“Golden” - Sister Suvi, “Now I Am Champion” (2009)
It turns out that Merrill Garbus aka Tune-Yards also plays in a band, called Sister Suvi. I love her solo stuff and I love this too. Note that they have one of those oh-so-hip pay-what-you-want album downloads (at the album link above) for if you like this.
The thing that strikes me the most about “Golden” is how many things it reminds me of as I listen to it. Just thinking back on it, different parts of the song put me in mind of Led Zeppelin, The Velvet Underground, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Police, and Ozzy Osbourne. At that level, a song doesn’t sound derivative of any of those influences, but just washes over you in good memories and associations. To my ears, Led Zeppelin is definitely the strongest touchstone for this song—not necessarily through any particular sonic feature (except a clear but very brief resonance of Stairway to Heaven at 3:05). I’m not quite sure what it is, but maybe the slow building and changing of the song’s energy, churning meditatively around the single simple guitar chord progression, maybe the very good balance between the various instruments and the vocals. Led Zeppelin was my favorite band for many years and I still think very highly of them, so I mean all of this as very high praise.
After I heard this song, I Googled Sister Suvi and found out they are opening for Thao Nguyen and The Get Down Stay Down at the Bowery Ballroom on May 14th. I also love Thao and had already been intending to go to that show before I heard Sister Suvi, so I promptly bought my tickets today. Very excited.
Incidentally, I found this song on the blog Said The Gramophone. It’s part of the MBV family of blogs, which are among the only music blogs I read consistently, but it’s the only one of them I don’t really read. If you read it for a little while you will quickly get a feel for how eccentric the writing style is. It’s always turned me off a little, though when I’ve been able to bring myself to the music anyway, it’s often been good (I also discovered Tune-Yards through StG). But even if the taste in music is good, the author just doesn’t communicate well with me.
