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.