Letters Have No Arms have packed their bags, put their travel hats on, and moved to a new land!

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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The week I became an Uber Alien






It started innocently enough. I was on Facebook. Something like '3 of your friends have played Music Challenge. Play?' popped up in my newsfeed. Ah, sounds like fun, I thought. I could use a little break. I like music. I like games. Hell, I even like some of my friends.
 
So I clicked



Yay, good fun! Michael Jackson passed by. So did Men at Work. And Foo Fighters and the Spice Girls. The Scorpions too. I got most of the questions right. I felt pleased. I, Music Challenge told me, had achieved 'Robot' status. "Sounds good!", I thought to myself. Then I glanced over to the bottom of the application, and saw my friends. Sitting there peacefully with their little pixel faces, smiling up at me. I smiled back at them, feeling a general sense of well-being and calm.
 

Those few minutes had been a pleasant distraction from the project I was working on. Good fun. But now, back to wo.... BUT WAIT A MINUTE! HANG ON! THEY HAVE SCORES! And some are HIGHER than mine! But this can't be! THIS I couldn't let be. This was just too much to bear. If I tolerate this, (surely) my children will be next! A line in the sand. Draw! To be drawn! Draw I must.

So I took the quiz again. And again. And again after that. etc


And finally, after maybe half a dozen tries, I was KING! Uber Alien! (Music Challenge's words...) Ruler of all things Music Challenge. Top Dog. My friends were below me - literally - with sad pathetic little scores, looking just a little more pixellated than before. "I wonder why they even try" I exclaimed to an empty room, feeling pretty damn good about myself. Several blissful hours passed me by. Granted, the initial feeling of sheer triumph and greatness decreased somewhat over those hours, but still I felt special. My day might have sucked, but at least I was king of Music Challenge.

Until I got a notification a few hours later. Someone had passed my score! The cruel, unfeeling, bastards!

Ah, the gauntlet had been thrown but I gracefully bent down, picked it up and dusted it off, accepting the challenge. I simply kept playing. And yes, I beat them.

Until I got a notification.


This has since continued over the past few days. All the way up to this morning in fact. It's 10:59 on Wednesday 30 September 2009, and I'm still king.

Yay.
 


 

Monday, September 28, 2009

From the depths of my external hard drive: Huggable Dust

 
We usually reserve this section ("From the depths...") to individual songs. This time it's an album. An album I somehow managed to completely ignore in 2008 but that I now can't get enough of. An album that I came across while randomly shuffling through my library - which fact, of course, proves once and for all that the Universe loves me. Okay's "Huggable Dust":

For fans of: Elephant Parade, Tinyfolk, The Robot Ate Me (musically not lyrically), Dilute, Little Wings, Thanksgiving, lo-fi folky stuff.


The wonderful pictures were taken by Chrissie White.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Letters Have No Arms is grateful for...



 The Format's Sam Means and Nate Ruess still continuing to make music individually
fun. -  At Least I'm Not As Sad (As I Used to Be)
Sam Means - Yeah Yeah

 Covers of songs we love that pay tribute to the original rather than extracting its guts with a polished spoon and eating them raw
Little My - New Slang (The Shins cover)

 Bubbly Spanish songs so cute you want to stick a pen in your eye
Queta & Teo - Es Cucu de L'Avi
Jóvenes Y Sexys - Amor Platonico
Papa Topo - Oso Panda

 Bands still making songs interesting enough to only "get" after repeated listens
Papa Vs Pretty - Arrestem
Sister Suvi - Deadwood

 Finding this line in a song: 
 "I bet that you look good on the dancefloor...but nowhere else."

  ...and the rest of the song's admittedly not deep but still very entertaining lyrics:
"Skin-tight jeans and MySpace hair
They have brought this over us
They're teenagers and they don't care
But what about us?
Spend their money at HMV
On bands they've seen in NME
They think they're into indie rock
But we know it's just kinder rock
Coldplay, Keane and Kaiser Chiefs
Kasabian, Jet and Razorlight
Kings of Leon, Dead 60’s: the kids are all shite"

Being alive in 2009: the year rap and politics mix.
At least in the USA, they do. Obama calls Kanye a jackass. Common speaks about the president's influence on hip-hop! What next? Obama sporting a gold necklace that spells "PIMP" at the next press conference? FUN!!! Oh wait, apparently *bling* is no longer in.

