Domestic Llama

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Caribou – Desiree (from the album Andorra)

This is off Caribou’s past album, Andorra. What I love is how he hits upon this absolutely perfect opening – it’s almost like a tenor version of the Beta Band, sparse yet emgrossingly rhythmic. And when he first hit upon that, it must have been tempting to stay there, especially after that beautiful flute-ish line comes in. Instead, he swells it into this charming beach boys-ish chorus that is nearly equally catchy. And then, just to prove he has no interest in the lazy route, instead of going back to what worked, instead of retreating to that amazing opening, he presses forward and develops the chorus’ theme instead, so that by the end of the song, you’ve almost forgotten the opening even though it was jaw-dropping at the time. It’s like he spins these melodies to compete with each other for the prize of getting stuck in your head, and then simply sits back laughing while watching the results.

Really, the whole album is like this. In the live videos I’ve seen this seems to play out – the songs sound totally different, all that remains are the rhythm and the vocal melody – all the rest is thrown around it in a crazy psychedelic haze that could either be random or meticulously plotted. “Sandy”, “After Hours”, “Irene” – it’s weird to me that “She’s the One” and “Melody Day” got all the blog hype off this one back in 2006 – they’re both great songs, but there are others on the album that have a lot more staying power.

In the 4th grade, I advertised that Tracey Gold would be attending my birthday party. When everyone came, they were totally bummed that Tracey Gold was not at my birthday party. I felt ashamed for a little while. And then I thought, “Hey, wow – these people actually think I have the clout to bring in Tracey Gold. I’m that big of a deal.

Here is a picture of Tracey Gold and her family:

This is a story about Scott Baio’s daughter, Bailey:

A Story About Scott Baio’s Daughter Bailey.

Tracey Gold actually went to her birthday party. And she kind of looks like a boy baby.

Here is the song “Wilderness” by Active Child

Girls in the board room! Girls behind machines! Those crazy girls! What’s gotten into them?

In honor of a potentially patronizing holiday (though it was doubtlessly created with good intentions), comes a “new” old mix of sorts that, itself, sends similar mixed messages! New in the sense that this is its first posting – old in the sense that it is 6 months old. Were it a baby, it could totally eat some pureed avocados!

Previously unreleased to the public, forevermore unrequited, but now here standing before your ears and eyes, Domestic Llama patrons! An entity fully divorced from its past context and seeking new meaning! A mixture of music tinged with very strong feelings and emotions indeed! Both an introduction, and a groundwork, it seeks the very heart of both the sender and the send-ee! The swirl of something indefinite! The tinge of uncertainty in the air! Could this be the smell of mutual affinity and kindness?! Yes, even, perhaps – something MORE?! One can never be sure, for the sweetness of the thing too closely resembles naivety…

BUT MAYBE. Yes, “maybe” springs eternal.

Sally forth, then, faithful lovers! Send this to those you hold dear! But I warn you: Be careful, friends. For, mysteriously, an introduction to the dark art of cardio-engineering seems to prod some to disappear completely at the most inopportune of moments!

Take heart, and press play!

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Track Listing:

1. Local Natives – Airplanes

2. First Rate People - Girl’s Night

4. Noah and the Whale – 5 Years Time

5. Islands – Jogging Gorgeous Summer

6. Harlan T. Bobo – Mlle. Chatte

8. Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man

9. Starlight Mints – Submarine #3

11. G. Love & Special Sauce – Baby’s Got Sauce

13. The Republic Tigers – Buildings & Mountains

14. Carly Simon – Nobody Does It Better

Daily Torpor (December Mix, 2009 – MC Mirrors & Tinsel)

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Track Listing

1. “I Can Talk” – Two Door Cinema Club

2. “The Atlantic Ocean” – Richard Swift

3. “Perfect Fit” – Clues

4. “Supreme Hotel (Micachu & The Shapes Remix)” – Fool’s Gold

5. “Bone” – Map of Africa

6. “American Boy” – Estelle

7. “Green Eyed Love” – Mayer Hawthorne

8. “Brass Digger” – Starlight Mints

9. “Let’s Go Surfing” – The Drums

10. “Ambling Alp” – Yeasayer

11. “Gypsies on the Road” – Sgt. Dunbar & The Hobo Banned

12. “Animal Tracks” – Mountain Man

13. “Follow You Down to the Red Oak Tree” – James Vincent McMorrow

(I’ll add individual track links in a bit)

