I'm Gonna Watch the Bluebird Fly Over My Shoulder. The world's greatest compilation ever. No? Ok, the best since Whirl Whels? The Glass Arcade? Tuatara? These are mostly unremarkable bands somehow coalescing and by providence assembling a tremendous record. James Rao as their synchronizer in chief. Oddity. Orange Cake Mix were rather prolific once upon a time. I was once prolific. First is Twin Atlas, from Philadelphia, a marvelous slice of casual beach pop. The beach shall be my "forced upon you dear reader" theme. I listened to this in the muggy Clearwater evenings. I walked along the beach, dreamt of being not alone, held my arms out to the notes of this music, a secret embrace, night dancing in my invisible embrace and slowly turned into a happy, unrepentant narcissist. A ukulele, a hawaiian(???) guitar and the most pleasantly insouciant vocal ever heard in Clearwater. This is Florida music, it is filled with ennui and bleakness but it's endowed with a hollowed out vagueness, tee shirt emotion. The emotional style throughout is decidedly consistent. I don't think there is much incestuous about the North of January scene so the homogeneity is a surprise. The next song is by the Knit Separates, this enticed me to buy their album. I picked it up for 2 dollars, it's mostly fantastic. They are part of some high minded scene in California, I think they disguise the fact that they can't play with an arrogance about free verse, open tunings, avant garde haircuts and living in a storage locker charm. it's graceful in its incompetencies. Was it No Antler? Antler was some part of the tag, Antler Collective, I forget, I never, in fact, attempted to digest even small bits of the rest of the scene. Third song now, twee things called the Smittens chirping about Momus. Before he had given his Japanese tour of London, post formalism expose. It's twee, sure, but in context to accompanying non-twee things it might be considered subversive, in the world of some of my mates it would be subversive. I invited a date over here to watch The Science of Sleep, she wanted to speak nothing of the movie and she laughed not once sounds came out but only of Jared Polis, his homosexuality, his IPO created wealth and his ambition. But she was through with politics. I am more interested in the theory of politics than the uglies involved. But that's me. Parker Posey reference, dated, she got old before she was old. How old is Parker Posey? I love the Smittens here, not so much anywhere else. Next song is out there man, cosmic floatation, West Coast Fifty Foot Hosed House Mothers. Not really, it's some bit of incidental psychedelic noisemaking, it's lovely actually. This entire comp has this slow motion psychedelia for autistic children feel, HR Puff'n'Stuff on Xanax. I had a dental implant inserted today. It was rather disconcerting to have an oral surgeon I've barely net tower over me with a hammer and chisel and hammer sharp implements into my skull. I prayed, hoping that I was not but one overenthusiastic swing of the hammer from having my frontal lobe impaled on sharp implements. He did not impale. later I went to the pharmacy to pick up some amoxicillin and discovered Harriet Wheeler working at the pharmacy counter. A very tall, young girl in a lab coat with a CU logo emblazoned over her left breast pocket, a nose piercing and decidedly ridiculous athletic shoes from Kohls on her feet. She looked to be the doppelganger of Harriet Wheeler, honestly. It could be the subject of a new Pas/Cal song on their road to rehabilitation, the Sundays, down on thier luck, with a dozen mouths to feed, working at a pharmacy. It could be marvelous. This song Dead Leaves of November by Orange Cake Mix is almost marvelous. Utterly lovely might qualify above for compliment sake, it is distortion laden, there is a tender voice but not a sychophantic or pleading voice, warm and relaxed. Charming patches of nostalgia on a miniature canvas. All good compilations should be like a gallery, wander about and spend a small amount of time in front of each, the furrowed brow, the step back, the feigned exasperation. It's all so choreographed, sometimes it is difficult to remember the steps and sometimes the steps alight in a row into a splendid valley. I'm not normally a big Rao booster, he has his fans, but he's terrific on this compilation, truly. Next bit, more of the barely amplified electric guitar, the rustic recording techniques and the primitive emotions with fierce imaginary captions underlining the artless words. When this was playing the ocean expanded, nighttime feeds the sea, the darkness blurs horizon edges, in the daytime the nearby focus is on people, odious unfit people and jetty's and monstrous vacation resorts consuming the shore. In the darkness it is the sounds, the smells, the tactile feeling of sand coarsening the soles of your feet that overwhelm. Next song, by Zenith 33, treacly guitar, wizardly sound effects, a meandering set of instructions to nothingness, it stays close, mimics the daytime scenes nearby, in a cloud protecting the heart. It's romantic. Who else to think it so I know not. I don't have another date anytime soon. I had a second date. I am not that interesting but I have never sit through an evening and never once had a question asked of me. Not one. It was odd. Oh wait, there was "Where is the bathroom?". Does Colin Clary experience such indignities? Do not the girls who populate the tiny rooms in tiny New England popfests throw their underwear onstage so that they get caught up on the bridge of his spectacles? He must wear spectacles, I have an image of Gary Busey playing Buddy Hooly, or possibly Marshall Crenshaw doing the same. Undefined musculature, a striped shirt, red tinted toughskins and Keds. Am I close? This a lovely song, mind. He's also in the Smittens. Other bands as well. I don't know the names of the other bands. Twin Atlas, more unmuscular sorts, but imagined frisbee golfers who have third dates and pull out the guitar and sing love songs from obscure compilations to ensure relations with their paramours. My guitar was leaning against the wall. I've been playing my guitar recently. I've strummed it aimlessly into garageband. To no end. But I could have made the bogus attempt, perhaps the feigned attempt would have been seduction enough to ensure a third date. I did not want a third date. I did not reach for the guitar. A first date with Harriet Wheeler is the goal, though the local version barely appears out of her teens. Perhaps the Harriet Wheeler from zip codes across the way, from Littleton or Lakewood or Lafayette. Have you heard the Twin Atlas records? Are they this pleasant an unassuming, I have listened to a few songs, actually, more rock band 101 than these summer pulp fiction hits. Here then a human whistle, my skin crawls not, success, David Scott should be enlisted as whistler on all pop records that require whistles. But then do pop records really ever require whistles? I like the name of the next band The Youth Souvenir. this compilation is from 2003. I have been delayed. I was writing about dozens of things that needed to be written of before I approached this with clarity of thought and determination. This is a bit Veronica Lake. I can now be more convincing in that declaration since I have just revlsited Veronica Lake only a few days ago. Michigan space twee. Very short songs. Another of the Knit Separates short songs has started up, they are the Clientele without the reverb, without the poetic ear, without the production values, but they share a similar portion of the great collective consciousness. I love this. Swords, Then Diamonds was their album. There is a long centerpiece of noise and tunelessness and then there are short poignant stabs of the politics of the heart. This is earnest and inspiring. Are they still up and about> Have they died? Have they been outsourced to developing world labor? No idea. Now to Orange Cake Mix, a bit of Nick Drake mixed with klezmer music, yiddish heartbreak never sounded this ache filled. Honestly, is this the greatest compilation ever in the history of the world? I ask again. Answer me. I call out in futility to the greater world of twee. When I was walking the beach there were dozens of others wearing headphones. I could have confronted them and demanded to know what they were listening to; but to what end other than a creepy satisfaction of my knowing that I was listening to the greatest compilation in the world ever and they were not. Even though, truth be told, this is not the greatest compilation in the world ever. More Smittens now, it's interesting how an entire album of this would seem tedious and trite but when it is accompanied by more austere, thoughtful, out there moments of emotional wreckage it comes off as a bright burst of oddly configured sunshine among the melancholic afterglow. I won't be picking up the new record. Sorry. I am looking at the title of the next one, trying to remember if it is a Brighter cover. I believe that it is. Smart bands cover Keris Howard songs. It is a cover, it has started, 47 cents worth of production values and a lifetime's supply of heart. Is there a more remarkable transformation in pop music than Keris Howard's metamorphosis from shy, nasal poet into soul shattering crooner? He has shattered souls, honest, they were laying strewn all along the Clearwarter shoreline, washed up from distant locations because remember nothing melancholic can survive in Florida. Paradise cannot suffuse the sadness of young men. Now some more OCM, a bit of Ric Menck and Paul Chastain-ness here, multi-tracked guitars seemingly out of phase, traced vocals, still very small, still elegant and charming. Is there a water theme to the record? Here he sings of the other elements, namely the air, the breeze, very short, excellent. Now The Hi-Fi Envelope. I like that band name as well. All of the songs are similar, odd for a compilation, if it was just one band in the credits it would seem believable. Is that a squeezebox or accordion? I don't know. It's guitars, and soft focus, colored pencils instead of water colors. A bounty of tenderness. Has this label released other compilations? The Single Tear now, with some indie rock nasal, boy/girl, really excellent things in their hands, these kids are sweet, sounds like it could have escaped from One Last Kiss. It's a bit Elephant 6 second string, the Gerbils, Beulah, etc..I enjoy the fact that the vocals are right up front and the music sounds like it was recorded in the closet down the hall. It is another miniature, it's the "Judgement of Paris" gone indie, or not. It's energetic and a blast. It isn't Swedish. It could represent the last gasp of the western world before the nordic domination of a century of pop music. More OCM, some more exacting work on the guitar, three or four in concert, nice voices, trifles about clowns and disorientation, vague and uninteresting but it sounds wonderful. Perhaps instead of being the greatest compilation in the world ever it is merely the most charming compilation ever. There isn't an unpleasant note to be found anywhere. Another by The Hi-Fi Envelope, must have been late entries, victims of priority mail. They would seem uncomfortable on the beach, maybe in a ski chalet, bundled in scarves and culottes and scarlet noses. It's an instrumental and a voice sample from somewhere that my friend Kate has surely visited but not I. I live only in the books of ill tempered genius'. Did you watch the Solvay conference video that I nicked? Serious groupie pangs going on in my heart by witnessing that, Paul Dirac is a dream no? And Ehrenfest, the saddest figure, he killed himself just 6 years later. Tragic. Last song here then an elegy for Ehrenfest in the form of a psychedelic dream paean to horticulture. Zellum Quang versus Star Screwer for greatest compilation closer of all time? Have either been heard from ever again, I hope not, they appeared as if willed to existence by Casimir burning briefly and then fading from existence only to reappear in an instant on the other side of the universe.

Most others, agree, it is a masterpiece.

Tompaulin Into the Black. Named after an anti-Semite poet, yes, one who plays with the net down. A Harvest Minister, strangely enough, wannabe, check. An amazing female singer who bizarrely must share vocal with said wannabe, check. This was their second album. It's astonishing. I am going back to moments of pleasant surprise after the distaste of disappointment has begun to subside. Banjo. Country Music. Will Belle and Sebastian ever do a proper country record? They did Wrong Girl but that was one from the "others". It does not count. All brilliant bands must make a country record. BMX Bandits made one. This burns slowly from the start, all desperate intentions for intense smouldering and then very slowly the intensity is increased, by more banjo, prominent feedback, and utter patience in rainstorms, torment, travail, uneasiness. Her vocals are resolutely poised yet the words do tremble on their own. It's a winter album. It's an album for long journeys into the mists of exhalations, fighting the moon for solace, turning the hidden lattice of the crystal night air to cheek strewn roses and numbness of the heart. This was written for a friend who had died of cancer. I believe. Too young, but with friends, with love, with a light to battle against the oncoming darkness. It's so insistent at the moment, "on your skin, on your skin, on your skin, on your skin", it's a masterpiece. Really. You wouldn't have thought that Tompaulin had it in them would you have but they did. You certainly don't see any spark of "it" in the Fischers. Oddities being such as they are. Second song, This Desire. I am writing this in anticipation of the airport. I am waiting to fly to Florida. I am not a Florida person, I am certain of this, but I long to be near the Ocean again. It's a maudlin period. I have been dating" the last few weeks. I have spent too long in a maudlin pose, too long time have I been pining for someone who doesn't think of me at all. It seemed as if the comfort of unrequitted love could fill the emptiness of my heart with the bleak stillness with hopeful delusions. This is a marvelous song, it's heart burning soulful. There was no prior warning of this. They made a record with Jim Reid, it was nonsense accompanied with vocal flares about their raucousness and riots and fire. It was tepid, at best. Now to Promised Land, it's smart and knowing. Lovely. As tender and heart rendering as this is it does still fall short of a 'my soul laid bare' moment. Are there any such records? Aren't all musicians and poets and artists performers or poseurs at heart? I don't feel the agony of depression in the performances here, as delicate and warm as they may be. Would that be something that is comfortable to listen to? I am not sure, I have never encountered it. When Bob Wratten is writing his odes to the life of a stalker it's as creepy as it is romantic. Harvest Minister almost was on his first lead vocal, it's not so bad. He does a marvelous The Boy Hairdresser. Is it a slab of Americana? Why, I have nothing but envy for the traditions of the English. They have forsaken these as Evelyn Waugh says "ripped out the nourishing taproot". It does have the echoes of the sea in many of these spaces and notes, the landscape is not barren and devoid in their conscience but lush and with undergrowth to capture restless souls out in thier literate pursuits. I imagine the singer is well read though rarely is it reflected thus in his lyrics. I imagine too that he is all things political as well, probably longing for the reinstatement of Clause 4, with a seething sense of betrayal by New Labour, disillusioned over the Liberal Democrats and cynical over the greens or someone even more extreme. This brand of ache is slightly overdone, her voice is more naturally melancholic, he has to groan at it. Next song, it is tremendously gorgeous, so so truly, even his bits. It's more of a restrained whisper in this case, also topped up with the knowledge that it is a duet and his tedium is measured by equal opportunity. Tom Paulin is Irish. She rises from a pedestal of wisdom somhow accumulated in her emotional register. He might feel it in his pen, girded by his bits of rejection, but somehow her voice weeps elegantly while he bangs on in a bit of a whimper like berries in escape from a jar on the refrigerator shelf feeling no sense of duty to the preserves or silverware. Useless has a bit of a calculator rhythm as the elements seem scripted, well thought out and placed inside a story board with preset accompaniment chosen by consultants on taste and emotion. I have calculator rhythms animating my spirit, a delirious affinity for numbers and the breakdown of human emotion into logical numerary, in permanent assessment of sadness as epitomized by a menu from the economist. Tom Paulin advocates murder "with the net down". 3 in the Morning, double tracked vocals, his'n'hers, charming. The art of melancholia is in the documentation of how people deal with tragedy, turning it catholic, it is not always the performance. Your heartache is not on par with the heartache worthy of a tribute. Should you capture the essence of heart sickness, renderings of a forced smile through the agonizingly bewildering ecstasy found in shame, this intoxicating enchantment of misery then legend awaits, the canon. Deception becomes key, walking amongst the living wondering if it will resurface stolen from shadows of apparitions. Look in the inverted sky architecture, from an airplane there is a reverse topography where even the alien extremes of the Northern Flinders transformed into the prosaic by mountains birthed from the sky. Brave, alone, in the evening, on a powdered sugar beach, the popular designation. No distant rigs on the horizon, geology has let me down when I search for the hamnet players of the world's roils and rows. Powdered sugar cannot sate the engorgement. On my journey from the airport in my surrealistic haze, in my re-enactment of Alasdair Maclean's sense journals I ran across someone making the argument that WWII was essentially superfluous. He was backed up in this opinion by Patrick J. Buchanan. Solid footing. Driving is a lost art, the smooth acceleration, the measured reduction in speed when barriers present themselves, these are all vanished from our uncivil society. I mourn their loss. And yet the Hitler Youth shuttle was not even efficient as Germans are wont to pretend. There's A Name It Hurts to Say, kate Bush, the later years, maturity, maddenings subsided. The smell of the sea was a curious reminder. The smell of everywhere is to be catalogued in the future, a weblog, the nostalgia induced from a wafting of friends and geology, botany and microbiology. I shook hands with a giant with small hands and a Beatles haircut. His hair turned metallic from a distance, an undocumented fetal alcohol syndrome consequence and then there were Mao suits, stirring midnight thunderstorms over the sea, and brave helicopter rescues amidst the margaritas and powdered sugar. Jesus and Mary Chain duet, does not require a sleepwalking Reid brother, not really, but he was duly praised by the usual sorts. Does anything of timorous melancholy arise in Florida? it seems an unlikely origination point for anything thoughtful and sincere. The veneer scratched away reveals nothing more than powdered sugar. Perhaps. There was Larry Bonk and his Plastic Mastery. Along with giants with short hands came young, fair maidens with one leg shorter than the other. An examination of patellas and discussion of lifts and spine alignment was engendered and led to high level discussions about femur stretching and tendon length. I found it marvelous. When the Night Comes Like a Thief, authentically country, morose, beautiful. A jarring rebuke to the startling homogeneity in my shared airport terminals, all ethnicities bleed into one species evolved specially as species to haul the same luggage, be adorned with the same attire, adopt the same posture, accessorize with the same adhesions; cell phones, tattoos, ball caps and an affinity for dawdling. Most disheartening discovery is that I am an easy part of that horde, my investments in Turkey aside, the Tompaulin in my ears not withstanding, the insecurities within my psyche taken for granted.

A Smile and a Ribbon The Boy I Wish I Never Met. Title track starts first, a bit like Aislers Set Alicia's Song. Slow, dreamy, echoey, drifty, girly, her voice is a bit more helium infused than that Linton fella. But then it springs to life, it's like Cub or Tiger Trap or Eggplant or any of those bands like that. Poppy, more than it is punky, there is barely a hint of snarl in those chords, hardly any at all, it's cuteness and an intravenous injection of caffeine at the most. Red Bull rock. They would belong in the same coterie of groups that would include the Brunettes, Pipas, etc...male/female duos with more ideas than space to fit them on the hard drive. Nice tinkles on the glockenspiel? It must be a glockenspiel, it is always a glockenspiel these days. It is the new melodica. Second song now, short song, a bit like the Diskettes, whirlwind and acoustic and an effortless sway to and fro. It's Swedish. Every other record released these days is from Sweden. Why is this? I don't know. Currently I am reading about guayale and Sonoran brittlebrush which each drop poisonous leave so to prevent competition from other plants in their resource pool, clever trees. Fascinating and of the joys of Jasmonic acid. Maybe when we have all died from hysteria the oats shall take over the world and the history of the planet will then be told to starry messengers from the most distant galaxies by chemical messenger molecules with longer half-lifes left behind in the root balls of social grasses and legumes. Third song, dreamy, cute and whereas I had said that Irene weren't really twee I can't say the same for A Smile and a Ribbon though I would agree that they are witty and charming and they have that awkward smarminess that seems requisite in these less than innocent times. It just sounds so darn precious, even their smut seems polished and a joy to behold. I don't have the free seven inch single that came with the cd, though it wasn't really free. One day business majors will start indiepop labels. Next song, it sounds very early 90s indiepop, from within these songs you can see the insides of the world of the Receptionists, the Lotus Eaters, Names for Pebbles, etc...it's semi-marvelous. Now with a cacophony of sounds yelps, guitars, poorly tuned horns, backing crowds for backing vocals, dramatic posturing and the sound of the galvanizing of a movement or something. Cheers. Next song, A Nice Walk in the Park, a casual strum, it sounds like a song for strolling. This is folky, sounds like an after school special going on in the lyrics, some guy named Dan, she doesn't want to see him or something, I can't quite make out the last name. Is it a famous Dan? I don't know. Perhaps a professional inline skater or something. It's frightfully warm here, it is meant to be over 100 degrees fahrenheit. It was hotter 3 years ago. i don't remember that. Weather is the only thing I am able to forget. It hasn't rained for months and I am feeling parched, I need the rain to soften the furrow lines in my forehead and the rain to wash away the stink of the dust devils and Russian Olive stumps. This song is a vague exercise in the avant garde, they probably had a course at university on Alice Coltrane. Right. One of them writes a website. it is a website that is much more famous than this one, though most are. I have started advertising this site because I am unstable and wish to have my meltdowns more widely displayed. But I have been advertising to people who don't really care at all about the things I write about. Next song, A Little Late to be Polite, lots of dynamics on this even as it is mainly tiny and untroublesome. Lovely bits now of synthesized magic, a fairy tale interlude, back to he pseudo-griminess of their unjagged guitars and sugary vocals, big finish. Excellent. Next song, already, Bobby Pin. Sounds like a thrift shop guitar. I bought my guitar in a thrift shop. It looked brand new when I bought it. it still looks pretty new, I was never an enthusiastic ripper. THis one is nice. Lots of electronics, some europop aping vocals, it's mechanic, it is not as cool as say Stereo Total but clearly they are fans. Francois Cactus could send them a copy of one of her books so they could learn to swing. They don't swing. Do people in Sweden swing? Even a raucous little unit such as Love is All seem bashful and polite while wailing and wizbanging on the guitars and the skronky saxophones. it could be that Al Gore is her hero and he's sitting on her. Maybe they will turn into my new hopes for 2008, Love is All saviours of the universe. Pas/Cal's album is really really bad. It isn't a mere disappointment. I promised, though, I did, to never speak of it, it's hard to keep my thoughts between my ears and away from my paralyzed fingertips. Next song borrows from the Angels My Boyfriend's Back, we don't mind, it's a bit clever. The drums sound like they are inside of trash bins, sounds as if there is a piano soaked in brine and hand claps made by old drum machines, excellent. It sounds dilapidated and wheezy but has an elegant and charming veneer. Baby's Breath, record crackle, sounds like the Motifs. It is a love song in case the 97 times she mentions "love" in the first verse didn't clue you in. It's a bit Talulah Gosh, a bit Beatnik Boy-esque. It all comes back to Talulah Gosh in the end. I can still remember Lois Maffeo's on site report to Calvin Johnson on the inside of the reissue CD. She didn't like Elizabeth Price. Made me like Elizabeth Price more since Lois was a laff mostly. Well those Courtney Love singles were pretty nice, if only for the Highlights covers, then the lawsuits, the real name, the Sassy photo spreads and feathered hair and a generation's loss of innocence when the second Verve album was released. It's an imaginary world that I have constructed. The last song is titled Outro, I am betting that it is an instrumental farewell. Still with the record crackle, some twinkles on a toy xylophone or something. Not that interesting, to be honest.

Still Corners sent me a nice email. Of course I've since deleted their entry along with everything else I had written this year in a fit. Whoops. I changed my name too only because I find the story of Victor Noir fascinating.

