listen.

listen gets bicoastal.

the reason you didn't hear much from us last week is that listen went on the road to beautiful PORTLAND, OREGON.

it was a pretty awesome trip, with all the trappings of your typical trip to the PacNW: crazy-beautiful nature, yummy seafood, cool laidback people, and some fun nights out on the town (nightlife points of interest include the talented performers at silverado, and the murinal at the eagle).  I also whipped up a little mix CD of some of my favorite portland-based bands to provide the soundtrack in our hot-hot-hot rented chevy impala (not even kidding), so I thought I'd share some highlights from that mix.

Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out
this is the title track from what i think may have been the first truly indie CD that I ever owned.  I bought it sound-unheard based on a friend's recommendation, and as a shy kid almost exclusively immersed in the indigo girls and tori amos at that point, i didn't really know what to think of it at first, but it didn't take long for me to get into it. these girls taught me what it meant to rock out. once when i was in college i cut all my hair off to this song and felt REALLY cool and misunderstood.
{{Sleater-Kinney}}

Quasi - I Never Want To See You Again
Another track from the early-ish part of my love for indie music, Quasi is a divorced couple, Sam Coomes (keyboards) and Janet Weiss (drummer; incidentally, also drummer for S-K).  the spare keyboard-drums combo makes for a pretty unique sound, and sam has a really sweet tenor voice that he uses to sing with a clever yet poignant dare-I-say Chekhovian perspective about the plight of the modern working class and the rat race in which we - i mean they - i mean we - are mired.
{{Quasi}}

 

Horse Feathers - Walking and Running
I've blogged about these guys quite a bit, and not just because frontman Justin Ringle is a friend from high school. Words Are Dead was one of my favorite albums of '06 - it's gorgeous.  They recently got signed to Olympia, Washington's Kill Rock Stars which is exciting. This track is from their daytrotter session last year. (photo by Jason Quigley, from HF's myspace page)
{{Horse Feathers}}

Loch Lomond - Bird and a Bear (I Am The Bird)
Loch Lomond - A Field Report
I just ran across these folks a couple months ago and have really been digging them.  I believe there is some crossover in the lineup between them and Horse Feathers.  "A Field Report" contains the awesome line "The sound of children laughing makes my eyes bleed."
{{Loch Lomond}}

Menomena - Wet and Rusting
Menomena - Gay A
Another recent Portland discovery, Menomena sort of calls to mind Animal Collective, but they strike me as being both more experimental and more pop-oriented, if that's possible. Wet and Rusting would have easily made it onto my top tracks of 2007 if I hadn't somehow missed it until a month ago. A bizarre and complex pop song with some erratic rhythmic stop-and-go to it, along with some killer piano hooks, it's all built around the simple (yet undeniable) refrain "it's hard to take risks with a pessimist."

Gay A is a track from the Wet and Rusting ep, cleverly taking issue with those Christian camps where self-loathing homosexuals go to either "cure" themselves of their "condition", or learn ways to ignore and stifle their sexuality. With the ironic opening line "All my pathetic and small life, I made big steps with small strides to fight what just feels right" the song illuminates the wrongheadedness of such an approach.  So I was kind of troubled to find a recent interview on the (awesome) blog You Ain't No Picasso with bassist Justin Harris, containing the following passage:

JH: A friend of mine went to one of those… like, places where they didn’t want to be gay any more.

YANP: Like a religious camp?

JH: Yeah. Like one of those where they didn’t want to be a part of the gay lifestyle any more. It’s based on my misconception about what that was. I was under the assumption that you go to these places to not be gay any more, but that’s totally not what it is. It’s just for people who don’t want to be in the gay lifestyle. You can’t really can’t stop being gay. But the point isn’t to rid you of your gayness, but just to help you if you don’t want to be a part of that lifestyle.

So, I just want to point out that the ex-gay movement is a complex and splintered social phenomenon, and yes, many groups or organizations do describe what they do as curing or treating homosexuality as a condition or disease.  I question what exactly JH means here when he uses the phrase "gay lifestyle".  If he means a healthy, non-repressive relationship with one's homosexuality, then it's unhealthy and irresponsible to be fostering people's avoidance or fear of that.  If he means, as many misguided people do, some sort of self-destructively promiscuous or otherwise unhealthy sexuality, then that's not a "gay lifestyle", that's an unhealthy relationship with one's own sexuality. I firmly deny the legitimacy of ANY formalized attempt to treat, cure, ignore, stifle, or "overcome" one's homosexuality. And I'll leave it at that.
{{Menomena}}

Sorry to end with the rant, but Gay A is a great song, so... give it a listen.

xoBen

on how strange it is to be anything at all

Don't worry: I won't be making a habit of celebrating the 10- (or 5- or 7- or 25-) year anniversary of any good album ever released.  But Feb. 10th marked the 10th anniversary (golden birthday!) of Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, arguably one of the most important albums of the 90s, and unequivocally my own personal favorite album of all time. so please indulge me while I dive back into NMH's world for just a bit.

