Because my Holiday season has been filled only with long books and decent movies ('An Education' is not bad) I've noticed, in between, that Sound of Arrows and Bachelorette each have songs in automobile commercials.

Post-Christmas Prettiness!

Danny Norbury Light in August. Another record that perhaps should have ended up on Make Mine Music or made in Iceland. Either way. Pianos, scraping violins, lovely things abound. It's pastoral and fey and escapist and romantic and beautiful. All of my favorite things. I have this hole in the middle of me from worry and sickness from worry and fear that I am about to lose something. I don't have anything of value though. If I woke up tomorrow having lost everything that I have today I would have lost little of value. Not even my fabulous new sofa, well pair of sofas. It was like Spring today, thank goodness for global warming, the tides have been turned back by the bureaucrats in Copenhagen. Hallelujah. What is it about men with their messiah complexes? Now Al Gore is being feted as a poet. More piano, more violins, such loveliness should be treasured. When it is warm all of the time will this sound as pristine and wonderful? Will the sweat perpetually perched above my brow cause me consternation and worry the same as I feel now except as a source of existential ennui will I not be able to abide and find myself reaching for a copy of Vulgar Display of Power instead and later find myself starting a war in the middle east over my frustration at not being able to marvel at a Danny Norbury record. Who is Danny Norbury? Who is Rudi Arapahoe? Are these skilled classically trained musicians? This is probably just practice, finger exercises for the knowledgable and talented but for me, it is a revelation. A radiant glimpse into the heart of all of the stars in the sky. Third song. No vocals. More violins. It seems as if bands should hear this record and decide that they want to merge with Danny Norbury and co opt his talents and save on overhead and corner a market in terrifically pretty instrumental music. A Deaf Center/Norbury record might be landmark. I was about to write about Svete Gairner which is one half of Deaf Center and which is a really fabulous record as well but I am writing about Danny Norbury because someone named Danny Norbury should not be making music this lovely. Lovely is lovely. I write lovely and yet I rarely say it. It is an Anglophile's tick and it is easier to display irritants such as this in print rather than in person. If I met you, my one dear reader, I would come off more Canadian than Anglo. Anglo-Canadian. My father had his left eye removed. He has a hole in the side of his face where his eye used to be. He does not have cancer in the brain. I spent a few days earlier this autumn contemplating my life without my father. I couldn't listen to music like this then because it would turn my pensiveness to distress. I don't handle shocking news well. I was told I had a cataract and nearly fainted. I was told that there might be cancer in my father's optic nerve and I nearly fainted. He's always there. He's not ever tried to be anyone he wasn't. He's got this inborn integrity that screams silently but only by example. I should be more like my father. I possess gifts he never dreamt of, or perhaps he did. I've never asked my father about his dreams. I was always closer to my mother. The daughter she never had. All of my friends are girls. My father never had a best friend. I don't have a best friend. I don't have any friends. Danny Norbury is my lonely virtual friend, the tenderness with which he caresses the notes here, the basic repeating patterns, the elegiac violin, the words that would come to fill in the desperate moments of melancholy but don't ever arrive. Only one person that I have ever loved has died. In absentia. My father is on the golf course. I send words across a 2000 mile void, over digital lines, and I try to personify them into all of the emotions and actions I should grant the people I love so freely. But I can't. Next song, more aching violin, the music is leading me into this path of macabre reflection. it is now a few weeks later. I didn't see the hole in my father's skull. I was in Seattle. I was at a funeral. Aspen Trees. I listened to this record after the funeral. Now two people I have loved have died. I am getting older. I am old. The dead no longer age. It is a startling feeling when one reads one's own name in a suicide note pasted to a refrigerator with duct tape and grief ladled smears. When you spend Christmas in a state of guilt orchestrated partly from the great beyond and partly from a morbid sense of inferiority it is difficult to stay awake. Sleep is much preferred. Lying in bed with the window blinds cast open the moonlight casting luminous shadows across the platform bedroom furniture and your eyes closed to view movies projected involuntarily, subtitles in a language you never spoke, from a heart you never knew you had access to. Someone I loved and someone who hurt me more than I've ever allowed anyone to hurt me before then turned that echo of sadness, that reservoir of sorrow into an end undeserved. I sat in the rain, looking at the airplanes on their glide path. I looked and wondered at the happiness of airports. I cursed the glowing embers of contentment in the faces of those who knew they would return. I told my boss. I haven't told anyone else. Well, I told my ride. I haven't told anyone else. I could play I Turn Off the Last Light and Close the Door and not tell anyone else ever. Sad songs when you are sad are dangerous instruments. A distant reflective piano, an inspiration possibly born of the collective shroud of melancholy that threatens everyone who has never felt anything anyone would envy feeling. Never. Not ever. I didn't go to see my parents because I was ashamed of the fact that I wasn't feeling enough grief, I was stricken, I was not destroyed. Later, when I spent two days reading a journal I was never meant to read I learned that I had invoked or provoked all of the feelings I always longed to incite in a heart. But hearts can't talk. Light in August. This would have felt romantic one month ago. Well two. I would have swooned at the agile grace of sweep. Danny Norbury would have met only praise and hysteric joy from a naive soul. Now I watch other people revel in their grief, in public, and I hold mine secret. Two people I loved and two people who left, have now departed as strangers. Their shadows unrecognizable in the dimmed lightness of being. But the violin sighs. It is two months later. I still only feel capable of vague reflections on a tragedy. Suicide. When suicide's mother sends you a package that redeems your entire lifetime's worth of hope it is a remarkable thing. And today, strangely, I felt warmth pervade my stoicism. I feel suspicious when people are nice to me. I don't understand why anyone would want to share anything with me be it friendship or kindness or joy. And when they fear that I find them nothing at all like I find them I want to reassure them of their greatness, the brilliance of their everything that wears me out because I prefer to slouch poorly in the shadows surviving on notes from strangers scraping a violin desolately in some dusty English attic in the middle of June. Far from the sun. But you can't tell someone you care for how much you care for them. I try. I could create a simulacrum of emotion in a loosely woven string of sentences that would not breathe humanly at all. But there is the telephone line to animate, the modem to breath essence into, the ether to charge with emotion and I am not up to the task. Someone today effortlessly made everyone around her feel better. I was included in that group. It was an amazing thing to witness. Some people are truly blessed. The music in their soul plays on, endlessly beautiful.

Soap & Skin is the most wonderfully wintry record. I should re-read my entry on her. I think it was filled with endless praise, as well it should have been. Her next record might be really astonishing. When she turns 20.

New Klima album in January!:)

Granted, I have not heard the album, but, this is just silly.

Update: I have now heard the album and find that write-up even more ridiculous! More later.

New Brunettes song Red Rollerskates. Not emo. Hmmm...It's ok, I'll never love them again I am afraid. 2005 seems so far away now.

Puh! The Primitives have reformed? Will they only play 'Dizzy Heights' and the whole of 'Lovely'?

Lia Ices Necima. A hand cranked gadget for effects and a resonant piano, now strings and her voice. A whispering coo, kooky girl croon. A bit Emmy the Great only more desperate to appear odd, alternative, progressive. Medicine Wheel., Having someone declare you "odd" is the most magnificent thing ever. Everyone is brilliant or charming or "great" but so few are truly odd. I made someone a mix cd at work and she proclaimed to the rest of my coworkers that I was odd. So I am the "odd" one out so to speak, it is an enviable position to be in. When everyone else declares their devotion to John Mayer they can look at me and know I do not share similar sentiments. It is a load off of my mind, to be honest. Laboured breathing, this is not the pathway to odd. Studied composition and string arrangements and confident vodcalising isn't either. Lia Ices is actually only a few steps away from Norah Jones. Is it me or is Norah Jones not beautiful? I am not much for the music but she looks like a swell young lady. These strings sound smmoth. This song is a bit dull. Pitchfork has already reviewed this record. Some time ago. If it was a book this would be a Julian Barnes book. It is was a short story it wouldn't be a Stephen Millhauser short story. I miss Stephen Millhauser, I cried the day he died. Note: I don't think he died. This song is too long. This song is too dull. When you are dull and are not completely aware of it you should practice brevity as a rule until someoen can clearly state the reasons in some sort of manifesto as to why you are indeed dreadfully dull and boring. I don't subscribe to this rule here but in "real" life I am mute, mainly. I walk around with headphones in my ears looking for furniture that has the appearance of hand craftmanship from New England Amish tweakers but is actually made in Chinese Prison camps located near to a railroad. This album is similar. Second song. Thump thump on the drums, thrum thrum on the guitar, snooze. Will I make it through this album? Probably not. I am thinking of deleting it just now. I am going to search out a photo of Lia Icers. Is this her given name? It is sunny this morning. It is normally sunny most mornings. I like the keyboard squeezy electronic effects here, she should eliminate the rest of it, her voice, the guitar, the drums, etc...Half Life, in a poll of all of the songs named Half Lie in my Itunes library this would qualify second out of two. Tears in X-Ray Eyes has a much superior version. This is not a Tears in Xray Eyes cover. I have found a photo. The next song is playing. She is attractive, I suppose. Her being attractive makes sense. The attractive need not be interesting. See Nicole Kidman. Now it's bluesy and dreary. Not dreary in the bleak 'in the car at the side of the road' kind of beautiful end of the world is nye bleakness but grey, monotone, blah blah blah. I have so very few words contained in my head, I am spending precious many on this terrible record. Why is this? I could rewrite my review of Plastic Mastery and explain how it is the most exciting record ever made, which it is, but insterad I am made annoying by describing the myriad ways in which I do not enjoy this record. Her parents named her Lia Ices because it is the name of a breath mint in Sweden. Not really. It doesn't seem unthinkably obscure, however, Alessi's Ark is named after a fascist blender. But Alessi is a dream. I will defend Alessi to the death amongst all of the people who inexplicably name Talking Heads' Remains in Light as the greatest record of the 1980s. I am pretty certain that I have heard but one track from that album. Is it good? I don't like David Byrne, seems like he should be fathering children with Natalie Merchant or Jane Child actually. He wore big shoulder pads, he's a genius. All of these songs seem excruciatingly long. We are on to song 4, Healed, it is less thump thump blah blah, it is softer, more tender, just as insignificant and pointless. She probably has a buffet in her parent's house with all of the blue ribbons awarded for her creative spirit and good citizenship at eco school. Does the Pearlfishers' song Eco Schools ring throughout the halls of academia? It's an insidious plot that one, it is a gorgeous song and yet the lyrics are so banal and condescending and brought to bear from the man I love more than most. David, please stick to fish mongers and food. Please. Duglas Stewart wrote a comment on my previous website. I deleted the website soon after. I prefer anonymity. Someone, earlier this year, commented on nearly all of my posts, I felt uncomfortable, I ran away. Next song. This is the song for her parents on the joyous occasion of their first trip to the new Ikea store that just opeened in town. Thrilling. This is rather accomplished in some fashion, I am sure her parents' friends are all very impressed. Of course, she may be an orphan, raised by repeated viewings of Curly Sue and James Taylor records. If this is the real narrative arc then I do apologize. But Montauk. This is going on and on and on, please do shorten your breaths. Nice interlude of strings, she has s Kate Bush record then, no donkeys no BBC miniseries'. Boring piano. Compare this to Frida Hyvonen who might actually have reason to be difficult but it does not compare. It does not compare. There are only three songs left. Whew. It has been unreasonably cold these past few days. I've been outside in the cold. I've been writing budgets as well. Tell me future Milton Friedman's of the world, what does the future hold? Will I receive a raise? I've not had a raise in three years. Will there be a Sound of Arrows record? Am I dooming it to failure by starting to gestate the same sort of hopes and aspiorations for it that I had for the PAs/Cal record? Are Pas/Cal over? The side projects have started to dribble out. Lia Ices, even, would turn up her nose to a Zoos of Berlin record. Some other song playing. Boring. That is the key descriptor. "I need advice"-"Use fewer adjectives". Is Anthony Hopkins not boring? To be British you needn't be interesting or attractive. I've decided he's dull. I won't, however, add him to my continuum of the "Edward Burns" of their generation-- Gregory Peck, George Segal, Tom Berenger, Mark Ruffalo. Mark Ruffalo is perhaps a Lia Ices fan. When he's sleeping with super models wearing a goatee he's probably playing Unchosen One to outwardly display his conflict over being fabulously wealthy and dater of supermodels and yet edgy enough to be in a movie with Kathleen Robertson. I think this song is nearly over. It is 8AM on the first Saturday of December. I must work today, but not in the office rsther I shall be in the open air, the 40 degree air. It feels much warmer. This album feels much longer than the coming winter. God this is terrible. Why couldn't she be unattractive and thus not entitled to a record contract? I don't know. I repainted my kitfchen. It is Tuscan Gold now. Is that too trendy? I won't have any visitors in my kitchen to let me know such things. Now, hey this is almost interesting, she's building to a crescendo, but here's betting she doesn't deliver on it, oh yeah some skatting over pedestrain drums and thudding piano, snooze. Lia lia lia, living in New York is a curse. Move to Nebraksa, follow Alessi around for a bit, learn to live inside of your head for a time. People often spend too much time living rather than dreaming.

Ah, nearly all of the tracks from the new Sprout record are on YouTube:).

Update: The songs are all magnificent! Each and every one. And these are demos, unbelievable! The death of cynicism.

Nearly all of the snow has melted or sublimated or disappeared. Autumn has returned. I've decided I really can type on my netbook from work and so I will start posting regularly again. First to arrive shall be a pointless bit of prattling about Steve Mcqueen. My lawn is very green in fact, it just may be the greenest lawn in the entire neighbourhood. Pride. I live among renters. I like my new blue collar existence. I will feel closer to the working man as I write about the collapse of human existence as soundtracked by beautiful pop music.

Prefab Sprout Steve Mcqueen. Never have I been able to convince anyone, anywhere of the greatness that is Prefab Sprout. They are difficult ones to proselytize for what with the glossy 80s production, the all too clever for the plebs-ness, the shoulder pads, the genius, the floppy fringeness, etc. They really do tend to send the kids sccurrying for shelter. First song-Faron- genius. I once read an interview with Thomas Dolby and in it he stated that he met Paddy sometime in the 70s. Paddy had miles of poems written on dog biscuits and paper plates and mylar kites and was waiting only for someone who could contain his inspiration in a vision of pop and pop songs. He found it with Thomas Dolby. I've only ever heard one Thomas Dolby song. It is the same one that everyone else has "only" heard. Thomas has probably heard many more Prefab Sprout songs than I ever will. I don't think he produced the new album. Paddy has graduated to the Dave Callahan level of producer indifference although his disaparagement of his on production skills is immense in interviews. Just writing a song about Faron Young is delightfully obscure for most but then you think of Faron's end, like Margaret Sullavan's end, Jean Seberg and the melancholic tinge arises. I'll have to defer to Alec Baldwin on the last one. Have I heard a Faron Young song? Unknown. This may have been written in 1973. They have just released a new record. I am desperate for it. I may be the only Prefab Sprout fan in all of Westminster. How lonely I feel living in Westminster buried beneath 27 inches of snow, alone in my McAloon worship, like a Christian in the snow. Very nearly. There are so many vehicles parked on the street for a snowstorm. Depressing. When I was a young boy there were so few autos parked on the streets. Non sequitur. I should have started a diary of my time spent on Weber drive. I didn't. I wasn't like Edward Robb Ellis. I've finished the abridged version of his diary. The unabridged copy is something like 22 million words. A world record for diarists apparently, I am certain I could eclipse that mark and I am also certain that I am a superior writer to Edward Robb Ellis. He's rather mediocre really, middling would be a compliment. Is the attention due to his being in the guiness book of records for diarists? I think that perhaps he has little other claim on reknown besides. And still it is a compelling read...walking through a century with a consistent voice is an interesting escape. His viewpoints held pretty steady throughout and it is remarkable how the soul does age so very slowly. My diary would be about all of the regrets I can't seem to lose my nostalgia over. I could write a page on tonight's activities. Dear diary, today I shoveled snow for the third time in 12 hours and then I built my new kitchen table on my kitchen floor. Dear Diary, I thought of painting my kitchen cabinets. Dear Diary, I think I shall paint my kitchen cabinets. Edward Robb Ellis was a mediocre reporter as well. Really I can't recommend his diary except for the experience of an average Joe in America. His strange reaction to Kruschev at the Waldorf was the most puzzling bit for me. It seems his proudest accomplishment is the fact that he seems to have slept with many attractive women. I have forgotten to write about the songs. Eddie's apparent reluctance to examine the demise of his first marriage is also a mystery. There is where your Lifetime movie of the week coul dbe drawn from. He's in Okinawa and suddenly he is divorced. I needed more information. Number four, I forgot to mention my favorite line oh wait it is coming up. Appetite is playing now. Oh no, here it comes "wishing she could call him heartache but it's not a boy's name". Is that not genius? It is. Does it always come down to sleeping with women? Am I abnormal because it doesn't come down to that with me? Or is that I haven't slept with enough women attractive or otherwise to convince me that everything I do including writing these inane twitterings is about women? As Graeme Downes said much more eloquently than Eddie Robb, 'all that I do, more or less, is for some woman's sake'. Is this song a remnant of Paddy's time on the prowl? He's now got a silly Brian Wilson beard. Does he have a sandbox? A Dr Landy of his own? He's still got a marvelous voice. Going merely by the sound of the first single from the new album. Now When Love Breaks Down, the first line just breaks your heart. He has loads of 80s cheese spread throughout the tracks but it's all so elegant and romantic. I am now returned from seeing Mary and Max at the theater. I feel saddened because all I see on the screen is my own reflection. I am alone all of the time. Mainly by choice, but it seems more of an automatic response and condition than a desire. I feel agitated when surrounded by people these days but that is due to their lack of decorum and intense self-interest. People will stop just short of murder to their own advantage and I don't think it would be a great leap to capital offences if the risk of being punished for their indiscretions was deemed low. People are dreadful. There are glorious sorts, Paddy, my friend Kate, but that is nearly the expanse of goodness of this planet. Oh and the director of Mary and Max. What a tremendously melancholic movie, it is a joy to watch, it is so lovely and beautiful, but the content was somewhat harrowing. The saddest animated movie of all time? Possibly. Goodbye Lucille #1. One of the mysteries of Prefab Sprout is the limited amount of space given to Wendy's backing vocals. Paddy is a marvelous singer but he had Wendy, with gorgeous graceful notes to spare and they are only sprinkled sparsely throughout the catalog. Was she working full time to support her family? Did Paddy not share the King of Rock and Roll millions? Paddy was Johnny Marr's drinking buddy. I think. Or was it Billy Bragg? Perhaps they were triumvirate, perhaps Johnny and Paddy needed to slum a bit by hanging out with an unrepentant bolshevik. Was Paddy consumed by jealousy, worried