Make Mine Music Flow (Compilation). Diversity is not the key word to employ when describing Make Mine Music. Even though ostensibly they have traditional "guitar" acts and non-traditional "electronic" acts commingling on the same label they all work towards the same goal. It's a less than purposeful drift towards artful vagueness. All of the personalities seem interchangeable, bedroom dwellers with their samplers, guitars and genderless affectations. First track is by Schengen. It's a looping riff with some twinkles sprinkled in among the repetition. It could have come of of a Avrocar record (when's that new one come out by the way? I am keen to hear it, depserate perhaps, I need something to look forward to as the Camera Obscura record is surely months and months away even though it is allegedly complete), or a July Skies record or a Portal record, or an Epic45 record. I think they play on each other's records. it's some sort of collectivist suicide pact where they share all costs and proceeds equally. It's a quaint idea, it seems to be working so far but their impact is minimal at this point. July Skies clearly commands the most attention and this perhaps is due only to his penchant for portraying the rustic nostalgia of the youth of those charged with revieweing his records and well he's fabulous, there is that too. This one is unchanging, it's warm and inviting, a nice start to the recod, the sample itself ingratiates while the twinkles swirl about leavening the heart. Second track is by Epic45. This is before they started releasing records every few weeks. It's mainly guitar. Before they incorporated more electronics. It's a brilliant song. Multi-tracked guitars, sounds like a Portal song actually. Until the vocals come, then it sounds like a slavish testimonial in devotion to Bark Psychosis. But what better band to ape than Bark Psychosis? None. And not the godawful Codename:Dustplucker version, no no, the Independency version. Woo! Vocals are multi-tracked and on the fringe, I am not sure if we are meant to pay attention, it's more effect, it works splendidly. They were inspired to start a band by listening to July Skies, I think, I could be wrong, I seem to recall they wrote him a letter and he helped them out when they started. That might be a bit of misremembering. Antony Harding still appears on their records. He must help pick the lovely photographs that always adorn their record sleeves. He's Make Mine minister of the department of nostalgia, surely. This is absolutely lovely, simple and montotonous but dreamy and romantic all the same. False ending, building back up to something slight, or not, banging on a five gallon pail and louder guitars and more insistent vocals. This is my favorite Epic45 song ever. I think. Unfortunately they are one of those bands whose songs are so boundary less and identifier free that I couldn't hear a song and match it with its title for the life of me. No reason to be concerned about that, it is the same way with July skies, well except for Berkwell but that's only because I start almost every mix cd with that song. I am predictable. it is the repeating riff here that charms, it's a slow relentless march towards something. Over. Simply marvelous. Next track is by Avrocar. This is Cinematography, allegedly Radiohead were highly influenced by Avrocar when they made the most important record in the world ever, the wizard's cap, the cat's pajamas, Kid A. I can understand the adulation and how on this song, a sinister hum, some fractured electronics beneath and in stark contrast to the Head a shy, non-mumbling vocal, a whisper, chant-like. It's a bit like the other two songs we've discussed so far. A pretty concept is trundled about and they don't veer far from the center line, this one is sinister, that is its purpose, no need to muddle minds by introducing change or human emotion. It's fantastic mind, who needs emotion, I am thoroughly enjoying the unbending moroseness. This record came with a postcard. I seem to recall that. Other Make Mine releases have come with bits of asphalt from old RAF airfields. I don't have a slice myself. I think I received another postcard, if I recall correctly. Next track is up, one of the more forward sounding bands Innerise. If this was 1998. It's a bit trip hop. Sinister is the word, vague again. But this time with a soulful female vocal, it's excellent. Press closely to your cheek and there is a bit Liz Frazier working with Massive Attack in this. They are from Bristol, surely in another life they would have been on Planet Records. They share some things in common with Movietone and Third Eye Foundation, they could pass for the offspring of both of those bands, should they have married and reproduced. There are random moans and wails, very nice, again the music is a locked runout groove, most of the change comes from the voice. I have never found myself all that interested in Innerise, this song is making me question my judgement. Make Mine albums are all nice but I've yet to have been captivated by one. Well July Skies of course and that Portal Waves and Echoes thing is really quite good as well but everything else is mostly only pleasant. Next song, next band, Portal Arion 2. I think Portal person is the person who started Make Mine Music. He released a lot of music as Portal. The alleged way forward is that he plans on releasing no more under that name. Has he released anything under his new non-Portal name? Who knows. I could look at the website. This one is a nice bit of ambient fedback and a groove. Just like all of the other songs. perhaps it is a ruse, all of these band names, could be that it is all one person behind each project, only the singers shall change. There isn't much in the way of dynamics here. It's repetition, it's loveliness, it's prettiness. Portal has a singer on their other records, she's really very good, it took me a few songs to get acquainted because she is often presented in stark contrast to the music with her upfront style and the music's inhrent bashfulness. I wonder how long it takes him to record something like this, once he has the delicate sound does it take long to marshall the other resources, the drum machine programmed to mimic a preset. Pretty. Now to July Skies. I already know that I love this song, because I love July Skies and it is on his best release-the Where the Days Do compilation that he released a few years ago. That record is the most wonderful thing ever. Especially in the dark, in the rain, in the undergrowth beneath the place where everyone dwells. He sings, it approximates a shy boy's take on Ian Masters, there are ringing plucked guitars in different directions and there are epiphanies and shadows and melancholy spread across the listening spectrum. There is something about July Skies music that just touches my heart like nothing else. I wonder what he will come up with now that July Skies is over. What will I come up with now that July Skies is over? His new direction is meant to be more electronic. I hope it's a continuation of the dour landscapes he;s featured in this line of work just with a different palette. We will see. Yellow6 next, another of the really prolific bands. I would say he's a lot like Portal but I would probably offend both of them with that statement, there are surely subtle differences but I am not fan enough to appreciate the gradations of tearfulness on display. This is lovely lovely stuff. A folky plucked guitar, some pleasant romantic hum underneath , a few guitars, echoes, an encroaching uneasiness, a nearness from the atmosphere that envelops the whole thing a slowly the resonant noise takes hold of the song and the guitars become less prominent. Marvelous. I should get out my Yellow6 cd. I am not sure I've ever listened to it. I must be missing out on some heartfelt melancholia for certain. Make Mine Music is a brilliant silliness. Is that a strange compliment? Over, so softly done. Next back to Avrocar, more of the sinister low end rumbling and fractured electronics, I heard samples from the new album, more of the same. That's comforting, nourishing, reassuring. It's a victory when things ar approachable, when there isn't this barier put up between listener and creator because motivation is a secret. Clearly MMM artists are all working within the same confines and to the same ends, it's a nuanced approach to loveliness. It is an interesting sensation that is conferred when listening to this, it is reminiscent of the way the semi-arid landscape here shrinks with the heat. On a clear, cold day the horizon stretches out past the imagination but with the encroaching heat and suffocating power of the sun it feels as if the distant sun has moved just beyond the outstretched hand and it is oppressive. Avrocar recreate that feeling. It's stimulating. Now to Epic45, once more, a gently does it strum of a song, it reminds a bit of My Autumn Empire but then as I've never heard anything other than a snippet of My Autumn Empire clearly I have demarcated myself as a liar. Apologies. It's so comforting and warm. I can picture the entire gang getting together in a pub and playing scrabble while listening to Loren Mazzacane Conners on a tiny tiny little boombox in the corner that is powered by 8 C-cell batteries and is in the shape of an Aston Martin. Next up is Inerise, whereas earlier they entered a track with a singer this then is an instrumental. All of the music here is very of the four basic elements, earth, fire, air and water. This seems to be a proportional mixture of water and air. It flows(a propo, given the title) into crevices and corners and consciences with marvelous grace. Again, I bet I could at least claim the ability to record something like this, it isn't wizardry, one wouldn't hear this and with mouth agape ponder over the complexities of its creation like say the evoluiton of the human eye though Dan-Erik Nilsson has proven it's rather simple to make an eye. Why is his name hyphenated? That's the more interesting logical dilemma. Ben Stein did that Intelligent Design movie, so bizarre, there is absolutely no proof of a designer and how intelligent is a designer that has allowed me to lose all feeling in the fingertip of my left midle finger just because I