I highly recommend checking out Pitchfork's double-header of 1997 interviews with Jeff here. He talks about a lot of things, including the "I love you Jesus Christ" song which no one ever seems to get -- it invariably weirds someone out.  Here's part of what Jeff has to say about it:

The thing about me singing about Christ; I'm not saying "I love you Christianity." I'm not saying "I love all the fucked-up terrible shit that people have done in the name of God." And I'm not preaching belief in Christ. It's just expression. I'm just expressing something I might not even understand. It's a song of confusion, it's a song of hope, it's a song that says this whole world is a big dream-- and who knows what's gonna happen.

I also love this part of the interview:

Pitchfork: [After moving to the kitchen for some reason] Wow, you have a lot of melodicas lying around!
Jeff Mangum: Yeah.

Since a good many of you have heard the album (if you haven't, please go buy it now), I thought I could post a few "deep cuts", as iTunes grossly calls them -- some obscure-ish live tracks (is anything really obscure anymore with youtube and 18million musicblogs wherever you turn?) from Jeff Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel.

Neutral Milk Hotel - Ferris Wheel on Fire
something about this song gets under my skin.  i don't know if it's the terrifying imagery of a ferris wheel falling apart while the crowd below cheers, or the way the catastrophe described is matched by an escalating chaos in the music, or that last line "now finally fading from view is everything we ever knew". a song about the ephemerality of our material surroundings.

Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Sister
if you're familiar with the album, some of this song will seem familiar -- lyrically it overlaps particularly with Oh Comely and Holland 1945. not sure why it didn't end up on the album... i like it as much as a lot that did. some great lines, and a simple but terrific melody, all matched with Jeff's otherwordly caterwaul (which truly becomes a caterwaul at the end).

Neutral Milk Hotel - Engine
as he says, "a children's song". this was the b-side to Holland 1945.

Jeff Mangum - Little Birds
the only recording (as far as I know) of any song Jeff wrote after Aeroplane. an intensely haunting and creepy song about a little boy whose body becomes inhabited by little birds. it gives a glimpse of what NMH's next album might have been like, had they ever made one. i also feel compelled (as I would) to point out the unsettling gay subplot, sung from the boy's father's perspective:

did you know the burning hell it took your baby brother?
did you see how far he fell and how he made us suffer?
another boy in town at night he took him for his lover,
and deep in sin, they held each other.
so i took a hammer, nearly beat his little brains in,
knowing god in heaven would have never could forgive him.

I was actually going to stop there, but that's a pretty depressing note to end on, so here are a few more treats:

Jeff Mangum - I Love How You Love Me
An adorable Phil Spector cover from Jeff's solo Live at Jittery Joe's album (pardon the extended spoken intro for Engine, tacked at the end of this track)

And two touching video recordings of Jeff solo and with band performing the album's gorgeous title track, one of the most beautiful songs ever written about life, love and death.  The second video is from Dec. 31, 1998, one of the last shows they ever played.

xoB

back in the habit and on repeat

hey kiddos. my apologies, most especially to my blogmate, for being a tad MIA -- and i don't mean the groundbreaking genre-defying English-born Sri Lankan musician -- over the past week (or so).  life just keeps on HAPPENING, you know?

anyway. i went over to Danny's the other night, and while he worked some tailoring magic on a few of my garments, we watched My So-Called Life and listened to Chris Garneau, among other things, and ever since, I've basically had this song on 24-7 repeat.