Common: "I also don't find as much gangsta talk. You see the whole chain-shining-and-rim era is gone. That's like super-played out. Just to have that, I think, is part of the Obama effect."

 Having a few people willing to click the "Become a Fan" button on our Facebook page :D

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

From the depths of my external hard drive: John Prine



"On his thirteenth birthday he saw 'Rebel without a Cause'
He went straight on home and invented Santa Claus"

(The Missing Years, 1991)

John Wayne - Call De Police (Sleng Teng)



John Wayne - Call De Police (Sleng Teng)


Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The return of Kings of Convenience!


Standing at a festival watching The Whitest Boy Alive this summer, I turned to Eliza and said "this is probably the closest we'll ever get to seeing Kings of Convenience". Well, it appears I might well have been wrong, as our favourite Norwegian duo are back! Their new album Declaration of Dependence, out in October, is already available to listen on Spotify (sorry everyone in the US and other non-Spotify countries) and is amazing!
 
 



And here's another taste to get you through the wait:

Kings of Convenience - Mrs Cold
Kings of Convenience - 24-25 

 and an old favourite:

Kings of Convenience - Toxic Girl

 pic by louise ashton

Friday, September 18, 2009

Pavement for Dummies




Unless you've been in a cave somewhere recording video messages to the great Satan on your webcam, trapped inside a large bear outfit, abusing Kurt's avatar (now those are three words I never thought I'd write), under a table somewhere hiding from swine flu, too busy following Terminal Man, worrying about your missile shield, or watching Dirty Dancing on repeat this week, it probably won't have escaped you that Kanye We... no, not that news... I am of course talking about: Pavement getting back together for a reunion next year!!!
  
 
 Statement on Matador's blog:
  
[After years of speculation, the most important American band of the 1990’s is returning to the stage, with the lineup of Mark Ibold, Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich and Steve West reuniting for dates around the world in 2010.  Please be advised this tour is not a prelude to additional jaunts and/or a permanent reunion.]
 
Over the past 48 hours the news has gone from '"a reliable source tells us"...', to them doing 'a show', to a full tour, though, as you can read on the statement above, they've also made it clear that this is a one-time thing, so don't expect any legacy-torpedoing new albums, or indefinite big money tours (nope, it'll just be the one).
 
Pavement, let it be clear, do not intend to piss all over their legacy.

So, having heard the news, what's an 18 year old indie kid, who had to Google 'pavement' when reading the news, and gets his/her music from the Gossip Girl soundtrack, to do??!! Pavement? Right, isn't that the band who has supposedly influenced EVERYONE? The band that got those 10 out of 10 album reviews on Pitchfork?



Yep, that's the one.
 
Letters have no Arms hereby proudly presents Pavement for Dummies. A brief introduction, a beginner's kit if you will. Start off with these ten songs (and perhaps the Pavement article on allmusic), then work your way through their rather majestic back-catalogue. You've got till next year to memorise all the lyrics and start getting VERY F**KING EXCITED ABOUT NEXT YEAR!!!

The early lo-fi one: Box Elder
The 'hit': Stereo
The quiet one: Strings of Nashville
The bouncy one: Cut your Hair
The wistful one: Here
The quirky one: Carrot Rope
The old favourite: Range Life
The it-doesn't-get-much-better-than-this one: Gold Soundz
The epic one: Fight this Generation
The amazing B-side: Secret Knowledge Of Backroads
 

the band
 



haha pavement, get it?



