Scarlet's Well Gatekeeper. Delirium. Do the forest creatures all about the outskirts of Mousseron gather and exchange correspondence hping they will soon feature in a Scarlet's Well song? Trees in sunglasses and mice in flairs and tiny little salamanders reading salamander poetry while wearing the afternoon sun casually, for a few fitful moments. First song, The Story of my Life. Are we still in Mousseron after all? This sonds rather conventional. What of steam fairs and underground passages and psychedelic plumes. The forest dwellers may have formed their own Move On.org councils in our latest adventure and their aim is pressed for change fom the oppressive regime of Bid. Did they vote for Joebama? Have you seen this video? It is comedy gold!. Imagine instead of wealthy upper class New Yorkers in shabby outifts it is the rodents and marsupials and genetic miscreants of the Mousseron outgrowth having this meeting discussing how a reptile might use a digital camera to change the world. These video stars could be ancillary characters in a series of comic book adventures where the creatures of the forest write erudite letters to each other, each correspondence given a panel in a thrill a millenium series of adventures. Mousseron mushrooms are fairy ring mushrooms. There are all sorts of theories about fairy rings and their being places where fairies have danced in the forest to the music of the spheres or to places where lightning has struck and caused the ground to give forth these hallucinogenic mushrooms. Bid must be a fan. Third song, Bid sings, since album four they have been a "band". Dickon Edwards is included. He wrote the lyrics to a song on the last record, I rather liked it, it is loads better than the intolerable business he releases as Fosca. Sorry. But there was Orlando, they were marvelous, not really due to the Dickon pen for lyrics but down to the other's star making qualities. There is a lost Orlando record, apparently. We wonder-will it ever see the light of day? Is it not filled with pathos and narcissism and is this why it is sheltered from an adoring public? It would be seemingly silly, as if this weblog could flourish without my own blend of self-centered satisfaction creeping into every entry. The year end lists are being released to the outside world, will this record make a splash on any of the lists? Unlikely. Alice seems to sing more on this record, good deal, she has a marvelous voice, an angel, innocently entwined among a web of dastards. Or so the comic books would be inscribed. Scarlet's Well records are not varied, much like Lucksmiths records are not varied, but they occupy their own little resident genre in the indiepop universe; one filled with accordions, bouzukis, theatricality, creepy overly hairy svengali types, virgins in corsets and their matrons in waiting or so I imagine. Next song is filled with carnival organ and fiddle and Bidness. it could be a redneck jamboree jam from any random state fair from 1983. But it is not. it's refined, it's joyful, it is a tender respite. Peter Momtchiloff plays in Scarlet's Well. And Would Be Goods. Has he abandoned the Sportique? Was he ever in Sportique, perhaps I am remembering incorrectly. He's smart, he looks old, he adds a sheen of pseudo wisdom to the public image when Scarlet's Well is out playing live. Bid evolved from princes in India, he must be lamenting the past week's events in Mumbai and wondering about the rift among the inhabitants of the subcontinent. Or not. Songs of puppies playing at the moment, and fatefully an explosion closes things, how very insensitive. Next song, a piano ballad, acoustic guitar, the Captain character on parade even as Alice sings her little heart out. Why did Bid chose Alice among all of the fateful young ladies that have travelled among the Scarlet's Well coterie of cohorts of known or unknown pleasures? She must have entranced the Captain by means real or surreal. We are all searching for our Alice, Alice to carry our heart's contents as earnestly as we would but lifting a small burden with every sigh and leaf shed from aged trunks. She's young, nubile, fruitful, Bid is wisdom, plucked from the temples of Peter Momtchiloff. Does Peter Momtchiloff hold an especially important position in government? All of Heavenly are meant to hold PHD's. Are they not? I enjoy this record more than the last Scarlet's Well record, it is smaller, less of a band, more of a traveling minstrel show variation. Steam fair souvenirs in view. Next one is more of the same, jug band feel, we're visiting scarborough fair. Bid singing. Imagery is abundant in the lines he's caressing the air with, such splendid poetry. I've mentioned before how delightful the air is on the Scarlet's Well website, they recommend to the world all of the dreamy romantic novels that exist in secret and recommend tea and dress in anachronistic fashions and seem proud for their anonymity. Fairy wings would not be inappropriate and would seem necessary and not at all a sign of weakness. By comparison a pair of fairy wings and the Sinister list would lead only to dissension and tears. Arms of sex are not meant for accordions and shawms. Are story arcs on Scarlet's Well records difficult to pin down. The Monkey's Hand is very Prancing Pony. Does he feel kinship with Tolkienn or Carroll or Lewis. There is "Alice". She's singing again, once more dreamily into the breach. Is Alice her actual name is it a useful literary device to have an "Alice" in the band. And a Dickon? Which children's novel has Dickon as main character? I don't know, he's fictional all the same, we know this by his white linen, I doubt he wears linen but he should, suits and peroxidized head. Next song, a bit of droopy psychedelia, a Fantastic Evelasting Gobstopper outtake? What ever happened to the Fantastic Everlasting Gobstopper girls anyhow? There was to be a Fantastic Everlasting Gobstopper album once upon a time, was there not? I believe there was. There was two sentences of filler. This song is not fantastic, the first to be less than marvelous on the album, really. It's a bit of a journey towards the avant garde desert with piano motifs and the armful of psychedelic merriments. This could be the key to the entire enterprise, where all of the key points to the epic tales are revealed to careful listeners. I am no such being, I listen inattentively while watching That Hamilton Woman which Robert Osbourne has just informed us was Winston Churchill's most favorite movie ever. Vivian Leigh seems such a tragic figure, destined for a future life in eternity as a Mousseronian footnote someday. Alice again on the second to last number. It is a pattern, Alice and then Bid and then Alice and then Bid and well...loads of slithering consonants here must be a means to allude to the darkest recesses of the ship of dream merchants. A quick end. Earnest last Bid number for the last song, his voice and some sort of tender accompaniment, lovely, romantic, a plea for Alice to drift away towards the icebergs of Pylinthia with him. It's a bit Stephin Merrit really. A bit of hopefulness on the end. Beautiful.

Lucksmiths First Frost. I do enjoy the Lucksmiths. I share their lack of ambition. They are pleasant. I could be pleasant. They make lovely records. This is a fine set of pop songs. But...ah no. I do not want to write a mean spirited review on a snow covered morning in the dying days of November. It was Thanksgiving. I did not have to work on this most empty home of holidays this year. I need a vacation. Desperately. Not just the sort of aural sensational visit to my inner self provided by pleasing pop songs. The Lucksmiths cannot grant me serenity. I need the ocean. I need solitude. I need warmth and grudgingly I will admit to needing family and food cooked in a home rather than under a commercial range hood. Are these demands excessive? I have been writing so much lately. Really. I have this richly cultivated inner landscape that I inhabit almost exclusively these days. I am a recluse, officially. It is worst on Holidays. The world has closed its doors, turned inward, here I stand with faced pressed against window panes that belong to strangers and me staring at their connubial inanities with a mad sense of envy. I don't miss my family. That's cruelty towards my collective heart. I don't ever talk to my brothers, I don't talk to my parents any more. i feel this alienation from people who only wish me happiness and joy. Why is that Why can't the Lucksmiths cure my mental disorder? Because. Frankly, they are a bit boring. Truly. All indiepop could, almost without exception, be classified as boring. It isn't daring, nor inventive or the slightest bit impassioned. It is deeply conservative. Indiepop kids find themselves reverent for those things that have already whirred past and yes, it is deeply middle class. I was almost middle class. When I was older. Is this why I gravitated towards the likes of Brighter and Courtney Love? There are differing levels of ambition I suppose. There are tiny levers to be tripped in a mind that seeks only perfection in the tiny exercises of a daily life. That is ambition. I lack even this. My personality profile claims I am a perfectionist but honestly in a normal day I have so much to do that I am happy just to try to finish something completely without being interrupted. Do you know the joy in being a crutch? For 80 people? I hope you do not. I can picture the inside of Lucksmiths minds and there are tiny quarry men with miniature hammers whiling away the day in some rich seam of pop goodness. It is well trod, deep, miles and miles deep, look there is Tom Petty, and while there are less travelled veins off to each side we aver that those are dangerous, dark and scary. We keep our LED headlamp pointed in the direction of tender moments, Bee Gees moments, Go Betweens moments. Belle and Sebastian meets Ladybug Transistor is as near to being Jacobins as our diminutive quarry men get. Second song now. I believe the first was written by the new Lucksmith. It wasn't bad. Not everyone is Michelangelo or Morrissey. Good Light, one of the peppy numbers. Different from the peppy numbers of the past, it's a bit over the hill, an aging athlete coming around the final turn with a confident stride only to fail to se the young up and comer in his rear ready to overtake him to make complete his obsolescence. Not that the Lucksmiths are obsolete. But they must be aware of their comfortable place in the indiepop pantheon. The kids might stay home the next time they visit because they've already heard Southernmost a dozen plus one times live. What happens when you see the emotion of the evening turn tepid and you are 10,000 miles away from everything you shoud be loving. I don't know, I've never travelled 10,000 miles except to escape from anything at all. Third song. I mentioned this one in the Oysters review. It's a Lucksmiths song, but it sounds like the title was agreed upon first and then a song was created to fit someone's stubborn adherence. it's pretty good. I like it. But the chorus gives me pause. It seems a song that didn't need a chorus really, perhaps a horn solo, a marimba shake, a laugh in the back of a Subaru, not the forced bit of conclusion arrival. I don't know. I am picky. Is this a failure? Hardly. Ask my friend K, she rather despises the Lucksmiths currently. I exclaimed, overstating, the goodness of this record to her and she described a painting session soundtracked by Naturaliste leaving her less than inspired. I paint only in Latex and earth tones, I don't know the inspiring quotient of these words and chords but the truth is that it isn't physical music and to me a soulful painting would represent the physicalisty of emotion, the subject leaping from the page reflecting the virility of the brush strokes or something similarly offputtingly pretentious. Last evening was spent in Parker, Colorado. A Christmas tree lighting ceremony. I was a VIP. I've attended four of these as a VIP in the past week. There was a large crowd. Hard to juge how many Lucksmiths fans were among the masses. I was listening to the Clientele, discreetly, in my little corner of the park away from the Parker Dance troupe and hot chocolate machines and two kids and a dog. I was jealous. I have simple desires. A face to look up at me with approving eyes. Next song. Do Lucksmiths have children? New Lucksmiths looks as though he might have children. Likable. The rest seem too thin for family men. This is the best song on the album. California in Popular Song. This is not among the pop pyrite cast offs, a glistening gem. His voice is softer than soft on this record. he has also just released a Guild League record. I heard a Guild League record once and it was not so good. I am imagining this as a Marty Donald song. So then why are they boring? gentle sorts often are. I am exceedingly dull. Take the song that is currently playing Southeast Coastal Rendezvous, it is, to use to epithet of the day, pleasant. There isn't a riff, there isn't a vocal hook, it is a bit of poop thickness turned over enough to make something smooth and appetizing. Hardly a recipe for adventures in esoterica. There is a classicism in Marty Donald I suspect. i just read th diary for the making of the album and he's a marvelous young man. He writes kindly of nature and his friends and the music and the minor scrapes and toils of pop alchemy. Next is a slowie. These used to be their forte. Not so, not anymore, it's leaden and the same as all of the other slowies since their first singles compilation. The horns and bus stop choir can't overcome the fact that it is a very minor effort dressed up to mediocrity at best. IF I was making a painting while listening to this it would surely turn to something drab and uninspired. Filler. Should have been left off. The title is a bit of an abomination as well. Was this recorded with thoughts of this being the close to side one? Possibly. It would make me hit fast forward on the tape deck by any means. Next song. Were they big Kevin Rudd fans? He's been a bit of a disaster no? Interesting that he's intent on reviving a version of the industrial relations board. With added goodies, if there is but one member of a union in a shop then industrial relations board dictates hold sway. Ah, communism! Why is everything to do with collectivism a matter of of compulsion? If these are such brilliant ideas then why don't people accept these facts on the ground and embrace them? Who knows. This is a marvelous song. Day Three of Five. I once had this theory that when bands reached the level where most of the songs on their albums were lovely mid-tempo pop songs then they had achieved greatness This is the second album filled with mid-tempo cheerfulness and here I contradict by relegating them to the league of mundane. Apologies. Next song is also charming. It is all effervescent and warm hearted. A bit of ambition might be seen in the almost post-punk guitar line that opens the song. They don't have much grasp of vocal harmonies do they. A few ba-ba-ba's and not much else. The Bats are boring. I love the Bats. Ballboy is boring, I love Ballboy. Though, Gordon's boredom has a deeper more heroic tone. It must be the difference between mundanity in a Scottish accent and mundanity in Australia. And my blood borne proclivities coming to the surface. It could be worse, they could be Carl Newman. Strings tacked on at end, must have had a few nickels left over. I went to answer the door. Album has passed in a blur. There as a country something or other with a bit of Lazy Line Panter Jane similarities, more Lucksmiths songs, more niceness, blah blah blah. This was recorded in snow and winter and isolation. The spirit was not dampened by circumstances. I'll listen to this one hundred times before next August but it is likely that I won't remember a single moment among those notes. Not everyone is David Scott.