that if Wendy was singing his beautiful songs he might be moved to the background just as Matt Love was with Even As We Speak. How exactly did Mary Wyer end up featured? I mean clearly it was the right decision as she has one of the greatest indiepop voices ever but was it a collective decision or is Matt Love able to step back and be objective about the beautiful songs he toiled upon. I don't know. Even As We Speak have little to do with Prefab Sprout anyhow. Hallelujah. The standard thinking is that this album is front loaded. This line of thinking is incorrect. Desire As is still a few songs away. Hallelujah suffers alongside the singles only by its virtue being mainly obscurity rather than sunshine, hidden on side two, under dust motes and soda can rings. Thomas Dolby agrees with me. I've been reading old interviews with Paddy and he's always been smarter than everyone else. He's strange. He claims to have written hundreds of songs that we'll never hear. I want so to believe him. He lacks on the energy and resources to bring these projects to fruition and so my exasperation turns towards an indifferent world that can't recognize genius in its midst. Pink could probably bring the concept of Earth: The Story so Far to her record label and they would fall over themselves to bring it to birth. But Paddy has to live only his his head, in his heart and then wrestle with all of his feelings of insecurity that wrap themselves around the shadows of his imagination. Moving the River. Maybe not my favorite but it is still marvelous. The production is what dates these things. On Jordan the twinkles seem more timeless, more out of step with fashion. This record is very much of its time. Was that intentional? The songs are bizarre exercies of eccentricity. "Turkey hungry, chicken free". He doesn't much like his own singing voice. It is down to his physical limitations. I think he sings wonderfully and the passion in his uninhibited glee at being deliriously out of step with the rest of the pop world is sustenance enough for gentle hearts to rejoice over. It takes someone secure to play Moving the River in mixed company. When I am moved to play music at work I have lately been playing Sam Cooke gospel music. You can't go wrong with Sam Cooke. Paddy would agree. Turns out Wendy was his girlfriend. At least when the band started. He married. He had children. He had a bout of "seeing the woprld through a teardrop" and was almost nearly blind once upon a time before silicon injections in retinas saved him in time to prevent his descent into darkness. Horsin' Around. Sublime. It's this breezy little number that sounds smarter and more clever than you'll ever realise. Surely there are references I'll never connect, witticisms that will pass me by, heart stirrings will make me merely a mute witness to greatness. Now the middle section, the glamourous crooner bit, hairspray, trumpets and patent leather loafers. There could be an alternate universe where we relive the 80s through the eyes of Prefab Sprout protagonists. They look sharp, smell distinct, glide softly on clouds and the shoulders of angels. I love this song. It could have been one of the ubiquitous ones. It still would have not mattered as to Paddy's stature among the public at large. He'll be the forgotten man. Amity Shlaes could write a novel about him. Graeme Downes could commisserate with him. Ah, Desire As, so deceivingly simple. Double tracked vocals. A devastating opening line. More voices. Ah...The new album is not actually a new album but was meant as the follow-up to Jordan:The COmeback, I am now even more desperate for it. His very own Smile. An essay on Brian Wislon in the liner notes even. Whew. When will Matinee be releasing it then? Oh you've got to get that 19th Bubblegum Splash EP out instead. Oh...I see. I went to lunch today, so many people had invaded my favorite Indian restaurant that I was forced into a change of plans. See above notes on my loathing of the species. I went to a place where I was the only customer. I had gone a few weeks ago during the blizzard and counted ont he weather being the reason for the sparse attendance but today it was reminiscent of tragedy. The two owners proudly served me and offered pleasant conversation while American football played on the television screen. The kitchen seemed a bustle, perhaps the lunch crowd is late arriving in Glendale? Perhaps. I hope so. They could play Prefab Sprout because there isn't anyone in their restaurant to be perplexed over such delicate beauty. Their food is marvelous actually. And Vegetable Samosas on a buffet! Thrilling! "I've got six things on my mind...you're no longer one of them" or "desire is a sylph figured creature who changes her mind' Could someone define Sylph for the lead singer of All American Rejects. Last evening I spent part of the evening with High School students dressed to the nines at a shopping mall. Their new forum. IN tow werre parents, there to worship their dreadful children. Like owners trailing behind pooches with their waste bags in tow. At least a dog returns your love. I am d as dreadful as those I call dreadful. I am aware of this. Blueberry Pies was not playing over the intercom system at the shopping mall. This could pass for smooth jazz. The smartly dressed teens could have lost thier virginity to this, imagine the swell of emotions as they return to the moment in the back seat of a 2003 Toyota Camry when they lost their viriginity to some boy named Hickory. I am finding my heart warmed even as a vicarious dreamer. Next track up already, WHen the Angels. Beautiful. Wendy barely registers in the background, hardly seems fitting for a song about Angels. Paddy the former seminary student seems something of an expert on the topic. He's part of two triumvirates really. In this one we don't include Billy Bragg but Kate Bush and Morrissey. The smartest pop stars in the world ever. After I finished my uneasy crawl through the hordes of 6self indulgent teens I got into my car and listened to the SMiths. It seemed absolutely appropriate. God, it is the most rebellious music ever. The Smiths, yes! Beautiful pop music with lyrics filled with the alienation of being normal when the definition of normal has been perverted to suit the insecurities of those who can't bring themselves towards a distance from the herd. Last evening was the purest distillation of pack mentality. These good people are not guided by their own desires but by the expectations they perceive as being part of some larger whole. And still their children are monsters. I am always alone. I am more observer than participant in the larger scale of existence. I live through books and music and express passions in secret because I can't bring myself to love the world as it is.

Chapterhouse reunion tour! Well a few shows. People in New York are horrid. Why does every band decide to reward them for their horridness? 8 or 9 inches of snow:(.

Update: 27 Inches of snow.

One day soon My Autumn Empire will release songs.

Giorgio Tuma-sigh. It is the most beautiful thing.

Record cold. Where is my global warming? You can't play baseball in the winter. Baseball players would make poor hockey players. I wish I had a table.

A new July Skies album may be imminent! I thought they were no more. A wonderful surprise.

Now if only some furniture would materialize.

Woo an unsecured network has appeared out of the aether! I am a sponge.

Back. This is the first post from my new house. Unfortunately there isn't an unsecured broadband connection to "borrow". I am made to update from my iPhone since I've come to presume that "borrowed" connectivity is my right! How very modern. Wouldn't you agree? Sentence fragments still abound no matter what my zip code. I may feel ambition to make a long entry using my iPhone. But I am not certain
about that just yet.

I listen to Sound of Arrows Into the Clouds each and every morning, it makes me heart smile all day long.

Veronica Falls - the less good Je Suis Animal. (sarcasm)Woo(/sarcasm). They are pretty people in photographs though. Is this the source of such undue praise?

Update: New Crayon Fields nearly makes up for the fact that the Clientele are now silly. It is nice, yes, and less polished sure, we could claim it as flecks of hearts on the sleeves. Oh, and of course the Cocoanut Groove record had already made us forget about the flabby Clientele anyhow.

Cats on Fire Our Temperance Movement. When last I wrote about Cats on Fire I was hysterical with praise. I am aged these days. I don't get hysterical, not any more. I am cynical and unfeeling and nearly dead. All these years piling up under my skin. Cats on Fire have fermented as well and somehow they're much older even than I am now. This is mature and docile and dutifully pleasant and really rather good. At first, a few months ago, when I was young, I dismissed it as dull and dull. It isn't dull dull dull, no, he's still Morrissey on a budget. He's still stylish. They still look fabulous but they've turned pensive and reflective and they luxuriate in the middle ground, the home of nuance and delights that escape notice of the frivolous. They are still Finnish. They are miles better than the Harry Hunks. Is he still a pop star? Indeterminate. That was a great deal of the appeal of the first record, there was flash and verve in his performance that overcome some of the perfunctoriness of the music. He's still a star. I think so. I find him splashy and debonair. He could be a host on HGTV even. How different the HGTV experience becomes when you are a prospective homeowner. I close on my home this Friday erm....Tuesday. I am trying to decide between Wildflower Honey and Amber Sun for the kitchen. I barely have any furniture. I am counting on my tax credit to furnish my spaces. Empty spaces could be temptingly inspiring, I could lie down in an empty room and inhale the history that has permeated the walls. It is 51 years old. Not that old, not nearly as old as Cats on Fire, but there must have been a fair amount of heartache and melancholy that has lowered the ceiling height by a few millimeters in that time. Rad-on teen experiences in the dark corners of the basement. Second song was just brilliant. Third song is just brilliant! He is keen on enunciating. We can can understand all of the words and they arrive understated and modest. Much unlike the aura that he radiates bashfully before entering a room. Do the girls swoon for Cats on Fire singer? Surely. But is he a sacrificial lamb for the muse of pop perfection? It is a romantic notion, foregoing the sustenance of mere mortals suckling instead on the nectar flowing from the trumpet vines strewn down from heaven above, those that long ago bypassed Stuart Murdoch and Richard Davies and Alasdair Maclean and heralded a brilliant return to form for the geriatrics in Cats on Fire. I don't much appreciate the fact that they mainly belong to the indiepop sorts, the Cloudberry sorts, the indiemp3 sorts, but I can share. I get a stomach rumbling from most of the bands listed on indiemp3 these days, they'll even rep for vivian Girls you know. Payola? Does Slumbrland have deep pockets or a killer depp research team to uncover the secrets lurking behind the gneric description factory on the thames. No idea if they are on the Thames. I've recently finished the Ghost Map which recalls the Cholera outbreak of the mid-19th century just near Soho and John Snow's heroics in uncovering its cause. Putrefaction of the Thames was once broadcast widely as evidence of the ineffable progress of science. It carried the bad air out to sea, to France Messionier's midgets and horses. This song is quiet, hollow drum mixed lowly, his voice elegantly restrained. The entire record is admirably soft spoken, it reminds of the bold underachievement of say The Boy With the Arab Strap, really, not that it sounds anything at all like that. This one is very Swedish, very Seashells, very Radio Khartoum, very North of No South. I mentioned the Bats before but it also reminds of Sneaky Feelings. They were also very old,truly frail, almost infertile men in boy's sweaters and trainers. Small shoulders are so indiepop. New Zealand had its niche because it was approximately 10 years behind the rest of the world fashionwise. Is it still? Unlikely. Now they're all mad for Kanye and My Chemical Romance and Julie Chen. Now they eat in cramped booths and wear unedifying footwear. Just the same as everyone else. And now when Cats on Fire have elements of the Bats in their songs or elements of Sneaky Feelings in their whimpers it's no big deal, globalization is a fine thing in this case. Of course it is evil in all other aspects. Let us forget the unprecedented gains in global wealth as a result, a nasty side effect, what about Global Warming after all! Next song, more jangle, more goodness. His style seems to accentuate his being, too often people who have overbearing style are making up for the fact that their level of compelling biography is limited by the lack of punctuation in air quotes. Remember the last Cats on Fire record? It was terribly exicitng. This one isn't. But it's a different level of profound, sad mopeys singing the lament of youth and despair. Nice. I am watching HGTV with a jaundiced eye these days, I watch House Hunters and all I think is "ooooo, my house is nicer than theirs!". It is so nice. I was lucky. I looked at 13 houses before and it was frigthening. Bad taste is so universal. Were you aware of this? Do not walk into other people's homes! You will not feel comforted, cheery or kind! Look at my witty post-modern reference. Oh I am a card. Next two days I have to attend sales training that I am coordinating. I sit in a room with loads of salesmen who don't want to be sitting in a room with me and their glances cast in my direction only at lunch time. I met a strange man today. I was waiting at the baggage carousel to pick up a visiting VIP and a man cme up to me and knew my place of work, it was on my shirt, and begged me off and then boasted about how he had created the logo on our corporate credit card. He was fantastically, terrifically proud. I smiled! I pulled out my corporate credit card for a reminder and I was disappointingly unimpressed by his handiwork. He spent hours on grass, lengths of his life on a lawn. Pah. I could design credit cards! He works for a bank, perhaps his right brain is locked in some safety deposit box. Perhaps he was delinquent on his payments, foreclosed on. I am overloading on exclamations, I don't feel exclamatory, I apologize for my profligacy. Some song is playing. Remember we are meant to be speaking of Cats on Fire. I like his style. If I was brave and kind and talented and people were willing to overlook my lack of those qualities then I would dress like him. My brother used to have hair like his, except he had whitewall sides because he was very pale and ghostly, small shoulders, but he was not indiepop. My shoulders are imposingly un-indiepop. My curse. I was looking at my new hardwood floors, this is me boasting, I may need to refinish them soon. Is this somethign I can do myself? I remember when we had hardwood floors when I was a kid. We covered them with carpet and then with carpet tiles, we were part of the hordes of ill manered assailants of good taste. We had copper jello forms on the wall, dinner plates on plate hangers and wallpaper with schooners on the kitchen wall. Garden Lights just now. Thankfully it does not sound like the Puddle. Fire Escape Talking is all about the Puddle. Why is this? They have a few unbelievably calssic songs including one that rips off the theme from Doogie Howser and loads of drivel. I was in a Dunedin McDonalds when George Henderson and his coterie of young female companions entered and shared a burger over dreamy stares and his frakly disturbing lack of hygiene. It was late at night. I was reading about Joseph Gordon Leavitt. I didn't think a Kiwi Burger was a wise choice, I've no idea what George ordered that evening, perhaps if I had joined them I could have been roped into a life in the Puddle cloud cult fantasist conglomeration and I would be as fond of GH as Fire Escape Talking seems to be. This is a brilliant song. He does have a lot of Morrissey. He seems proud of this. He is singing, proud enough to sing, proud enough to perform and sell his soul as a drama rather than a meidtative monologue. Most musicians are dreadful lyricists. Why is this? Why don't more bands have one person to write the music and one person to write the lyrics. Midnight Oil worked under this model, they were dreadful. Rush also employed this division of labour, they were brilliant. Hard to say what would happen if say the drummer here decided to write the lyrics. Is it the drummer from Cats on Fire that is in Aboa Sleeping? That's a terrifically dreary record but I dont remember if the lyrics are profound. I would venture they are not. The lyrics for Le Future Pompiste are not magnificent. When is it that they will release something new? Worldwide acclaim for Burning Hearts shold not delay a second Le Future Pompiste record, please no. The Borders of this Land is on now, it is in that delightful midtempo sweet spot, where you are convinced they really aren't as clever as this seems. But they are, really, it is just that you, me, in this case, are not. The awful truth, call Irene Dunne. Next song, perhaps the only dud. It's very slow and ponderous and it should have probably been a b-side. But we forgive them their indulgences. Vampires are all over television. Soul destroying vampires. Words should have fangs, words should be vampires, words should bleed, but I am listening to vampires speaking now and it is banal and flat and anemic. A vampire's kiss would be fatal. Our Days in the Sun, not for vampires then perhaps for daytrippers and medical students high on oxycontin. It is not exciting. It is almost over. It is an examination of lethargy. No powder kegs between the legs. Last track, Fabric. Before I move I need to clean the keys on my keyboard. I have dirty fingertips seemingly. Are your fingertips as dirty and unkept as mine are? I hope not. The last song is another mid tempo strummer. Oooo! the new Crayon Fields has appeared. It is unaccompanied by band photograph, a triumph, they sound a great deal like Cardinal. Cats on Fire do not. Some female voice joining his high, pointed voice, he has subtle urges in his breathing, there's a charged electricity to his being, there must be dozens of Cats on Fire appreciation societies only a beard or three away from obsessive status. To beard or not to beard. Such a difficult decision. Beautiful, beautiful.

