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.