The Sunlandic Twins (2005 - Polyvinyl Records)

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Requiem for OMM2
I Was Never Young
Wraith Pinned To The Mist (& Other Games)
Forecast Fascist Future
So Begins Our Alabee
Our Spring Is Sweet Not Fleeting
The Party's Crashing Us
Knight Rider
I Was A Landscape In Your Dreams
Death Of A Shade Of Hue
Oslo In The Summertime
October Is Eternal
The Repudiated Immortals

~~ Bonus EP ~~

Art Snob Solutions
The Actor's Opprobrium
Keep Sending Me Black Fireworks
Everyday Feels Like Sunday

Photo Credits




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When I met you, I was just a kid
Hadn't built up my defenses
So I gave my heart completely
Vaseline over the lenses

Memories don't go away,
I remember every day

I never, ever stop wondering
Wondering if you still think of us
I don't need a photograph
Because you've never left my mind
No, you've never left my mind

I remember feeling like a ship
Whose captain was too drunk to steer
And you watched as I was sinking
Waving sadly from the pier

Memories don't go away,
I remember every day

I never, ever stop wondering
Wondering if you still think of us
I don't need a photograph
Because you've never left my mind
No, you've never left my mind

It's such a burden to carry around
The vestiges of dead dreams
And I don't want to make a wake out of my life
I just have to let you go

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* O.M.M.2 stands for of Montreal Mach 2, the second incarnation of the band, which included Derek Almstead and Andy Gonzalez. Both left the band around the same time as Kevin took the reins again, thus propelling the band into another era.





Climb The Ladder
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I was never young, even as a child
Said I was never young, I've always felt beguiled
Oh, I just never smiled
But you have a glow
From an inner sense I'll never know
Because I was never young, even as a boy
No, I was never young,
Kindness seemed no ploy to temper or annoy
But you, you have a mind
Full of wonderment I'll never find
Because I was never young
Ever since I was a kid,
I've been a brooding basket case

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Climb The Ladder
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Wraith Pinned To The Mist






Let’s have bizarre celebrations
Let’s forget who forget what forget where
We’ll have bizarre celebrations
I’ll play the Satyr in Cyprus
You the bride being stripped bare, bare

Let’s pretend we don’t exist
Let’s pretend we’re in Antartica

Let’s have bizarre celebrations
Lets forget when forget what forget how
We’ll have bizarre celebrations
We’ll play Tristan and Isolde
But make sure I see white sails, sails

Maybe I’ll never die, I’ll just keep growing younger with you
And you’ll grow younger too
Now it seems too lovely to be true
But I know the best things always do










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* Satyrs are Greek mythological creatures. Usually portrayed as men with (a) ridiculously enormous erections that would put porn stars to shame, and (b) with either a horse's tail or as half goat-half man , their only purpose in life (or so it seems) was to have sex with as many nymphs and woodland creatures as they possibly could. Note that in the picture above, David Barnes is sporting a Pan costume. Pan was the king of all Satyrs. No wonder the ladies are all over him.
Cyprus, as you all know, is a Mediterranean island, just off the Turkish coast.

* The Bride Being Stripped Bare, is a reference to one of Marcel Duchamp's best known work (in French, La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même). Marcel Duchamp was/is an influential artist who used to run with the surrealists.

* Tristan & Isolde (actually, her name was Iseult but I guess no-one could spell right in those days!) is one of the most famous of the Arthurian myths. To cut a long story short, foreign guy falls for Irish princess, gets wounded in battle and eventually dies (not from his wounds, though, but because he thinks that Iseult has betrayed him), Iseult is so depressed she dies too, gets buried next to the love of her life, trees grow from their tombs and their branches intertwine.
Now, what about those white sails, uh? Well, let's see... when Tristan gets injured/poisoned, he asks for Iseult because he knows only her can cure him, and since they didn't have iPhones in those days, Tristan and his trustworthy buddy decided they'd have a code = if Iseult comes back to him, his buddy will hoist up white sails, and if she's not, black sails. Tristan's buddy finds Iseult, sails back with white sails, but some treacherous bitch lies to Tristan (who couldn't get up and see for himself) about the color of the sails, and he dies.



