AbsurdBeats

That’s just a great title for a cd: direct, not quite right—God doesn’t like it—but somehow exactly right.

Yeah. God don’t like it. Even an apostate like me can say that.

Speaking of: Holy freakin’ hell, I gotalotta Holly Golightly cds.

This is an almost*-all-Canada post, by the way: I heard about Holly Golightly in Montréal, I think from my St Denis (or was it St Laurent? Damn!) Music Man, and her jangly post-punk appealed to me.

I just hadn’t realized, until I pulled the mid-G’s to listen to them, exactly how much she sucked me in: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 cds! Seven cds! And that doesn’t even count the Thee Headcoatees disc!

I mean, she’s good, but seven? Really? I must have been deep in obsession to have collected so many in such a short time—I’m guessin’ a year or two. (I have a lot of Emmylou, for example, but that’s over decades.) It took me a while to get through ‘am all.

Anyway, Holly Golightly, performs one of my favorite covers, of a Bill Withers (also a short-time obsession of mine) tune. Now, Withers is a peerless singer, so it really shouldn’t work, but it’s one of his lesser  tunes—“Use Me”—and Miz Golightly just strips that baby down to its skittering and frayed wire, then coos and flirts her way across and around the beat:

If God don’t like that, God don’t like nothin’.

The other band is Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a band which, unlike our Miss Holly, is actually Canadian. Music Man might have shoved them in my hand, too, but I think I found them on my own.

Not that I can go all hipster-early-adopter on you: I only started listening after the exclamation point had migrated westward.

Only three GY!BE cds proper, but I also have three The Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra La La Band (tho’ they apparently now go by Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra), which contains a number of Godspeed members.

Anyway, GY!BE is loud, very loud. Very very loud. In concert. My friend J. and I saw them at some Mile End (I think) theatre and even in the balcony (which I, unwilling to be blasted off the ground floor, dragged J. to) we were crushed under the cascade of gorgeous, heartbreaking, menacing sounds. They played two hours proper, then offered up another hour of encore.

I don’t know that I could have stood up had they decided we were worthy of a second encore.

The music, by the way, is strange and familiar and fills the space from the ground to the sky. Highly recommended.

~~~

223. Godspeed You Black Emperor!, “lift yr skinny fists like antennas to heaven!”
224. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, xxx f#a#~xxx
225. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Yanqui U.x.o.
226. Holly Golightly, The Good Things
227. Holly Golightly, God don’t like it
228. Holly Golightly, The Main Attraction
229. Holly Golightly, “Up the Empire”
230. Holly Golightly, truly she is none other
231. Holly Golightly, Singles Round-Up
232. Holly Golightly & Dan Melchior, Desperate Little Town
233. Jose Gonzalez, Veneer

*I forgot about Jose Gonzalez. He’s nice, too.