The Sea And Cake >> Water breathing warm and heavy

The Sea And Cake - "Choice Blanket"

(Thrill Jockey Records [U.S.] / Rough Trade Records [U.K.], 1993)

Few songs immediately make me feel summer's warmth deep in my bones like this one, so I had to post it to kick off the summer.  I think I've told this story before, but in October 1996, I heard a stunningly strange and joyous song on WTUL while stuck in traffic on Jefferson Hwy. driving to a dermatology appointment.  It turned out to be "Lamont's Lament" by a band called The Sea And Cake.  I couldn't even hazard a guess as to what year it had been made, what city the band was from, what ethnicity its members were, etc., which is usually a good sign of a unique work of art.  It bewitched and bewildered me so much that I immediately sent some money to Thrill Jockey Recs. and demanded that they send me whichever TSAC CD had "Lamont's Lament" on it.  I got the CD, Nassau, a week or so later.  It came with a Thrill Jockey catalog full of stuff I would soon obtain, by groups with intriguing names like Trans Am, Tortoise, and Oval, all of whom have recently been Blowtorch Babied.  Brad Wood recorded this album in early September 1993, fresh off of becoming indie rock's producer célèbre after twiddling knobs on Liz Phair's Exile In Guyville.

Archer Prewitt shows why he is the thinking jazzbo's guitar hero on this song, unfurling effortlessly cool licks as though the bloated and/or macho genres that marred the music scenes of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s never happened.  Sam Prekop's creaky vocals are unmistakable, and his falsetto near the end is the perfect closing touch.  It's worth listening closely to his lyrics, which are cryptically beautiful and naïve in almost a beat poet kind of way.  Even the maracas are perfectly shaken on the off beats.  The baffling cover art deserves mention, since it is a guy's afro made up of around a hundred cotton balls.  There's also a painting of Charles Mingus by TSAC's bassist, Eric Claridge.  I should mention he's one of the best bassists ever, period.  The combination of that one particular shade of sky blue with that one particular shade of corn yellow just works perfectly, and puts me in the perfect mindstate to listen to the music.  See all the artwork (of the U.K. LP, to be exact) here.  As for me giving this the tag "should've been a #1 hit," well, I'm not necessarily referring to the '90s; in the '50s or '60s it could've made serious inroads on AM pop radio, and I bet the band would've been fighting off major label offers left and right.

AllMusic Guide's 4.5-star review succinctly said "The Sea and Cake's buoyant debut is a breath of fresh air, an utterly distinctive and innovative work that expands the scope of frontman Sam Prekop's work in the great Shrimp Boat to incorporate a new fascination with Afro-Caribbean rhythms and textures. Recorded by Brad Wood, the album simply glows -- Prekop's dry vocals and free-associative lyrics skip along a shimmering and lushly pastoral backdrop that nimbly fuses pop, soul, jazz, and even prog rock; tracks like 'Jacking the Ball,' 'Flat Lay the Water,' and 'Showboat Angel' are as seductive as they are elusive."

This summerrific image is used on the back cover of the CD & LP, as well as on the LP itself

My TSAC timeline:

Jan. 1996: Read about them in a long article about this new-fangled scene called "post-rock" in a guitar magazine.

Oct. '96: Hear "Lamont's Lament," immediately buy their sophomore album Nassau. (See above.)

Mar. '97: Hear a few songs from their brand-new album The Fawn in my car and am blown away.

Spring '97: Buy The Fawn on LP at Tower Records in New Orleans.

June '97: Buy The Sea And Cake CD for my dad. (See above.)
Mar. '98: Got a free The Fawn promo poster from mailorder; promptly put it up on my wall for almost a decade.

Mid-'98: Buy Two Gentlemen remix 12" from Thrill Jockey mailorder.

Early '99: Borrow The Biz and Sam Prekop's debut solo CD from hip friend Andrew Mister.

Ca. '99: Buy Shrimp Boat's CD Cavale, since Prekop fronted this band before TSAC.  (Claridge and Wood also did time in the Boat; a very incestuous scene there in Chicago.)

Late '00: Somewhat disappointed by new album Oui after sampling it on the listening station at Borders; lose faith in band for a few years.

Mid-'03: Download Glass EP from eMusic; "An Echo In" restores my faith in the band's prowess.

9/23/03: After waiting 7 years for TSAC to come to NOLA, I sell my stereo to a pawn shop for $35 to buy a ticket to go see them play at TwiRoPa.  An incredibly boring band called The Kingsbury Manx opened.  TSAC were loud and used lots of distortion, which disappointed me, since I wanted a quiet, crisp, nuanced show.
Ca. '06: Buy a beautiful neon green Nassau promo poster on eBay.
Early 2009: "Jacking The Ball" is used in a commercial for the ultra-evil criminal enterprise* known as Citibank.  (In this live clip of the band's first-ever gig, Sam says the phrase means "Bring out your firearms and ammo."  I had only been wondering for 15 years!)
Early 2010: "Parasol" is used in the R. Patz "I'm-not-just-a-brooding-vampire" drama Remember Me.

I would say that, along with "Lamont's Lament," "Jacking The Ball" and "Parasol" were The Sea And Cake's two best-known songs, even before they got the aforementioned exposure recently.  The band's recordings since then have been pretty spotty, essentially treading water, though few bands are skilled enough to tread water like TSAC can, and fewer still are even allowed in the same pool.  Overall, Nassau remains my favorite album of theirs, with The Fawn and The Sea And Cake tying for second.  Buy all three.

Tue. June 19: Saw two garter snakes mating below my parents' neighbor's doorstep.  Later was called upon to help extricate a baby raccoon from her enclosed swimming pool room / greenhouse.  Stayed up all night talking to Drea online.

Wed. June 20: Finished up with two weeks of house-sitting for my parents while my mom was in Japan & other parts of Asia.  Realized I might be slightly allergic to dogs, since I always seem to get sinus problems when I stay there too long.  I've also banned my favorite food, blueberries, from my diet since I think I might have a sensitivity to them.

Yes, that's a Prince CD

Thurs. June 21: I got into one of the most HILARIOUS and rewarding incidents of my life.  I'm driving down Hwy. 20 to Thibodaux when some psycho person starts tailgating on me, while combing his/her hair, and weaving side to side on the road, nearly going off it a few times.  It's a narrow 55 MPH road with nowhere to pull over.  So I maintain my speed and take a film clip in my rearview mirrors using a little digital camera that I often bring with me, making sure to periodically show my speed, as well the time & date, on the dashboard display.  Down in Thibodaux, after being tailgated for over 10 miles, a cop pulls me over.  I'm trying not to laugh as she walks up to my car on this 90º day, since I know all my shit is up-to-date and on point and I will put my 20 years of driving up against anyone's.  She tells me that someone called the police and said I was photographing them while driving.  I say "Yes, and I have video of that person tailgating me right here."  HAHAHAHAHAHA.  LOL.  She watches the clip and decides I'm right, since she can see/hear that I even tried to wave the person around me at one point.  (FWIW, she was short, blonde, cute, and slightly chubby, with a gigantic, staggeringly vicious pink scar in a semicircle under her chin / on her throat.  I seriously was amazed that anyone could even survive such a wound.  A bite from the lower jaw of an alligator?)  She even gives me a business card with the Lafourche Parish police dept.'s phone #s on it so I can report tailgaters in the future.  So this was fun and all, but a few minutes later, I start to think what would've happened if I hadn't taken that video, if it was just my word against the tailgater's.  Would I have been ticketed?  And since two cop cars were dispatched to intercept me, and the cop declined my offer to burn a copy of the video for them to use against the tailgater, that meant the tailgater probably got away scot-free.  Not so funny.  But this did remind me of the power of video in clearing up a dispute, and coincidentally it came a few days after the death of Rodney King.
Continued on to Hebert's Nursery and labeled a bunch of their cacti for them.  At Rouses, being a huge Guinness fan, I took a chance on an amazing beer by Guinness called Foreign Extra Stout.  It's almost comically full of flavors like coffee, chocolate, honey, toffee, etc.  By far the best beer I've ever had.  The cHeat won the NBA title.

*Citibank received $45 billion in federal bailout money in late 2008, with which they immediately, brazenly, bought a $50 million corporate jet and then teetered on the edge of insolvency for a while as people like me gleefully waited for them to fail.  According to Bloomberg in 2011, "Citigroup paid back $20 billion of its bailout funds and the Treasury converted the remaining $25 billion into a 27 percent stake in the bank, which it began selling last year. It sold the last of its investment in December, realizing an overall gain for taxpayers of about $12 billion."  It is clear that that groovy Sea And Cake song singlehandedly revived the bank's fortunes and hence really paid off for the taxpayers in the end.  America.

Mark Bittman: What's wrong with what we eat - A fascinating, disturbing, and oft-humorous video

Beirutopia: Could Lebanon's capital become a garden city?