Know Why? – No.. Why? (October Mix, 2009 – MC Mirrors & Tinsel)

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Track Listing:

1. “Dominos” – The Big Pink
2. “I Hope I Become a Ghost” – The Deadly Syndrome
3. “Be a Star” – Oh No Oh My
4. “My Body’s a Zombie for You” – Dead Man’s Bones
5. “40 Day Dream” – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
6. “Get Up and Go” – Broadcast 2000
7. “When the Child Awakes” – Mount Righteous
8. “Wavin’ Flag” – K’naan
9. “Run” – Broadcast 2000
10. “Home” – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
11. “Providence” – The Love Language
12. “No One’s Better Sake” – Little Joy
13. “Lalita” – The Love Language
14. “No Love Could Be Sweeter” – The Equals

Lest I forget them, I want to post the following 7 quotes which beautifully illustrate the main themes flowing throughout “Skinny Legs and All” by Tom Robbins. They’re probably long enough, combined, to qualify for some sort of copyright infringement or something, but it’s cool if you guys don’t have time to read them – I just want to make sure not to forget them.

Each quote is seperated by the first word being emboldened.

Earth, it occured to her, was a sexual globe. Unique in a solar system of dead rocks, snowballs and gasbags. Earth was a theater, a rotating stage upon which a thin green scum of organic life acted out countless, continual scenes whose content, whether explicit or oblique, was almost wholly sexual…

Human beings do not have dominon over the plants and animals. Every daisy in the field, every anchovy in the bay had an identity just as strong as her own, and a station in life as valuable as hers. Humanity was a function of nature. It could not, therefore, live separately from nature except in a self-deceiving masquerade. It could not live in opposition to nature except in a schizophrenic crime. And it could not blind itself to the wonders of nature without mutating into something too monstrous to love…

It was futile to work for political solutions to humanity’s problems because humanity’s problems were not political. Political problems did exist, all right, but they were entirely secondary. The primary problems were philosophical, and until the philosophical problems were solved, the political problems would have to be solved over and over and over again. The phrase “vicious circle” was coined to describe the ephemeral effectiveness of almost all political activity.

For the ethical, political activism was seductive because it seemed to offer the possibility that one could improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one’s perceptions and transforming one’s self. For the unconscionable, political reactivism was seductive because it seemed to protect one’s holdings and legitimize one’s greed. But both sides were gazing through a kerchief of illusion.

The monkey wrench in the progressive machinery of primate evolution was the propensity of the primate band to take its political leaders – its dominant males – too seriously. Of benefit to the band only when it was actively threatened by predators, the dominant male (or political boss) was almost wholly self-serving and was naturally dedicated not to liberation, but to control. Behind his chest-banging and fang display, he was largely a joke and could be kept in his place (his place being that of a necessary evil) by disrespect and laughter. If, for example, when Hitler stood up to rant in the beer halls of Munich, the good drinkers had taken him more lightly, had they, instead of buying his act, snickered and hooted and pelted him with sausage skins, the Holocaust might have been avoided.

Of course, as long as there were willing followers, there would be exploitive leaders. And there would be willing followers until humanity reached that philosophical plateau where it recognized that its great mission in life had nothing to do with any struggle between classes, races, nations, or ideologies, but was, rather, a personal quest to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain. On that quest, politics was simply a roadblock of stentorian baboons.

I often overstate things. I am an overstater of things. Some might say I am The Overstater of Things.

But walking home tonight from an appointment, I came to my house, and I kept walking in the slight cold for another 45 minutes for no other reason than to listen through the CD I was playing once more. I’d listened to nearly all of it once while walking to my appointment. I am still playing it now, on my headphones, in my room. This is the 4th time now. I am anxiously awaiting the 5th, and the 6th before my class.

It was and has been easily the best listening experience I have had in years. I’m tempted to say of all time.

I’m tempted to say that Charles Mingus’ The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady is the greatest album of all time.

I’m not sure that I won’t still be tempted to say this 10 years from now.

My God.

“America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known…. We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?”

I jest. Purely jest. See – the acronym above is …. so I have to like post stuff of a similar… eh, forget it. I hope you understand – I like ya’ ladies! I’m a perfect gentleman!

Anyway – it’s time to talk about more music that I’ve come across, and that is always fun! That exclamation point makes it seem like I’m being facetious, like this task is forced upon me. That is not so. Darn you, exclamation point, with your innate power to make any and all sentences to be misconstrued! Darn me for my stubborn unwillingness to simply use the backspace key to fix what you have done to my sentences!