The news does of course leave us with a number of questions:
- At what point during their upcoming shows will it be polite for the band to exclaim/tell Stephen to (just) stop jamming!!! ?
- Stephen Malkmus famously chained handcuffs to his mic stand during their last ever gig at the Brixton Academy in London, stating 'this is what it's like being in a band'. What will he chain to it at their first gig back? Keys? A cheque?
- And finally, will Stephen be sporting a moustache?
 

 magazine bearing their name 
   
You've been humming and I think it's forever
Praying for pavement to get back together
Nobody knows where you are living
Nobody knows where you are

You're so far around the bend

 

The National - So far around the bend 

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Dirty-haired pajama party

Okay, what is this? Has anyone been noticing what's going on? They're attacking us! Attacking us with songs and bombarding us with good music all over the place! Teasing us with their myriads of new or soon-to-be-released albums! What do Los Campesinos, The National, Islands, Johnny Foreigner, Land of Talk and that dude from TV On the Radio have in common? Yep, you guessed it: they all have a new album out soon and are shamelessly offering preview-songs from it to get us interested. The sheer amount of bands I love releasing new material in the next three months scares me out of my wits. There are expectations and hopes regarding each and every one of them. And there's just no time to readjust them now. It feels a bit like a crowd of shiny-happy-people just stormed into my house (knocking down the front door and forgetting to put the dog back in) demanding I have a party. They're nice, all pretty smiles and rosy cheeks and they bring music and champagne, and prettily-wrapped gifts too, it's not that. It's just that I wish I would have had time to wash my hair, get out of my pajamas - maybe even bake a cake - before they started forcing a party hat onto my head. But what the heck!You can't look a gift-horse in the mouth. A dirty-haired pajama party it is! Let's celebrate:
Dan Mangan - Robots
Bear in Heaven - Wholehearted Mess
 Rain Machine - Smiling Black Faces
Correatown - Valparaiso
Land of Talk - May You Never
Islands - Vapours
Allo Darlin' - Dear Stephen Hawking
Johnny Foreigner - Camp Kelly Calm
Illustrations made by Ward Zwart. Check out his stuff here.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

SOS, I'm touching the electric fence


Was The Songs I Didn't Write the real thing or just a copy of the Coldplay original after all, did Chris Martin copy Creaky Boards or did Creaky Boards copy Coldplay question mark, etcetera. I know what you're thinking - old story -  but worth bringing up because this particular story will go on and on, like Céline Dion's heart, forever and ever, amen. I hear nowadays people are trying to figure out whether Kelly Clarkson copied Beyoncé's "Halo" in her song "Already Gone"! This is worrisome to the extreme for reasons I will not go into right now. Actually I will: they're both written by the same guy and they're both crap. The point is, this nonsense has to stop, folks! In a way I understand why people get so worked up about these so called "controversies". I get it, I really do. It's like a whodunit type mystery where everyone gets to act the detective and bring forth arguments to prove who the victim and who the murderer is. ("well, you see, Creaky boards had a video dated a year before Viva La Vida where they play the song, ha!")  I get it. But what I really wanna know is why the fuck should we care who-done-it? I mean, personally I think no one did - it was just a bloody accident because, you see, people have been writing songs for thousands of years and it's just stupid to expect that they will always come up with something new and original. The unfortunate thing in this particular case however is that this song, which isn't even that great (neither of the two) is the only thing people will think of when they think of Creaky Boards. Their last.fm page looks a little like this:

  • Hawkdaddyfoolz wrote:
    How can they be thieves when they filled the law suit? Make sure you know what your talking about before you say crap.
  • sanjay11 wrote:
    no similarity with viva la vida
  • dontdoitjake wrote:
    Tagged as: great musiuc, thieves, losers, antifolk, plagiarism
  • GrantRS wrote:
    And now Coldplay arebeing suedby someone else over the same song. Creaky Boards have struck gold there. This will only widen their audience. For a band with only 1,000 odd listeners any publicity is good publicity.
  • IHeartRiloKiley wrote:
    in any case, their music is better than coldplay.
  • HermsGandsen wrote:
    you are wonderful! I hope coldplay musit pay a fat sum of money for trheir musical theft!!!! It's really a bad thing thet the music lobby of the famous ones is so strong!!!!! Cheers and all the best

  • higginst wrote:
    lmao at this band. fucking losers. All for the attention
  • subatomicupcake wrote:
    You'll be lucky if Coldplay doesn't sue you for libel or slander, since Chirs Martin was in London at Air Studios, making real music the night you accuse him of being at your concert, besides having written the Viva la Vida 7 months before your concert. say bye bye to your career. Think about it next time before you purposely write a fake song (the songs I didn't write? that's an obvious clue) to try to frame these lads. Hope you don't go to jail.
  • haifisher wrote:
    The Songs I Didn't Write has absolutely nothing in common with Viva la Vida - but nice try to get some media attention...

