Saket Vora

Back on Thanksgiving day, I found an article exploring NPR listener’s best music picks of 2009 at the year’s halfway point. I recognized several names on the list and laughed a little, remarking to Michael, Karla, and Troy how we sorta fit right into the NPR demographic. They saw the list, and agreed. We made our way through the list while cooking that evening’s dishes, but later two songs remained lodged in my head: No Intention by the Dirty Projectors and Blood Bank by Bon Iver. I’ve found myself playing these two a lot these past few days as we’ve entered the last stretch towards winter closure. They certainly elicit different moods, but there is something to Dave Longstreth’s wandering voice and lyrics in No Intention and Justin Vernon’s striving vocals and vivid narrative in Blood Bank that I can’t get enough of.

Dirty Projectors – No Intention

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Bon Iver – Blood Bank

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Now, I can just see Jordan’s eyes roll at my very mention of Dirty Projectors — a band he’s been namedropping for months now — but I listened to the rest of Bitte Orca and didn’t find the others as memorable. Bon Iver is a band that I’ve been wanting to explore, and this seems like a good entry point.

No Intention

The renegade feeling satisfied
You blinked and closed your eyes
You like the feeling of Saturday
You love the danger in the night
The restless corpse is collapsed wind
The breath is daffodil
What not become what is lapsing
Into the universal fill
Or maybe just

No intention
Or maybe just
No intention

When I am full with endeavor
Nothing can stop gestalt
The freshness of my reality
Makes me feel tingly and hot
When you wake up shouting “Idea!”
Is that a punishment?
You represent saying, “I’m real,”
But is that what you meant
Maybe you meant

No intention
Maybe you meant
No intention

Blood Bank

Well I met you at the blood bank
We were looking at the bags
Wondering if any of the colors
Matched any of the names we knew on the tags
You said “see look, that’s yours!
Stacked on top with your brother’s
See how the resemble one another
Even in their plastic little covers”

And I said I know it well

That secret that you know
But don’t know how to tell
It f$@!s with your honor
And it teases your head
But you know that it’s good girl
’cause it’s running you with red

Then the snow started falling
We were stuck out in your car
You were rubbing both of my hands
Chewing on a candy bar

You said “ain’t this just like the present
To be showing up like this”
As the moon waned to crescent
We started to kiss

And I said I know it well

That secret that we know
That we don’t know how to tell
I’m in love with your honor
I’m in love with your cheeks
What’s that noise up the stairs, babe?
Is that Christmas morning creaks?

And I said I know it well
I know it well …