Sleeps in Oysters We Kept The Memories Locked Away Like The Beetles Of Our Childhood, Or How To Appreciate Someone Who’s Always Around. When Mum meets Pram beautiful things blossom from urban soils by the Thames. First, a recording of someone, possibly an an ent-omologist or someone who plays one on tv, then a flowering into a glitch symphony with choral vocals, a shy whisper in the valleys and the highs kept humble enough to keep them from turning silly. Twinkles, high pitched squeals, loveliness on every petal tip. It is so splendid and marvelous. I tried to steal this, I could not find it, I paid for it, I don't mind. I made a list of things that I've heard new this year, I have been a bad boy. But then my pay has been frozen for about 18 months, who can afford to take a chance on the likes of The Deer Tracks and Color Cassette? Turns out they were worth the risk. Who knew. First song, fairy tale industrialism, so very Victorian, filled with drams of progressivism. The industrial revolution as whispered by a tender shoot to a libra. Next track. We move to flies. He sings this. Are they a duo. Fractured electronics, overexposed, disorienting, but an anchor in the voice, nice. So very nice. Walk into the forest and overturn rocks and find ancient synthesizers made by the mysterious nay telepathic inhabitants of the forest before they were subjugated by the evil Titans of yore. Kronos, Ouranos, Hyperion, Johnny Greenwood and the mother of all despots recently resurrected Gaia. How much will Joebama USA spend to appease Gaia lest she unleash her formidable powers on a superstitious public, he must look within the grooves of this record to find salvation. Now washes of synths and quiet, and dreams of water. I can recognize several variants of flies from the fairy kingdom power point presentations, for my unimportant work. I am not an entomologist nor do I wish to play one on tv. I am filled with Christmas. Flies seem inchoate, to plagues and murder and all things un-twee. But I need a license for flies to be able to contaminate our patch of earthwith the miracle of holiday joy. When I arrive to work on Monday there will be miles of revelry crushed by disappointment. It's an ugly day to be sure. People are not nice. I was sent a bill to clean my ears at the doctor. It was for an outrageous fee. I would have run hot water in my ear on my own had I known the cost. But doctors are not businessmen. Allegedly. They always dress in fashionable wares and have expensive eyeglasses. I shop at Wal-Mart for both. But I don't like Wal-Mart. I aspire to be able to afford to shop at Kohl's soon. Third song. More glitch atmospherics, run these songs on an oscilloscope or NMR spectrometer and try to elucidate what makes them so magical by the peaks and troughs that appear as if predestined by a queen of melody and goodness. Now some plucked bits of melody underneath the brutal nature of the track's foundation. Sounds like a typewriter, so anachronistic, a typewriter in love. A marching band in a Autechre video. Repetition is key to hypnosis. I find this incredibly lovely even as the walls are shaking from dissonance, like a mite beneath a butterfly's wing. I mean to write several entries today. On the Deer Tracks. They do sound like mum. They resemble recent model Mum, which is odd, since that last Mum album seemed to whiz by unnoticed even as it was beautiful and amazing. This is not snow music. This music sounds forged in a cauldron of Arachnid passion and intensity rather than precipitated out of the ether by some endergonic process. The atmosphere does not warm by its existence, but the mind ruts deeper into a tranche of introspection, insulation from the winter of your discontent. Pretentious. A spoken word bit with twinkles and recordings of previous entomologists trapped under glass, enticed only to lecture for their freedom, with poesy and whimsy. Inside we place large replicas of insects made of pvc and given human names like Floyd and Darryl and Therese. This feels like a suite, a whole, the bits are shed from the splendid organism that is this record. "Beetle Fat". Is this what Cristina Rosetti had in mind? I had a semi-classical education but it did not cover fairy tales with the new 'understanding". Have fairy tales always indoctrinated children? I suppose they have. But normally with seemingly benign concepts of morality and golden rules and hygiene among the victims of the black death. Now rhymes armed with matters of disputed science and esoteric dietary habits hold sway. Next to the last song. Marvelous things with multiple voices, As if Pram made pop songs. Voice is exasperation. It's a novel bit of electronica, ho, puns, look at me I am a Lucksmith. Have you ever wondered if the Lucksmiths assemble a song title and then write a song to accompany it? A Sober Thought Just When One was Needed seems to fit that description. The Lucksmiths are boring. Pleasantly boring, but this, unfortunately, precludes them from ever being interesting. Ask them a question. Will you receive a sense of defiance from the answer? Unlikely. Ask Sleeps Like Oysters a question and they will try to be as clever as a personal ad in the Onion, not very, but you will find their annoying habit of thinking they are more clever than they are endearing, unlike Onions, and then you will listen to this album and be bowled over by the imagination bursting from the seams. Last song. Crickets. I love this record. I love every record it seems. I apologize for that. Teletype machines. Glitch cliches. Hums and madness and nursery rhymes and lovely voices. All very twee. Read the Gregory and the Hawk entry for my treatise on "forest twee" versus "regular twee". It has very little to mention about fairy wings and garden gnomes. This is just marvelous. One of the releases of the year. Warms the soul, I lied, earlier, endergonic for certain.

