You and me watching the jets go by

Saw this movie late one night when I was a teenager. It was made up of black and white stills, streaming along to the murmur of a placid narrator. The film was about a post-nuclear world, time travel, love but most importantly, memory and how powerful it can be. In this unique and beautiful sci-fi short, a single well-remembered moment has the capacity to alter lives. What is that memory? A man racing towards a jetty at the Orly airport where his beloved is watching the planes and possibly waiting for him.

Chemtrails/Beck (mp3)

While I'm sure Beck Hansen has seen Chris Marker's La Jetée, I don't think he intended this song as a soundtrack to that moment. Nevertheless, it works that way for me. His voice sounds so far away, so detached, it sounds like someone gone beyond caring for themselves but still not immune to horror. Their destruction is assured, it is happening, it may have already occurred, there's no point in crying about it. Music swirls around, an avalanche of drums and too-loud bass, mimicking a maelstrom of devastation. The vocal at the center stays calm, the only thing that matters is that they are not alone, they have someone to witness the disaster with. To hold their hand as they perish.


Purchase Modern Guilt

I'm so glad that I'm an island

Dear friends,

1. It sounds like wind. And it's morning. You are walking along the foggy promenade. The woman whispering in your ear tells you what to do, exactly what to do but also tells you what she would do if she were in your place. Or maybe she's been talking about herself all along and you've become her. No matter, your pace intensifies and becomes a full on run. It is clear you're not going anywhere in particular and you're moving to get this feeling out. That's what the sudden guitar attack is there for. It is there to remind you that change and decision making can be a violent internal affair. And this surely feels like war. You make your choice, set your teeth and resume your walk. Slow down and eventually stop. It turns out what you heard wasn't wind noise at all. It was the sound of all the time you spent trying to make it work and the ghost of that time finally taking its leave.

Emily Haines from Metric* has a voice that can't help but be intimate. Even at her fiercest, she's got a familiar, lilting tone that feels like a friend's hand on your back. So all the things you don't want to hear become more palatable somehow. Empty from Live it Out is song as thought process. One where the feelings involved are so strong, you're half pushed along, half frozen in place.

Empty/Metric (YouSendIt Download)

2. The vaults of Soft Communication

From April 5, 2006…

In darkness with memories

Featuring three live covers:

My World is Empty Without You/I Hear a Symphony/The Afghan Whigs (YouSendIt Download)

Satisfaction/Björk and Polly Jean Harvey (YouSendIt Download)

Go Easy/Beck (YouSendIt Download)

3. Tomorrow a little Boubacar Traoré.

Love, D

* Personal admission #38: I went to see Metric during their last tour. They opened with Empty and while it lost most of its vulnerability, it was still potent. Arch, lithe and lightning quick; Haines was quite a performer. She danced, shot down dudes in the audience shouting I love yous, and played her keyboard all while rocking a spectacularly tight black sheath. Initially, I was down with the punk by way of Vogue posing, after all she could work it AND has the talent to back it up. But later in the show, she started complaining about khakis and why the fuck is everyone wearing khakis in New York. The crowd cheered wildly in response, the way concert crowds do. I looked down at myself, in my usual outfit of rumpled nonchalance, not khakis but jeans and a sweatshirt with a tomato sauce stain, stared around at the various Haines doppelgangers and suddenly felt like getting the fuck outta there. Because no matter how much I love the music, it's hard to swallow fight conformity banter from a skinny, statuesque blonde in designer duds who has just finished singing about whether women are "Are...all designed to be confined." So out I went into the cold and walked home.