Another song for the upcoming album project. This song is, to my ears, an unabashedly poppy love song. And that’s how I likes it!
I wrote it this summer in Russia, so it’s one of my more recent songs. We’ve been rehearsing it for the gig this Saturday, and - as with many other songs we’ve played together - I really enjoy seeing my music grow and change as I play it with others. It seems that letting something go improves it. A lesson there, probably. And Morgan improved this song greatly: from his harmony on the pop chorus to the counterpoint guitar work, I can no longer imagine my song without him on it.
Once this gig is done, I will get started on recording studio versions of this song and many others.
I think this is the kind of song you’re only supposed to listen to at night. It’s one of my absolute favorites. Anastassia and I are planning a studio cut, but I felt like posting it pretty much as we play it, raw. If you’re not already, I highly recommend getting familiar with the work of Leonid Fyodorov and the incredible Petersburg group Auktsion. This is our cover of “Esho Ne Pozdno”, which translates to “Not Yet Late”.
I guess I’m still not done raiding the archives for more good old stuff to throw on here. This song has a bit of history to it, actually, even if it’s not as old as some of the other stuff I’ve shared recently. I wrote it two years ago in a southern Russian winter, out in the country. I remember: strumming the guitar by candlelight, heavy blankets of white snow muffling the sounds, chopping wood and training the dog to carry logs with me to the furnace, sweating out my worries in the banya (that’s the Russian sauna, a fantastic place).
Most of the lyrics came from a kind of prayer or mantra that came to me in one of those mornings when you wake far earlier than your normal time. I was up, alert, and the world was dark. So I scribbled down the words and that was that.
The recording happened last year and was a journey in itself. At the time I was feeling pretty low, musically speaking. Not that I didn’t enjoy making music, but rather that I was unhappy with my limited abilities to record, much less share. All the stuff I was recording seemed terribly flat and uninteresting. I couldn’t imagine who would ever want to hear anything I made. At the same time, Nastja was asking me to play this song for her almost every day.
So eventually I worked up the courage and set out to record it, crossing my fingers that I wasn’t going to ruin a song I loved. But I needed help, so I drafted Nastja and KT the wonder monkey for backup vocals. It is hard to describe the joy of sitting in a living room with mics and headphones, laying down with absolute seriousness a vocal track that goes “Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo!” You should try it. It’s really hard to maintain a bad mood after that. (It also works with ‘na-na-na’ and, of course, ’sha-la-la’.)
This is another one from ye olde archives. The song evolved spontaneously, with my dear friend BKP, in 2003 or 2004. I had taken a Teach Yourself Navajo book from the library, and was sitting on the floor practicing basic vocabulary, and BKP started playing the guitar behind me. The chords just came out of him, and I started singing the words in time. We both knew we had hit on something, so I set up the mics and in fifteen minutes we had the guitar recorded.
I laid down the bass, then BKP did the drums (he was a great joy to play with, a tremendous drummer) on our little ghetto kit. We sang - and improvised - the vocals together, and then to polish it off I played a little Navajo flute for atmospheric authenticity. The whole session lasted the afternoon and was a huge amount of fun. The whole time that BKP lived with us was a very fertile period, where we spent the bulk of our days and nights playing, writing, recording, and experimenting. And this song is one of the best from those bygone days…
This is a great song written by Boris Grebenshikov, the genius behind Akvarium, one of Russia’s most influential and amazing groups. I think of Grebenshikov as occupying a cultural and musical space somewhere between Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and John Lennon. The more I listen to his music, the deeper and more wonderful it gets.
The song you’re about to hear is our cover version of Garcon Nomer Dva (which translates as “Boy Number Two”, a phrase as mysterious in English as it is in Russian). This cover is quite old, dating from 2005. It happened late one night in the fall when I was trying to work on a concept album and failing horribly. At the same time - literally in the background - Anastassia had figured out this song. Happily I gave up my own futile project and we set about recording her.
It was a lot of fun. We first laid down her guitar track, which she played on her gorgeous handmade czech acoustic. Then came the vocals with only one overdub, which happened when she got so overcome with emotion that she choked up and had to take a break (the words really are quite powerful). We wrapped up the evening with my putting down a bass and, of course, taking a couple solos. In all honesty I’m not sure how this really holds up next to Grebenshikov’s original, but at least we had a good time doing it.
