So, the staff at TMT were just chilling out, tapping away on the Floating Platform, our HQ graciously given to us by Mission of Burma a year or two ago. We had been searching for the Lost City of Columbia for the past few months to find a new power source. This is because, after the loss of Jeph Jacques’ ability to tell actual jokes and/or punchlines, finding enough snark to power the engines to keep the ship afloat in the clouds has been a difficult task, even with our combined sauciness. You may note this in some of our articles. While punching out stuff and wondering what corrupted Amanda Palmer, the New Release Klaxon went off, Priority Two (Priority One is dedicated to DJ Rashad, Julia Holter, The KLF, and The Music Tapes only). Apparently, Chan Marshall a.k.a. Cat Power has a new album, Sun on the way, due September 4 on Matador. I was given the task to tap out a piece.
For about 10 minutes, I thought about what angle to take, tossing up between discussing the last performance I saw her (MFA, Boston, 2006), or the really bizarre point-blank question a roommate once asked me about Chan’s popularity among lesbians. Just when I came to a decision, I hear a sudden cry of “Land ho!” To which Caroline Rayner responded, “We’re in the frickin’ sky! Did we crash again?” Yet there it was, an island in the sky, filled with lovely flora and fauna. And waterfalls.
While ruminating about, preparing some form of bridge or dock to land on the island, I decided to listen to the new track associated with Sun, “Ruin.” It’s very… Cat Powery, with a twinge of loops. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It really depends on how you feel about Cat Power, who built her own studio in Malibu for this album. I was about to take a second listen, when somebody (who I later found out to be Nobodaddy) screamed “UNICORNS!” Everybody rushed out to meet the mythical beasts, which for some reason I couldn’t see. We would spend the rest of the day on the island, halting our work and enjoying some shore leave. I witnessed our writers floating around, but no unicorns. We even secured a new temporary power source that may aid in our search for something more permanent (John Crowell explained it was the horn of a dead elder unicorn, which was platinum. I just nodded and walked away).
This morning, I was looking at my ancient word processing device, and realized I forgot about the article. This is the result. Of course, I should mention that, while the shore leave was great, I couldn’t understand the deal with the unicorns. Later, I asked Ben Pearson, “Do you see them?”
“The ducks?”
“You always see the ducks,” I said. “I mean the unicorns.”
“Nope.”
“Neither do I, Ben. I wonder why.”
Sun tracklisting:
01.Cherokee
02. Sun
03. Ruin
04. 3,6,9
05. Always On My Own
06. Real Life
07. Human Being
08. Manhattan
09. Silent Machine
10. Nothin But Time
11. Peace and Love
• Cat Power: http://www.catpowermusic.com
• Matador: http://www.matadorrecords.com
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