Lost AT E Minor

Pink Mountaintops

Pink Mountaintops — a wry Canadian duo — are getting some pretty steady exposure on my stereo at the moment, and lots of others judging by their steady rise up the rock echelons. They’ve got that skaggy swagger and well-worked male/female vocal arrangements, particularly on Tourist in my Town, that drew so many people to Velvet Undergound and the other psych-stoner rock bands of that era, and the production is similarly lo-fi. Their 2004 eponymous debut album barely sold until frontman Stephen McBean released the debut album of his other band, Black Mountain, and news filtered out of this little gem. Listen to the song, Rock and Roll Fantasy.

The John Henrys

It’s only fitting a band of Canadian rootsters like this would tap a mythical figure of folklore for their namesake. Indeed, Ottawa’s The John Henrys understand the power of the familiar. Read more

Morning Songs

Over the last year or two I’ve been clandestinely concocting a list of ‘morning songs’ — those tracks that coax the sun through the curtains as you stretch your way into the day. They are the songs that will suddenly, and unexplainably, make you irresistible to the person lying next to you, just like high grade pheromones or a snatch lottery win. They’re ethereal, perhaps slightly melancholic, but also with the slightest hint of euphoria to accompany the supernatural brightening of the room. So far, though, I’ve only got three: Maria Callas and the Marriage of Figarro; Nick Drake’s classic, Cello Song, and this little gem of a piece, Como la Cigarra by Mercedes Sosa. Add as you wish, and let’s see if this baby works it’s magic.

Patti Smith’s The Color of Coral

2008 is shaping up to be a banner year for Patti Smith. Not that she needs banners, parades, or the like, of course. But just in the first six months she’s already been the subject of three books, one about her first album (33 1/3’s Horses, by Philip Shaw), one a career overview/analysis (Praeger’s The Words and Music of Patti Smith, by Joe Tarr), and one a paperback edition of her Auguries of Innocence poetry book (Ecco Press). There are two more volumes due this year as well: Land 250, a collection of her photography being published to commemorate a Smith exhibition which ran March 28 – June 22 at the Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain in Paris; and Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a photography book by filmmaker Steven Sebring intended to serve as a companion piece to his documentary of the same name. Read more

Wire’s Object 47

The title of Wire’s eleventh album — due for release on July 16 and their first since 2003’s Send — suggests some angular, nonrepresentational piece of AbEx sculpture, the kind that rejects all attempts to name it anything other than what it is. Which is more or less the case. Read more