Chris Garneau - Black & Blue

it takes him about 1:45 to kick into full voice, but man, that moment kills me, each time he sings "oh, oh, i want to catch my death of cold, oh, oh, cause i'm scared i'm growing old."  be careful listening to this song on headphones late at night while it's raining and you're walking home alone to an empty bed. i'm just saying.

interesting interview with mr. garneau here, and here's a terrific video from the blogotheque takeaway show series:

#42.4 - Chris Garneau - We don't try
Uploaded by lablogotheque

on a totally unrelated note, did anyone else see the disaster otherwise known as Amy Winehouse in this clip from the Euro MTV music awards? [ADDENDUM: The clip i posted first ceased to work, so here's another with a corny intro. but it's the same performance.]

i don't know whether to cry, or laugh, or throw my computer against the wall in a fit of rage.  i mean, she's just so talented, and i'm afraid she's going to waste it all away.  look at her.  AMY: Get. Your. Shi*. TOGETHER.  Please.  if not for your sake, then for the sake of all the classic soul-revivalist lovers out there.  Please?

also, i don't remember quite how, but yesterday i ran across the myspace profile for this Brooklyn band called the Homophones.  And I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to think that a bandname like that or lyrics like "I wanna lick your popsicle" necessarily confirm that they play for my team, but... let me just say that i had a hard time finding many details about them, but they are officially on my radar.  expect more info to be relayed to you as it lands on my desk.  i like this song.

the Homophones - Everyone's Dead

on a non-musical note, here are some beautiful photos (i did not take them) from the amazing secret underground dinner party my dance group performed at over the weekend.  and more photos here.

that adorable boy-girl banjo-accordion duo were a real highlight, and apparently they perform under the name Fall Harbor, but i haven't been able to find any info about them so far.

that's all for now. bye.

>ben

those unison voices in your head

so, i've been meaning for a while to write a post about the use of double-tracked unison lead vocals.  which might sort of be like writing a post about "the use of the acoustic guitar", or "the use of piano", seeing as how it's not all THAT uncommon (though admittedly, less common than the acoustic guitar or the piano), but still.  when it's done well, the effect can be truly intense, lush and beautiful. 

not that i know a whole lot about the process, but it's basically when a singer records two takes of a melody and layers them on top of each other, so the slight differences in nuance or inflection add a real texture to the line. it's one of my favorite things, and three of my fave bands of late (all previously featured on listen.) have used it to great effect. it's best appreciated on headphones!

First of all, i refuse to stop inundating you all with the gorgeous music of Horse Feathers. [side note: i just discovered HF's daytrotter session, which included alternate takes of two of my favorite songs from the album, and two unreleased tracks. please go, listen, download, enjoy.]  Justin double-tracks his vocals a lot on the album, and this song is double-tracked throughout.  it's another of my faves from the album, and probably my favorite when we saw them live: at their most dynamic and intense.

horse feathers, falling through the roof

loney, dear is another recent discovery-then-obsession, and he does a lot of double-tracking. it's interesting on this song because the double-tracking comes in and out pretty subtly. i hear it first about 0:37 in on "i've been counting on it since ten".  then of course on "time, i had a chance, i had a chance..." it's pretty in-your-face. beautifully so. anyway:

loney, dear, the meter marks ok

and i'll try and spare you the redundancy of how much i generally love sleeping states (see here, here, and here) but this is my favorite song from the new album.  except i can't listen to it without feeling (more than) a tad melancholy.  it's all about the beginning of a new relationship, promising to take it slow:

i won't rush things, i'll be your friend first.
i'll take you out for lunch and i'll ask you those things i forget:
like, would you like to go for a walk? and,
would you like to take my hand?
and i'm asking you, please? come on, please? 

Of all these songs i'm posting today the double-tracking is probably most obvious on this one because Markland's voice is SO front-and-center in the mix, it's like he's singing inches from your ear. you can hear him open his mouth before he starts each line.  and then, on the second refrain of "please..." (which he hears back from the chap he's courting), the double-tracking multiplies and expands into full harmony. gorgeous. heartbreaking. genius.

sleeping states, the next step

i really can't do a post about double-tracked vocals without including the song that first introduced me to the concept, and which, as far as i'm concerned, is still one of the gold standards for the effect. i could go on and on about the beauty of this song (not to mention the entire album), but instead i'll just say that Jeff Mangum's precision in singing unison with himself is kind of mindblowing.  and the part at the end when the double-tracking (like in the sleeping states song above) expands into a multi-part harmony is amazing. one of my favorite songs of all time.

neutral milk hotel, king of carrot flowers part 1

>ben

Guest listen.er mateo with the BARBRABLOG you've been waiting for!!

Hello, listeners, guest poster Mateo here.  Today at the listen blog, we have the post that you have all been begging for.  We've read your comments, poured through the thousands of emails, and decided it was finally time to give you what you want:

 

THE BARBRA STREISAND POST

 

Today we'll be picking a few favorites from throughout Barbra's career.  From old standards to funky 70's covers, this post runs the gamut.  But what do they all have in common?  The voice of a beautiful, Jewish angel.

 

Happy Days are Here Again
Starts out sad, ends up angry, this song is a beautiful paradox.

 

Come to the Supermarket (In Old Peking)
Without a doubt, the most dramatic song you'll ever hear about grocery shopping.

 

Time and Love
If your dentist has taste, he'll be playing this in his waiting room.  A masterpiece of Easy Listening.

 

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered
She.  Was.  Born.  To.  Sing.  This.  Song.

.....
Addendum: i'd actually never heard this solo version of Happy Days, but if it's not QUITE gay enough for you, here's Barbra singing it as a medley-duet with Get Happy sung by Judy Garland.  Delicious. >ben
Judy and Barbra - Get Happy/Happy Days are Here Again
.....

more live music!

okay, so it's been kind of a live music binge here at listen. lately.  as you know, we saw sleeping states and horse feathers (twice) last week.  in case you missed it, here are some photos:

sleeping states at mercury lounge, 10.08. how cute is markland?

horse feathers at knitting factory, 10.09.

horse feathers at silent barn, 10.10.

anyway, all of these shows were totally awesome, and i'm not going to shame you for not being there, but i will say you missed out.

but there's going to be ANOTHER totally awesome show this tuesday night at the living room. and i think it's free!

at 11:30 (late for a school night, i know) Jennifer O'Connor is playing.  Now, when i was just a young buck, fresh off the train from Idaho, I spent a lot of time at the metropolitan, which for those of you who don't know (who are you?), is a gay bar in williamsburg. (that sentence sort of makes it sound like i don't still spend a lot of time at the metropolitan, which may or may not be the case.)  well, i quickly made friends with my favorite bartender, this awesome chick named Jennifer. we talked a lot, i bitched to her about stupid guys that broke my heart, etc etc. Well, i knew she played music, and then the next thing I know she gets signed to Matador and is like this hot-shi* indie folk rocker. so that's kind of awesome, and she's totally awesome, and her music is totally awesome. so listen up:

Jennifer O'Connor - Sister
this is a really sad, honest, kind of deceptively upbeat song about losing her sister. 

i know a lot of people are haters on the indigo girls these days, and frankly i haven't heard like their last 3 records, but i used to be obsessed with them (there. i said it.), and in some of Jennifer's stuff I hear shades of earlier Amy Ray in top form.  like this next one!

Jennifer O'Conner - Exeter, Rhode Island

and one of the earlier performances tomorrow night is Hotel Lights, which incidentally is the ex-drummer for Ben Folds Five.  I'd never heard of Hotel Lights, but i checked it out and it's really great, so I'm excited to see him.

Hotel Lights - Small Town Shit

(there's more to listen to on his website, i highly recommend listening to you come and i go.)

in subway ad news, i really wanted to share with you all my own personal favorite ad these days which is the new manhattan mini storage ad featuring a painfully attractive mostly naked man that either cheers me up or makes me angry, depending on my mood, but i cannot for the life of me find a digital image of it to post.  so the next time someone sees it, can they take a photo with their phone for me? thanks.

>ben

sing you sinners!

hey hey kiddos!
have you all heard about erin mckeown? 
after you read this post and listen -- you will have heard. (i LOVE the future perfect!)
how did we find out about her?

well.... several months ago my friend dan s. gave me a copy of PASTE magazine
paste comes with a cd of all these tracks of various artists (i think it is an emusic tie in... no?)
anyway! the one track was:

melody, erin mckeown.

and i dug it. emailed it to ben.  times passes....

a week or two ago ben emails me some more erin mckeown.
i dig it even more.

if you a viper, erin mckeon

(i love it when people sing about smokin grass!)

he tells me to go to emusic and buy her new album LAFAYETTE.
(which is a live recording of her Joe's Pub show. get it? Lafayette? yeah, it took me a few minutes)

anyway - i am sharing a few tracks and encouraging all to go to emusic and get SING YOU SINNERS or LAFAYETTE or any of the other albums.  it's folksy - country - type music with a little love for the american songbook/songs popular during the vaudville era.  her voice is great - quiet at first - then she kicks it into gear with a full sound.   i like troubadours, and she reminds me of one.

from lafayette

slung-lo

blackbirds

(this isn't bye bye blackbird. so chill out)

how cute is she????

