higherpowermoment.com

Well, I’ve bought a new car. It’s frankly ridiculous, it’s so big it has its own gravitational field. A massive old Merc. But I love it, no matter what everyone else says. It’s one of those “beyond your wildest dreams” things, I would have never have considered driving an old fart’s car like this when I was a hyper aggressive arsey mad dry drunk phase. But I sit there in double glazed splendour, tootling along at 70 (I can’t afford the petrol to go much faster) and lapping up tunes on the amazing stereo that the millionaire who bought this car in 1996 selected. There’s no iPod connection, I’m not sure whether to put one in, but for the moment it’s CD’s. And you get to listen to CD’s over and over again on big trips, as the changer is in the boot (or “trunk”, for our North American readers). The signature CD for this car appears to be Levy’s 2005 debut Rotten Love. What can I tell you about Levy, fact-fans? Not a lot. It appears to be the working name of James Levy. He used to work in a Jewish cemetery. He’s from Brooklyn. ANOTHER great musician from Brooklyn! I can’t now remember where I heard this track, but I couldn’t find the mp3 to steal anywhere, bought the CD, and the whole thing is great. It’s pretty breezy, pretty slick, some big sky sounds, dare I compare it to, hum, Coldplay? Well, maybe there are hints there, but there’s some Smiths in there too and it’s sufficiently quirky and dreamy and intelligent and knowing and assorted not to be too hideous. And I really should confess to having a soft spot for “Yellow”. Anyway, enough confessions. Here’s the title track.

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Levy - Rotten Love

This question in the Narcotics Anonymous “Step Working Guides” looks, in the context of Step 1, at how our powerlessness over our addiction overrules all innate morals or standards we might have in order that the addiction be fed. I think this ties in quite well with the process in Steps 4 and 5, when we take a moral inventory and admit the exact nature of our wrongs. There is (or certainly was for me) a fear about Steps 4 and 5 that there were these terrible admissions to be made. The process of Step 5 normally reveals that many people in recovery have made similar admissions, and done similar things. The connection is that we are all addicts, and our addiction, and in particular our powerlessness, has this effect of overriding what we know to be right. We find ourselves doing things that we would never do if it weren’t for our addiction, things that make us shudder with shame when we think of them.

So, in “sobriety”, when I find myself doing stuff that I normally wouldn’t dream of doing, my experience and the experiences of others tell me that I’m in a dangerous place. And so the tenuous recovery link to today’s song: Brooklyn’s Matt & Kim’s new single “Lessons Learned”, a rare (and very welcome) vocal foray by Kim, from the excellent new album “Grand“, which comes complete with a new video featuring Matt, Kim, Times Square, and lots of public nudity.

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Matt and Kim - Lessons Learned

Next topic: How does my personality change when I’m acting out on my addiction?

So we continue with Step 1 in the Narcotics Anonymous Step Working Guides. Here’s another question that I seem to answer in the affirmative. The disease of addiction has an impulsive nature - thoughts are acted upon rather than being thought through. We’re programmed to skip the consequences and get on with the action. It’s why the slogan “Think, Think, Think” is so important in recovery.

Matt & Kim are a Brooklyn based duo consisting of Matt Johnson (keyboards) and Kim Schifino (drums), who play mental keyboard led (obviously) power pop at top speed sitting in the middle of their adoring crowd surfing fans. Last year saw them play to a bunch of stiffs in Stockholm and then the next night to a throbbing sweaty mass of Jönköping indie kids and it’s the latter gig you want to be at. Kim is tattooed, androgynous and permanently smiling a smile that looks like her face is going to split in two; Matt plays keyboard with one arm more or less constantly waving in the air, not that seems to quieten him down to any significant degree. They are fun. Here’s a song about acting without thinking about the consequences: Yea Yeah.

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Matt & Kim - Yea Yeah

And as a bonus, the not-out-of-character video:

Next topic: How does the self-centered part of my disease affect my life and the lives of those around me?

OK, I finally got this thing up and running after about a year of plenty of talk and not a great deal of action.  On the basis of “Keep It Simple”, the first post is just that.  It wasn’t going to be: in true alcoholic fashion I thought I’d kick off with a review of the whole of 2008, the first draft of my top 10 tracks containing 23 tracks, and various other “best of” charts fizzing away in my head.  But having remembered to Keep It Simple (and for that matter Take It Easy) I’ve decided to just try one band and one song given that this is the first time I’ve ever made a blog.

It’s taken a dose of man-flu and 6 hours to get this far anyway. The famous WordPress 5-minute install didn’t quite pan out like that.

So, to begin, this is High Places, a duo from Brooklyn who I saw and heard for the first time earlier this month at Primavera Club in Barcelona, and who have been growing on me ever since. High Places are multi-instrumentalist Rob Barber and vocalist Mary Pearson. The sound is very layered, with a build up of bells, rattles, clunks, and knocks looping and repeating to produce an equatorial rhythm over which swoops Mary’s lush, low-key vocals.

The performance itself couldn’t have been simpler and more casual - some battered green flight cases resting on an industrial grade bench, a hand held mic, some wires and knobs, and (charmingly) wrist bells. Simple sounds were made, looped and expanded on, the resulting lurching cacophony brilliantly contrasting with the smoothness and subtlety of the vocal. The effect was very much more the sum of these simple parts - and that is the highly contrived and tenuous link to the slogan “Keep It Simple”.

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High Places - From Stardust to Sentience

The eponymously titled album is out now on Thrill Jockey, and is available from Amazon and other places. Mine’s in the post.

Trivia: Mary is a classically trained bassoonist, the instrument played by my hero Alexander McCall Smith in Edinburgh’s Really Terrible Orchestra.