slammed it in a car door. I close my eyes and pretend I have alien hand syndrome and my left middle finger fingertip is living a much more exicitng life than the rest of me because it is free of the constraints of my personal inhibitions. The song is no treatise on evolution or anything at all, it sounds like something they made for their friends and their friends think it is pretty cool. Next is july Skies. He took a long time to make an album but hey it wasn't a resulting heartbreaking work of folly. It was what he always does, only a bit louder, a bit more fleshed out, a bit more like Jonas Munk, really. Jonas Munk has stopped releasing records every other week. Why is this? When will the Jonas and Ulrich show be released? Ulrich Schnauss was here recently. A long way from Germany. Last when I was in Germany I met an Ulrich and asked him if anyone in his family had been a member of the Nazi party. I didn't win many friends that evening. I was curious. Just the same as when I was in Dallas earlier this year and I spoke to someone for hours on beekeeping. July Skies song over, an incidental bit of nostalgia, of the sorts that seep slowly from his pores. Next song is from Portal. With the awkwardly upright singer, it's an elegant posture she sings in but with the languorous tide of the music in the background it's like two diverging paths loosely tethered are the starkness of her human emotion and the ambience of the spheres ebbing and flowing underneath. I keep mentioning the flow. I don't mean to. This is slow motion melancholy, a dream in half-speed, at the speed of the past. Yellow6 now. Quarantine. I love their quaint use of technology, almost as if they have discovered artifacts while visiting the past via yard sales and thrift stores. The drum machine here is this rudimentary beacon from 1973 from the BBC radio workshop and over top is this sprawling universe of loveliness. Splayed across all directions of the compass so that it sems aimless and wonderful all at once. It's noise sculpted into something delicate, chipped away the rot of precision and merciful notes until they have ended up with fingers pushing vibrations back and forth across an empty room with Paul Theroux's pen duelling with VS Naipaul's narcissism. I need a mentor. I should take applications. Where I work I sometimes feel on an island because I am privy to information that is not available to those just beneath me but then I am not intimately involved in high level decision making and so each morning anew there still presents a surprise or three and I enjoy those moments more than the dread of knowing what hangs ovr some people who seem blissfully unaware. But then I live detached, with few close relationships with anyone, alone with my caustic blend of peculiarness and pedantry. This compilation could be my soundtrack. One day I will write an entry using only the words that appeared in my personality profile. It's shockingly accurate. I went on a date on Thursday. I had a lovely time. I just asked hundreds of questions of my date and hardly spoke of myself at all. I am not sure I am truly interested in dating. I have this vague notion of someone appearing to me as if plucked from a dream, arriving ready for marriage and ideally suited for me and my oddities. Is that strange? Exploring someone's hidden depths seems daunting. I would rather just have them read these thoughts and recognize the innate genius that I possess, that is indecipherable most times, but that is genuine and honest and worth a leap. Next song now, back to Schengen, they bother less with the guitars. It's about motion at the city's edges, it seems slightly less pastoral and fey, well no, it is absolutely fey and fairy. It just has some instruments of progress that seem more of these days than of a romanticised era. No words. I think there are a few sung songs on the Schengen album. That album is quite nice really. I've always intended on purchasing everything that is still available from Make Mine Music but I've never gotten around to it. Perhaps now that Sterling is taking a hit I can reassess my earlier motivation. Or, perhaps Shoegazeralive.blogspot.com will take an interest in all things Make Mine Music and make my life that much easier. He's posting Pale Saints demos now! Glorious! Another site posted the entirety of the Veronica Lake discography, cheers, Tim Sendra, he's a god. I met him a few times because of my secret connection to Madison Electric. You won't see me filed in any of their official biographies but I was the secret link between them and Drive-In Records. Yes, you're welcome. Next song now, Northern Lakes End of Resolution sounds like a band rather than a one man or two man project. Reminiscent of say ColdHarbourStores. Whatever happened to them? They made that fabulous record with Graham Sutton and then disappeared, maybe they were caught in the gravity of Rocket Girl's plunge into the void. This number is a bit of a drag, not a whole lot happening, a Codeine-esque drum beat, three or four notes on an acoustic guitar and some sighs and breaths of contentment mixed equally into mundanity. I think this was their introductory release, perhaps a trial balloon, more lead than mylar. I have a lot of entries written I just need to edit them for typos. I have been writing less and less here because I have another website where I am writing short stories for a poetry reading night. I don't write poetry but they don't discriminate against me based on that, moreso on my ludicrous performance art pretentiousness where I played Mum's There Are A Number of Small Things while I read a story about a young man who places pheromones, harvested from the deodorant of his secret crush, in liquid fertilizer that he is applying to the lawn professionally in hopes that he will have an amorous interest in him but there is a chemical reaction deep within the turf an the bacteria have mad escapades and the byproduct of all of their mitosis and gaiety causes an allergic reaction and she dies. Everyone dies, at least recently. I wrote a story about a young lady, myself posing as a young lady, who lives her life according to the slightly altered libretto of Even As We Speak's Feral Pop Frenzy and she dies one day just as the spell is broken and she falls in love with the object of her affection. Death is a small price for heaven could always be my chosen last line but it has already been taken. Last one, Weyland a sort of pop art collage of hawaiian samples and vocal snippets, over.

Godzuki Trail of the Lonesome Pine. Why isn't Dion making records any more? O is he? We saw him open for Mark Robinson long ago, maybe 1999, my date fell in love with him. He was looking pretty smart. He was the one who kept the Godzukis in line apparently, the one who made them dress sharp and worked on their dance choreography and cheer routines though limited as it may have been. they were shrunk down to size mainly due to the constraints of playing places like Zoots. Pollen USA. A lot of the songs on the first album have lyrics about insects. Right? I don't feel like digging through and finding the lyric sheet but I seem to recall a lot of the songs were entomological in nature. They were all science students. I think. There was a detroit band called Four Fabulous Scientists, I saw them live once, they may have played a show with Godzuki, who knows, I think it was Four Fabulous Scientists, Comet (some dreadful Texas band with really large amplifiers and blood as thick as mercury) and some other band. it may have been the Apples in Stereo. Was it Godzuki, I can't really remember or imagine that Godzuki was the headline act when I saw them. Were they ever? I don't remember. They wore red ties, red stars on their pressed shirts with starched collars. They swapped instruments rather a lot, it always turned interesting when Erika would sit down to sing, like Jesus or Obama. This was the exploratory record, the one where they dipped their collective toe into the green seas of many different musical styles so song number one is a bit of Stereolab on milk tainted with valium. Now, already, we are to song two and it's a bit more shouty, more aggressive, similar texture to the first one, they sounded like they were recording underwater. The ending electronic flurry presages the second album. Third song now, Sunday Man, a bit indiepop this, the slow motion Northeastern brand. Erika Hoffman was doing a lot of singing around this time on His Name is Alive records and Godzuki and she was probably dead exhausted. Mostly her voice and a riff, then another riff, some percussion fills in gaps until the big finish comes. Is this the better Godzuki album? I don't know, it starts off a bit slow but it gets really interesting, the other one is more monochromatic, it's synthpop for breakfast, lunch and dinner. While at Zoots once I met a girl who said her ideal mate was Alex Lifeson and her heart was peripatetic while they were in hibernation but all the same she was breathless and excited because she had just found a used cassette copy of2112. She spent the entire evening taking photographs of the Push Kings and telling everyone within earshot about Alex's best qualities. It was fantastic actually. I was a bit of a Rush fiend when I was a kid. People my age were required to own a copy of Moving Pictures on cassette, it probably had to come from the Columbia tape club where you ordered 18 cassettes for a penny and then always forgot to check the box to tell them not to send the selection of the month which was usually Giuffria or Chris Rea and so you had to make sure not to be tempted to open such nonsense and mail it back. These cassettes were of dismal quality, sounded like third generation copies someone had made on their audiovox amplifier and there was the very real threat of your cassette player eating your copy of Fastway's first album. Fourth song now, some angular Sonic Youth-y rock, sorta, Warren Defever had a big influence on the band at this time. So it was eclectic. It was in keeping with the Time Stereo ethic. Time Stereo recently held a press conference to elucidate their platform supporting the rights of wolfmen. It's clever happenings. I wonder if the electric bear and the electric giraffe attended in support of