Tunes Consumed: the Poutine Silver Platter

I know, I’m a bit of a romantic when it comes to music, and while I’ll be the first one with my grubby hands in the indie-rock dollar bin, I’m still attached to the idea that music should be epic and fanciful. That it should not only go the places it’s told, but take itself places as well, not unlike how fairytales are abound with dragons and mysterious foggy woods and all. I mean truly, the instruments speak a whole world of history when you let them, but that’s soon forgotten when everything is crammed into that 4-minute space; in a fashion where they just become one of the pack, right next to the 4/4 drumming.

Two artists that I’ll highlight here are by no means starving, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still have the potential of a transcendental street-urchin. I’m going to highlight each in turn with two often overlooked side-projects that you should turn your ears toward.

The first is The Decemberists, who, despite what it may seem, were not always picking their teeth over American politik or singing sea shantys. Back before the hey-day of Picaresque & their major label, they found the time to craft one EP by the name of The Tain, which was something of a masterpiece. An 18-minute seamless saga that was delicately synthesized from the Irish mythological tale “Táin Bó Cúailnge”. It has five movements in total, each one increasingly twisted & raw, and it literally bursts at the seams with instrumental guidance. I’ve listened to this enough by now that the words are second nature to me, and as the words turn the proverbial pages of the tale, moving from scene to scene, the instrumentals in their guiding light act to brush a scene behind it all.

Then there was Bell Orchestre, an instrumental supergroup that came together in 2005 involving many of the members of Arcade Fire. It was birthed out of the same singular silver lining as was The Tain, and it was something of a wonder. I had “Les Lumieres Pt. 1″ as my morning alarm for months. I would wake every morning to blinding sunshine and the slow rise of that track (which eventually erupts into the drum & horn madness that is Pt. 2 - but that was never part of my waking time). On the all, that album was a clever experiment, with tracks that drifted about as though they were scores to voiceless epic cartoons or otherwise just conceptually bizarre like the “Recording A Tape… (Typewriter duet)”, and still others that were merely progressions on an idea that carried themselves forward.

take a listen: (for The Tain, I recommend it in order, for obvious reasons)
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. I
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. II
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. III
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. IV
The Decemberists - The Tain, Pt. V
Bell Orchestre - Les Lumieres Pt. 1
Bell Orchestre - Les Lumieres Pt. 2
Bell Orchestre - Throw It On A Fire
Bell Orchestre - Recording A Tape… (Typewriter duet)

The Tain is, unfortunately impossible to buy new nowadays (wait for a reissue), but there are some used discs floating around, [see comment below] and Bell Orchestre’s Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light can be found over at Amazon for ~15 bucks.

(Header graphic courtesy of Lost Garden.)
(The Decemberists tracks were performed live @ The Metro back in 2005)