It's A Musical The Music Makes Me Sick. It starts off slightly Soda Fountain Rag. Is that her main competition then. I am pretty sure that I've only ever heard one Bobby Baby song. The chorus is surprisingly ace, her voice has jettisoned its flatness in the chorus. There is meant to be joy. I believe. There is so little joy in pop music these days. Pas/cal have brought down this plague upon us, and Math and Physics Club and Graeme Elston and their dreary compatriot merchants of morosity. It's not even morosity, that's kind, rather it's aseptic, it's lack of soul, hearts tethered. Materialism and wealth have dealt their inner beings the cruel thwack of freedom from scarcity of necessities, of friendship, of fear, it's a misrable existence to be alive in 2008 what with all of the decadent days we have spent as resentful youths and the even more fruitful days that lie ahead. It's a misery. I keep typing that. I am not unhappy. I would yearn to know unhappiness. I am not happy. I am only alive. Barely. I am going to be able to go to school for my job soon. Possibly. I had an annual review and it went swimmingly. I was previously convinced of my impending doom. I underestimate the esteem others invest in me. If I was administering Bobby Baby's annual review I'd tell her to loosen up slightly. Surely she's clever but she's got this inhibited manner about her. Which are the uninhibited in these days? Moto Boy, the fellow from Corduroy UTD, Plastic Mastery, the Leslies, desperate piners who turn their insides outsides for the world to view. The don't do silly things such as living their music, they surely don't mean it any more than Bobby Baby pretends she doesn't but they make the attempt at deception and we appreciate them for that commitment. This is actually rather lovely. I quite like it, but gosh if she invested more than a spoonful of heart filled exuberance it would then turn absolutely marvelous. I wish I could label more things marvelous. I will start to use 'marvelous' in my everyday existence. This website was once called "Marvelous Boy" but it's so trite to name your website after a pop song. I have decided, others disagree. Much better to memorialize someone with great promise that never lived up to it, no one would understand if I had usd my own name but then I have become Ron. I am Keith. Third song is terrific, they do best when they blend their vocals, I am enjoying the piano, I still long for more piano pop. Why then did I start this review off so negatively? I am not sure. I had only listened once. In my car. It is headphone music. Not because it is intricate and dense but because it is small and insubstantial, the outside world tramples through the flower fields within the notes. Lovely little piano break with twinkles of keyboard interspersed. I really fancy this. Marvelous. I think he sings the next one, he has a lovingly earnest voice. Is he German or is he too an ex-pat alien to the metropolis they find themselves in. More ace piano. It is not very Soda Fountain Rag. It feels like a Morr record only in its cleanness, their junior league. It's a bit Bjork here, and I lie, it is still very Soda Fountain Rag. She's got more sass than I credited her for earlier on but there is a complexity here that compensates for her basic performance. I'd rather bands sang more of schadenfreude and less of suburban ennui clearly they should adhere to a code of important topics that have nothing to do with self-reflection. Simply because I indulge my self-absorbed tendencies here doesn't mean I want to analyze these pop songs. Another really beautiful section is playing now, they sing in unison and it sounds hopeful and warm. It's all very warm. We might have restraint but it serves as slight kindling all the same. Very Bjork in the vocals. Bjork was making music like this when she was 11. He doesn't possess any annoying Einaristic characteristics. Clever bit of sophistopop this, I take back, once again, my earlier skepticism. Quite. Next song, more piano, his voice, soft and warm and earnest and inbuilt with a heart worn edge. Another excellent song, clever cute lyrics that are circular and nonsensical. There is the joy we were searching for the small ephemera that carries love to all corners of the world in tiny packets in big hearts. More duetting in the middle section, tin pan alloy, Billy Joel, Carol King, it is nothing like any of those really but I like it all the same. He has a vague ethereal presence. I don't mind him at all. The trumpet sounds canned. Not necessary. I've never been to Scandinavia. When I was bumbling around Europe in 1998 with purple hair and a weak constitution I never thought of traveling north. I did just watch Megan Mccormick eating fish and cheese in Sweden. I was jealous. But then I am in love with Megan Mccormick. Among others. Back to Bobby Baby vocals, they