New(?) Monica Queen song on her Myspace? Possibly, woo! Entry on Cats on Fire tomorrow, for some reason I am over the moon on the most recent album now. I have worked something like 31 of the last 32 days. I took Labor day off, for the cause!

The Clientele album is a dud. Good thing that they are over. He should join God Help the Girl.

Odland The Caterpillar Ep. Whatever happened to Emily Lloyd? It was Emily lloyd and Helena Bonham Carter that mattered to a young sensitive boy once upon a time. Helena Bonham Carter is off having babies with a creepy man and dressing like a goth. I found a website that made calim that Emily's dissappearance can be traced to Larium and fear of Malaria and the Dalai Lama's dog. If true it seems a marvelous story! Tragic sure, but certainly worth a soundtrack in its eventual retelling. This EP could provide that soundtrack. It is all things French. It is desperately serious. Dramatic. Beautiful. The first track starts off with some toy inclinations and a whispered spoken word bit in English. Then a dour violin accompanies the piano, ukulele, ah, but...it isn't anything at all like Beirut. It's decidedly more glamourous than the American Southwest. It's Lillian Gish movies, the White Sister, Lillian posing with a book, looking over the cedars, tears on her cheek, Italian aristocrats in love. The music falls away, the voice returns, it sounds like a school lesson, a teacher explaining the horrors of life to young children in her role as fading spinster relaying the dastardly tales of romance to innocent hearts sprawled on berber. It's dancing now, the music has got up and swings across the room, delicate steps and effortless grace, more English. How did L'Academie permit this? It feels perhaps more sophisticated, worldy, learned and charming than it is. I am not a musician. It's constructions like these that once enticed the Huns to take a stroll in the east. Is there such a thing as French camp? They don't seem embarassable when it comes to their inherent pretension. This is desperately pretentious but it is arrived at so effortlessly we feel privileged in being condescended towards. The voice is a young French actress. On song two she is speaking her spoken word bits in French, oh it is a ripping yarn! There is a Merlin handheld in the background, a cell phone, pianos, violins, the collision of civilization and the civilized. This was recorded in a bedroom. it does have an amniotic evocation, a warm atmosphere to turn the moments cordial and agreeable no matter the state of British finances. Emily Lloyd was rumoured to have been the choice for a British version of Sex and the City. I would have excised her from my memory box had she agreed. She shoudl never be so agreeable. perhaps a move to France and a role in some terrible Emmanuelle Beart movie where Emmaneulle Beart does not shed her clothes. This is artfully vague. There is a storyboard imagination painted in the listener's head with the well thought out structure and loveliness on display. Third song, a bit more song like. This is on Aerotone records. I've only just discovered Aerotone records. Well three members of Aerotone records. There is this, this is marvelous. There is Anois, Anois is marvelous. There is Entertainment for the Brainded, which of these band names does not belong, and she's marvelous anyhow. A German Emmy the Great if I mean to be rude by comparison. Third song is turning playful, vaudeville, sound effects, tiny tiny tiny little hands on very large pianos and scarves and boots that riddle the ankles. She's singing now. Almost. They have an album on the way. Terribly exciting news. Hopefully it does not end up on Bella Union. It might I am not certain why I am anti-Bella Union. These are complicated songs, they are filled with spaces filled with hollowness. The echoes search for the hollow. Marvelous. I received a note from someone in regards to the Palms entry. I did not read it. I re-read the Palms entry to see if someone could have found it objectionable. I didn't think it was all that disgraceful except for the reference to Amerikkkans but this is my being ironic. I am aware that not all Amerikkkans are racist and that it is Europe that actually elects nationalist monsters but you know, I feed the animals in the zoo animal crackers and honey. It is always curious when bands write me. There are 3 readers for this website. an unscientific guess sure because I don't have a counter but it's not that interesting to learn about the Hendra virus and wonder why I haven't breathlessly recounted the tale of Unnikrishnan the tragic Elephant as compelling as it is as a story. I am not clever enough to craft tales as splendidly rich with detail as an elephant dying of anthrax, a lament over the difficulty and expense of burying an elephant, the process of elephant decomposition and the threat to human drinking water as a result. Third song was beautiful. Fourth song was more beautiful. It is more French now than it once was. It is all very declarative at the moment, Gerard Langley's influence and now singing. Chanson! She's clearly imagining herself in a sailor's outfit saluting the drunken patrons as they dream of Tuaregs and Yves Congar dancing across the horizon. Dilapidated spoons or toy telephones have joined the delightful discombobulation, it's rather smart, it features smartly in my repertoire as a fromerly anglophilic dandy. Baudelaire and Manet. Let us just make a list of French notables. Back to spoken word, and squeezebox sentimentality and now to a player piano outro. Beautiful. I love this label.

The new Clientele seems not awesome. Not on first listen.

