Album: Radio Swan is Down by Laura.

I had this album floating around for a while before listening to it and I have found it quite enjoyable, it reminds me of the shoegazing music of the early nineties.

Interestingly enough, the band is Melbourne based, which I didn’t realise when listening to them (which may explain why there were not a lot of clips on youtube). Anyway, try this on for size:

The song “john Wayne Gacy Jnr”, which is mentioned below in the post on Sufjan Stevens, is not obviously about a serial killer on first listen. If you know the story of JWG because you are from Chicago, or you read about it on wikipedia, then the lyrics change shape and become more obvious.

It is an incredibly sad song, almost unbearably so. Some people have a bad reaction to a song like this, for example this listener:

Listening to this song my first reaction was “is this SOB actually trying to make me feel sympathy for JWG?” Quite frankly I don’t care what upbringing JWG had there are no mitigating circumstances for being the definition of evil.

I’ve never been so disgusted in my life. JWG is nothing short of a Monster. For his sake I hope there is a hell and I hope he rots there forever.

BOO HISS – Bill please remove this garbage from rotation.

Not that everyone has that opinion:

I never would have thought it would be possible for someone to make a song about John Wayne Gacy that would be sad and beautiful, and probably would have thought the very idea was horrible. It’s a testament to Sufjan’s talents that he pulled it off, partly by making it about more than just Gacy. Still gives me the chills, a year and a half after first hearing it.

Stevens does end up with a song that is sad and beautiful? How does keep it from being morbid or from “expressing sympathy” for JWG?

By expressing sympathy for everyone.

The song is one huge sigh at the sadness of the world: that JWG could kill, that he would get in a position where he felt he had to do so, sadness at the feeling of the relatives of the dead, that evil exists.

He ends to song by even bringing himself into this world of sadness:

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floor boards
For the secrets I have hid

This was noted on the radio station discussion board that the above quotes come from, alluding to his purported christian upbringing:

He concludes with a reference to christian scriptures that says (paraphrased) we are all sinners, whether we steal money or kill 27 people.

Author’s note: Given my reasonably diverse music tastes I thought it might be interesting to spread the word about interesting music I stumble across. My original thought was to try and embed short clips in the blog page, but in practice clips can often be found on YouTube.

I have used YouTube clips before, for this post on The Gotan Project. Unfortunately one of the links has died but the two video’s there are quite good and representative of the Gotan sound. They have subsequently released a new album; a clip of a song from that album (‘Diferente’) can be found here. (The lesson here is to make sure you give the name of the song in the text in the blog, that way if you do suffer from link rot you can a least go and look for the song again – I will never remember what that last Gotan song was).

Anyway on with this review, which is of Sufjan Stevens.

Sufjan Stevens is modern indie pop musician with a strong folk music influence. You can see it with the focus on acoustic guitar and the extensive use of banjos and other folk instruments.

My first experience of Sufjan Stevens was the album ‘A sun Comes Up’ which can is in iTunes (itunes link to ‘A Sun Comes Up’).

His most famous album is the Illinoise (he has proposed an album for every State of America. So far he has made two). Here is a song off that album. While you listen to the song try to figure out what the subject is about.

It turns out that John Wayne Gacy Jr is quite famous.

The following songs are some of my favourite that I have come across so far, I tend to enjoy his quite songs.

This Dress Looks Nice on You

To Be Alone With You

Concerning the UFO sighting Near Highland

Seven Swans

I went to see the Gotan Project this weekend. If you have not heard of them they produce a mix of South American tango with Parisian chillout beat sensibilities. I first heard of them on one of the early Hotel Costes albums. To get a sense of them look at the videos below.

This is a track off of their first album:

This is their latest single:

And this is a video of their live show, pretty much the same as the one i saw: