Tim Kinsella is the lead singer of Joan of Arc, which began in 1995 after his previous band the seminal emo-core band, Cap’n'Jazz, broke up. Stylus writer Bjorn Randolph called their most recent album on Polyvinyl, 2004’s Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain, “one of the more difficult and ultimately rewarding musical statements of the year”. [stylus review] With that in mind, Stylus asked Kinsella to curate a day at the Stypod.
This sounds a bit tricky (to pick out three in the whole world of songs), but off the top of my head the songs I’ve been excited about recently:
Simon Finn– Jerusalem, [Pass the Distance]
I think this record was made in the late 60’s or early 70’s and I don’t know if there has ever been another. He just played in Chicago for the first time and my lady friend’s band opened. I was out of town and missed it, but she said he did this song live and it sounded just like the recording—which is insane if you imagine a 60 year old man screaming and flipping out like that. It’s in the whole Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson school of guys playing two chords for 6 minutes, confident and confused. The lyrics disregard any religious orthodoxy in search of a greater spiritual answer, and I eat up that sort of ‘the symbols of things get in the way of understanding things’ kind of stuff. It’s like the vocal take equivalent of Mel Gibson’s Passion.
[visit Simon Finn’s website here, buy Pass the Distance here, read Stewart Voegtlin’s Stylus review here]
Jackson C. Frank– Blues Run the Game, [Blues Run The Game]
I got this record a few years ago and was totally devastated by it and then sort of had to put it away to get on with my life. I’ve just rediscovered it and it’s so heavy. The guitar playing is great, a bit tricky but always in the service of the song and the vocal delivery is very simple and a bit affected in a charming old-fashioned folky way. Lyrically it’s so simple that any more production considerations would make the whole thing sound hokey, but it just comes across as modest, self-deprecating and super fucking bummed out.
Apparently he drank an absurd amount and Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel and Nick Drake were all on his jock and he had no time for them and then he was in a fire and survived with a lot of scars and then drank even more and by that point he was too bummed out to be bothered with playing music. So the legend goes . . .
[visit Jackson C. Frank’s website here, buy Blues Run The Game here]
Lungfish– Space Orgy, [The Unanimous Hour]
Lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish. Lungish lungfish lungfish, lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish. Lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish, lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish. Lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish.
[visit Dischord’s Lungfish page here and buy their records, including The Unanimous Hour at the same place]
Note: These tracks are no longer available for download.