Do You Remember the Moment You Got into Sonic Youth?

I was in tenth grade and saw them play "Unmade Bed" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The only exposure I'd had to Sonic Youth prior this performance was their video for "Teen Age Riot" on MuchMusic's late-night alternative show The Wedge. I dug "Teen Age Riot," but it was Sonic Youth's ability to so seamlessly infuse a song as dreamy and melodic as "Unmade Bed" with such destructive blasts of sustained noise and then bring everything back down to that same dreamy state in which they started that drew me into the band:

Do You Remember Where You Were the First Time You Heard Guided by Voices?

I was sixteen-years-old, sitting in my living room watching Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I'd heard of the alternative lo-fi legends long before I saw what became their final television appearance. With that one performance, a fan was born. Their album Alien Lanes (Matador, 1995) remains one of my top twenty-five albums of all time:

Constantines - "National Hum"

This song (and Shine A Light, the album it's from) always makes me think of cold walks to and home from campus in Autumn. It makes me think of university in general too, even though I think I was only super into Constantines in second and third year:

Sunny-Day Music: Apostle of Hustle and Arcade Fire Edition

These two songs always remind me of driving to the Cape George Lighthouse on a sunny day back in Antigonish:

Sunny-Day Music/Those Memories: AIR Edition

With colder mornings and cooler nights lately, summer seems to be winding down, though there's no shortage of sun or afternoon-to evening heat. Thus, I continue to share sunny-day music.

This edition of "Sunny-Day Music" features the song "Ce Matin Là" by French electronic pop duo AIR. I've been a fan of AIR since they released their debut album Moon Safari (which contains "Ce Matin Là") in 1998. Okay, so I only knew their singles "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly Watch the Stars" back then, but I have vivid memories of watching the videos for both songs on MuchMusic when I was ten-years-old and loving them every time they came on.



Fast forward to 2011, long after I'd read Jeffrey Eugenides' much-acclaimed debut novel The Virgin Suicides (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993) and watched Sophia Coppola's 1999 film adaptation several times each. I can no longer listen to "Ce Matin Là" without imagining the scene in which the neighbourhood boys are reading the diary of deceased thirteen-year-old Cecilia Lisbon, the youngest of the five Lisbon sisters. Cecilia narrates the entry which is brought to life in a fantastical montage of her sisters (including Lux Lisbon, played by a seventeen-year-old Kirsten Dunst) dancing, playing and sitting in a field and amongst flowers, swinging on a swing and twirling sparklers with everything basked in a soothing sepia. Everything about the scene is perfect, from the delicate cross-fades to the selective slow-motion, down to the way the camera catches the light. All the while, "Ce Matin Là" playfully shimmers, creating an ethereal ambience.

Listening to "Ce Matin Là" always gives me the same feeling as watching this scene: utter peace - escape through daydreaming. There’s nothing like listening to "Ce Matin Là" while sitting on the balcony, laying on the beach or going for a walk and just letting the song take me away.

Here's the complete scene:

Sunny-Day Music/Those Memories: Yo La Tengo Edition

I'm starting a new feature called "Those Memories" (named after the Brian Jonestown Massacre song of the same name which you can listen to here), and the first edition is this very post, mashed up with my Yo La Tengo edition of "Sunny-Day Music." "Those Memories" will basically be posts in which I reminisce about specific songs, artists and albums. Pretty straightforward.

My favourite sunny-day Yo La Tengo songs were all made for pool-side/beach lounging. Yo La Tengo has always been an incredibly versatile band (from noisy, droney alt-rock on 1993's Painful to near-pure pop on 2006's I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass to scuzzy garage-rock with their alter ego band Condo Fucks on 2009's Fuckbook), but one thing I've always felt Yo La Tengo has been able to pull off particularly well is capture a very drifting, aquatic feeling, and I'm not merely referring to their instrumental soundtrack to the 2001 underwater documentary the Sounds of the Sounds of Science. Hear for yourself:



"Little Eyes" is my favourite summer song of all time. Every year, I can't wait for summer to start so I can listen to "Little Eyes" the way, to me, it is meant to be listened to. It's the most perfect chill, soak-in-the-sun-with-your-eyes-closed kind of song. My favourite memory of listening to "Little Eyes" was at Cribbons Beach back home in Nova Scotia last summer. I was laying on a flat rock that was pretty much just big enough for me to lay on while the merciless sun beat down on me. The rock was shaped like a spoon insofar as it narrowly stemmed a couple of meters from the coast towards the ocean so that looking around me, I felt as if I was afloat in the middle of the ocean.



"Return To Hot Chicken" gives me almost the exact same feeling as "Little Eyes," except I feel even more afloat when I listen to "Hot Chicken" due to its pure ambience. I usually listen to "Return To Hot Chicken" as a segue into "Little Eyes."

In addition to "Little Eyes" and "Return To Hot Chicken," Yo La Tengo has less ambient but still kind of watery/aquatic songs that are more acoustic and more lyric-oriented to lounge to too: