063 - Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear certainly benefit from having three members who're songwriters and capable of singing. You can hear it in the breadth of their ouvre. Having a greater pool of source material to work with has culminated in the diverse and enduring Veckatimest, their full-length '09 release, the album from which this video is taken.

In Ready, Able, it is founding member Ed Droste whose voice takes centre stage. After a 90 second introduction, strings kick in, marking the drop. Or rather,  take-off.  From this point on the track just flies. Soars and glides, more appropriately.

It's incredibly well put together. Droste's soothing, syncopated voice is juxtaposed against the distorted thrashes of the guitar. There's an electronic sound (1:46) that has a fairgound feel to it.  All I can see (but not hear) when I listen to it is people enjoying themselves on a roller-coaster at nighttime. I think the combination would make for an interesting scene.

Together these elements create the hazy, care-free space of the track, one that crams happiness and sadness; beauty and ugliness; seriousness and nonchalance all into four minutes.

050 - Aphex Twin

To my ears the solo piano has the greatest potential of all traditional instruments. It is at its strongest when unaccompanied, its most effective when it whispers: in terms of listenability, there is no sound quite like it. Richard James'  Avril 14  is reminiscent of Grizzly Bear's Foreground  or Radiohead's Videotape  (predating them both by almost ten years) - a somewhat incongruous comparison considering James' renown as a musician of the dark arts. In the context of his oeuvre  then, Avril 14  is like moonlight among shadows. It has a sense of silence to it, bathing in a quiet air of calm, and - despite its almost child-like, playful melody - a distinct maturity and ineffable charm. With the delicate subtlety of a wind-up music-box the song reveals a narrative: in the classical tradition of counterpoint, notes and lines bounce off of and clash against one another, yet we leave in good spirits as any momentary conflict is resolved by the end of the piece. In a way the track ends abruptly, stuttering to a halt like a word on the tip of one's tongue being swallowed again. Ultimately, then, the magic of the song relies on its channeling of an unspeakable truth, from one soul to another, mediated by the instrument of piano alone.

Aphex Twin - Avril 14