Man sees his stolen bike on Craigslist, steals it back - "A spoke for a spoke, so to speak."

Planets with similar climates: The Promise Ring - "A Picture Postcard" (1996), Luna - "California (All The Way)" (1994), The Sundays - "Summertime" (1997), The Cardigans - "Carnival" (1994), The Police - "Bring On The Night" & "The Bed's Too Big Without You" (1979), The Church - "Already Yesterday" (1986), The Smiths - "This Charming Man" (1983).

Kill Laura >> If you could be somewhere, where would it be?

Kill Laura - "Unheeled"

(Klee Records, 1994)

I downloaded this EP, Unloverlike, last year after seeing it on an mp3 blog that I used to follow, despite my vehemently hatred of Kill [Female Name] band names.  The EP itself, released only on 12" vinyl, is long out of print.   It took me forever to decide whether to post this song or the passionate "False Dawn".  Singer Jane Weaver obviously has one of the most astoundingly awesome and versatile voices on the planet.  The best showcase for her voice on this EP is the delicate and almost hallucinogenic dream-pop ballad "Cinnamon Brow," in which she does some stunningly nuanced vocal gymnastics that only someone with operatic training should be able to pull off.  And the EP's title is a lyric in that song.  So just check out the whole EP, which is truly one of the lost classics of the '90s.  If it had been released on Creation, 4AD, or Too Pure, it would have the large cult following that it deserves.  The most simplistic overall way I could describe the EP's sound would be Lush and/or Bleach (U.K.) meets Sonic Youth and/or Poem Rocket, with a PJ Harvey lyrical style.

Info about the band is hard to come by; they were from Liverpool and released three EPs.  It's hard enough to know anything about these kinds of bands while they're still active, and almost impossible two decades later.  You can see a copyrighted promo photos of Kill Laura here, plus a live pic here.  On the live pic page, the photographer refers to Jane as "One of the tallest, most talented and nicest musicians I have ever met."

Promo pic by Tony Smith, "Taken in the Winnington Rec Snooker Room"

When I first heard this song, I immediately thought of PJ Harvey's classic "Rid Of Me", due to the abrupt soft-to-loud dynamic shift.  I think the word "unheeled" in this song means both untamed (as in, teaching a dog to heel), and its homonym, unhealed (as in, the singer's wounds).  And it could also mean poor, as in the opposite of "well-heeled."  So she could be saying that at that bad point in her life, she was reckless, injured, and poor, which led her to getting into some situation that she regrets.  "If you could be somewhere, where would it be?" is a chilling thought, in terms of it being something that an abused person probably spends a lot of time thinking about.  But the way she sings it is so gorgeous that it should be aired continually in Travelocity or Orbitz commercials around the globe, bringing vast royalties to the members of KL.  Just snip out that sentence and play it atop some slo-mo clips of parents walking behind their kids on a beach and you have instant advertising gold.  Or better yet, picture William Shatner fucking hang-gliding off of the edge of an erupting volcano to this song and watch the money roll right in.
Speaking of wounds, here's the cover art:

I buss'id my lip open playing basketball while wearing one of my Paul Pierce jerseys, on June 6th at the Annunciation Street court.  Also broke my glasses, jammed my thumb, and slit my palm up, but that's streetball, America's best pure invention aside from jazz.  Unfortunately, the Celtics lost to the cHeat in game 6 that night, and they lost in game 7 a few nights later, probably ending the Big Three's tenure in Boston, though Rajon Rondo has now eclipsed all three of them, so they can get to rebuilding.  This pic of my buss'id lip that I took the next day didn't show the injury too well, since the light reflection covered up the yellow pus, and since only my neck was in focus:

Wearing my terrific Macha shirt; will finally get around to posting a song by them soon

So, if I could be somewhere, where would it be?  A few off the top of my head:

The Faroe Islands in the summer
Anywhere in New Zealand
Nong Nooch Botanical Garden in Thailand (1100 different species of palms)
The famed palm groves of Elche, Spain
The famed coffee-growing mountains in Jamaica
Anywhere in Belize
Dakar, Senegal
Cozumel, Mexico (again)
The Canary Islands
Kew Gardens in London

Jane Weaver on ITV's This Is Music show in 2002; from her MySpace

75 awesome "Looking into the past" pictures

Driving like a jerk may cost you an extra $100 per month in gas

Planets with similar climates: PJ Harvey - "Rid Of Me" (1992), Juned - "Leeches" & "Pretty New Song" (1994), Bleach - "Hit On Me" (1992), Band Of Susans - "Mood Swing" (1993)

Doldrums >> They don't care what time it is now

Doldrums - "Weird Orbits"

(VHF Records, 1995)

It's reverb time, motherfuckers.  If you are so unpatriotic that you don't know what reverb is, you will learn after a few seconds of this song have elapsed.  Though it's mainly used on guitars and keyboards, reverb is also used pretty frequently on vocals; e.g. the singer from My Morning Jacket.  This song from their album Secret Life Of Machines, whose title is of course based on a curious Stevie Wonder album which was a soundtrack to a film about plant life.