"A frisky lamb, and a frisky child, playing their pranks, in a cowslip meadow, the sky all blue, the air all mild, and the fields all sun, and the lanes half shadow."

The greatest song in the history of the world ever, I mean it this time.



Real posts to follow. First real snow of the season fell whilst I was unaware.

Judging only by the song recently posted on Pitchfork the new Crayon Fields album will be wonderful. Less Cardinal, more Jens Lekman.

Sounds a bit Cocoanut Groove as well.

The Deer Tracks Aurora. Yes This Is My Broken Shield. The title is not really Mum. But the music is. Twinkles. A bit Efterklang too, but then Efterklang have always been more than a bit Mum, well, before they went over entirely to being silly. They are Swedish. Now to a big middle section, two voices, synths meant to sound like fake strings, blurgh washes, earnestness. This is earnest electronic muisc. Does such a thing exist? There normally exists this impassable chasm between listener and creator in electronic muisc. See, we're meant to imagine that the music has escaped captivity rather than been birthed. Her voice is squealie in a semi-Japanese way, but humanely, more Piana than 800 Cherries. Did you read about the essay contest where some risible outfit, a chain of hotels, improbably, was attempting to rewrite the history of Japan's activities in WWII and something like 30 of Japan's top military officers offered their bit of revisionist history for prizes and acclaim in the eyes of genocidal apologists everywhere? Big big crescendo now, driving rhythm track and guitars and swoons and really squealie vocals. Rather awesome. This is an explosive way to start an album. Can the rest of the album compare? Let's listen. The winner of the Japanese contest was a high ranking air force general. Well done. You are fired. Sweden and Japan seem like natural allies. Bloodless. There are always moments in reviews when music is described as containining tiny packets of sunshine. This will not be one of them. Instead, we will discuss tiny freezer drawerfuls of frigid bursts. This album has it in spades. Even as we listen to the monumental crescendo on the first track we feel a sharp lowering of the temperature. It's gorgeous and beautiful and enticing but in the better sense of ghostly pallors and cold hands and pearlescent sclera. He sings, occasionally, he should not. Second song now, twinkles, very very Mum, which is alright by me. I've been watching live videos of Mum on the Youtube and they don't do much of the electronic twinkles live, rather it is an amalgam of organic elements made to sound diffident and alien and glacial. She's singing, very Japanese-like. Is she Japanese? A Japanese ex-pat in the heart of Stockholm, atoning for the sins of the Showa era, an emmissary on behalf of the decent hotel chains in Japan. Who knows. He is singing again, he has generic fella voice, but it fills in the gaps behind her helium laced thought bubbles. I have downloaded a pile of this sort of music this year. It is all very Sneaker Pimps, should I be honest and if I examined it closely. It is all very trip hop, with twinkles and glitch static and the occasional foray into the keys. It's lovely all the same. Don't judge me. I am not going to move into a downtown loft, spread back issues of Watchtime magazine across my coffee table and eat takeout over the sink in fine china. I'll just sit here alone and watch football games without any passing interest and feel guilt over the chicken I've just consumed. I've finished the Yiddish Policeman's Union and while I thought it was great it seems that when you are a fancy best selling novelist then you are granted some licence. I don't know about his choice of adjectives, every bit of scenery was described strangely in the book and without any of it conjuring vivid imaginings in my head. I could write like that. I can describe her voice as that of a dying giraffe but then John Darnelle would arrive in no time to castigate my improper use of simile as Giraffe's do not sing. Exept when they are under water. Third song. He sings. He's sounding pained. A lament for Anna Lindh? No. Should justice have prevailed it would have been a protest against those who just watched her die. A protest against her green plate glass memorial. A protest against the prevent defense in football. Horns, synthetic???, trumpet out all over this track. It is rather cold here today. Earlier this week it was 60 degres fahrenheit and when I awoke this morning it was -3 degrees fahrenheit. How can anything alive survive here? It is always windy. It never rains. The soil is grey, hypoxic, lifeless and yet we try to maintain our dignity is such a sterile envronment. It could be why the people of Denver are recognizable mainly by their dull torpor. Perhaps the city is too young to have a personlaity. The Subaru Outback is the official symbol of Denver but it is built in Lafayette, Indiana or Gunma, Japan. How can you be sure? I bet Pains of Being Pure at Heart drive regularly in a Subaru Outback. Somewhere. Even though they are not actually from Denver they seem like a Denver band at heart. Why? I don't know. I rather like their new album. It is pleasingly genderless. It is brimming with confidence even though they seemingly have near to nothing to say about anything. It is the personification of nu-indiepop. Self esteem trumps everything and so the confident stride long unaware of their facile natures. This is the definisiton of confidence "being unaware that you are not interesting". Julia Allison's photograph is next to the definition in the dictionary. And her friends. But she's vaguely