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.