Mountain Man

It isn’t too hard to romanticize the three Vermonters that make up Mountain Man. In their recent videos, they hold hands with their eyes closed, singing like they’re praying. It’s a rare show of intimacy in these hipper-than-thou times, a closeness most evident in their harmonies. Their female voices, twined together tight like a braid, fill the echoing spaces of the abandoned ice cream factory in which they recorded their debut album, Made the Harbor.

Sometimes accompanied by a particularly resonant guitar, oftentimes not, the trio are mic-ed so close you can hear the timed inhales between their minor key lines. Music this naked needs to sound faultless, having very little to hide behind save a little reverb. Thankfully, it holds up to close scrutiny. The alchemy of their three voices prove to be greater than the sum of their parts: an unassuming alto, a clear, sunny middle voice, and a eerie soprano that seems, at times, to repress a soul-calling cry.

Their sound is unmistakably steeped in Appalachian melancholia, and at times shows traces of clarity reminiscent of sister sorority a capella groups, and even the Andrews Sisters. Sometimes their roots show too much, such as in the song “How’m I doing” which is more saccharine than honeyed, and weakly old-timey. Thankfully, these moments are brief, and for the main, the music is as sun-drenched as it is stark, and not so explicitly emotional as to overtip the scales into the neurotically or coyly feminine. “Mouthwings” is wonderfully enigmatic, singing dreamily of wet bellies and salty caves. The dizzying counterpoint “Babylon” is solemn, its structure tight and controlled, and doesn’t suffer for its tradition.

There is a hypnotic quality to three people singing closely. As if one voice fits itself snug against another, and then a third, building itself into a mesmerizing tangle. The amount of energy these musicians pour their energy listening to each other is palpable, and is ultimately what makes this album addictive.

on Radiohead in the park, in august.

The last band is playing at the end of the day, on the edge of the continent, and the fog is draping itself over the trees like cobwebs. We are 60,000 and we are alone, trying to get our own eyeful of a band bigger than the crowd but hard to see from here. They sound silky, the beats streaming past like cars on the freeway in the dark and all the brake lights like little coals. Not a note is wasted, the chords moving seamlessly forward like a machine. Every beat is computationally perfect, neither too early, nor too late, and we love that, that and the urgency and the confusion in their voices rising high above, raw, despairing. We can sing along to this. We'll be the flaws that make this music gorgeous. I strain to see a glimpse of the band, but i cannot see them, except on a screen. I suppose that is close enough in this age. We sing along, we know the songs by heart, we can all sing together that we've lost ourselves.

Things that have made me cry of late, in the most enjoyable way:

Mew - Frengers
Trash Can Sinatras- Cake
The Diary of Anne Frank

Forbidden Games

Ten years ago, I went though a phase where I watched Forbidden Games (Les Jeux Interdits) at least twice a week. Every camera shot meant something. The lighting meant something. I adored the music. I even wrote an essay on it, a terrible, sprawling essay that for the life of me I can't remember a thing about, except that I saw so much in the film that I couldn't really narrow myself down to a thesis and needed someone to help me figure out something lucid to say.

The film focuses on a five year-old girl whose parents die while fleeing Paris during its occupation, and how she is taken into the care of a young farm boy and his family. The boy and girl start burying animals and playing cemetery to understand death. The film created something of a scandal at the time of its release, and received some terrible reviews. But now the film is seen as a classic of French film, though I've never met anyone familiar with the film who isn't French.

I see it so differently, now. I have similar reactions as I had in the past, but now all of a sudden the dark humor in the film has more weight, as does its personal antiwar statement. What stood out in the past was the purity of the characters, the love story, the music, the countryside. It's swimming in beauty but it's dark, and I focused more on its beauty. I never saw exactly how macabre the film was. The cemetery they create is enchanting and sweet and innocent, you almost forget how fucked up it is for children to make one.

Funny how the things you love when you are young don't look the same when you're older. I am no longer passionate about it, the way I was. I know it too well. I wonder if somehow I've absorbed its beauty so completely that I've taken it for granted, and now it's the other things in the film that stand out. I still love it, though. I still think the film is perfect. There are very few false moments. You could argue that there are none.

Obliteration by music

Sometimes I want my music to hurt. When I'm grumbling my way to work in the twilight morning, and my thoughts are a bit too honest, I'll turn the volume way, way up, and I'm the obnoxious one on the street. It's a bit masochistic, ears giving a twinge when the treble is loud and high, reminding me that music can be visceral. Piercing whines and the deep throb of bass penetrate the body on a vibrational level, making my blood shudder. The little hairs on my arms are trembling, and there's a little tickle, all over my skin. Maybe it's The Flaming Lips keening like benevolent witches, or the Rolling Stones insistent dark howl on Paint It Black, or Dungen's guitars spinning like a kaleidoscope, and I'm in sound, and past thought, just for a little while. Sometimes I'll trade off the hurt of thinking for the hurt of sound. And it's not really hurt, just distraction. But it can feel good to feel like you are just going, and not thinking at all.

I've wandered back. I'm sniffing around, and it smells good.

Young tree, newest leaves
Bird with the longest neck
Man with the strongest hands
Woman with the biggest heart

How long, how long, how long (will it take)?
What needs to bend
What needs to fold
What needs to open
What needs to break

earthdeep beauty
love without longing
Am I as sweet as you

I am the cloud
I am the tree
I am the bird
I am the sun
I am the dragonfly, passing you by.

An ending, a loss, a gain

An ending, a loss, a gain
An ending, a loss, and found