A: I remember the enormous carnival. I worried about shooters. You took me to shoot little metal pans and do some shots, and get my mind off of things. I did not want so much gin and I did not want any cigarettes. I probably had six ounces of your Seagram’s gin and three cigarettes.

B: I can’t believe we trust our children to these carnies.

C: My grandparents once let me ride this ridiculous fish ride and I didn’t understand how it worked and I think I tried to stand up. I was six. The carny yelled at me and, amazingly, I didn’t cry, but I did sit completely still and stare blankly and did not enjoy the ride.

A: I got on the phone to my parents. I told them that I probably wouldn’t be home and that you and I were getting married. There is strength in gin. Even Seagram’s. I said it with perfect articulation, no slurring. I clutched at my purse. When I hung up, I looked around the tops of the buildings for figures, and felt a little sad about my parents. You were still smoking, and the smoke came up between your fingers like sand going backwards.

B: That guy has to be on meth. You’re not doing that ride. Let’s go over here and look at the horses.

C: I was in Michigan with my grandparents. My parents put me on a plane to Michigan by myself in Houston. I can’t imagine. I made it through the crowds in the airport. I’m guessing that someone helped me get to my plane. I sat with girls on the plane on the way back that were headed to San Antonio, and felt strange to be the only boy there, much younger. I could not imagine where San Antonio was.

A: I didn’t feel like doing any of the rides. I didn’t feel like it before the gin and cigarettes and now I couldn’t imagine it. But you’d already gotten the tickets. We had to use them on something. I saw the Ferris Wheel, I thought it was the one ride that wouldn’t make me throw up right now. But at the height of the thing, looking down at the tops of all the buildings clear of figures, your hand on my leg, I threw up Seagram’s all over my sandaled feet. It could have been worse. The morning sickness for the past two weeks made it almost routine.

B: Sure. Here, here, take your tickets. Pah. So, apparently, last year three of them were driving around drunk in the middle of the night. I know. I can’t believe it. They wrecked the car in a ditch. Surprisingly. Two of them in the back seat . . . compromised, I think we could say. No. Why don’t you do that game? Throwing the ping-pong ball in the bowls. Let’s leave after this.

C: My cousin won a blue ribbon in something or other at the fair, at the carnival. Quilting? The whole time in Michigan I felt a feeling in my stomach like a fish bowl filled with cool water and splashing, but the fish having left, ascended through my chest and throat, out of my mouth, leaving a cooling residue in the passage.

Grizzly Bear – “All We Ask” mp3

He snapped into a terror, and gurgling grabbed at her too roughly, gripped her arm, swept a foot away and toppled her onto the ground. She landed, her shoulder and head making a triangle with the ground for a moment, the rest of her thumping just after. He held her arm still, which she tried to pull away. He pulled her to him, now held both shoulders in hands and asked, “Why would you do that?” the sleep not quite out of his voice.

Daniel Rossen – “Waterfall” mp3

As with Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavillion, it is absolutely exhilarating to hear a creative and ambitious band tether its experimental tendencies to the concise demands of the four-minute pop song.

Grizzly Bear – Cheerleader (from 2009′s Veckatimest)

The two songs that I’m putting next to each other today have a similar attitude, some sonic similarities, but different tempos, and where one builds in changes throughout, the other experiences a sudden shift.

Baltimore’s Lands & Peoples has a proclivity towards reverb and vintagey sounds that we’ve seen a lot of in the past several years, but handles these elements lightly, allowing project manager Caleb Moore to match songs to the world those textures evoke. “Isabella” is a slow number, which completely sold me at the change it undergoes in its middle.

Lands & Peoples – Isabella mp3

If you haven’t yet heard Here We Go Magic (touring with Grizzly Bear this summer), I’ll leave it to you to look into the backstory. The song “Everything’s Big” exists in a world very similar to the Lands & Peoples song, but is a little more restless from the beginning. I think a saloon/Gainsbourg piano can sell me on just about any song.

Here We Go Magic – Everything’s Big mp3

Check out thur myspaces
Lands & Peoples
Here We Go Magic

Vincent Moon has a new site. You can read about it in his own words. It doesn’t initially look like it’s going to be very different than the Take Away Shows. But if we watch closely we might see something new.

http://fiumenights.com/

In case you haven’t seen Bon Iver on The Take Away Shows, you may watch after the jump.

Posted by: Josh

Laura Gibson's Beasts of Seasons reviewed on Pitchfork.com.

First, check out the Pitchfork review of Laura Gibson’s Beasts of Seasons. In light of yesterday’s post, it’s actually a pretty good review. But I’m still completely stuck on the 7.2. On the 1-10 scale that makes it sound not good, but the review shows almost no negativity, engages the music and the words credibly, and generally sounds like it was written by a human. Anyway, who wants to score in the 8′s, if that’s where The Pains of Being Pure At Heart land? Check out Brendan’s review of Laura’s record here.

Next, Entertainment Weekly, of all places, is now streaming a Grizzly Bear track from the highly anticipated (by me) and already consummated (by Larson Hicks and countless others who lack any form of self-control) record they’ve called Veckatimest. The track is “Cheerleader” which they’ve performed on Letterman. For those who might question my infallible integrity, I’m linking to it, and have already listened to it myself, because once it’s been released, it’s promotion. It’s to pump the public up. I will play that game. Find the stream here, and bemoan the terrible quality and clicking page, but love the song that lives there.