Sin Fang Bous Clangour. This is Seabear person. It's a bit, more than a little, like Seabear. This is owing mainly to his pleasant voice. There are some squiggles, a bit more pep, fewer strings, etc...but it is as Gorky ZYgotic Mynci amniotic as anything on the approved Seabear record. We all love Seabear. We must, this was my admonition from earlier this year. First song. It's chugging. Digital typewriters and Atari 2600 sound effects, multi-tracked himness. It's vague. Everything about him is vague. There was a video of Seabear, or some incarnation approximating that, playing in a living room. It seemed appropriate. Mum was playing seven strong in a shower stall on the same program, being willful is Mum. Seabear looked well bathed but there is a tender warmth to his stylings, a brilliant symbiosis with the heart and mind, an invitation to sit in your favorite ray of light awaits. I compared the Seabear record on one of my hundred ex-blogs that were all exactly the same as this one to Euros and Richard and John while if you put the two musics side-by-side they would bear little resemblance to each other it is clear they drink from the same rare distilled nectar pouring forth from secret springs accessible only to those who dream dreams of Kevin Ayers and Marmosets in Tea Cozies. Second song. Smaller. Multi-tracked voices, piano, everything all at once distant, echoes, shadows of songs instead of the meat and bones of music placed on a commemorative plate for consumption. This is to be lightly experienced, to have your soul grazed gently enough to leave only angelic imprints. His voice is busy. Seabear was once a solo bear. Now it is a "collective" or sleuth. He's solo once more. It's a lot like Seabear minus the "collective" or sleuth. I admitted to someone that i am in throes again. It is pointless. I am mute. .Look Back in Anger is on the television at the moment. Was this before the cliche bad boy in zinc cinema became cliche? Which heart throb in black and white created the dizzyingly absurd cliche that Richard Burton is hamming it up to? Frederic March? Adolphe Menjou? I just throw out names. Cath them. I know little. I am not Robert Osbourne. When will he tell Rose McGowan that 'you don't really know what that word means do you?'. I can pray. Next song. Chugging, again. Trains rolling in pace, sounds like movement on a train through an eastern European province of no consequence. Multi-tracked voices, always with the multi-tracked voices. I am off from work today. My first day off in a very very long time. I haven't any plans today. I may go to lunch. Will anyone dine with me? No. I am mute. Sunken Ship. But, recently, I have transformed to a better dressed mute, better than I once was. I dress so shabbily at work, always I am made to dig deep into the pits, drive some boars, ride the rapids, run through the gauntlet. It is difficult on the wardrobe. I wear the same trousers every day until they wear out. I am not sure that this is a feasible economic model. A pair of trousers can have an extended lifetime through darning. If only I knew my darning. Are the multi-tracked voices evidence of loneliness, he misses his fellow bears of the sea? This is a marvelous song at the moment. Sunken Ship, Beach Boys-esque arrangements, megaphone sensitivity, Mojave 3 classicism without the sun-in. Seabear was marvelous too, this might be most marvelous. Is a new Seabear project imminent? The old Seabear record was somewhat older than it appeared. I have my ear to the glacier for news. Claire Bloom is tremendous and desirable in Look Back in Anger, but how old is Richard Burton? And why with the rage of eyebrows? Dunno. Next song is darker. Almost a turn sinister. I can't suppress the giggles. He couldn't possibly turn sinister. It's as sinister as Dog on Wheels. It's not then. Richard Burton has a bit of Gary Cooper's cold stare in him. Too bad then that he's a diva. I could be a diva. I am pedantic. I eavesdropped on conversations in the burrito establishment, a treatise on liberal economic policies that was so wrong headed and folly bound that I could barely keep my nose in my copy of Gentlemen of the Road. Next song. More chug chug chug turn the wheels on the narrow gauge. Words about nature, rustic scenes, the sea, the typical islander fare. Should not then Iceland and England share more in common. Perhaps Iceland and Ireland. England is not the whole world but they sometimes mistakes are made. Electronic flourishes. Very nice. Could be sleigh bells in the background or tambourines played by wood gnomes. Is there an Icelandic equivalent to Belle Watley. Are