Vetiver "You May Be Blue"
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
“You May Be Blue” (mp3) is drawn from Vetiver’s forthcoming Fat Cat debut To Find Me Gone, and they’re sure to find more than a few like-minded folk under the commercial awning that covers Animal Collective, Amandine, Songs of Green Pheasant and Mice Parade. Vetiver’s first record established the mutating collective as a sort of neo-folkie super-group, featuring leader/songwriter Andy Cabic of Devendra Banhart’s band, Hope Sandoval, Joanna Newsom and former MBV drummer Colm O’Ciosoig. The new one features Devendra again, but more importantly, a sound that improves considerably on the first record’s impressive promise, and provides evidence, much like Banhart’s Cripple Crow, of Cabic’s increasingly accessible and attractive skill as a songwriter and arranger. “Blue,” in particular is a cantering, polished blues number full of elegant flourishes (especially the marvelous little guitar ornament at the 2:30 point), yet one that still somehow remains unassuming, in a George Harrison “For You Blue” sort of way.To Find Me Gone will come out May 22 on Fat Cat.
ALSO: Over at goodhodgkins, Ryan has curated a group of “visceral song moments,” with several bloggers, including yours truly, offering two songs each that do things that other songs don’t do, or can’t do. I picked the bridge from R.E.M.’s “Shaking Through” and the 4:51 mark of Frank Zappa’s “Andy.”
FURTHERMORE: Hardest-working video director in Cincinnati (and former pupil of the guy typing this) Pete Ohs has created a new video for the High and Low song “It’s Time” (mov). Stick around ’til the end. It’s adorable. Give him your business.
When I read your post about “Shaking Through,” I immediately went to one of my favorite R.E.M. moments: at the end of “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” when the Michael kicks into the “time I had some time alone” while Mike Mills continues the chorus. That always stands out to me far more than the rest of the song, and live, it’s one of my favorite parts of an R.E.M. show.
I can think of several Todd Rundgren songs that also “do things that other songs don’t,” but that’s a whole other post, I’m guessing…
Oh man, that part in “Shaking Through”… Michael rises above the clear yet obscure voice he uses on the whole album and ascends into pure glossia; not enuciating any one word well enough but still able shattering the two dimensionalness of my left and right speakers as if he had called me by name.
“Yellow like a geisha gown” has got to be one of the most perfect phrases in their catalog too.