This is a damn shame. Creaky Boards might not be the greatest or the most original band in the world, but if you paid any attention to the actual music you'd find they actually have some solid, good songs. Which you should listen to and forget about The Songs I Didn't Write. Or Viva La Vida. Or Kelly Clarkson for that matter.

 
Illustration: Paul Merril

Thursday, September 10, 2009

The "I'm so full of prejudices and sweeping generalizations" post.

 Pukkelpop 2009
 
Sweeping generalizations I firmly believe in:
 1. People that holiday in the same city/resort/hotel/village or island year after year after year after year are not real people. They are  simplistic robots that the Government has created in order to make us feel better about being so boring. Let me explain. In a rare moment of clarity back in 2005 the Bush administration decided to introduce these robots amongst the humans. The reason was that suicide numbers in the U.S had reached an all-time high. More and more people, polls revealed, committed suicide because they considered their lives to be extremely boring. Not only were their jobs miserable but they didn't even have fun on their holidays! Thus, the Robots that Holiday Every Year in the Same Place (RHEYSP) were invented. Suddenly people thought: "it's not that bad! At least I'm not as boring as them!". So things went back to normal. There is proof of this. People that spend every holiday on, say, Ibiza lack some sort of fundamental brain function that scientists call "curiosity". Now this "curiosity" is a quintessentially human trait so of course this proves once and for all that these freaks are non-human. But seriously now, I don't understand it. You can take the pathetic sum of money you worked all year to make or that your parents worked all year to make and you can either a) do something boring, unoriginal, stupid,  repetitive and unchallenging or b) do something different, eye-opening, horizon-widening and intellectually challenging. It's like if someone told you - "look, if you buy this magical banana (which will cost you the same as or less than an ordinary banana) you will become instantly happier, more knowledgeable, you will be richer as a human being, you will have more experiences, you will stimulate your imagination and brain, you will learn a ton of new things without even trying and you will have many wonderful memories." And you're like "no thanks, I'll have the ordinary banana instead, you know, the one I always get. I just know it better and trust it more. I like how it always has the same sticker that says Chiquita." What???! It makes no sense! Seriously, have you stopped to consider the fact that you are committing brainicide? Same place every year, same people, same sand, same water, same club, same cigarettes, same TV channels, same language, same boredom, same music, same radio station, same sun, same friends, same same. Going to the same island for the 4th year in a row is about as interesting and entertaining as watching grass grow. No no no no no, wait, you know what? That's a shitty comparison, I apologize to all grass-watchers. At least with grass there's the unwavering certainty that at least if you watch long enough something will be different. No, going to the same island for the 4th year in a row is more like container-ship watching. Or Feng-Shui. Or discus throwing. Or repeatedly drawing little triangles onto a piece of paper until you've covered the whole surface only so you can then wipe your ass with it. Over and over. For the rest of your life. Yeah, that's more like it.

