Check out this wonderful band on the their myspace. I had the real privilege of seeing them at the Water Rats (second time at this venue in a week - really cool) on Sunday night just gone.
Their music effortlessly bridges the gap between the genres of folk (english AND french) and indie pop, and bands such as Belle and Sebastian and Grandaddy. The vocals are whispery, most often male but when female are no less guileless, pure or affecting. Harmonies are copious and fill out an already varied tonal range. The band comprises about eight members (the lineup changes subtely and constantly throughout the set) with instruments such as a recorder, accordion, trumpet and oboe taking significant roles. All these alongside the more commonplace drums, bass, guitar and keys. Their new sinlge, Marie at L'accordeon has just been released on CD and 7" by Kitchen Records. Buy it. Now.
9 comments:
Hey Aaron,
Many many thanks! All the more appreciated for being unsolicited.
I'll buy you that pint later ;o)
All other readers - listen to this man.
Andy SOA
Aaron, just to let you know, missing your content, man. Know you're having internet access issues at the moment, but just to encourage you, please come back to the blogosphere!! We miss you!!
yes to stephen's comment. and in fact, i wish you were blogging so that i could reply. i have something i want to post on your discussions. so maybe i'll post it here and you can pass it on as a post?
missing you terribly, merc
part 1, from an email from my friend, and, vicariously, yours, alex:
--
from the intro to Gravity and Grace, Simone
"creation reflects God by its beauty and harmony, but through the evil
and death which abide in it, and the blind necessity by which it is
governed, it also reflects the absence of God. we have issued from
God. that means that we bear his imprint and it means also that we
are separated from him. the etymology of the word "exist" (to be placed outside) is very illuminating in this respect: we can say we exist; we cannot say we are. God who is Being has in a sense effaced himself so that we can exist; he has given up being everything in order that we might exist...the work of grace consists of "decreating" us. God consented through love to cease to be verything so that we might be something; we must consent through love to cease to be anything so that God may become everything again. It is therefore a question of abolishing the self within us..."
more on that later if you are interested. it is an idea from the
jewish mystics apparently. simone is if anything, jewish. i think
alot of this comes from an extreme recognition of the wretchedness of
ourselves...that our only good is not even in ourselves but in the
death of ourselves. and this is not death of the individual for the
good of the community, nor does is it meant to justify destruction
inflicted from the outside...
("he takes and he takes and he takes" that line made me tear up as we drove through yellowstone. if i were capable of crying i probably
would have.
the kingdom of God=God's repossesion of all creation. there is a zookeeper song called "becoming all things" that i have told you about and sang at the peacock.
but God is an emptiness at first so this invasion is something of an
emptying. surrender to a divine and eternal stillness. it is a death. love and death and all that. i don't know.
part 2, the second email:
--
here are some more thoughts. true? i don't know. i don't trust some of it, but i do think it is very important and wise. it resonates for sure. i don't really know.
read at your own risk
simone weil:
a case of contradictions which are true: God exists. God does not. where is the problem? i am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure my love is not illusory. I am quite sure that there is not a God in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be anything like what I am able to concieve when I pronounce this word. but that which I cannot concieve is not an illusion.
of two men who have no experience of God, he who denies him is perhaps nearer to him than the other. the false God who is like the true one in everything, except that we cannot touch him, prevents us from ever coming to the true one.
we have to believe in a God who is like the true God in everything except that he does not exist, since we have not reached the point where God exists.
the errors of our time come from Christianity without the supernatural. Secularization is the cause - and primarily humanism.
religion, in so far as it is a source of consolation, is a hindrance to true faith: in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be atheistic with the part of myself which is not made for God. Among those men in whom the supernatural part has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
he who puts his life into his faith in God can lose his faith. but he who puts his life in God himself will never lose it. to put our life into that which we cannot touch in any way. it is impossible. it is a death. that is what is required.
nothing which exists is absolutely worthy of love. we must therefore love that which does not exist this nonexistent object of love is not a fiction, however, for our fictions cannot be any more worthy of love than we are ourselves, and we are not worthy of it.
there are four evidences of divine mercy here below. the favors of God to beings capable of contemplation (these states exist and form part of their experience as creatures). the radiance of these beings and their compassion, which is the divine compassion in them. the beauty of the world. the fourth evidence is the complete absence of mercy here below. (it is precisely by this antithesis, by this rending of our souls, between the effects of grace within us and the beauty of the world around us, on the one hand, and the implacable necessity which rules the universe on the other, that we discern God as both present to man and as absolutely beyond all human measurement.)
so i will get over simone weil eventually, but right now she is my
dead french crush.
--
a - turn this over in your mind and tell me what you think. and then some internet so we can skype. not hearing your voice sometimes makes me forget what you sound like. - m
I've been letting this stuff mull over in my head for a day or so. I think there is something about the way she is using language, specifically the word 'exist' which was confusing and needing mulling.
So, what I get from it, and correct me if I'm reading it wrong, but it's the sense of not being able to know God completely. Is she talking about the otherness of God in relation to us? And using clever use of the word exist to challenge us to think about how we are separate from God? I'm not sure of the way she almost suggest that getting to know God (using the cliche) is like being absorbed into some huge entity and that we lose our existence, our otherness.
She might even be touching on Jesus, by discussing the concept of God giving up everything, his 'being', to join us in 'existence'. God becoming part of that which he is not. Creator becoming part of creation. I was actually reading about this recently, and someone suggested that that was the/a need for Jesus. Like it says, fully God and fully man - other in otherness - 'being' in 'existence'.
I like the theory behind using words to explore the different notions of knowing and now knowing God. It's almost poetic. At the same time, I don't think it's communicated clearly. There has been discussion before on Aaron's blog about language and it's problems. And I know (think/suggest/wonder/interpret) in a way that this is a stab at deconstructing "accepted" language and looking at the ideas which are perhaps at the origins of christian cliches. At the same time, there is ambiguity - I don't mean ambiguity about the nature of God, revealing wonder, but ambiguity in what she is actually saying. I think the challenge to deconstruct and search for the real God is there, but I think she's overcompensating too much, and could be clearer. For example, does she tend to confuse the matter towards gnosticism by talking about death of self so much? If God has 'existed', then he is part of 'existence', and being eternal, outside of time etc. he has always and will always 'exist' - so he has made 'existence' good, acceptable, lovable. No? Death of self, or moving out of the emptiness, or whatever, is impossible yes, but is it needed if the only true 'being' has already bridged the gap and brought 'being' into 'existence'?
That's my gut instinct(s) and questions after some thought.
It's almost like she's an abstract/modern artist, using language in ways it hasn't been used before; using it as art in a typically non-artistic context.
omf. thats is mindbending stuff. good to read you both. sorry i'm still not able to be online that much - i just had enough time today to briefly read these comments, but nowhere near enough time to process them. damn. hopefully i'll have internet at home in a week or two.
miss you both. look after yourselves. hopefully talk more soon.
xa
Look forward to your return to the blogosphere! Hope life is excellent.
Aaron, my good man. I've realised who you are and have not hesitated in letting you know. Hope things are well with you in London. I'm enjoying your blog - love the gig reviews!
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