there's a failure in me/ there's a flaw in you

Cant resist another lo-fi indie song the constant rain is perfect for such a mood these nights.

Though I wonder why the above should be so, for my recent memories of nights like these are not in the least bit pensive or anything such. Running to pull a damn boat up from the flooding shoreline/ huddled around a can of shared beef cubes ( I think) with friends at the back of a truckful of snoring guys while it rained cows outside/ and this one stretches one year back keeping sentry on a soggy hill while pointlessly discussing life, the universe, and everything inbetween with the other posted watcher/ stuff like that. So fun.

Anyhow, Orillia Opry is Daniel Noble and Emma Baxter, from Montreal, Canada, where I seem to be featuring lots of people from lately. Cant help it I like their kind of indiepop along with the swedes. He plays the guitars and sings, while she provides marvelously enchanting vocals that harmonizes with everything near perfectly. Put the song on, go on it's just a click to the right side, and tell me if her lilting woven voice isnt of just the right timbre, the right suppleness, in a perfect weave with the song's other elements. What irony though, such harmony in a song plainly about a breakup.

Dont we all wish we can meet the sadness of any heartbreak with the same " plainest of adornment, with the evenest of tones", as how this duet is done? or so as the listener at Said The Gramophone puts it very succinctly:

" Such a fearsome, gentle chorus: "If you come back / come back with a heart attack". A heart attack! Like it's the easiest thing to sing, like there's nothing tightening in their chest as they stare you down.."

I do not know about you but I have not heard another that is as pretty and bitter a breakup song as " I Lied".

Perfect for nights like these.

Orilla Opry - I Lied

you can tell this looking in my eyes

hm I really got to stop this habit of only transferring posts long overdued in my mind to type at four am in the morning. Never really liked sitting down in front of the keyboard just because a blog needs life, well see this and you might understand what I try to avoid---> http://xkcd.com/77/ .

Anyway, I finally decided to snap up Victoria Bergsman ( of swedish Concretes fame) debut solo album " Open Field" just last week. Looking back I do not understand why I had doubts about it when I first saw it on the shelf about a month ago but there we go. Just after I grabbed hold of the cd, an american couple came up and handed me a HMV stampcard, which just needed a purchase of $20 more in order to get the reward of $25 worth of anything from HMV. Oh yeh and in classic Zhanhui fashion of happily losing the bird in hand he drops the damned card while filling up the job application form at said outlet later. Bloody hell. Keep forgetting *both* my hands can be used to hold stuff now.

I suppose things like to balance themselves out, in a fashion anyway, as everything went smooth for the form and subsequent interviews the next day.

No that is a lie. It was only yesterday that I realized with a twisting fear in my gut that under " which artist released 'Blonde on Blonde' " I had filled in *Blondie* without thinking much...

No I may not really listen much to Bob Dylan but *still*, Blondie?!?!


Hah right that's enough, here is the song which you are here for.

Branching away from the 'sounds-complex- but-truthfully-devastatingly-elegant-and-simple' aesthetic of her ex band The Concretes, Victoria has chosen instead to focus on simpler, tighter arrangements woven around just her voice and a few other sparse instruments. What she fashioned, is this sense of *space*, of a starkness that has a kind of unblinking sincerity behind it. An openness that doesn't envelope but instead encompasses. It is the same kind of wow as ' Say Something New', but approached from the other direction, the beauty in pure sheerness kind.

She is right in bringing her amazing vocals to the forefront, for that and the careful arrangement in the songs make this album shine. Not in the sense of a bright burning star but the sure quiet glow of embers. But truly, like I quote from another " we don’t really need stripped-down arrangements and a cappella passages to know that Bergsman’s voice is special—this smoky, fragile/strong, entirely distinctive thing."

Ill put up the most obvious single from ' Open Field' here. The song is penned by Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura for her friend Victoria, and that I supposed lent the measured indie catchiness to the tune. There's a video up for it on youtube too.

Be sure to check up her myspace link too, you can practically sample the whole album there. ' Cedar Trees' is another gem.

Taken By Trees - Lost And Found

Well, call me different but there is this sense of Northern stoicism that Victoria Bergsman sings with, that I just kind of find myself identifying with.

well you know i've tried

I have no idea how this found its way into my 'songs' folder, I think I once meant to put it up on this blog before, but never could find the appropriate words to go along with it.

Anyhow, this song was somehow striking enough to catch my ears once again while randomly going through my archives. It shies just over two minutes long, but within this devastatingly fragile and plaintive frame of a serene melody, so much sentimentality and heartbreak is contained within that it *is* kinda hard to get through it completely sometimes. Haha laugh all you want, but that is the way it catches and simply is.

I cant find out the name of the singer, but well, her voice is - meh cant think of a better term- sensitively mature in a very attractive fashion. She possesses just the right touch of distance even though " We Used To Talk" is basically a lament. A lament for a dissolution of a relationship where not even a slightest silver of communication goes across anymore. She does not mention the reasons so, but that makes sense because really those do not really matter, and are not the point here.

After repeated listens, there's a hint, somewhere in there of a buried wonder, or as close as I can tell anyway, a wonder why she or the other person is unable to find the time or effort to pick up a phone and well, talk.

So there.

HELLO STRANGER - WE USED TO TALK