the sound of water

an old pond--
a frog leaping in--
the sound of water.

/matsuo basho

animal collective - no more runnin

nature never did betray

"nature never did betray the heart that loved her." /william wordsworth

saves the day - she

one could do worse

"i’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
and climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
but dipped its top and set me down again.
that would be good both going and coming back.
one could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

/robert frost

cloudc - elm

i'll love you, dear

"i'll love you, dear, i'll love you
till china and africa meet,
and the river jumps over the mountain
and the salmon sing in the street,

i'll love you till the ocean
is folded and hung up to dry
and the seven stars go squawking
like geese about the sky."

/w.h. auden

elliott smith - say yes

another unplayable work

"i am delighted to add another unplayable work to the repertoire." /arnold schoenberg

arch m - 21st union

another galaxy

"there is a moment, a chip in time, when leaving home is the lesser crime.
when your eyes are blind with tears, but your heart can see: another life, another galaxy." /paul simon

broken social scene - major label debut

he's always on time

"i like the fedex driver, because he's a drug dealer and he don't even know it. and he's always on time." /mitch hedberg

curtis mayfield - pusherman

there still remains oneself

"when one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?" /oscar wilde

cut copy - unforgettable season

on a sunshine holiday

"and the jocund rebecks sound
to many a youth, and many a maid,
dancing in the checkered shade.
and young and old come forth to play
on a sunshine holiday."

/john milton

highlife - f kenya rip

fishbowl

"the absence of a fishbowl that limits our scope of achievement is a recipe for misery." /barry schwartz

casino versus japan - aquarium

i believe it

"you tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and i believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances." /abigail adams

erykah badu - the healer

gossamer of moments

"'veckatimest' is a gorgeously refined statement that isn’t content to merely be pretty — a rippling current electrifies even its most gossamer of moments. grizzly bear manages to be delicate and charged at the same time by stitching together compelling styles, including doo-wop, sea chanteys, the stringy interplay of jam bands, jazz time changes and the anglican choral tradition. on “fine for now,” rossen’s vocals have a touch of lounge to them but are strained and hushed. christopher bear’s drums predatorily tick around the vocals before capsizing the whole production in a tidal wave of cymbal crashes." /margaret wappler

grizzly bear - fine for now (live)

words are inert

"what is 'frustration'? or what is 'anger,' or 'love'? when i say 'love' the sound comes out of my mouth and hits the other person’s ear and travels through the byzantine conduit in their brain through their memories of love, or lack of love. they say they understand, but how do i know? because words are inert. they’re just symbols. they’re dead, you know? and so much of our experience is intangible. so much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. it’s unspeakable. and yet, you know, when we communicate with one another and we feel we have connected and think we’re understood i think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. that may be transient, but it’s what we live for." /waking life

modest mouse - a different city

to be human

"one of the reasons that we're willing to make ourselves vulnerable to our favorite musicians is that they often make themselves vulnerable to us (or they convey vulnerability throug their art). the power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human." /dan levitin

bon iver - brackett, wi

puzzle piece

"you're the puzzle piece behind that couch who makes the sky complete." /lemonheads

the replacements - within your reach

what's best in music

"what's best in music is not to be found in the notes." /gustav mahler

kaki king - night after sidewalk

tune in

the beatles - tomorrow never knows

"turn on, tune in, drop out." /timothy leary

expressing the inexpressible

"after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." /aldous huxley

grizzly bear - reprise

to behold the hundred universes

joni mitchell - both sides now

"the only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of eternal youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is." /marcel proust

two lovely berries

"we, hermia, like two 'artificial' gods,
have with our needles, created both one flower,
both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
both warbling of one song both in one key,
as if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds
had been incorporate.
so we grew together
like to a double cherry, seeming parted
but yet an union in partition.
two lovely berries moulded, one one stem;
so with two seeming bodies, but one heart.
two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
due but to one, and crowned with one crest."
/bill shakespeare

i went into the woods

"i went into the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if i could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when i came to die, discover that i had not lived." /henry david throeau

animal collective - seal eyeing

dancing lessons

"peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god." /kurt vonnegut

animal collective - sweet road

let's make a sound of our own

"there doesn't seem to be a cutoff point for acquiring new tastes in music, but most people have formed their tastes by the age of eighteen or twenty. why this is so is not clear, but several studies have found it to be the case. part of the reason may be that in general, people tend to become less open to new experiences as they age. during our teenage years, we begin to discover that there exists a world of different ideas, different cultures, different people. we experiment with the idea that we don't have to limit our life's course, our personalities, or our decisions to what we were taught by our parents, or to the way we were brought up. we also seek out different kinds of music. in western culture in particular the choice of music has important social consequences. we listen to the music that our friends listen to. particularly when we are young, and in search of our identity, we form bonds or social groups with people whom we want to be like, or whom we believe we have something in common with. as a way of externalizing the bond, we dress alike, share activities, and listen to the same music. our group listens to this kind of music, those people listen to that kind of music. this ties into the evolutionary idea of music as a vehicle for social bonding and societal cohesion. music and musical preferences become a mark of personal and group identity and of distinction." /daniel levitin

animal collective - we tigers

things of the spirit

"the cowardly belief that a person must stay in one place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude and yet always willing to accept the slipping on the harness. there are limits to every domain, and laws to govern every organized power. but the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the non-existent horizon, and her empire is an intangible one, for her domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit." /isabelle eberhardt

air - universal traveler

lure of the real

"the humble are they that move about the world with the lure of the real in their hearts. /wallace stevens

bob dylan - beyond the horizon

a bit of mongrel

"i like a bit of mongrel myself, whether it's a man or a dog; they're the best for every day." /george bernard shaw

man man - big trouble

pause to reflect

"we passionately long that there may be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. but we do not pause to reflect that, even without waiting for that other life, in this life, after a few years we are unfaithful to what we have been, to what we wished to remain immortally." /marcel proust

jefferson airplane - embryonic journey

somewhere in the universe

"what is so pleasant as these jets of affection which make a young world for me again? what so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling? how beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and the true! the moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish, — all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of beloved persons. let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years." /ralph waldo emerson

panda bear - bros

let us have madness openly

"let us have madness openly,
o men of my generation.
let us follow
the footsteps of this slaughtered age:
see it trail across time's dim land
into the closed house of eternity
with the noise that dying has,
with the face that dead things wear--
nor ever say
we wanted more; we looked to find
an open door, an utter deed of love,
transforming day's evil darkness;
but we found extended hell and fog upon the earth,
and within the head
a rotting bog of lean huge graves."
/kenneth patchen

akron/family - raise the sparks

stir, press, feel

"i merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy;
to touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as i can stand."
/walt whitman

the beatles - mother nature's son