attractive, thoroughly sexless, brainless and inventing conversations out of the ether that have never existed anywhere on this planet. Ever. Fifth song, Before the Storm. Quiet bits at the start, glitch photographs on the mantelpiece, gentle meaningless poetry, a slow rise to crushing sadness, it's all in debt o tthe Cocteau Twins. Liz Fraser's shadow hangs large. Robin Guthrie was an oaf but he had sense enough to let the cosmic radiance of Lz speak for the band instead of his menacing yap. And Simon Raymonde was mute witness. More trumpeting horns. Synthetic? It is the weather that is appropriate for this music. I would type out in the elements but I fear a step out into the breeze today might endanger survival with a clever thought in tact. I am so tired. I woke up yesterday to go to work and I wanted to die instead. I have no idea why but Kevin Barnes says it is easy to sleep when you are dead. I steal all of my music now so I needn't the cash for an expenditures on future Deer Tracks releases. I will find them sometime. I just found the Cocoanut Groove album. It might be the album of the year. Even as I have heard five of the tracks on it already. It's bloody marvelous. Sixth song now. More wordless Japanese. She's blonde. He looks as if he may have been blonde once upon a time. Now he's goth. Is indie electro where all goth kids go to die now? I suppose emo is the more assuring resting place for would be goths from the suburbs but there is a mop here soaking up the lost smoking youth of Scandinavia as well. It's cleverer than emo and its pathos is more reasonable than the sweater loving set. She's lovely, really, he has bad hair, not blonde. Fake strings and washed out synths and double tracked vocals and iciness and tenderness and humanity. Earnest. I intend to write three more entries this evening about sunshine and light and joyful records. Do I approeciate the Las Escarlatinas record more than this? I don't know. The Cocoanut Groove record more than this? Probably, sure! Pains of Being Pure At Heart? Undecided. That record makes a good first impression but the emptyheadedness of it all means it could slide through the cracks into oblivion rather quickly. Nice synths on this album. They describe it as an epic battle. Militaristic imagery from modern Swedes seems out of place. But why is the soil grey in Colorado? Because it is lifeless. There is very little microbial activiity in the clay soils here, we were not blessed with forethought enough to abscond with the fertile loamy top soils of Canada as they had in the midwest. Instead it is all blank. As blank as the stares on the Outback wagon drivers as they listen to NPR tell us that Obama really isn't out of his depth over everything. Do you feel confident that this guy has a clue? Granted Bush hasn't either but Obama was elected as saviour, as the most intellectual president ever, as Black Morrissey. But he isn't. He's proposing building roads and bridges. In Japan they built hundreds of Opera Houses and roads and bridges and still they teeter near to a deflationary death spiral. Christmas Fire now. More elevating twinkles and heartfelt arpeggios. He really does look like a post-emo reject. They were in other bands before this. Were these emo bands? There are photos on the myspace of their live performances and they have melodica, very Mum, they have loads of people on stage, very Mum, they show shoulder and toe however, not very Mum. Showing shoulder is inexcusable in these pious times. Oprah Winfrey apologized to everyone for gaining 40 pounds. Will we accept her apology? Again, we are undecided. Perhaps if she has Deer Tracks on her show soon we will grant her absolution and accept her contrived acts of contrition but until then it will be an unsettled issue in our hearts. How dare she! Really! This is not as grand as the last Mum record but it is as nice as a Piana record and I really do love Piana so that could be high praise. Set fire to Christmas. If only they were as mad. It is to dip below zero again this evening, blast this global warming. The planet hasn't warmed since 1998, the year of a significant El Nino event. What say you Bluebird with your umlauts and global awareness in Portland, San Diego, Curacao. Eighth song. Are eighth songs traditionally glamourous and special? Unknown. There is only one song after this. This is similar to all of the other songs on the album. Diversity is not key. It is wintry. If global warming's scourge be upon us then why have not all bands not turned into Jan and Dean and started singing about the gnarly waves at the shore? All of this frozen wonderland of pop cool. He is singing again. Is he the "genius" of the band? Nice crescendo now, her voice is piercing, not in a seductive sensual way, but they look rather young, when they speak from the heart it's a consumerist message, an aural text, an instant message, a pop culture reference from an imported television show referencing a pop culture touchstone from 30 years before. Freddie Prinze in Chico and the Man, Lou Grant in Minnesota, Joe Namath in panty hose. Last song. A slow threat, backwards, sun scald, horns, unsure, it could be tension if they weren't so middle class. Fake strings, wordless Japanese, tenderness, semi-Spiritualizedness. Nice fall out to her voice, an overexposed drum'n'bass program, horns, the polar landscape miniaturized into a diorama of notes and oscillations. Dream lives played out in Sweden. Never mind the Charade.

New Las Escarlatinas and Scarlet's Well in 9 days! And a new Make Mine Music compilation as well!

New Les Tres Bien Ensemble records is out. Is it wonderful and exciting?