EDIT: I wrote the above, and 3/5s of the below about..like..3 months ago. But see, when you try to reach the highest heavens with your aspirations, God sends lethargy and distractions and lack of caring to make your tower of babel impossible. Thus, when I propose to have all sorts of updates in this feature…you get quarter-yearly at best. Which is sad. I repent of my pride, and also of my lack of follow through.

To the music! Tally Ho!

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Ron Sexsmith – Brandy Alexander
from the album “Exit Strategy of the Soul”

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So smooth. Ridiculously so. I love Ron Sexsmith’s voice and the way he just flows through the entire song as somewhat unlikely elements are added (are those Patti Labelle’s background singers? Tower of Power’s horns?) but nothing can shake the pure smooth of his vocals.

This song is pure head shake. Not head nod, it’s too sweetly rhythmic for anything like that. It’s remarkably simple – nearly the same guitar line and drums throughout – but the simplicity allows the vocals to completely lead. And they lead with a display of pure mood. Not like…that Enya new age bull crap…another kind of pure moods. Like, a cool kind.

This is the sort of song that someone would have running through their head at some point, and think they should make into a song, but fail to put down in any salvageable form until it had already disappeared.

It almost feels like Sexsmith just sang the melody and someone put everything else around it – not in a detached way at all – quite the opposite – the freeness of the vocals just make you think anything else could be slapped around it and somehow that voice would make it fit. It’s amazingly powerful at creating an atmosphere.

Where it all comes home: PIANO SOLO – short and sweet, but ties it all together.

Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)

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Nik Freitas – Sun Down
from the album “Sun Down”

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A rambling, easy-going great song for walking or driving with the windows down – it is exactly this sort of song that makes me miss having a car. The Oh-oh-ohhhs are absolutely heartbreaking and one of those moments where you know he just sang it out in the middle of the studio and was giddy for the next hour and a half – it just fits so beautifully and perfectly with the rest of the song.

I love what the bass is doing, and I love that the entire ensemble could just as easily be strolling along the same country road as the vocals. It’s easy to imagine them kicking a rock along the road, passing cattle, being slowly chased by a horse renowned for being unruly. Ok, maybe the last part is only associated in my memory…Bandit chased my sister, my cousins and I for a long while, and eventually even bit Cindy – so..uh yeah - I do think, though, that if we’d all sung this song while walking the savage colt would have been soothed and no one need’ve gotten bitten…

So easy, so free – perfect for a summer day. The bio on Nik Freitas website, which was ever so aptly written by his neighbor, says it perfectly: “These songs inform you exactly how the composer was feeling at the time that he wrote them.”

Where it all comes home: The breath between “sun” and “down” – the song is rambling and rambling, and it’s exactly this little bit of space that infuses that makes the epicness of the “oh ohh ohhhh” smooth and flowing.

Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)

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Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
from the album, “Fleet Foxes”

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This is really just a quick taste of this incredible album, but somehow its short, 4-part harmony, quasi-round-based structure seems the best way to introduce you all to the best band of the last 6 months.

I say introduce..maybe you guys have already heard of them, I don’t know. I’m definitely a bit behind on this band – but who cares, it’s so beautiful – it’s like the beach boys brought up to date with indie rock sensibilities. And, wisely, they know they’ve hit upon pure melodic gold, and don’t try to do too much with it – perhaps that restraint is the most impressive feat of this song.

Some day, I will get a group of 3 other friends together, and we will wander through the streets of some little town singing this song. This definitely seems like a good direction for indie rock to turn…um, I think I’m going to stop now – the hype machine is in full effect (on the indie scale) with this group, and probably doesn’t need my piddling little addition. I don’t know what else to say… I love this band.

Where it all comes home: The second the 4-part harmony hits, from there it’s just a beautiful coast to the finish that leaves one feeling completely satisfied and compelled to sing along.

Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)

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Gaby Moreno – Song for You
from the album “”Still the Unknown”

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This song greatly reminds me of The Beatles “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” In fact, the first time I heard it, I started singing “I don’t know why-yyyyy-yyyy…” - but nobody told me, that the song would unfold in a lovely and entirely different way. Gaby is from Guatemala, which makes her Centrally American, and A BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT HOTTIE!!!1, and Guatemalan. A triple threat. Also: In trying to verify my suspicion that Gaby Moreno was attractive (and thus a BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT HOTTIE!!!1), I found a picture of her with Yoko Ono. They’re tight. Thus, I feel like my Beatles reference is even more relevant.