devastated Icelanders destitute turning to love for a kroner and on the verge of social anarchism with their civilization near to collapse and doom because of bankers and brokers. Surely Joebama will save Iceland. Snow in Las Vegas today on the news report. Bubbles bubbling. Next song. We Belong. The banjo song. Multi-tracked voice. Twinkles. Loveliness. Rickety spools and tricks and now we're transported to the Russian Steppe, the vistas glorious and bloodstained and tear filled skies witness to historical transgressions and there is drama enough in this song to comport itself nicely among the diminished apparatus and apparitions of torment but it's all too delightful. We dance on the bones of the aggrieved, we raise the corners of mouths, dream dreamily in the leafy spurge, without conscience. Banjo! Very nice. It's a thinking person's record. I flatter my own enjoyment. Some wheezing to the end. Next we turn to the odor of pine. Electronic fog, romantic interludes on the guitar, all very minimal, distant, hushed, his voice an amplified whisper. Reverb. Alasdair Maclean would be proud. Drama. Again. It's got a cinematic feel that is not at all reminiscent of Burton's cliche. On the other channel is Frederic March! How conveniently coincidental. In Hugo! One of the most entertaining bits of the Flaubert biography are the notes of Flaubert's initial dinner time conversation with Victor Hugo. It pierces the ideal that these giants are anything other than nominal failures at nearly every other endeavour of human invention. It warms the soul. Endearment. What this record dearly lacks is one of those atrocious coloured pencil pixellated wizard drawings that once adorned Gorky's Zygotic Mynci records. Honestly. Who was in charge of their art direction? For a brilliant band they had the most dedicated adherence to hideous artwork ever. That's a poor sentence. Their albums were atrociously clothed. Peel them and beauty lay within, without fail, but oh dear, without there was the orange soda can of pop songs. Next song. Tiny acoustic guitars. Lyrics do not appear to concern magic or dungeons or alchemists in bedraggled garb. How old is he? His is an old soul. He's thin. He's fragile. He's the embodiment of his music. I would leap to such conclusions based only on the viewing of one live video from Icelandic TV. Much goodness now, his voices all in unison and tinkles and paper creche sentiments all floating delicately in the summer breezes. Charms have arms. Soft fingers and crinkled cut eyelids. It feels like "a family singing in the deeper woods record", it is expansive and multi-colored, thus the glories of home recording in the digital age. Next one. Fafafa, sadly, not an Able Tasmans cover, well we are not all that sad. He's part of the collective pop consciousness of oddballs that counts Humphreys and Keen among its membership. His acoustic guitar now with voices, pianos, low end, whistles, boundless cornucopia. I don't think it really reminds of Animal Collective. Some do. They are wrong. By extension it would then remind of Ruby Suns and it does not. It's not as marvelous as Ruby Suns but it is one of the best records of the year. I have resisted temptations towards making a list of favorite records of the year. A victory over autistic tendencies. Owing to the fact that there are zero or fewer readers of this website so it is at best vainglory at its paramount and because lists in and of themselves are pointless especially when every list is exactly the same. Why are Fleet Foxes so beloved? Oh but you put FLeet Foxes 3rd when he put them second! I know! Why are all of the ears on the planet unable to recognize the symptoms of Tv on the Radio's lethal wretchedness? Why? Admit it, you do not love The Bug, you do not. I don't. I do like Vampire Weekend though. I am a trender, all the same. Next song. Harps and some back road folk music, John Denver in a Daihatsu before the sun's glow has caressed the rear view mirror. How long would it take to drive across Iceland. Is wanderlust the national malaise? In the new Ice Age they will be able to walk to Denmark and sing in choirs with Efterklang and the really pretty girl who fronts that other Danish band that people have heard of that isn't Mew. Last song now arrives after the quietest number, space, piano figures, a trinket. Drums. Intensity. It is a existential flowering of the spirit, this is semi-Animal Collective actually, prove me a liar with a song titled Lies, how ironic. Isn't it. It's very Panda Bear actually. A featurette on how to write a Panda Bear song comes with every copy of the album along with a Nashi Pear.