Doldrums are what seafarers call areas around the equator with little to no prevailing winds, where a sailed vessel can easily get stuck.  Wind is actually "born" here.  No, seriously: I've seen footage in a world climate documentary (I think it was that one called Planet Earth) of someone standing on a beach near the equator who simply held up a leaf and let go of it, so that it fell towards the sand.  It hung suspended for a few moments, and eventually floated up and away into the æther.  The word is also used to describe sadness, but I don't know which term came first.  Doldrums is a band that grew out of the Virginia experimental band Rake..  Whereas Rake. (it's always spelled "Rake." with a period after it) were prankster-ish, iconoclastic, and kitchen-sink, Doldrums were more atmospheric and mysterious, at least on this album.  The cool thing is that they didn't use synths and other electronic gizmos, which most ambient musicians rely on.  They just plug in their guitars and basses and crank up the ol' reverb and delay to create vast washes of sound, like blue whales sighing or a desert of opals melting.  They did a good job of putting the ghost in the machine with this song.  The airy, crisp, jazzy drumming is the ideal counterfoil to the spacious brushstrokes of guitar.  It's really difficult to describe what genre this song is, as it blends ambient, space rock, post-rock, and dream pop.  Man, this song makes me so proud to have been born in Virginia, birthplace of 14 of our nation's 44 Presidents.  It should seriously be the state's anthem.  "Weird Orbits" segues seamlessly into the album's second track, the 15 minute instrumental opus "Colossal Scissors".  (Great potential band name alert...)  I would say Lustmord's creeptacular ambient classic Heresy is the only album I can think of that uses reverb as prominently / boldly as Secret Life Of Machines.  Slowdive and Low used it to great effect on their early stuff, Windy & Carl made a career out of it, and The Orb used it in some of their "ambient house" soundscapes.  So yeah, go buy a reverb pedal and play a guitar through it and you'll hear entire new worlds unfurling before your eyes.  My amp, a Fender Prosonic, has allegedly the largest spring reverb tank of any amp ever made, hence I don't need a reverb pedal.

Doldrums' next album, Acupuncture, had song structures based more on krautrock / prog; that was the first Doldrums album I bought, on promo CD in '98.  They apparently broke up after their 1999 album Desk Trickery on Kranky.

I found out there's a band named Secret Life Of Machines, but I dunno if they're named after this album.

This CD's artwork features some beautiful photos of our avian friends:

Speaking of orbits and space rock(s), here's one of my favorite thinkers, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:

Neil deGrasse Tyson is officially the sexiest astrophysicist alive

Why do smart kids grow up to be heavier drinkers? - "Smart people booze so we can tolerate everyone else.'"

Tile your home with recycled money

A few weeks ago I finally went to Tickfaw State Park on a 95º day.  Nabbed two seedlings: a Callicarpa americana (American Beautyberry) and a Saururus cernuus (Lizard's Tail).  Played basketball at an indoor court for a few hours.  Had a semi-slumber party with my sister and her friend Ashley last week. Missed a concert by The Weeknd (House Of Blues, June 12th) because it sold out online literally as I had just reached for my wallet to whip out the credit card.  Flaming Lips / Grimes (June 28th) tickets also sold out right before my wallet-reaching, but I think we have a source for free tix to that one.  My sister is now addicted to Grimes, so missing that show is not an option.  Speaking of Grimes, the Doldrums in this post is not the Doldrums that appears on her latest album.  The one on her album is a techno dude from Canada.

Also recently: Saw some movies, including Boy A, The Dinner Game, American Heart, a Rodriguo y Gabriela tour documentary, Vitus, Skin, and The Brooke Ellison Story.

Planets with similar climates: Slowdive - "Albatross" (1991) & "Losing Today" (1990), Windy & Carl - "Undercurrent" (1998), Bark Psychosis - "All Different Things" (1989), Bowery Electric - "Coming Down" (1996).