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?