The Starlets Out Into the Days From Here. First track is the title track, this may be the first time that they have lived up to their early admissions of being influenced by Judy Garland. A lovely little tune that could have come from a lovely little Judy Garland movie. Strings and soft vocals and cinematic harp! Second song already. First was a mere introduction. Most of the songs are very short. Second is classic Starlets. Biff- gentle voiced and ever so soft, tremulous, squeally, girlish. Nice. It's beautiful. I only want to listen to beautiful things. I rarely get to experience it in every day life. I don't search it out. I could wear a tee shirt asking "Are you beautful!? Inquire within" and I could assess a person's beauty not on thier outward appearance but how many times each day they sigh, how many times they say thank you and mean it, whether they own a pair of crocs, and whether they listen to the Cocteau Twins. These are my subjective criteria. Starlets are from Scotland, surely they love the Cocteau Twins, he sighs more than he sings, that's two, I can't possibly picture Biff in a pair of crocs, not even ironically, and when he's served at a pub he must mean it when he says thank you. Third song. A rocker. This record follows the same pattern as the first two records, really quiet and terrifically lovely ballads and then the less "successful" rockers where it appears they are compensating out of fear of being mischaracterized as silly, wet whiners so they crank up the amplifiers a few times each record and sound befuddled as ever. This isn't bad, it is in line with the post-punkish numbers from the last album more than the dance groove rockers on the first album. Surely they could crib a few more pointers from Franz Ferdinand. It has been so long since that first album. I remember playing Rocking in a Shy Way on College radio and then being asked not to return by the host. They still seem to fly under the radar even though they are on the same label as ballboy and are as top quality as they are. Why doesn't anyone love Starlets? Biff must love Otis Redding. I listen to Otis Redding at work, everyone loves Otis Redding. otis is jesus, Joebama is not Otis. Is it because the world hates beauty and seeks to destroy it wherever it can scare it out from its hiding place deep within the hidden well of people's souls? Possibly. Repeated listenings to their rockers always improves them, I am only on my third listen and already this song is seemingly hugely improved. The next one may take more work. This is a outstanding record. But the next song. It's a bit Noel. Isn't it? Swaggering riff, distorted Jack White vocals, maybe it is more White Stripes than Oasis, Oasis were too wuss to ever really rock. Has there evr been a wimpier "greatest rock band on the planet" ever? At least Coldplay don't make claim to being a rock and roll band. Do they? How hard is it for chris Martin to maintain that aura of absolute vanilla inoffensiveness? It must truly be difficult to be so generic and bland in every public pronouncement and event. He has a really boring wife too and his band members look really dull as well. He's so method. But he's probably happy and I don't mind Coldplay it is only that if he wants to be Bono he should blow himself up into something other than a cardboard sailor. Speaking for myself well I loved U2 when Bono was Jesus, before I decided Otis was Jesus, and not so much when they seemed to disinherit the entire pompous legacy that they had worked so assiduously to cultivate. Coldplay is about economics. Next song, not a rocker. You're So Changing Your Mind. Gorgeous. Will Camera Obscura fans fall in love with Starlets sing Biff was featured on the cover of one of their singles? Will they notice? Will this be on a commercial selling footwear to the impoverished? Buy Payless stock. They are destined for fat times. This is really lovely. A repeating ringing riff is chiming and it soothes more than it drills. Strings. His voice recorded outside in a marble hallway with really masterful acoustics. There are football games on this day. Watching football and listening to Starlets seems incompatible. I rarely watch football any more. The only sports I like are playoff hockey and baseball. But I only love baseball when seen in person. I am becoming less of what I love and more of a mystery to my own heart. What an amazing song. A Starlets greatest ballads comilation would bring tears to even Albert Haynesworth's gigantic eyes. Do large people have exceedingly large eyes and if so do they see more of the world than we average types. I am 6 foot and my eyes are large for my size, perhaps my vision, were it not clouded by cataracts would reveal a deeper understanding of the world if only I could stop staring at the ground. I am not sure it reveals anything in these writings. I am still writing a book. It is why I don't write on here very much. Here it is about speed, I can type as fast as I can and then look back at the nonsense of it all and feel a sense of satisfaction with my non-linear analysis. Next song, gorgeous, again, In Excelsus Grace. Surely these records are made from red buckets of love and for the benefit of the Japanese only. It will be released to no great acclaim and they will then only tour Japan and then write brief, witty rejoinders on their Myspace about how young schoolgirls in Japan are rated among the top 100 most influential people in Japan or a quick note on how the Duma has introduced a bill in session to regulate emo, emo haircuts and emo style. Brilliant. Will we see a repeat of the PMRC hearings where that idiot from My Chemical Romance steps over the snowdrops and stands in front of the deputies in Moscow and proclaims how it is parents responsibility to make sure their kids don't get dreadful haircuts and don't dress in silly fashions and display clearly misogynistic tendencies. Dee Snider has romanticized his testimony so absurdly that it bears very little relation to reality but then his band broke up a long time ago and the last thing we remember about them is their effete shangri-las cover so what else has he to hang his afro on. Like Novocaine, a rushng bit of melancholy, seems faster in the little hurts and his words mesh together with the texture of the song, so classic Starlets. Scotland breeds a different sort of passion than the rest of the UK. In men, there is a hot blooded sense. I steal from Harry Hotspur. In Ireland it seems a warmth has been injected into the female only. Why is this? And in England they are all as dead as Chris Martin. Strange prejudices. Now a rocker, the Oasis rocker, not great, more distorto effects on the voice. White Noise, would have been more interesting if the drums had not come in. I will make a Starlets playlist and I shall not include any of the rockers, I don't feel as if there will be a major part of the overall story arc missing as a result. This is an odd thing at the moment, it's a ballad made into a rocker. This was not meant to rock, clearly, Biff was not meant to rock but hey you know this is not so bad. It does remind me of Oasis minus the inanity, studidity, limpness and the clodding or dopey or asinine. Anyhow. It's a shortie. Now back to slowies. Crashing Down the Hurry Slope. Their string arrangements are sublime. Are these created by the band themselves? I know very little about the band. I suspect they play every other Friday night at their mother's bingo night at the local church that has been disabused of its rights of sanctuary and now serves as a fine place for fifteen years old girls to lose their virginity to 21 year old refugees from Albania or Estonia. This is a gorgeous one, really really gorgeous. It is a few days later and I have made my Starlets playlist and this is on it and mostly the ballads and it is so beautiful. I still want to only listen to beautiful things, send me beautiful things. Perhaps a speech by Robert Oppenheimer, a Lorentzian contraction, a ice cream sundae from dairy queen. I will listen as the ice cream melts in the Sunday morning atmosphere of my life. I have this sublime sense of contentment at the moment. No reason to. But I feel fine. This time of year I am normally unable to sleep or to dream, but I am doing both recently and it is a marvelous new thrill. Beautiful horns and plucks and strings. When they are recording do they lament if something is merely lovely and not utterly and spectacularly gorgeous? Did they vote for the Scottish nationalist? Does Scotland really want independence? What's the point? They would miss the government largesse. Scotland seems to be a bit like Britain's Quebec. The threat of secession is always more powerful than actually seceding. Next song, Maggie Loves Hopey, stunning. He has this tiny little fragile voice that pips and squeaks more than it caresses, but it's tender, it transcends lullabies and words and lilting sentiment. Does he ring up Traceyanne from Camera Obscura and play these songs down the line? Does Biff write the songs? Maybe it is the drummer who writes the shy, poetic lyrics? And perhaps when Biff is elected to the Scottish Parliament it will be revealed that the drummer was really his Peter Garret puppet master after all. Who is the drummer? I only know Biff is Biff. Big crescendo of bashed drums, strings and softness, then a fall back to guitar and handbells or something dreamier. Last song, pseudo rocker, it's more in line with the pseudo rockers or the first record. I quite like it. A record that surely does not defy anyone's expectations but which wins another one thousand hearts in the ongoing submission to some plague whispered l-o-v-e. When does the School album come?