Anyway, I was saying, “Weeps” and this song move at about the same pace, but George Harrison makes the vocal choppy to put some sense of urgency into an otherwise laxidaisical melody, whereas Gaby just lays back and stretches it out to fully give the feeling of ”chilling”. “Song for You” is just incredibly layed back and all connected to make for a lazy, laying-on-the-ground-as-the-clouds-shuffle-above-you type of feel out of essentially the same pieces that The Masters used to make a mournful and urgent song. Even with similar chords and a similarly disjointing key change between verse and chorus, this song manages to have a completely different feeling simply by legato-tizing the vocals and guitar – to great effect and affect.

Where it all comes home: As mentioned, right where the chord suddenly becomes all warm and fuzzy on the “youuuu”…before that it’s just muddy drums and a latin-esque guitar playing american-style slow-pop. After that, it makes you want to sway back with some girl, any girl, while sitting with a picnic basket on the top of a hill. I’m picturing that “very best place in the world for a picnic” that Papa Bear of the Berenstein Bears had in mind but soon found to now have a loud and smelly train passing by it in “The Bears’ Picnic” Were this song ever to be found, years later, to be ruined by a large locomotive, I also would, like Papa Bear, lead my family through all kinds of crappy picnic spots with mosquitos and trash and rain trying to recapture the idyllic beauty of a past experience. I might have read too much into that book.

Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)

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Ane Brun - The Treehouse Song
from the album “”Changing of the Seasons

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Ane Brun comes from Sweden. She was born in Norway, but has chosen to come from Sweden. You know what also has chosen to come from Sweden: The craziest McDonalds commercial ever. Exhibit Only:

Ane Brun’s music is a little bit like that, in that it’s seemingly just a hippy country song, and just strutting along until suddenly, out of nowhere, she starts singing a bunch of words really fast and talking about making babies in tree houses and stuff. There are no floating amoebas though.

This is really good sweet country music…but the way she manages to fit 30+ words into like..4 measures in the chorus, made me sit up a little more whilst listening. Then, just to flaunt that she didn’t have to do what she just did, she holds ”goooold” for about 8 bars. Tooting one’s own horn is okay in my book. I once met this guy named Bob Johnson at a church. He introduced himself like so: “Hi, I’m Bob “The Honker” Johnson (mouth trumpet:) DOOT DOO DOO DOOOOOOOOOOOO.”

That guy was awesome, because he was not afraid to flaunt his mad mouth trumpet skills. If we all had a little “Honker” Johnson in us, the world would be a better place, with more crazy noise making! I bet Ane Brun makes some crazy Swedish mouth trumpet noises. Her voice reminds me of a female Devandra Banhardt, or some girl with a nice voice sitting on a drying machine. Somehow that’s a good thing. The guitar starts off sounding like Iron & Wine or something…a grooving but still relaxed melody with a tight beat, and then turns more conventional with the bridge before doing something quite different with the verse, keeping everything interesting.

I don’t really know what this song’s about. She’s Norwegian, but has resided in Sweden for a while, so all I hear is ”Bork Bork Bork we were gonna make babies in a treehouse bork bork bork”

Obligatory Swedish Chef Making a Banana Split Embed:

You know, The Muppet Show was probably the best show ever. I remember once watching Gonzo grow a tomato plant to the 1812 Overture. Like, that was the name of his act that show, “Growing a Tomato Plant to the tune of the 1812 Overture.” That sort of random, absurd comedy is sadly underutilized in modern day television. Long live the Swedish Chef.

And with that, long live Ane Brun.

Where It All Comes Home – Probably the first time the mariachi chorus comes running in at the cue of “split”. Nevermind that they have nothing to do with splits. Nor do banana splits come from Mexico. Nor do mariachi lines have anything to do with Sweden, or cooking. It was at that point that I knew I’d spend the next hour watching Swedish Chef clips. And I did.

Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)

Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness. By forgiving too easily we can be badly hurt. But if we’ve learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn’t we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?

What if the world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her, “I didn’t mean what I just said.” and she would say, “It’s okay, I understand.” and she would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said that thing? We could remove the damage, but still be wiser for the experience.”

From the introduction to the video game “Braid”…unexpected place, to be sure.