the cause? My friend desires a move to Detroit to witness the Time Stereo spectacle in person, she's likeable enough that they would probably invite her into the fold while the closest I came was as part of an anonymous group heckling Kurt Ralske when he played Detroit in his Led Zep phase. Gleason Rocket is a bit squealie and supercharged(Detroit bands require more automotive metaphors than this surely), her voice isn't as deadpan or sweet, it's roughened slightly to reflect the tension of the times. It was 1996, a dark age when The Rules held the spot currently occupied by Eat, Pray, Love, when Angela Chase was being ignored by everyone, Dunblane, Mad Cow, jacque Chirac blowing up the South Pacific. But the Cardigans were on the radio every ten minutes! Orange, Red, Bright Blue, a lovely little pop song, along the lines of Sunday Man, the instrument swapping might have led to the diversity on display. I saw them later, they opened for the Magnetic Fields, in a bowling alley, I was wearing a shirt with a "K" taped to the front so my friend could recognize me from across the room. The Magnetic Fields played about 40 songs. It was magnificent. Oh wait, was it the Magnetic Fields or was it Seely? Seely was the band that killed Too Pure, their Adventure Babies. Some will claim that Too Pure has been reborn somewhat recently but have you actually listened to that Future of the Left record? So horrible. She has a muadlin tone here, resigned, but it is in keeping with the character of the moments cataloged and it is very nice. Now an instrumental interlude, music boxes and backwards tapes of voices and other epehemera. Ready to burst into the storming??? Old Number 7, slinky bass, drums, then some power chords to propel us somewhere sublime, sorta, her voice is distorto queen of the distortion and the whole thing is a bit messy, glamourously so. it's a relentless bit of noisenikerry and one of the boys starts to sing. Is it Crispy? Was his name Crispy? He did a solo side project later. It was called Teach Me Tiger, it was alright, I always longed for a Dion solo record. Has he done one? He used to play the electric giraffe or bear or something and would sometimes find his way to Noise Camp as well. This is a skronky bit of tension. It doesn't really frighten or drill into your soul, it's still kinda mannered and rather polite, things might have been different if they had majored in gender studies instead of Biology. Hmmm...over. Poinsettia, another brilliant power pop song, with her distant spacey vocals, I think this may be the one concerning insects and arachnids. They were suburban kids, from Macomb county; this was my old hood. There are three main counties in the Dtroit area; Wayne(the craphole), Oakland(the rich folks hole) and Macomb(wasp-land). It was tracts and tracts of strip malls and faceless subdivisions, one near me was delineated from the rest because all of the streets were named after popular brands of smokes. Viceroy St, Marlboro Ct, Pall Mall Dr. Charming. I lived on Weber St. it is still there, as of 2005, but my elementary school has been torn down. It was old even when I attended. My friend once tried to break into the library and steal the collected series of Great Brain books and the one copy of Super Fudge but his co-conspirator fell through the roof and it turned into a huge scandal and the next week when school was back in session the blood was still on the ceiling tiles, quite improbably. My friend turned into a city commisoner later in his life, he's probably kissing higher class babies now with canadians. Next song is Tractor Driver a breezy synth led number that I love dearly. Loads of guitars, dryness, her uncaring voice, just terrific. And short. After this one we get into the experimental side of the band and it's an interesting view of the band but this must have been the song to serve as the template for the second album with its short, peppy synthpop numbers. This came out on March records. I wonder if Skippy paid. Apparently he didn't pay anyone. Third hand rumours. Don't sue me. You have more copies of that 800 Cherries cd left on your shelf than I have readers Mr. Skip. Tractor Driver is over and now to Auto-Haze which is old school skronky rock, a bit Further mixed with the Go-Gos with a bit of the B-52s slinking in as well. I loved to hear this one live because it moves to a pointed skewered beat and then usually they blew up into something bigger. Detroit in the 90s was booming. Everyone on earth was buying an F-150 or a Chevy Truck because Bob Seger told them to. It was fat city. Oakland County was the second richest county in America. Of course, things are slightly different now. Everyone is leaving. It should serve as a fertile ground for music but it seems so far not so much. The discontent and malaise mean that it could be similar to Manchester in the late 70s but the White Stripes are hardly Joy Division are they? 12x now, this is Go-Gos-ish at the beginning then it turns into an awesome maelstrom of noise and prettiness about halfway through. It reappeared on a split single with Outrageous Cherry some time later. Even Matthew Smith was having it large during the 90s, it was that gluttonous. Matthew Smith is like the Mundy of Detroit. I always thought that "Cloud Mine" song was pretty cool but other than that man Outrageous Chery were lame. Static-y guitars, machine gun drums, intercepted radio transmissions, it's a bit Joy Division really, wrong decade, maybe an Atrocity Exhibition for the kids. Over. Piano, bass, monotonic vocals, Do the Sputnik, more of the spindly guitar, the repetitive bass. I think the second album was definitely better, but at the time I defended this album over the rocketship cd, passionately. I was a homer. I think the Rocketship album is miles better these days but then I don't live in the Detroit area any longer. Dustin Reske could make a record with Dion. It might be fantastic or he might spend all of his money on a new bong. A bit of the Cure and Siouxsie in this. Time Stereo's record store Record Collector is or was a dreadful store. The only thing I ever picked up there was the cassettes for Esp.Summer and Pail Saint. Last song now, Canary a little more cirsumspect and ambient, they had a short drummer, they had a small drum kit, her voice is hollowed out a bit on here. It's like a cruise on belle isle, you look to the south and see Windsor, a ghost town until they opened a casino, well except for the weekends when all of the American kids were over in Canada getting drunk on ice beer and then the urban legends about them sticking thir heads out the windows and yelling 'the Windsor ballet rules!' and them then getting decapitated by the pillars that lined the entry of the tunnel under the Detroit river. Denver's legends remain out of my reach. I never made it to the Windsor ballet and I've never been to a strip club here. I should broaden my horizons. Have you watched the Anthony Burgess video above, god what a crazy look, I have been wearing hideous ties a lot but that hair! It's madness!!! Godzuki, we miss you!

Irene Long Gone Since Last Summer. The second Irene album. They had previously alleged that they had recorded a summer trilogy of summery pop albums but it appears they were being less than truthful but then they now allege they are in the midst of recording their third album. Well done. Acid House Kings will also have an album out this year. Has it been five years since the last? i thought that always it was five years between Acid House Kings records. Irene are slightly influenced by Acid House Kings as then are most Swedish pop bands of this generation but they are also deeply reminiscent of the Magnetic Fields. I wrote as much in my review of their debut record but I erased that long ago, the ephemera of uncontroversial opinions. There is a youthful vigour to Irene; we are then left asking was Stephin Merrit ever carefree and fresh. Unlikely. More probably he escaped from the womb, cigarette ensconced and rank attitude in tact. He's an old soul, archaeological. First song has started and it is By Your Side, an epic, by their normal measures. There was a video for this, it featured two people who were not in the band but it didn't matter because it's a glorious romp, an anthem for teen love, empty headed and frivolous, perfect in execution. Long goodbyes have arrived now, horns, tremendous excitement- "I wanna thaaaaaaaaaaaaaannkk you cause you light up my life". Again with the lifting of famous lyrics. Is there a scene of bands officially recognized for this practice? In Sweden, now, there seems to be a scene comprised of the jangly contingent and of the dance duo metrosexual contingent, at the moment both use this new age of plagiarism to their advantage, and it is a splendid time to be alive. And yes then there are the Maryonettes who represent the dreadful contingent. I am always so rude about them, my apologies Mr Maryonette, it is just that I don't care much or like them actually. Sorry. Second song. I love Irene! End of the Line, he sings of boyish things and yet the disconnect comes from his withered voice. It is romantic and yet partially estranged from the vitality of his subject matter. I've not seen a photo, well I have, there are seven of them on the cover, who can be sure which is the man? I am not familiar. There is a comforting softness to his voice, a voice of authority, a deep and resonating tone. Over. Third Song. Looking for Love. There was some agreement that this was not as grand as the debut. Wrong. It's not as grand as the debut. Huh? it's still petty grand. They are companion pieces more than anything and the songs surely date from the sam eras, plebiscites on adolescent dreams sent out for public perusal and career quenching aspirations taking second place to a life of social networking and pop culture idealism. I read a review of The Dumbest Generation and felt heartened at my abnormality among my peers. I sometimes make the distinction between my generation and the current but honestly the youth obsession that afflicts so many generations since the Baby boom makes it more and more difficult to distinctly classify generations any longer. Nearly, everyone I work with is buying or planning on buying a motorcycle. Desperately