2. All festival-goers suck. Especially festival-goers that think they're being funny and for some reason also think the rest of the world thinks they're being funny so they repeat the same joke ad nauseam just in case you didn't get it the first time (you didn't). Especially festival-goers that piss on any single object having the misfortune to be vertically positioned - including your tent, the place you buy food from and your leg. Especially festival-goers that burn your tent with cigarettes and squirt what one can only hope is water in your face from plastic guns. Especially festival-goers that don't attend said festival for the bands but just so they can have what underdeveloped Vogons and mentally challenged apes would deem "fun". To be fair, all these people mentioned only comprise about...oh, 90% of all festival-goers, but just to be safe I propose the whole lot of them be castrated (and tube-tied respectively!). YES! In fact, I already have a plan. We'll have a dozen hundred surgeons ready on the spot. We can tell festival-goers to gather at the Marquee for a "Surprise Act", à la Pukkelpop 2009, right? They'll probably have wasted their last two (2) remaining neurons on trying to figure out whether they'll be seeing Katy Perry or The Rasmus next so they won't even understand what's going on - my God! The genius of it! One minute they're staring obtusely at the sign that says "If you have already had a vasectomy, please walk away now" and the next WHAM. No more babies for you, Scottie. Preventing the Stupid-gene from polluting future generations just like that - imagine! It'll be cruel, sadistic, horrifically bloody, epically sick, environmentally-safe and so much fun!
3. Anyone that watches MTV nowadays is a complete and utter moron. Now I need to explain myself properly here because this is highly debatable. I'm not saying people are morons, just because they choose to watch tasteless crap. I am saying they will eventually become morons if they continue to watch the shows for a prolonged period of time. You can only do it for too long before you start hearing screaming voices in your head. If you insist on doing it, be prepared. Expect nausea, dizziness, paralyzing headaches, an overpowering urge to throw plates at the wall, kick your dog and possibly kill small innocent children with big red sledgehammers. Your brain cells will also start dying a slow and agonizing death and you will find you are only able to communicate in tweets, text messages (sorry, I mean, txt mssgs) and loud unexpected bursts of "NEEEEXT!". If you don't believe me and want to experience the effects of this global disease for yourself, just watch one of the millions of reality shows on offer these days at what used to once be a music channel: e.g. Date My Mom, Made, A Shot at Love With Tilla Tequila, That's Amore, From a G. to a Gentleman (or was it From a Gangsta to a G?), The Money and the Power, Next, Room Raiders, Sweet Sixteen, etc.
 
4. Any person who uses the word "morality" in a sentence is a twat.
 
5. Despite what Cosmo might tell you, sweaty men are not "sexy" - they are disgusting humanoids oozing filth, chloride and water from their pores and should surely put effort into avoiding human contact rather than happily trying to rub against you in buses or at gigs.
  
At this point I must stop my complaining and stereotyping unfortunately because the new Mew (newmewnewmewnewmew. Haha. Must be all the MTV-watching. Sorry.)  album has gone and put me in a good mood. Ugh. Hate it when that happens.

Here, you have some, too:
 

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Rocket for sale - call now!

1. Adem - Launch Yourself
2. Singapore Sling - Martian Arts
3. Say Hi to Your Mom - Let's Talk About Spaceships
4. Futurecop! - Starworshipper*
5. Heavenly - Space Manatee
6. Murder Mystery - Love Astronaut
7. Au Revoir Simone - Stars
8. Mikrofisch - Alien Monsters
9. The Magnetic Fields - You and Me and the Moon
10. Mew - Special
12. Modest Mouse - 3rd Planet
*
illustration by el blog ausente

*song removed by request of the band's record label; they did however write us a kind e-mail asking us to have it available for listen only, not download - instead of the usual way of record labels (just taking down our post entirely) and we really appreciate that.

Friday, September 4, 2009

So, uhm, how have you been, and eh, what's new?

 pic: Steven

You know how it is when you haven't seen someone for a while, and then you finally see them again and it's kinda awkward? You're not really sure what to say at first, and even if you get past the awkwardness there's so much catching up to do you don't even know where to begin?

Well, we feel a bit like that right now.


Things have been rather quiet (rather an understatement) on the unarmed letters front lately. Reason for this is a rather extensive trip across Europe by both myself and Eliza. Said journey has taken us from Greece through Bulgaria to Romania, Hungary, Poland (where we attended the charming OFF Festival 2009), Czech Republic and Germany (with a night in Slovakia thrown in somewhere in between for good measure). We ended up in Belgium two weeks ago, for the Pukkelpop 2009 festival, while last week was spent in Amsterdam riding bikes and collecting vintage postcards and second-hand books.
 
So yeah, where to begin? Should I post about the two festivals first, or the trip? Should I mention all the new stuff we've been listening to upon our return? Maybe mention how much I love the new Bibio album, the sheer genius that is Atlas Sound's Walkabout (w/ Noah Lennox)?
 

How about I just say hi to everyone and welcome you back, thanks for passing by and all that for now, and then we'll just see where we get in the coming days?


It's good to be back! We missed you.

 
Electrelane - To the East
Television Personalities - A Long Time Gone
Tegan & Sara - Back in your Head