I'm depressed.

come back soon.

- - -

update: April 13th.

I was not thaaat depressed. I was procrastinating. And in April I am doing the Script Frenzy. But I'll be back in a few days. :)

Scythian Empire; Andrew Bird

A.V.Club: Do your lyrics tend to come after you've written the music, though?
Andrew Bird: Yes. Pretty much any given day, barring some major distraction, I get melodies coming to me. Lyrics don't come quite as easily. So I've been inventing little projects and challenges to sort of kick my ass with the lyrics.

AVC: Like what?
AB: Well, I've got a song I'm working on, and I bought this book about ancient tribes, ancient cultures from 3000 B.C. to 300 A.D. This new song is called "Scythian Empire." When I was in 8th grade I became somewhat obsessed with the Scythians—they're kind of lesser-known archers and horsemen in the Russian steppes. Everyone else was doing reports on Julius Caesar and I just got obsessed with this Scythians. So I'm sort of bringing back that obsession and working on a song that's all about the Scythians. I don't usually invent concepts like that for songs. Usually I just let words come—I start speaking in tongues and making shapes and vowels, and subconsciously I'll end up with most of a song. This is a little more deliberate than usual. I create little challenges for myself, like, "Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots," or something like that. Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary what that is.

AVC: If you've got an idea or a goal in mind, even if it's not necessarily the main goal, it gives you something to work toward.
AB: Yeah. So lately I've been going to that process more than I usually do. Greek Cypriots, Scythians, and obscure ancient cultures seem to be a good, fertile area for me.

Five day forecast bring black tar rains and hellfire
while handpicked handpicked handler's kid gloves tear at the inseams
their Halliburton attach cases are useless
while scotch guard Macintoshes shall be carbonized
now they're offering views of exiting empire
such breathtaking views of Scythian empires

Scythian empire, horsemen of the Russia steppe
Scythian empire, archers of an afterthought
Routed by Sarmations, thwarted by the Thracians
Scythian empire

Scythian empire, exiting empire
Scythian empire, exiting empire
Routed by Sarmations, thwarted by the Thracians
Scythian empire
Kings of Macedonia, Scythian empire

Cataracts; Andrew Bird

when our mouths are filled with univited tongues of others
and thew strays are pining for their unrequited mothers
milk that sours is promptly spat
light will fill our eyes like cats

and they shall enter from the back
with spears and scepters and squirming sacks
scribs and tangles between their ears
faceless scrumbled charcoal smears

through the coppice and the chaparral
the thickets thick with mold
the bracken and the brier
catchweed into the fold

when our mouths are filled with uninvited tongues of others
and the strays are pining for their unrequited mothers
milk that sour is promptly spat
the light will fill our eyes like cats
cataracts

Simple X; Andrew Bird

A.V. Club interview: "And to just write a word for every keystroke. While we were in the studio in Minneapolis, I would get up and have breakfast at a café and write a few lines, and it was kind of my regimen, I'd write another couple lines for 'Simple X.' I guess that the song is a bit about breakfast, or that period of the day, being a possible key to world peace. [Laughs.]"

some people wake up on Monday mornings
barring maelstroms and red flare warnings
with no explosions and no surprises
perform a series of exercises

hold your fire
take your place around an open fire

before your neurons declare a crisis
before your trace Serotonin rises
before you're reading your coffee grounds
and before a pundit can make a sound
and before you're reading your list of vices
perform the simplest exercises

so here we are at the end
the war is over
there's nothing left to defend
no cliffs of Dover
so let us put down our pens
and this concludes the test
our minds are scattered about
from hell to breakfast

hold your fire
take your place around an open fire
don't open fire

Darkmatter; Andrew Bird

"Darkmatter" is a rehash of "Sweetbreads", which appeared in Bird's live EP "Fingerlings 1". I found on SongMeanings.net that "Sweetbreads (an earlier song that gave this one a lot of its lyrics) was not just about eating animals - specifically it was about eating the vital organs of animals. "Sweetbreads" is the term, more especially in Europe, that denotes things like livers, brains, tongues, etc. and it was a song that Bird came up with while touring over there because he would find out that sweetbreads meant different animal parts in different places. So, it was a song about that originally, and it had some interesting rhetorical questions in it that have found home in this more well-rounded song."