Climb The Ladder

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Forecast Fascist Future

The language of the frost
Lobs dead balloons over ruins today
In view of wan wordless crowds
That chase waifs to spires with fiery plumes
And incite the firmament’s portrait of "A Drowning in Styx"
That gives impotents kicks

Boredom murders the heart of our age
While sanguinary creeps take the stage
Boredom strangles the life from the printed page

Masking vapor trails from Mercury
For a killer on Umbria who crippled birch mares
Now briars replace their old cotton limbs
Who will tell? I mean, would it make a difference?
Look, metal flower petal
Tears do not even appear in the Myopic Mirror

The moon was sagging in the sky
As I held her face to mine
All our thoughts were coming in so clear
Beyond the Myopic Mirror
We were darting from the place where we just couldn’t fit
For away from all the violence safely flying in our own orbit

Why do I always have to tell you
"Forget about the prescient signs”?
Forget about the life we knew
May we never be stripped of anything we love
May we grow so gentle, never go mental
May we never go, go mental
May we always stay, stay gentle

What was my number? 114395? I don’t care! No, no, no...





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* Styx is, in Greek mythology, the river that separates the world of the living and the world of the dead. The interesting thing about it is that it is on fire. Now, of course, this is not about the river Styx itself, but about “a Drowning in Styx” - which could be the title of some obscure painting, or of a book or whatever – I couldn't find a trace of it.

*
Mercury is many things. The only one I can rule out is “Freddie,” otherwise, this is open to interpretation, I'm leaning towards the planet closest to the sun (so hot it would turn into vapor?) but to be honest I don't have a clue.

* Umbria is an Italian region, right in the middle of the country. It doesn't have a higher crime-rate than other places in Italy.







Climb The Ladder


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And so begins, begins our odyssey
And we begin, begin our odyssey

The aria is bleeding and the boyish voice is leaving
I’ve been an evil tenor, I filled the innocents' doe eyes with glue
You’re my only softness, you’re my only pleasure, it’s true
And I never want to be your little friend, the abject failure

And so begins, begins our odyssey
And we begin, begin our odyssey

The chrysalis is breaking and the super ego’s waking
I’ve been a gloomy Petrarch with a quill as weepy as Dido
You’re my mousy aesthete, you’re my bouyant cherub, it’s true
And I never want to be your little friend, the abject failure





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* Petrach was an Italian poet and philosopher who spent most of his life as a recluse.

*
Dido was, according to Roman, and not Greek (makes a nice change), mythology another one of these tragic heroes whose significant other dies and who can't bear to live anymore... The special thing about Dido is that she set herself on fire.








Climb The Ladder

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Our Spring Is Sweet, Not Fleeting. (instrumental)

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You're such a mystery
I just want to stand and stare
Nibble on your ear
And smell the ocean in your hair
I know you damage me
You leave me tangled in a knot
But when you reappear
I see Neptunian blues that eyes forgot

Still, I only feel alive when the VU is flashing
Alarms going off in my head
I want to grab you and just kiss you
Maybe I should sit down
No sense in cacheing us now

Yeah, I only feel all right when the VU is flashing
And bombs going off in my head
I want to grab you, want to scream at you
No icing you down
The party's crashing us now

We'll make love like a pair of black wizards
You free me from the past
You fucked the suburbs out of me
Oh well, those ugly days that made us so sick
They are just fossils now
We've learned the elevating trick

Still, I only feel alive when the VU is flashing
Alarms going off in my head
I want to grab you and just kiss you
Maybe I should calm down
No sense in cacheing us now

Still, I only feel alive when the VU is flashing
Bombs going off in my head
I want to grab you, want to scream at you
no icing me down
The party's crashing us now

I only feel all right when the VU is flashing
Alarms going off in my head
I want to grab you, want to scream at you
No icing me down
The party's crashing us now

I only feel all right when the VU is flashing
And bombs going off in my head
I want to grab you, and just kiss you
Maybe I should calm down
No sense in cacheing us now
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* Neptune is the Roman god of water and the sea.






Climb The Ladder
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Knight Rider (instrumental)

That instrumental made an interesting comeback for the Ninjas Prove It tour, as the band needed to fill in while Kevin was changing into his bathrobe and the gallows were set up on stage...
It also gave Jamey the chance to go “wwaaaaaa-oooooooo waaaaaaa-ooooooooo” and make the girls swoon.