they are clinging to a faded symbol of virility. I drive a box on wheels. I am not a febrile wannabe. Better, in my own thoughts, to take steroids and have a follicle transplant. Next song, a short, small number, a piano, a few hand claps, tinny drums, horns, but all in tiny measures, it's remarkably well recorded for something that sounds so warm and inviting. Is it all down to his voice? But then how does the music also turn so rustic. Next song Out of Tune, all of the songs are very short, it's a mad rush of adolescent entertainment. I am old old old but we codgers still can appreciate the well crafted celebration of youth without succumbing to it's blindnesses. Steven Millhauser looks as if he's weathered a dozen decades but his essence is in the vitality of a young man's stride and purpose. He really is brilliant. I love him so and perhaps when Irene singer is as ancient as Steven Millhauser he will still carry the torch of eternal spring. Irene could write a song about Edwin Mullhouse dancing in heaven with Teresa Wright and it would be brilliant, charming, effervescent and surreal. A bit like the Clientele perhaps. Lyrics have turned profound 'I Loooooooooooooooooooove You, Baby I love you'. There are no possible arguments available to refute such genius. Over. Little Lovin' A mid tempo strummer, as if it has escaped from a Kissing Book record, before the plague years of jazz ages and pretensions. How old is he? He seems hopelessly smitten but I wouldn't classify it as a classical twee condition. There is a smartness, a studied pose, confidence and savoir faire. Is it a collective? A cult mired in a hippy love spiral? Are they accepting applications for membership. Do you need to live in Sweden? Must you possess cheer? Winterlude is, wait for it, an interlude, simple and unaffected, not sure we needed an interlude but it is harmless enough. It has just been announced that tailgating will not be permitted when Barack Obama gives his acceptance speech at the football stadium here. The Brie and Merlot crowd will be devastated. Will he hover out over the heads of the audience suspended by guy wires with pyrotechnics and Justin Timberlake dancing in the background? Will he give the address while seated as Jesus sat when delivering the Sermon on the Mount, he must, it confers authority and he seems to have that narcissistic air of inevitability already. We'll see. Will the secret service close down ESPN Zone on the 16th street mall because it is frequented by republicans? Back to Back, "feeble words and simple chords, is that all I'll ever be", he truly sounds desperate, lonely, it's an impressive performance. There once was a band which was started with the manifesto that creating a perfect 3 minute pop song was the most challenging thing in the world ever. Somehow along the line they lost that conviction or fell lifeless in defeat and indecision and now 5 minutes or more is required to say next to nothing at all and then the importation of whistle solos and rock music, egads. In less than 2 minutes Bobby from Irene has captured the devastation of heartbreak without even a diminished minor chord or zither solo anywhere in sight. Next song is more upbeat, it's fantastic, guitars, organs, his longing voice, the soft backing vocals to temper the disappointment of winter's encroach while he's losing the thing he desires most. He offers her summer in the midst of the long night, absolutely brilliant. I've never offered anyone even a small slice of Summer and he's granting her an option on all of August. Selfless. They are a perfect pop band. Next to the best song on the album. Always On My Mind, a duet. This winter I would run in Myrtle Beach until this song came on, I could run forever in Myrtle Beach. The unending gifts of a flat topography and oxygen are not to be underesteemed. "If you let me I'd like to be with you the rest of my days". Every song is a love song about love lost, won, hoped for, whatever. It doesn't sound trite or worn and it's yearning perfectly on key. Every band's sad weepy love ballad is their biggest hit, it's a catholic acceptance of the fact that what anyone really wants is to find someone to spend their life with forever. It isn't about sex, money or drugs but rather we are driven by the search for soft kisses, tender caresses and the smile upwards in the fading sunset, under a sodium lamp outside an Indian grocery store. Last song now, a lightly feathered lament, "when I say it's forever please believe me, if only for tonight". Is he earnest and sincere or a cynic. Does he read Johnny Welch's almost Gabriel Garcia Marquez ventriloquist poem and swoon over "to live in love with love" sentiments or did he instead vote for Umberto Eco as the world greatest thinker and shares but a laugh at our collective gullibility.

Sex Clark Five Strum And Drum. Alabama. Hotbed of indiepop. This is a reissue, from Ohio, I believe, or was it Indiana. They did an Electric Blood reissue some time later yet it was not as successful as was this masterpiece even with the presence of Robert Scott and his Andrew. 34 songs. All classics. The Men Who Don't Know Ice, it's rollicking and spiky and tuneful. They hadn't yet gotten too meta with the inscrutable Celtic influences on this record. It was the Beatles and the Replacements. It was better than both of them. Furious strums, as per the title. Apparently the name is a pun on Sturm und Drang, Goethe would be proud, it was the sort of cleverness that distinguished them in the hyper-competitive Huntsville indiepop scene. Who else would write a lament from the point of view of the Wermacht on their travails in the Russian winter. But that is coming later. Detention Girls, more buzzy pop, what must have been the reaction of people in Huntsville to this? Lynching? I kid because you know, Huntsville has the highest percentage of PHD's to the general population of any city on earth. It's true. Possibly. My brother lived there for a couple of years. I never visited, I have no first hand knowledge about the general level of intellect on display. My brother has only an MBA, he brought down the curve. Who knows if they've even heard of evolution. Third song Valerie, the first power pop number, double tracked vocals from James Butler and Rick Storey. This song reappears later, slightly altered, slightly improved. This album rushes past, if only Boyracer had this level of quality control they might have more than one listenable album. But then that is all Sex Clark Five have, though granted Battle of Sex Clark Five is almost there. Fourth song over, fifth song now, the experimentalism comes out. They were remarkably prescient in the causes that would come into vogue past their musicality sell-by date, here is a song about the girls of Somalia, they only just repeat the title over and over above a random drone but Somalia would later figure heavily in two presidencies and is currently one of the world's failed states and likely spot of future US interventions. I wonder what their educational and vocational background is. The German references are also flavoured with other Eastern European allusions including tales of the muslim conquest of Sarajevo and of course the most ludicrous celebrity cause of all the Liberation of Tibet. It would have been marvelous for them to discuss the war at the top of the world and the sellout of the cause by the American Government turning on the resistance in exchange for better Sino-US relations but we can't have everything can we. Can't Shake Loose, the sort of song that populates all of the distant corners of this record, intensely colourful and bright and cheerful. Modern Fix, a delightful love song, later there will be remarkable stories of loves that could have been and those that shone but briefly. We have often discussed the Verlaines as prime exhibit of the crimes of the ignorance of the record buying public but this is truly a lost treasure of western culture. This is sing song, harmony drenched glorious pop. Now then to accordions, a faux dramatic rendering of a lover's intent of a slowly dying love that will persist but whose luminosity weakens by the minute. So short. Who was there when this was current? It was issued on Subway records. But gasp it was American and from Alabama, surely the prejudiced eyes of indie kids from the 80s fomented its neglect. Apparently John Peel loved it. When they did their last record it basically showed up on John Peel's show and nowhere else, I ordered a copy from the band. It's pretty alright; it is better than Antedium at a minimum. While I'm Here another perfectly contained pop universe, barely over a minute in duration. References to Vladimir (Lenin?) and the Channel? Love worn sentiments and all that noise. If You See Her With Me Let Me Know, an odd title, I am unable to ascertain its meeting from the lyrics. Is it that he's smitten with someone who is all wrong for him and he's asking his friends to watch out for him in case he relapses falling helplessly into her clutches? Hard to guess. It's probably something more clever, perpetually will they be granted the benefit of the doubt. It is more caustic strums in the decoration of a wonderful pop song. I don't think that any of the songs stretch past 3 minutes and one half. In and out, more is said in that brief moment than in the entireties of some pop records which may make more legitimate claims of ponderousness. Now Alai, a rhythmic chant and drone, a Kyrgyzstan reference? It is possible. I wonder what their world travels consisted of. Maybe they were voracious consumers of National Geographics. When I was a child there was a large stack of National Geographic magazines in our basement, in the main, of course it was anthropological pornography for a young boy but you also learned about the Alai Mountains, well, presumably, you could. Next up is 51-L, a mention of the Pantheon in guise of a love song, I was in front of the Pantheon almost 10 years ago to this day. At the time I was unaware of the jumbled history of the place as secular vs. religious iconography. I knew Voltaire was buried there, I wanted to bask in his essence but I went to the Baskin Robbins just down the street instead and allowed a young french ice cream specialist to test his