----------------
also. yesterday was coming out day! did you shame your closeted friends?

just kidding! did you call your fancy little cousin/nephew that loves unicorns and/or your niece that is most likely a lesbian just to tell them you love them?  here is what bush's new abstinence campaign says about a kid coming out....
good to know money is being put to that as opposed to an HPV vaccine for all teenage girls or education that would actually do some good.  here's what the hater had to say.

-----
AWARD TIME
and awards for worst movie tag line goes to......

BEE MOVIE with HONEY JUST GOT FUNNY!
(applause)


i mean. what the fuck are you talking about?
if there is one thing i have been waiting for it's honey to finally get funny.
is this movie about honey FINALLY loosening up? like some sort of along came polly but with a pot of honey instead of ben stiller? or is it about a bee falling in love with renee z?
either way: i'm not seeing it AND someone was, most likely paid a lot of $$$ for that sentence. sigh.

other tag lines they should have used:
bees say the darndest things!

don't worry about all those bees dying. as you can see here they are alive and CRAZY!

pretend we're pixar.

------

and the award for THE STUPIDEST AND  MOST ANNOYING AD CAMPAIGN CURRENTLY CLOGGING OUR SUBWAY (the SAMACCCOG pronounced SAM-a-kog or THE SAMMY for folks in the biz)

goes to our favorite waste of paper/resources: PAGE 6!
with their six = sex campaign.

so hard to find images of all 300 CLEVER CLEVER CLEVER variations....BUT my personal faves are:

Feeling SIXy?
SIX Therapy
and
Put More SIX in your sunday

DAMMIT! WE GET IT! you swith out the i for an e and it is the word sex. are you 8?
does saying the word SEX make you giggle?

i picture waking up on a sunday morning...thinking...damn, i sure do feel SIXy...i wonder what i could...
BAM! all the sudden my brain flashes image after image of the horrible ad campaign and i am running down the street to the deli to buy my very own NY POST (i don't have to buy the magazine becomes it comes FREE with the paper.  which is like saying the Metro section comes free with the NY TIMES. i still have to buy the fucker to get it....so....it isn't...free...the price just isn't changing...)

-------

and finally:

did you all hear about 88 yr old Doris Lessing and the Nobel Prize for Lit?

the press pounced on her when as she was getting out of a cab with her groceries asking her about winning - she hadn't even heard. HA! it's a funny clip.

that website calls her a bitch -- but i don't think she was that nasty. she's just an old lady.

i LOVE it when she says: "Look, I've won every award in europe - every bloody one - so this is..delightful."

-------
if you made it this far:

onion radio news is funny!

have a good weekend!
geo

live! music! tonight! in brooklyn! awesome!

so, yeah, as geo mentioned we've been on a live music blitz so far this week, and it's been totally awesome.

monday night we saw sleeping states, who i've seriously been waiting for ages to see, at mercury lounge. and he's so good!  and kind of surprisingly experimental. he did a lot of crazy guitar business, tapping the strings and pressing odd contraptions against them to make all kinds of discord. and, incredibly, he even did that dionne cover i'm obsessed with:

and a pretty song called london fields:

and then last night, horse feathers really kind of blew us away. and i know i might be biased because the frontman Justin Ringle is a friend from high school and we had the same summer job during college processing frozen peas at twin city foods in lewiston, idaho, but seriously, it was one of the best live shows i've seen in a long time. a really intimate space (at knitting factory tap bar) and they were just really on. Aside from Justin on lead vocals and guitar, Heather Broderick was on cello, celeste and backing vocals, Sam Cooper on banjo and backing vocals, and Nathan Crockett on violin and saw. all the arrangements i thought were really terrific, faithful to the album (Words Are Dead) but fleshed out and adapted beautifully and simply.

here's them playing Dustbowl.

And get this: they're playing tonight out at this loft in Ridgewood called Silent Barn (off the Halsey L-stop) with Karl Blau, another Northwesterner.  I like this song of his.

Karl Blau - My Johnny

I'll be there tonight.  Who wants to come?