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What kind of comedy is this?
All of the danger you've discovered.
What kind of comedy is this?
How can you say now you're frightened?
You labeled me in forty tries
And in case you didn't realize
I was a landscape in your dream
And all my mountains were on fire

What kind of labyrinth is this?
That we're constructing through talking?
What kind of labyrinth is this?
That sends you laughing without smiling?
Age brings a sad little surprise.
And in case you didn't realize
While you were calculating tears
My head expired

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Climb The Ladder

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Over a sea of grief Scarlett died
Above her dying mind were fossilfied memory imprints of her favorite day
For a minute I stayed watching this brilliant display
Until a god with a broom came and swept them away

In their bereavement, all of her colorful friends
Turned to a milky gray depressing blend
Which incidentally made Gray feel inane
So he set off to find a less trite identity
One as stunning and bold as Scarlett used to be

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* Scarlett may be referring to Gone With The Wind's main character, Scarlett O'Hara, though it remains to be seen.

*
Fossilfied is Barnesian for fossilized.






Climb The Ladder
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Oslo in the summertime, nobody can fall asleep
I’m staring out the window from my bed
At 4 AM the sun is up
Look, the sky is peppered with sea birds
And with crows all cackling

Up in tre ten Heimdalsgate
Me and Nina making fun of footballers
In Rudolph Nilsen Plass
I practice my Norwegian on poor befuddled waitresses
Who shake their heads, completely at a loss
Oslo in the summertime, the streets are strangely quiet
Because everyone’s away on holiday

Oslo in the summertime, Pakistani children play
Locked inside of the courtyard all day
Pretty people everywhere, sun lamp tans and flaxen hair,
Just tell the American not to stare

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* Oslo is the capital city of Norway, Nina's country. Parts of The Sunlandic Twins, Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer? and Skeletal Lamping were recorded in Oslo. It is also the place where the couple gave birth to their daughter Alabee.
Even though I have never been there myself, saying that it is still light out at 4 a.m. seems excessive, since the city still gets 6 hours of nighttime in the summer. It's just not that far up north.

*
treten Heimdalsgate is (I'm assuming) where Nina & Kevin used to live. Treten means thirteen in Norwegian, and gate means street (and not gate, goddammit!), though interestingly enough, the correct spelling seems to be Heimdalsgata, so it's either a grammatical quirk (I have no idea whether there are declensions in Norwegian, but it would make sense since it has common roots with German) or Kevin's mistake. After all, he admits two lines later that his Norwegian isn't so good.

*
Rudolph Nilsen was a Norwegian poet, journalist and left-wing extremist.According to my research, you can probably see footballers playing in Rudolf Nilsen Plass from your 13 Heimdalsgate window, but once again, it's hard to tell from Paris. Which is where Rudolph Nilsen died, if you need to know.
Pakistanis make up 15% of the population – why they would lock up their kids I have no idea – shouldn't they be in Rudolph Nilsen Plass playing with the others?

End of Norwegian class. You'll be tested on it next week.






Climb The Ladder

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Very useful instrumental – just long enough for Kevin's costume changes...


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The creator of what’s now cliché
Had some funny words to say
"All you little things are incomplete"
Why did he speak of us that way?
I don’t cry, not because I don’t care
It’s very hard to feel the way we used to feel up there
The creator of what’s now cliché
Wants us little things to cry and feel alone

But don’t, don’t lose hope, no, no, no, no
No, no, no, don’t feel sad because it’s a violent world
But there’s still beauty
I’ll take care of you if you take care of me

I like to sit and listen to the sound
Of the snowflakes landing on the trees
But I can’t get used to feeling cold
I can’t get used to what has happened here to you and me
There’s no escaping so I won’t try
It’s just the heaviness that comes
With knowing you will never die

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Climb The Ladder
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Art Snob Solutions


What’s up, directors? Grab your knives!
It’s time to take all, all of the lives
Of the people who cannot see
The somnolent genius of Tarkovsky

Come on authors, grab your guns!
It’s time to murder everyone
Who has never heard of Apollinaire
Send them all to hell, it’s only fair

Cast them all into the flames
If they don’t know any names
Of the principles of Arte Povera
Or are unfamiliar with le serpent mascara
That’s right, mascara snake!

Come on painters, alive or dead!
Give all the cretins a boot to the head
If they don’t extoll convincingly
Tempered Elan era Kandinsky

Throw them all into a well
If they cannot tell
An Arto Parv feast of repetition
From a Schoenberg 12-tone composition

Come on artists, the day is here!
And your mission is very clear
Put an end to the bourgeoisie
And death to everyone who’s never heard of me

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* Andrei Tarkovsky was a Russian/Soviet film director. While acclaimed by critics, his films never really made it to the mainstream.

* Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, writer, playwright and literary critic. He is mainly famous for his poems and also for being the first to coin the term "surrealist."