English out on me. Faith, surely as cosmopolitan as Sex Clark Five are they are atheists, but then they grew up among the Bible Belt prominences and this seems to be a matter of a secular distinction of faith, his faith is in her "green eyes" the memory of which he will carry with him always for fortification. Another of the power pop masterpieces. Perhaps one day the clowns at All Tomorrow's Parties will have Sex Clark Five reunite for a one night only performance of this album. In Kyrgyzstan! I would travel to the ends of the Earth for such an event, even though they are certainly old, probably fat and reassuringly cynical. A short keyboard, motorik instrumental now, Kid Raja, always with the orientalism fascination. I am reading The Muslim Discovery fo Europe at the moment and it is fascinating to come to grips with how little interaction to two great foes of the age; Islam and Christendom had with each other. It was a case of suspicion, slightly, but each seemed to regard the other as essentially subhuman and on an express train to hell. It is a strangely written book. Next is Streamers, another love song, even in Huntsville the girls one loves are always either prepossessed or rather unpossessable, it's the universal state of nature. Very short. Almost halfway through the 34 songs. Here is the song concerning Sarajevo's history, is it concerning the Turks or Tvrtko or the Hapsburg conquest, actually it's about about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and all of the above. There is a museum dedicated to Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo. I worked with a Bosnian who was very proud of Gavrilo. He didn't seem to know anything about the role of the order of the black hand and the Serbian conspiracy in the assassination, just the yoke of nationalist passions against the Hapsburgs that still seem to animate so many in the region. Whatever. He no longer works for us and I am not sure he was ever relieved of his European bred prejudice against me the unknowing American disguised as a covert Canadian. Window to the Works, one that sounds like it was recorded in the basement, as it was, most of the rest of it has remarkable fidelity considering the realities on the ground. Shot stabs on the guitar, trebly vocals, marvelous. Its difficult to keep up with all of the goodness on display. She Collides With Me introduces itself with an echoing, ringing, opening then segues into more of the buzz-saw pop we are already bowled over with. Carl Newman is an alleged fan. If only Carl would reform Zumpano. I had an email argument with someone over the New Pornographers once, it was ridiculous, it seems that it is a crime in some countries to not be a fan. This song just rings and rings and all the while speeds frantically along like a runaway carriage, you are left searching for Jon Voight and Rebecca Demornay though a glass of milk in a snowstorm. It's vague and warm, everything is desperately endearing there is nothing unlikeable at all in any of these grooves. Now to the reprise of Valerie with a bit of the Celtic foreshadowing introduction, folky strums, stiffly tamped drums, then the abrupt shift into a perfect power pop song. No concerns of "death by moped". That was rude, apologies. Over. Get Back Yoko another of the experimental moments, predates the Dead C actually, and actually this would be the Dead C in tuneful mode, very much DR 503 material this, primeval and fractured and indelicate. I suppose this is what Yoko Ono sounds like when she is making toast, but I am not hip enough to be aware of that. Wolf Eyes fans would love this. They would never admit to as much. Neita Grew Up Last Night, chugging strummy folky pop, is it about Neita losing her virginity, there was talk of flowers earlier and now she's had a transformation and a change in the balance of power towards her pole has been detected. Our hero was not the thief of her heart, unfortunately, and now he has lost his interest, pity. Red Shift their focus then changes to science, Edwin Hubble as beneficent interloper in youthful romance, taking precise measurements and keeping charts of her affections, it's icy and romantic and delicate and brilliant. I don't know if anyone else would find that. Play this song for me and forever would my heart belong to you. it could be the first dance at a hipster wedding of Huntsville Phd's. I Want You Mine, this is very Beatles-esque, or Peter and Gordon, double tracked vocals, a basic backbeat and a casual strum, a respite from the storm and stress of the earlier songs. There is a real progression on this album as the later numbers are absolutely mesmerisingwith their deceptive simplicity and aching real world drama. There is yearning in these vocals, in the pages of a abused yearbook there are tear stained creases of loneliness. Bloody brilliant. I keep wanting to insert references to certain event this week into this entry as points of comparison but I will maintain my resistance. A T-Rex cover, pretty straight forward. Were T-Rex legal in Alabama in the 80s? Effeminate rockers with questionable wardrobe decisions could cause a ruckus. We must care for the moral rectitude of the flock after all. This fits in perfectly with everything else and tellingly it's far from the best song on the record which means that Sex Clark Five, in addition to being greater than the Beatles and the Replacements are also greater than T-Rex. Splendid. Here is the Wermacht's Lament, first relaying the tale of fighting in Siberia while being dressed for the beach, then it breaks into some weird tribal chant with German accents and mocking allusions to Mein Kampf and Weimar Classicism. It's high comedy and it's insanely brilliant. Next comes Hot Heart with as perfect a set of wearied, lovelorn lyrics as will ever be discovered by anyone- 'your lightning's warm in my thunder' etc-it is as casual a trill through the depths of the raw ideals of a heart's demise as you will ever hear, it lingers beyond the final note into the next song even; a mad gallop through something slightly less substantial. Now on to another perfect love song, always to they receive credit for their historical references and, absurdly, they then had it used against them later, but they were master class navigators of the emotions of human interaction. Is this the bassist singing? I can't tell. I've never actually noticed that this might be a female singing before. I am remarkably observant, it would appear. But, I've relayed the fraught state of my ears before. I love music and yet I am tone deaf and musically illiterate which makes for an interesting combination and contributes greatly to my rambling incoherence, the glorious inequities of naivety. Fool I Was might require its own wing in the pop pantheon, surely when James Butler is interred at some distant point along the continuum Madame President of the Ninth Republic Vanessa Paradis will step forward and offer a spot among the giants of Gallic sophistication. Now to the greatest song in the history of the world ever! Really. When Words Become a Kiss, perfect lyrics, again, let us try to transcribe in real time-"You came to me. I took your hand we were in love. I understand, but in this world we couldn't last too many strains were holding us too hard and I knew from the start the more I saw you the sooner we would part. There's landmarks in the town where we would meet to hide what we found. We came so close to finding our way. A secret's making the sky an empty cathedral. I wanted so for you to be mine and yet I could never have you at all. In the place of chance we held our own and found a way to make the world in our image if only for a little while. We struggled on to let our love die when our words were torn from the sky but for a while I lived in your heart and we know that what we had was true love and I know what I miss, the tragic moments when words become a kiss. It was meant to be but it will never be at all'. Isn't that amazing? It's a John Hughes movie condensed into a perfect 3 minute pop song with fanfare and romance and melancholy. Gosh, it's so wonderful, and sure John hughes is hardly the standard bearer of beauty but it seemed a handy comparison at the time. Love, a jaunty little exercise, soulful and reminiscent of 50s rock'n'roll, a bit Big Bopper meets George Harrison's early turns when the Beatles covered R'n'B hits in the early days. James Butler turns faux-soulful crooner on top of a perky beat, fantastic fantastic, why isn't this the most sought after record ever made? I am 30 songs in and I honestly wish that there were 30 more to follow. Which other records do you own that are like that? Maybe Fonda 500's last album. I have the new one, by the way, its judgement will come soon. I am hoping the disappointment of the week does not contaminate my thoughts on it. I haven't even listened to the entire thing yet. You Left the Lights On In Your Eyes, a precursor to a Bob Wratten stalker pop genre, she's dumpd him but he can still see the attachment to him in her eyes. It's an anatomical metaphor rather than a Letter Never Sent. Of course, that one's a magnificent song as well and it got me through this lonely Christmas where I emailed my encounters of the locals to someone marvelous. Now a Byrds cover, now this might be the second best song on here, but it is alright because its an obscure Byrds song isn't it. I was completely unaware that it was a cover for at least a year after owning it. Best thing about it is that there is not any David Crosby on it. I watched the Seven Ages of Rock today and thankfully he did not make an appearance. Is there a more minor figure in the history of anything who receives more acclaim and attention than this stooge? Unlikely. It would be like interviewing James Marshall about the Manhattan project. 33rd song now, Accelerator an appropriate title, a rush of a pop song, high pitched squealie vocals, frantic beat, ramjet rockets and flames and buzzing guitars and cacophony and dreaminess. Last one is a bit of experimental noise, but it is the last song, we don't really have to listen now do we. It does almost play like a historical epic, a bit of Gogol mixed with Ross King perhaps.

The Pooh Sticks.

You move back to comfort, to the Pearlfishers.