>ben

WE LASTED A MONTH! and: sleeping states won't stop breaking my heart.

some of them didn't believe. some of them scoffed. some of them said "we'll see how long this lasts." well, thirty-one days later, we're still here, and you're still listening! we hope. so thanks for sticking around.

some quick interesting stats, for you statisticians out there:
we've gotten just over 1000 non-unique visits (non-unique meaning a good third of that is probably due to me hitting refresh to make sure the formatting is right).
we've posted 21 times, which averages to exactly one post per business day.
we've shared 69 songs (many but not all of which were indeed love songs).
and we've even been the brunt of ONE strange, unprovoked insult before our friends rushed to our defense and the detractor retracted.

we also just tweaked some of the listening options, so please see the "so many ways to listen." instructions to your right.

hooray!!

now.  some of you know i'm sort of obsessed with Markland Starkie aka "sleeping states", and not just because he's adorable, gay and british. though that may or may not count for something. i mean, look at him with those balloons and that cable-knit cardigan sweater vest and that bowtie and tell me you don't want him to kiss you on the cheek.

but really, something about his quiet, vulnerable music just kind of destroys me. he sounds like what i imagine london to be, having never been there: gray, sort of rainy, strangely muted, and eternally inescapably melancholy. his croon is so honest and immediate, his lyrics always sad and lovely, all against a backdrop of these shimmery, rainy, subtly dissonant atmospheric guitars. it's a little too much for me to handle sometimes. and knowing he's singing these beautiful sad love songs about another *dude* really drives them home for me.

ANYWAY. he just came out with a new album, which i've basically been waiting on for months. and it's a totally heartbreaking album all the way through, right from track 1, "Rain Check", which just repeats the refrain:

.....

when i'm getting ready, in spite of the rain

you sometimes ring me up (/let me down) and say, another time.

.....

but it's a capella, and each time it repeats he layers another harmony on top, until he's singing with himself in 5-part harmony. it's gorgeous.

Sleeping States - Rain Check

and then there's this quiet one, which starts with: "watching your mouth in the evening, as the sun's going down." if i had a nickel for everytime someone told *me* that!  <sigh>  <sob>

Sleeping States - The Sleeping States, or Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat?

and just for fun, here's the lovely video for the album's single (i guess), "Rivers", which might be my favorite track from the album.

NOW. he's coming to NYC and playing at Mercury Lounge on Oct. 8.  geoffrey and i are going.  who's coming with?

one more older track of his just for good measure, since he's soon making a trip to NYC...

Sleeping States - A Trip to NYC

keep an eye out for another post soon all about multi-tracked vocals (the other mtv), which will feature yet another new sleeping states song.

xo >ben

on the thinly, thinly veiled water-based sexual metaphors of labelle

when labelle (the trio comprised of Patti Labelle before she went solo, Nona Hendryx who wrote most of the songs, and Sarah Dash) released their best album, NIGHTBIRDS, in 1974, everyone freaked out about the single, Lady Marmalade. which is a really really good song. but no one ever talks about the album's last track, You Turn Me On.  And a quick google search for the lyrics reveal... nothing. except that someone has made an effort to make the lyrics unavailable.  perhaps because it's a little bit DIRTY. in a wonderful way.

it starts out with some brief and subtle rain imagery, then saunters slowly (they make us wait a full two and a half minutes) toward that oh-so-sultry, pent-up chorus: "I come like the pouring rain, each time you call my name.  It's good whatcha doin', whatcha doin'..."

Now I know coming "like the pouring rain" is technically a simile and not a metaphor, but i might also argue that in "i come like the pouring rain", the c-word, as in "i arrive/show up" is standing in metaphorically for a different usage of the same word. or maybe she's just being that up-front and literal. it's hard to say.

in any case, that gutteral thing patti starts doing at 4:00 is out of control.

LaBelle - You Turn Me On

then they upped it a few notches on their last album before going their separate ways, Chameleon, in '76. you kind of just need to hear it to believe it, but the name of the song is "Going Down Makes Me Shiver", and it's all about "going down" to her man's "river," and how it makes her, well, shiver. and yes, at 1:20, she does say "I forget about all my lost years, when I am kneeling."  I mean, Nona! tone it down!  (don't. please don't.)

LaBelle - Going Down Makes Me Shiver

Sometimes i wonder if Nona is a gay man trapped in a soulful black woman's body.

And then I wonder if I am a soulful black woman trapped in a gay man's body.

Just in case you need your palate cleansed after all this smut, this rather chaste one is from their collaboration with Laura Nyro.

Laura Nyro and LaBelle - I Met Him on a Sunday

>b