot It In People cannot be easily-assessed; it's sweltering, dysfunctional stuff, and it's entirely brilliant.

Day I Forgot - Pete Yorn (SCQ Spring 2008)

Day I Forgot

Pete Yorn
Columbia Records.

SCQ Rating: 86%

In April of 2003, I should’ve been studying. That would’ve made a lot of sense, given that my schedule included several essay exams scattered over the coming two weeks. Instead, I stood in a London-area HMV with a gift certificate in hand, completely at odds over what to buy. Sure, I was carrying a copy of the newly released Pete Yorn album around with me, but truthfully, I was looking for something different. After a few distractions (including my first impressionable listen to Cat Power), I gave up and bought Day I Forgot. Despite his first album being a big deal for me a year earlier, I viewed this purchase as a silver medal to my own indecision.

From the opening field-recording demo that leaves us hanging before the guitars of ‘Come Back Home’ crash in, I instinctively dropped all presumptions about what this record should be. His sound hadn’t changed so much as focused; the DIY ethic was still at work, but where Music for the Morning After stretched its wings over several styles, Day I Forgot is singular in its forthright desire to rock. The drums are decidedly heavier, giving would-be ballad ‘Crystal Village’ a defiant edge. Even the guitars are beefier, cutting deep into ‘Long Way Down’ or blowing a riff out of the water as ‘Carlos’ does. Much of the reason critics merely shrugged at Day I Forgot can be traced to this straight-forward guitar rock, which disappointed those who treated Yorn like the next big thing, but few can argue that Yorn pulls it off convincingly.

We had two weeks left on the lease of our decrepit student flophouse, and between finals and unresolved summer plans, my housemates and I could feel the changing of the guard. Like how the spring rain melts weeks-worth of filthy snow down the gutters, this house would soon be filled with a new group of wide-eyed students to deflower. In many ways, we were preparing to say goodbye for another few months, and given how quickly things change amid a group of young men and women, I was aware things couldn’t stay the same for long. As several songs from Day I Forgot began to cling to my brain, London underwent an unseasonably warm current that bathed our last days in a summer’s humidity. The blankets of our make-shift projector room were torn down, revealing a great living room we’d wasted, and our windows were left open to breathe at night. Our study days became routinely interrupted by water-gun battles in the stairwell or backyard procrastinating. A song as seemingly ridiculous as ‘Burrito’ fit right in, its power chords drowning Yorn’s reminiscing from the window-perched speaker. The kitchen mentioned in ‘All At Once’ will always be our kitchen in that house.

A night after we pulled the couches out onto the front lawn, bought bottles of wine, and drank into the early hours, I woke up to write my anthropology exam. It was the end of April and my last exam, so I left early to ensure I could pace my walk and enjoy the green grass of campus. And as had been the case for the past two weeks, I woke up with one of Yorn’s new songs in my head; in this case, ‘Man in Uniform’, which I wordlessly sang to myself as I considered how dead I was about to be. The exam was a write-off – I could’ve been in a different class the whole time – and Yorn’s melody followed me home for one last day in London.

With its clean instrumentation and romantically-restless songs (who could ignore ‘Turn of the Century’?), Day I Forgot is a spring-time album that preludes those approaching summer nights. In a tight competition, it is also my favourite Pete Yorn album.

1.) Sound of Silver - LCD Soundsystem (ST. PATTY'S 2008)

Sound of Silver

LCD Soundsystem
DFA Records.


SCQ Rating: 91%

St. Patrick’s Day, 2007

I was going to start with where I woke up but I no longer recall. I was living between cities and my parents were in the process of moving houses, but I think I slept on the couch of my friend Patrick’s haunted apartment. The three of us (Patrick, his girlfriend Kait, and I) had a variety of things to collect before we took off to Toronto to celebrate the Irish holiday with friends. In charge of getting a variety of chips, pop, Blarney Stone, etc., Kait and I also picked up two essentials for the day; for her, a pair of green sneakers, for me, the new LCD Soundsystem.

I had been mildly pleased with James Murphy’s LCD debut but it played out like a compilation or best-of (the second disc was, to its credit) and I never found reason to put it on repeated-listen priority. We met up with Andy in the early afternoon, scooped up Emily, and on that highway from Hamilton to Toronto it became clear that Sound of Silver was an entirely different record. ‘Get Innocuous!’ opens with a nearly identical beat as his underground hit ‘Losing My Edge’, then transforms into a keyboard heavy dance-track featuring mightily improved, Bowie-esque vocals by Murphy (C'mon, his name is MURPHY, for godssake). It’s a breathtaking seven minutes that feel like three. ‘North American Scum’ had been implanted between our ears after two listens, and we were already beginning to sing along as we parked outside Leith and Nic’s.

Their apartment was swimming in green, strands dangling from the ceiling like vines and balloons waiting to be batted around. The decks of cards were still spotless, the fridge couldn’t even digest the liquor it had to hold, and we still believed our Blarney stone to be stone, not a snow-covered slab of concrete. Yes, the day was young and by the end of it, we all had heard Sound of Silver countless times; the funky vocals of ‘Time to Get Away’, the electronic glow of its title track, and of course, that cut-up piano ecstasy of ‘All My Friends’. The vines and balloons were floor-bound, and the fridge was ready to be gutted. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, people.