do not impress, when he joins her things turn more interesting, it's a spiral moment, music in the background in a whirr while the vocals are concerned with kiddie matters. Have you not wretched over the new Smittens song? I was never able to stomach 'cuties', the overt sorts like Strawberry Story, the Receptionists, the Haywains. It was all too much. I always looked older than I was, I liked to pretend I had sense when I did not and it seemed so unnatural for twenty somethings to be in a band concerned with such things. I was sophisticated. I have regressed. This song is a bit of a drag. Less piano, more guitar, monotonic intonations. Next one has a buzzy Pipas intro but then back to the piano, horns, do do dos, a bit Majestic. Uh oh, jazz, blergh, now a tender piano ballad, very second Girlfrendo record. Has there been a Girlfrendo resurgence with the success of Love is All. Would a pitchfork loving kid get with First Kiss Feelings? Unlikely. Not unless Matt Lemay approved. There is less to this song than it appears, moe jazzy noodlings to no particular effect. It's all random fluff that doesn't compel. We can give up on this song then. We'll just type random words until it is over, decoupage, insolent, tivoli, ricin, inarticulacy, fervent, miscreant, dutiful, pusillanimous, verisimilitude, expiry, Gagarin, blah blah blah. Sci-fi opening to the next one, nice, sounds promising even when the flat vocals come in. Cheer up! It is a bouncy pop song I think you are meaning to create. Whiring effects in place of the piano, very Buck Rogers. When will Buck Rogers be updated for the youth? Could Edward james Olmos pass as Buck? Big dramatic bits now, not much of an impact really. Ok perhaps my initial inclination was correct. It is still better than Pas/Cal not nearly as good as Soda Fountain Rag, recommended if you like Soda Fountain Rag but buy the two Soda Fountain Rag records before you buy this one and then you can hide your disappointment behind the smiles that accompany the anticipation of listening to Soda Fountain Rag after this is over. Songs have the appearance of undue length. Are they.? They are. Most over 3 and 1/2 minutes, some over four, scandalous. This one is mostly about tedium. Oh no, ridiculous trumpet alert, is the guy trying to impress with his skills Now a fall back into some noodly headspace bit, gah they've really lost thir way here. Did Dave Fridmann produce this song? His creepy fingerprints are all over this. Maybe they were only projections off of records laying on the floor in close proximity but it's got that ugly sterility we fear from his records, a second deep plague spread by fleas on hedgehogs or hello kitty hair slides. Ending was pretty cool, Stereolab-by. Next one, circus music, and hey it is called The Circus, sounds like the organ grinder and his monkey. Peanuts, cotton candy, elephant ears, corn dogs. I suppose I am describing the state fair. What does state fair music sound like? Is each pop record an attempt at courting immortality? You read an Evariste Galois biography and despair that his name is memorialized among titans because eh had a brilliant spark of creativity that could not be contained, it rose out of him as if beyond his control. What of the rest of us who lack that coruscation? Are we condemned to be subjects of pas/Cal songs? or there is the hope in your genes, possibly scintillation lies deeper within your double helix to be extrapolated at a later date? But will my decomposing corpse find itself reveling in my descendants success over my failure? The circus is over, please don't kill the clowns, next one is Bad Day. Not a Daniel Powter cover. The ironic cover still seems an artifact of the indie rock era. We've killed all of the indie rockers now, they are all dead, the world is safe. The bad day is over. It was a short day. What All People Know. Robotic. It's music to soundtrack my mundane existence, perhaps this is why I can't sleep. I don't use any creativity at all during the day. My anti-imaginative microglia are satiated having consumed all of the fleeting, random brilliant thoughts that entered my mind but languished, died and became detritus to be vacuumed up. A pity. Bobby Baby could write a requiem. Last song. Tender. if only I had a mind like reflecting pool with ripples and valleys to capture all of the brilliance reflected into it from a collective consciousness that only some are privy to. And beneath the surface of this body of water a hidden world of depth or mountains and canyons to explore as if visiting a new vision of heaven where true feelings and hopes are worn on sleeves, soul laid bare, and weaklings like me are not castigated for never expressing their feelings to anyone. Obsessions would wither and fall, there would be a catalog o f delights to choose from and it would be marvelous. This song is Morr twinkly.