This is surreal!



Lifted from ILX.

Au Revoir Borealis Dark Enough For Stars. There is a depression, real and imagined, in Michigan. It will soon be worse. Bankruptcy for the auto companies is looming the prospect is really very frightening. The entire state depends on these companies and soon they shall be run aground. The auto companies will morph into the government. Everyone will work for the government. They will make things that no one wants and demand excessive compensation for doing so. They will send their children to dermatologists and podiatrists and allergists and the like, just as my neighbours the sickly runts of the neighbourhood were smothered by medical care doled out for free by their union mothers. Au Revoir Borealis are from Michigan. This is sad music. This is melancholy music. It is music of the north Oakland county landscape in December, barren, overcast, chilly, unfinished. When I lived in Michigan it was a mad rush in flight away from the blighted city center. Farther away stretched the affluent suburbs. The urban core was rotten and turning to dust, it was grist for dynastic politics and death and other hell bound journeys. There existed only a few blocks in the city where I felt safe as a maudlin suburban outcast. This music doesn't play as informed by the circumstances but definitely infected by the overwhelming resignation. It's rather stunning. Second song now , Dark Western, slide guitar, very Mojave 3 this but with a smoldering feel that life exists outside of the library, more of an actual Slowdive in the country reflection, much more so than Neil Halstead could ever conjure. Singer Stephanie here is much the superior of either in Slowdive. There is a sinister edge gathered within from the storm hidden just beneath the horizon. The song lengths are not excessive, they don't lend themselves to boredom, concise romanticism. Why then do some bands go on for nine or ten minutes when they have used their quota of ideas at the 3 minute mark? Unknown. Is it so they can release an album with five songs on it? Do they all fancy themselves capable of creating a Hex? Probably. But even Bark Psychosis could manage only a rubbish and dire follow-up to that masterpiece, although it could be surmised that those same folks who love Codename:Dustf***er are probably those in thrall to I was Deeply Saddened by Matthew, Mark, Luke and Laura. Au Revoir Borealis started in 1998, in the wake of the first wave of Detroit Space rock. There were Mahogany and Auburn Lull and Astrobrite(briefly) and St Januarius Blood and Asha Vida. Aside from the first two it was mainly rubbish. Gravity Wax had that one really cool single. Burnt Hair Records never did become collectable. But then neither did Planet Records and they received far more adoring press than did tiny little Burnt Hair. Third song was as beautiful as the first two. I didn't mean to ignore it. Fourth song, acoustic guitar, stillness, serenity. Then a pickup with a distant soft squall mirroring the melody, gorgeous, really really gorgeous. Almost half of the songs are instrumental and while she has a magnificent voice they are stunning enough wordless that one doesn't mind and it allows a casual drifting and an expansion of the senses including that of the grandeur of this album. Instrumental music can with minimal effort more easily slip loose of the bonds of earthliness I find. More resonant hum building up in the background, very Auburn Lull this, this adding of layers of somnambulant sonics in a very IDM style instead of a progression of notes and countervailing melodies but a gradual increase in intensity through the impact of sound alone. The slight differentiation from the past being that there is a beguiling acoustic guitar in the foreground of the landscape of coming maelstroms that never arrive. It's a soft tremor. Music for holding hands to, for discussing the impending doom in our lives with a smile. Next song is another instrumental, it has a Spiritualized gospel drone feel. Also more Auburn Lull inspiration. That these beautiful records are being released in these dour times speak a great deal about the need for reflection in periods of difficulty. It is why in spite of the perpetual whining there wasn't a great amount of sad reflective, gorgeous music made during the Bush years because times were better than they were ever given appreciation for. Now that the lunacy of "dissent" has ended, what will become of those living the fantasy life of dissidents in their home town?, will there be a re-evaluation of the past 8 years. It was borrowed time certainly. The market was distorted by government policies and the rush to regulate after the dot-com bubble forced the creation of ever more exotic instruments in deepest darkest recesses in order to overcome the desire to regulate risk out of the marketplace. Give France the opportunity to design a financial system and you will only set up a more painful destruction in the future as prohibition fails when sunlight would illuminate. It is when governments feel they have safeguards in place and they maintain that the alert level of the vulnerable can be reduced that we run into real troubles. There was a remarkably prescient article in the New York Times ( of all places) in 1999 where they dissected the new policy of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranteeing the purchase of subprime assets granting them AAA status simply as a matter of policy and how it will, well, let me quote