=)

When I was just a little boy
I threw away all of my action toys
While I became obsessed with Operation

With hearts and minds and certain glands
You got to learn to keep a steady hand
And thus began my morbid fascination

Tore all the spines out from all of these self-help books
Made myself a gun that not only shoots but looks so real
Yeah it shoots through steel with rays of dark matter
Rays of dark matter

Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in the head or between your sides
And who would be the one who will decide
Its true location

And does the thought of all this red and black
Thought of tongues that tasted bad
Fill you with the nausea of elation

The noose is loosed around our necks made of DNA
And every day it's growing tighter, no matter what they do or say
And you can shoot right through with rays of dark matter
Just before they kick out, they kick out the ladder
With rays of dark matter

Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in the head or between your sides
And who would be the one who will decide
Its true location

Armchairs; Andrew Bird

The song of today is not mentioned in the interview Andrew gave to AVC, so I don't know what I can write about it...


I dreamed you were a cosmonaut
of the space between our chairs
and I was a cartographer
of the tangles in your hair

I sighed a song that silence brings
it's the one that everybody knows
oh everybody knows
the song that silence sings
and this was how it goes

these looms that weave apocryphal
they're hanging from a strand
these dark and empty rooms were full
of incandescent hands

an awkward pause
a fatal flaw
time it's a crooked bow
oh time's a crooked bow

in time you need to learn to love
the ebb just like the flow

grab hold of your bootstraps
and pull like hell,
'til gravity feels sorry for you,
and lets you go

as if you lack the proper chemicals to know
the way it felt the last time you let yourself
fall this low
time
oh time
it's a crooked bow
time's a crooked bow

fifty-five and three-eighths years later
at the bottom of this gigantic crater
an armchair calls to you
yeah, this armchair calls to you
and it says that
some day
we'll get back at them all
with epoxy and a pair of pliers
as ancient sea slugs begin to crawl
through the ragweed and barbed wire

you didn't write, you didn't call
it didn't cross your mind at all
and through the waves
the waves of a.m. squall
you couldn't feel a thing at all
your fifty-five and three-eighths tall
fifty-five and three-eighths tall

Plasticities; Andrew Bird

Continuing... the same A.V.C. interview:

The A.V. Club: How did you approach the recording of Armchair Apocrypha differently than Mysterious Production Of Eggs?

Andrew Bird: It was quite a bit different. I think the first song we recorded was "Plasticities," which Martin Dosh and I had just started playing together. That was one of the first songs where we were just experimenting with us both looping and combining our distinct universes with each other. We went into Third Ear [Studio] in Minneapolis and recorded basically what we do live, which is him building a loop on drums while I'm building a loop on violin—which is a risky way to go. You don't have as much control, but we thought, "This is working really well live, so let's just try it like we do it [on stage]." And it worked out really well.

this isn't your song
this isn't your music
how can they be wrong
when by committee they choose it all?
they choose it all

chin chin
chin chin

you're gonna grow old
you're gonna grow cold
bearing signs on the avenue
for your own personal Waterloo
you're bearing signs on the avenue
for your own personal Waterloo now

we'll fight, we'll fight
we'll fight for your music halls
and dying cities

they'll fight, they'll fight
they'll fight for your neural walls
and plasticities
and precious territory

this isn't our song
this isn't even a musical
I think life is too long
to be a whale in a cubicle
nails under your cuticle

chin chin
chin chin

you're gonna grow old
you're gonna grow so cold
before this song can deliver you
you're bearing signs on the avenue
you're bearing signs
for your own personal Waterloo now

we'll fight, we'll fight
we'll fight for your music halls
and dying cities

they'll fight, they'll fight
they'll fight for your neural walls
and plasticities
and precious territory

Fiery Crash; Andrew Bird

Now it's time to post songs of another Andrew Bird's album: The Armchair Apocrypha. I love to post about Andrew's whistling songs! They always have good and easy-to-find interviews from which I can take the best informations to you, my beloved readers! ^^

Good interviews like the one below, given to A.V.Club:

Whistler, Suzuki-trained violinist, and all-around musical polymath Andrew Bird scored his biggest success so far with 2005's terrific The Mysterious Production Of Eggs, which introduced his offbeat, complex songwriting to a new audience. Shortly afterward, he found a simpatico partner in Minneapolis drummer and loop artist Martin Dosh, who joined Bird on tour and later brought him to Minnesota for the recording of Bird's follow-up album, the remarkable Armchair Apocrypha. Bird, on tour with Dosh and guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker, recently spoke with The A.V. Club about the new album.

AVC: One thing that seemed to keep coming up in the new songs was an ongoing theme of the wonder of being alive, the strangeness of it, and on "Fiery Crash," the fragility of it.

AB: That's not so much a conscious theme. I would say there's more of a desperate attempt to connect to something that isn't matter-of-fact. Spending so much time in airports and being bombarded with facts and people and people's faces and people's lives, and just being overwhelmed. When you travel, you just see more human faces, and you think, "What's their life like?" And then you see another face. How often can you do that? Sometimes I just think we're not meant to fly halfway around the world in a day. That some kind of mutation is going to happen. Something metaphysical has got to happen. There's definitely a theme on this record of desperation, I think—of trying to hold onto any evidence that we're still alive. I think life is a wondrous thing. I'm happy to try pretty hard.

