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.