"In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Rather astute, this Peter Wallison. These homes were not actually owned by anyone, they didn't make an investment, they didn't save to place a down payment, they didn't even have to prove they had the income to make the payments. And the government guaranteed to purchase the falsely securitized assets. That is the start of a bubble my friends. But the sophisticates pulling levers behind a curtain can't seem to grasp this. The need for the government to step in came as a direct action of the federal government pressuring banks to change their sound, at the time, lending practices. This is the result any time the government steps in to "olve" a crisis. Anyhow. Next song. My favorite on the record, the Houdini song, as it is about an escape artist. Surely it is metaphorical as well as literal, it is most assuredly a showcase for a beautiful voice. The sort of song you play on a tiny boombox when you are on a first date on the roof of the local mall. There are peaks and valleys and membranes and all sorts of interesting odors and the exhaust from the life existing within, you sense the confused muddle of body heat, breath held, warmbloodedness and the feeling of an undiscovered country as you walk from area to area uncovering different surprises. You look to the sky and it is dark enough for stars next to the muted glow of consumerism. Now my Ipod has just stopped working. Apple is a disaster. They are constantly let down by the hardware. I suppose it is the same cult identity that will afflict us all during the Joebama years. There will be a blind allegiance and a willingness to overlook all of the failures of policy because it will be presented in an attractive package. The inaugaration will surely be a Leni Riefenstahlesque extravaganza as we move back into the age of style over substance. For all of his shortcomings Bush never sought to obfuscate his true feelings by employing "soaring rhetorical" skills. Granted, those were not in his toolbox, but the real fear we should lament over is of a government that says one thing and does another and that is my fear with this administration. All of these things that the voters who support them felt anger come about as a result of what the government did not do for them and suddenly now the fear has shifted to people who fear what the government will do to them. And those most obviously within the crosshairs willingly pulled the lever for their own vilification. Next song. Another instrumental, strings and backwards masked dissonance and loveliness. I will stop with the political posturings. I just find interesting this reversal, but normally Democrats take charge when times are good and people want to buy into the notion of sharing the wealth with a greater proportion of the populous but now we are to believe that they understand markets and job creation and other intrinsic matters of finance in a world beset with problems. It is all turned upside down. The Clinton "boom" was actually a Reagan "boom", it was 17 years of growth interrupted only by 2 quarters of contraction caused by an external global crisis. What will happen to the softies of today that have never experienced a downturn. Already the media is making this out to the be the worst economic crisis since the depression. Jobs are being shed but this will ease, except of course when the auto companies go extinct. But then they should have outsourced all of their production long ago, there is the lesson of unions, we'll ride the beast straight into the grave afraid of evolution which is the normal course of human events. Thank goodness nature is open shop. Next song The Key, stunning and gorgeous, again, acoustic and soft focused ambience, without a great amount of percussion on this album the pace seems organic. We do not miss percussion. Her voice is in balance with the ambience and there exist dramatic touches as when her voice ticks up at the end of each line and then a romantic drawl intones the wordless bits in between. Piano. Beauty. Remarkable. And so short, well done. Next. Breeze on the Tree. Will there be a resurgence of outstanding popular music in these turbulent times? The angst of Punk and then the increasingly venerated nihilism of Post-Punk came alive under the misguided policies of Jimmy Carter. We have one same actor in the current drama in Paul Volcker, or so it appears. Tall Paul will be steering the ship, he can't be worse than Hank Paulson, surely but the he's fond of difficult medicine, much to Jimmy's chagrin, will the current generation so inconvenienced that they've had to reduce their cable subscription and postpone purchase of flat panel televisions for their bastard kids be able to cop with real hardship. My job deals with luxuries. We are feeling the pinch at the moment and surely it will be worse than that in the coming months. 2009 is going to be a disaster with the cumulative effects of a credit hangover, the crash in non-residential construction and the continued shedding of jobs. Ah, but I am tired of writing about this just now. This is an amazing album, in my top 5 easily, it stands alone outside of circumstances, and my favorite thing these days is walking in the moon shadow and the accompanying darkness with it in my ears. I am confident that things are not as bad as they are made out to be and the resilience of beauty and art will help to carry people through. Times of opulence and living off the fat are never conducive to the creation of beautiful things, see the current state of indiepop for evidence on this count and hopefully an economic malaise will draw down a new state of hopeful reflection among us all and beauty will return to every day life as people attempt less to buy a sense of aesthetics and move instead to creating a unique vision of the zeitgeist in small groups isolated from the whole. In the internet age this may be impossible. But this record is terrifically small, it's tiny, there a exquisite moments of grandiloquence and dreams put on tape and it is a statement to that effect. Maps of the Sky is playing now and the entire record has at this precise moment reached its climax, just 2 minutes into the last song with a duet, a piano, rising crescendoes and elegance all on display. It's marvelous, uplifting and hopeful. Remember in beauty and loveliness lies hope in these bleak existences and the heart should turn inward to appreciate the subtleties apparent even in the shades of grey that threaten the blue skies overhead. Dream. The last is an instrumental, tender and romantic and everything else we long for in the cold forever night.

The Au Revoir Borealis album is beautiful.

Update: Really, really Beautiful!

Update: It is love.

New Moto Boy EP out on December 3. Woo. It's still my favorite album of the year. Could a Cocoanut Groove album supercede it?

Update: Will this be on the Ep?

Surely the Mutators would be more interesting if her voice/growl was front and center instead of dumped below some generic tuneless rubbish. Life without Buildings were brilliant in spite of the music's mediocrity because they had sense enough to unleash the pixie. In my head all of the backing members in Life Without Buildings were fifty and portly. Canadians!