May 2013
14 posts
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 56: Faded Heart →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
This is possibly the biggest sounding song in the world. It just sounds fucking epic. Like, running down the beach in white shorts in the opening sequence of Chariots of Fire, capital-E Epic. Inspirational. Uplifting. In any other hands, this song might sound corny, ironic even, like the cheesy “training montage” from a sports movie, retold in flashbacks. But that’s the...
Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 55: Secret Days →
Catching up from last week:
lightandloveforbenjamin:
From one extreme to the other. After the baroque everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink luxury of Put Your Sad Down’s epic symphony, Secret Days is an exercise in restraint, almost minimalism, an experiment in exactly how much space one can let into a song just by clearing everything else out. And the space breathes, as they say.
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 54: Put Your Sad... →
A song that should be available on the NHS:
lightandloveforbenjamin:
Do you remember what I was saying last week about the ~Imperial Phase~? Any ordinary mortal band that had put out an album as amazing as Ghostory would have toured then just rested on their laurels, going “that’s it, place in the pantheon assured, off to lie on a beach in Mexico for the foreseeable.” Not School of Seven...
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NYC, are you awake yet?
*kicks NYC until it sticks its head out the sleeping bag*
GO TO THIS TONIGHT. WE COMMAND IT.
Glasslands - Support Benjamin Curtis benefit
That is all.
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 53: When You Sing →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
It’s the last song on the album, which usually means it’s going to be the best song on the album, the barnstorming epic that brings down the house. Come on, you’ve done this pretty much every album since Now Here Is Nowhere, did we really expect anything less? Except, the first time I heard this, I didn’t only think “epic album closer”...
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 52: White Wind →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
It’s funny, to my ears all three SVIIB full-lengths are ridiculously back-loaded. It’s kind of the opposite of Secret Machines, and their “thesis statement” opening tracks, to save the best tracks for a 1-2-3 punch at the end. White Wind batters you with those relentless drums, circling the whole time around that repeated drone-chord chant of “white - white wind” like a...
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 51: Scavenger →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
Jesus Christ, the bass on this album! ::licks EQ knobs on mixing desk:: Here’s another furious, growling bassline chugging back and forth, with that huge, vicious sound you get from striking chords high up the neck. It’s mean and angry and wants to go drinking and pick a fight.
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 50: Show Me Love →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
It’s the tiny details that get me on this song: it’s not actually the massive chugging distorto-guitar which forms the backbone that I love most. It’s tiny sonic flourishes like the step delay on the “Hey! (hey… hey… hey… hey…)” of the chorus that comes in at 1:54, and the 3 spangly,…
April 2013
28 posts
Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 48: Low Times →
Sorry! Looks like Low Times got out of sequence…
lightandloveforbenjamin:
Yes! Yes! Oh my god! Low Times! See, this was the one thing I’d gleaned from reading that music messageboard. One by one, every person who listened to an advance copy just stopped whatever they were doing to run instantly to the SVIIB thread and just go “Oh my god, Low Times! Low, low, low, low,…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 49: Reappear →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
Album version (Official Video) Ridiculous ~chillstep~ version I secretly kinda like
Like the calm after the storm, the tense, ambient chords wash out like the first pale glimmers of light after a cloudburst, or the feeling of emotional exhaustion and utter depletion after a massive blow-out…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 47: Lafaye →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
This is the only song where the musical nostalgia threatens to overwhelm the propulsive forward-motion of the album. If I close my eyes, I’m still in high school, staying up late to catch the debut of the new Siouxsie and the Banshees or Cure video on 120 Minutes. That exotic air of mysterious…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 46: Love Play →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
No! No! Oh god, see, stuff like this is why I try not to read reviews or watch interviews with the band, because Benjamin kinda spoilered this song for me. It’s odd, for a band I love this much, and say that they are my favourite band - probably as much an identity thing as an aesthetic thing,…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 45: The Night →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
From the opening bell-like chimes, and that driving bass riff, riding up high through the waves like a swaggering Hook-shaped Viking, this song is a declaration of intent. Come on, my friend, you might as well be wearing a T-shirt that declares “My name is Benjamin Curtis and I am a New Order…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Ghostory →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
Is there anything more simultaneously nerve-wracking and exciting than waiting to listen to the new album by your favourite band? Especially when you follow loads of music journalists who receive promo copies or advance streams a month or more before you do, and have to boast about it in that rush…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 44: The Wait →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
Album openers, and album closers. It’s funny how the former is usually considered the great statement of intent, but for me it’s the album closer that makes it or breaks a record. I mean, what song is truly more evocative of the Velvet Underground, Sunday Morning or European Son? It’s not how you…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 43: Bye Bye Bye →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
It’s not an *NSYNC cover. It’s one of those beautifully devastating songs, like only SVIIB know how to write. It’s probably the most image-heavy track on the album and very reminiscent of Alpinisms. Somehow it sounds even dreamier live (aided by swaying from Alley that could actually rival…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 41: Camarilla →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
The synths on this always remind me of a video game (I mean that in a really good way). Probably Spyro…
Camarilla carries a lot; a heart of sin, or a heart of sand; still don’t know which one it is, so I alternate (waiting for a friend to give me my box back so I can check!). Still, the idea…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 40: Joviann →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
“Things aren’t the same, no day is complete, because with the moon, love fades away from me…” Today hasn’t been good. My nanna passed away this morning. I have no grandparents left. Facing mortality is something that I never get good at, no matter how many times I do it. But today has been…
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WatchSchool of Seven Bells Interview
Video by Adam Mark Brown
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 39: Babelonia →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
“You are listening to a Vagrant Records advanced promotional stream.” Well, no shit, Sherlock, I thought sometime in May 2010, freaking out in my room at uni as Babelonia came flooding through the speakers. My friends didn’t get it. “What’s with all the ‘eeeee’s?” They said. “It’s School…
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March 2013
23 posts
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 33: My Cabal →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
OK, I own way too many versions of this song, and I can’t even decide which is my favourite. I made it single of the year in 2007, back in another life as a music journalist, on the strength of the canary yellow vinyl 7” version released on Sonic Cathedral records, with an etherealicious remix…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 32: Prince of... →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
So I was totally going to write this earlier today, while at work, and instead, I got sucked into the time-warp that is the Dallas Observer archive of music coverage, and accompanying YouTube clips. All this early pre-history of Secret Machines and the bands that splintered to form them, complete…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 30: Sempiternal /... →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
A. Low. Your. Self. To. Be. Re. Lieved.
It’s that staccato intonation-shifting that I love so much, drizzled over the top of those chiming, ecstatic guitars at the apocalyptically huge climax of this song.
Damn, I’ve listened to this song three times now, and half an hour has gone by in the…
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 29: Connjur →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
At this point, I know that I keep saying “no, no, this is my favourite song on the album!” every two songs, but no, this really is my favourite track on the album. Or maybe Chain. Or maybe Half Asleep or maybe… no, iTunes doesn’t lie, Connjur is in my top 25 played songs on my computer, ever….
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Light and Love for Benjamin: Day 28: White... →
lightandloveforbenjamin:
It’s so much harder writing about music you genuinely love than about music you hate, or even music you have mixed feelings about. It’s easier to pick out flaws, or things you’re half satisfied with than it is to rave about pieces of music you believe to be utterly perfect, not a note or phrase…