*
Arte Povera is a somewhat short-lived artistic movement from Italy. It was deeply rooted in the Sixties revolutionary culture. It mainly questioned the relationship between art and capitalism. In some ways, you could think of graffiti as an expansion of Arte Povera. (maybe it's only me.)

*
Le Serpent Mascarais a reference to Captain Beefheart's Magic Band member of the same name.

*
Vassili Kandinskiwas a Russian abstract painter and undoubtedly one of the most influent artists of the XXth century.
Here is a picture of his "Tempered Elan" painting.



*
Arvo Pärt (and not Arto Parv!) is an Estonian classical composer. I've never heard anything by him so I really can't tell you much more.

*
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer. He invented the dodecaphony (note how close it is to cacophony, and it's not a coincidence in my book), or 12-tone composition. From wikipedia, "the technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any through the use of tone rows. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key."


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I guess I should have known to stay away
From a snuff film by Jean Genet
But the cash was good and the director gave me the biggest scene
What does it mean when Pentecostal born-again virgins
Appear picketing in angry protest?
Oh, those sloppy tarts have sulphurized hearts

Sure, a dead man quietly pulling on his tongue
In a coffin after being hung
Does make strange erotic cinema
But that was the great master’s vision
And the actors agree to portray
The fiend is best in a death fantasy
Because when one is licking the knife
Ah, well, that is truly the life

Oh, what does it mean when the stagehand approaches
Wheeling in a guillotine?
Let’s play nice. Yes, I want to be a star
But that’s going too far

Yes, I’m still smarting from the bite
Of coital sessions in gelatinal light
I’m questioning my chosen career
Don’t think I’ll be attending the premiere

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* Jean Genet (and not Gene, or whatever) was a controversial French writer. Even though his body of work can stand on its own, he is mainly famous for his lifestyle - he spent a lot of his early years in various jails, was even sentenced to life before turning his life into Art and embracing numerous political causes, standing alongside workers and students during the events of May 68, endorsing the Black Panthers, etc...

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Keep Sending Me Black Fireworks


Look in my eyes, what do you see?
I'm hanging upside down like a chimpanzee
When I'm with my friends
Riding somewhere on a crowded bus
There is nothing that I want to discuss
I just sit and smile thinking about us
What is this that sends black fireworks
Dancing around me? When we kiss, the explosiveness
Is life's sweet mystery

I feel like a balloon
Floating higher, I'm touching a distant moon
I don't think I'll come down anytime soon
Ah, my kitten, I am so glad you're the way you are
You're my favorite living human, by far
Because you make this frightening world less bizarre
What is this that sends black fireworks
Dancing around me? When we kiss, the explosiveness
Is life's sweet mystery


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Everyday feels like Sunday, baby, everyday feels so good
Everyday feels like Sunday, baby, everyday feels so good
I’m further and further away from the fall... everyday
And for years I bowed. I could not sleep so very well
Even standing up I crawled. Yet there is a softness I can tell
Everyday feels like Sunday, baby, everyday feels so good
Everyday feels like Sunday, baby, everyday feels so good
I’m further and further away from the fall... everyday
I’m electric now from the pure brilliant sparks you shot
Like a little man, all I can say is, ”Thanks a lot”
Everyday feels like Sunday, baby, everyday feels so good
Everyday feels like Sunday, baby, everyday feels so good
I’m further and further away from the fall... everyday
I must destroy this artificial darkness
That’s how it seems to me to be, art artificial now because
Everyday feels like Sunday, baby, everyday feels so good
Everyday feels like Sunday, baby, everyday feels so good

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PHOTO CREDITS

Requiem For omm2 – Townhaller KitKat
I Was Never Young, Forecast Fascist Future, The Party's Crashing Us, I Was A Landscape In Your Dreams, Death Of A Shade Of Hue, October Is Eternal – Townhaller Adrigu.
So Begins Our Alabee – Nicole Kibert
Wraith Pinned To The Mist & Other Games - Alan White

Climb The Ladder

2 comments:

  1. On the summer solstice, the sun rises at 3:54 am in Oslo. So the sun wouldn't still be up at 4 am, it would have just risen.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There are so many lyric sites, including this one, that say "Masking vapor trails from Mercury/ For a killer on Umbria" in Forecast Fascist Future. I'm taking an Astronomy class and just learned about Uranus' moon called Umbriel, and I immediately thought of that lyric. Since he's making a planetary reference to Mercury already, do you think it could be Umbriel instead of Umbria?

    ReplyDelete