=)

Turnstiles on mezzanine,
jet ways and Dramamine fiends
and x-ray machines
You were hurling through space
G-forces twisting your face
breeding superstition
a fatal premonition
you know you got to envision
the fiery crash

Oh close your eyes and you wake up
face stuck to a vinyl settee
Oh the line was starting to break up
just as you were starting to say
something apropos I don't know

Beige tiles and magazines
Lou Dobbs and the CNN team
on every monitor screen
you were caught in the crossfire
where every human face
has you reaching for your mace
so it's kind of an imposition
fatal premonition

To save our lives you've got to envision
and to save all our lives you've got to envision
the fiery crash

It's just a formality
why must I explain?
Just a nod to mortality
before you get on a place

Oh close your eyes and you wake up
face stuck to a vinyl settee
oh the line was starting to break up
what was that you were going to say?

Compromisso; Mallu Magalhães

Humm... I haven't found yet anything about this song (inspirations, blablabla) except the more important thing: who whistles! Answer: Mallu's boyfriend, Marcelo Camelo and Taciana Vaz. Here.

É tanto compromisso
obrigação e sacrifício
Que eu vivo aqui no vício
De pensar em ti
E só!

Sozinha, a rotina me massacra
De dor, eu fico fraca
E caio em grande nó

Normal, não, pai, não leva a mal
Sem ele a vida é tal
Que o sal me soa a pó!

Pois certo, que eu nunca perco o encanto
Pra sempre eu amo tanto
Teu jeito de aaah...

Make it Easy; Mallu Magalhães

In 2009, Mallu Magalhães (who had already appeared here) released her second album — with no name, like her first. At the time, with 18 years old, her sonority gets more refined, but without giving away her characteristic style.

I found an entire interview on Vagalume.com.br but it's in Portuguese and I don't want to translate it now. You put it on Google Translate if you wanna know more about our little Mallu. :P

"Make It Easy" é uma canção que descreve a relação de uma filha e uma mãe. Partindo disso, o relacionamento com seus pais mudou bastante depois de dois álbuns lançados, turnês e a perspectiva de toda uma carreira musical pela frente?

Sim. Tenho a impressão de que eu mesma amadureci pessoal e emocionalmente. Tenho, agora, uma percepção mais calma de vários fatores e acontecimentos que me cercam.

No caso desta relação, percebi que, por conseguir me posicionar no lugar de mãe, aquilo que sempre julguei autoridade, moralismo ou conservadorismo era, em sua essência, amor e, por ser amor, medo e cuidado.

Isso me ajudou muito a ter uma relação mais tranquila.

It's been hard days
For mama
And hard days for me too
Keep fighting for my love
As a woman, mom
And mom cries
As I knew she would do

It shouldn't be that hard
No mama
We accept each other
Then make it easy

Love is no problem
No, mama
We love each other
Then make it easy

Life is good
Life's so fine
Then, mama
Let's smile to life
and make it easy

It's been hard days
For mama
And hard days for me too
Keep fighting for my love
As a woman, mom
And mom cries
As I knew she would do

It shouldn't be that hard
No mama
We accept each other
Then make it easy

Love is no problem
No mama
We love each other
Then make it easy

'Cause it's alright
also fine to mama
Let's smile to life
Then make it easy

It shouldn't be that hard
No mama
We accept each other
Then make it easy
love is no problem no mama

Life is good
And it's allright to mama
Lets smile to life
and make it easy

Toothpaste Kisses; The Maccabees

Own! It's a beatiful song, isn't it?! And what a beautiful whistling at the end! This post is for all the lovers who have kissed passionately in the morning with the toothpaste taste in their mouths. *-*

This song was released in the debut album by The Maccabees, called "Colour it in". It's from 2007.

The Maccabees is an indie rock band from in London, England. It's formed by Orlando Weeks (vocals and guitar), Hugo White (guitar), Felix White (backing vocals and guitar), Rupert Jarvis (bass) and Sam Doyle (drums). "The band came up with the name by flicking through the Bible and picking out a random word. Despite adopting a name with religious connotations, lead singer Orlando Weeks has more recently affirmed, in an interview on Steve Lamacq's BBC Radio 1 show, that none of the band is religious."*

Cradle me
I'll cradle you
I'll win your heart
with a woop-a-woo
pulling shapes just for your eyes

so with toothpaste kisses and lines

I'll be yours and you'll be

Lay with me, I'll lay with you
we'll do the things that lovers do
put the stars in our eyes

and with heart shaped bruises
and late night kisses
divine