Hammer No More The Fingers – “Radiation” From the stalwart Durham, NC indie-rockers’ full-length, Looking For Bruce, released earlier this year on Churchkey Records.

There are rumblings of significant layoffs at Spin. Today must seem like a double-whammy to anyone who subscribed to both Spin and Vibe.

Sonic Youth
Dan Grzeca, 2009

Bruce Davidson

Dead Elephant Bicycle - “I Will Always Be” The candles of my feet ache and singe the sore trunks of my legs. The path of my day glows like a translucent yellow band that I only need to follow. I can see it head first to the sink, I must need a glass of water. Then to the bathroom, must be a shower. Then back to the room, get dressed obviously, then out the door and down the front stairs. Mostly normal stuff the path leads to; post office, bank, pharmacy (right, I need paper towels). All day I follow perfectly the path, I can turn off my mind, I can think about other things, what a pleasure this path is, what a convenient turn of fortune. Until I find myself biking very far from my house, way to the north and very unfamiliar surroundings. My legs, now blackened with acid aches, bike on, following only the path. Maybe I need to meet someone way up here, or maybe I'm going to get my passport renewed, or maybe I'm supposed to take pictures in an industrial neighbourhood. And then the path twists under and up the other side of an underpass, and heads straight onto the highway. I pause. I don't have a car, and the path just stretches on as far as I can see, amongst the whizzing traffic of the highway. I follow the path. At the time I wondered why I was doing it. Now I know: I had no other objectives left. Nothing more important to do.

Dead Elephant Bicycle - “Drunken Child” I followed the path for 8 days. After the first day on my bike, I realized I should be hitchhiking. It was amazing and poetic that even the people that were driving me would follow the path, every lane change, every pit stop, every drop off point, they followed it perfectly. Though I was afraid to actually mention it to them. I thought I would only say something if they deviated, but none of them did. One night I could see a strange pattern in the path in the distance, and as we approached it and slowed down, I realized that would be me having sex. I was more embarrassed that the path was 'watching' me have sex, I didn't enjoy it. The next day, she drove me into town, and it was sunny and hot and we got ice cream and walked on the dirt road. Then the path lead to a man selling glasses, and I tried on a pair of yellow tinted lenses. And everything looked yellow I couldn't tell the path from anything else. It disappeared. It felt terrible, horrible, and also totally liberating, like having your legs cut off and replaced with a pair of wings. I spent an hour or so debating the choice, I told the girl I was with all about it and she laughed and said the choice was obvious. I don't wear the glasses anymore, obviously, but sometimes I wonder if I'll run across the path again, and whether I'd be drawn to it.

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Cold Cave – “Life Magazine”* From the forthcoming Love Comes Close, out 7/14 on the band’s Heartworm Press imprint.

(*FADER Exclusive MP3 via Stereogum.)

Vibe magazine: Done.