Palms It's Midnight in Honolulu. The beginning is primitive drum beatings and howlings. And then German, or not, she's singing in English isn't she, oh wait, now it's German. It's sensual. It's terrific. 15 years before Too Pure would have considered releasing this. The band name is stupid, the album title is stupid but the record is fabulous. It would have been on Too pure because Too Pure weren't always lame little fangirls who signed bands with beards. Did any of the original Too Pure bands have beards? Let's see Stereolab-uh, I don't think any of them could grow one, Moonshake-Dave Callahan can probably appreciate the primitivism of going unshaven but I don't think so, PJ Harvey-now I could see one of her band bearded but certainly not PJ, Seefeel-do beards go with drugs other than the hippy lettuce? Long Fin Killie-it would have been caught up in the cowbell, Mouse on Mars-uh, nope, Minxus-ah who cares about Minxus. You see, there's your proof, the greatest label in the hisotry of the world ever and not a beard among them. Granted I am not sure I've ever seen a photo of Seefeel so I could be making things up. But today everyone is bearded. On the website where I sometimes "try" out music before buying it they post photos of every band they link to and the art of band photography has taken a dramatic step backwards really. Every band looks lame and without effort, their uncoolness is all very natural. Sure sure most of them are making lame music as well but they could at least attempt to look good while making insufferable music and not completely assault each of our own good senses. Second song. The first was tribal, brutal, and now- a cheerful acoustic duet. Really. It's almost romantic until they get semi-doomy on the chorus and turn the blood chilled. It should have been on the soundtrack to Deadgirl. Animal Collective was. The Liars were, the Liars song really sounded perfect in the moment. You should go see Deadgirl. "Don't dance by yourself, dance into the light". It's lovely really. Germany may have former communists take a major step towards national office because they are meant to come close to taking office in one of the departments in the west, in Saarland, Oskar Lafonatine. Is he related to Pat Lafontaine? Pat Lafontaine grew up in my neighbourhood. There are avowed communists in the American government, it's frightfully chic at the moment, private property rights are so passe'. Third song, another acoustic strum along but multi-tracked female voice instead of a male-female sing-songathon. It's dreamy and charming, but in that darkly forlorn manner so endearing to Germans. Angela Merkel in lecture tone, pant suit and physics. Already over. Many short songs. Next track, some french, some carnivalesque wheezing organ and then spaced out super synths, pretty cool. It's back to the dark matters at hand. Sounds like some sort of human squeal electronically affected, and a laconic pace, some guitar, it's all very random sounding but its cacophony is an apt metaphor for European politics. Communists in Germany, Magyarisers in Hungary, steroid junkies in the Kremlin. It's all very silly. This is mainly instrumental with some dread pale conversation going on underneath, it's lovely. Lovely is the wrong word. Lovely was Rudi Arapahoe, this is pretty but in the sense that Joy Division was pretty, that the serene atmosphere they plied their trade in was pure and uncontaminated, artful and melancholic. This isn't on that level, obviously, but it exists in its own vacuum of indifference to popular sentiment and tee shirt sales. They weren't on the Glastonbury Highlights show I watched part of this aftrnoon, in High Definition, but the Ting Tings were and Bloc Party. Bloc Party are four of the dullest boys on earth. They might make a song like this but somehow I'd have been bored by it straight off. Next track, more electronics, more woozy ambience, more of kilter emotions, her coos leavening the mix, a dream sighting of souls and anit-souls mixing in the aether. It's probably very well engineered. It could be a monument to the Solvay conferences of yore. This is the ethereal moment, the track that vaguely underlines the extant manifesto of their forebears. It isn't anything at all like Kraftwerk or Neu or Can, well a bit like Neu and the Velvet Underground. All your favorite Germans. Too Pure was obsessed with Can, they would do wise to remember that at one point nearly every band on the label was in some possibly minor way indebted to Can. I hate Can but it is very much like the relationship I have with the Velvet Underground in that I love most of the bands that cite Can as a direct influence and I can appreciate Jaki Liebezeit most of all. Next track, more primal urgings, sexual incantations, wordless exhultations. Semi-Wordless. The music is rote and uninteresting, Amerikkkan, but it fits perfectly into the model of social aggro blood from a stone rock, now there is a climax, a panting screech. Delirious. Beth Ditto should listen and learn. Now the guy sings, he's coming off a bit like the fellow from Roxette. It's meant to be sinister and sleek and it isn't, it's a bit camp and friendly. I would have advised him against it. He's just followed a Skeptics-ish bit of meandering, unfocused impotent rage with some sort of man on the make posturing. Bah. He should stick to wearing PVC jackets and zip up leather boots and The Shins tee shirts and leave the singing to her. What's her name? I don't know anything at all about Palms. I am somewhat certain that they are a duo. Leather Daddies is over. Now another guitar ballad. Back to her singing. Agnieszka, it is very Velvet Underground and Nico. It is unremarkable except in its grasping for climax, you can sense in her voice a yearning for climax. I quite like this even as it is smothered by subdued hues and subtlety. Lyrics are silly. Are the lyrics written in German and then translated to English. He's singing again, I don't mind when I can't hear him, it adds a shadow to the tenderness, the sinister malevolence of male hormones and militarism. This is really really really Velvet Underground. It's very New York. Is the Amerikkkan from New York. I have been reading about Palms while writing this and yes, he is from New York, the music travels along the undersea cables between the USA and Britain and then is transported to Berlin by carrier pigeon where there is a cipher code that needs to be employed to reconfigure all of the notes on the page. It is top secret. Next track, air raid sirens, stukkas, drum machines in kitchen armoires. It isn't scary at all, it's relaxed, if you know it is coming just lie back and enjoy it right. As Bob Knight might say. Do it for your country. I like this. I like the mix of the possibly frightening(the ones in German) and the softer focus bits. Goethe versus Dreiser. He's shadowing her vocals again, down a telephone line, in a PVC jacket. It does remind me of the Skeptics. Was Nick Roughan involved? Maybe these two are the world's most devoted Nick Roughan fans in the world ever. It has that stale Auckland metally sound. This record will not be giving birth to anyone soon, but the German is key, David D'ath had that nasally Kiwi accent which made him sound like a muppet in comparison to the icy cool teutonic tones here. Nice. Last song. Piano, fairy tales told backwards, bones outside the body, music to make charcoal to. Black.

Downloading the B**tles, there is shedloads of filler on these records. I've only ever owned Revolver and so I was unaware. They died in 1966, impostors took over.

Update: Can anyone really love the Beatles? I am listening and there are all sorts of pleasant memories attached to the songs but their ubiquity renders the songs themselves meaningless doesn't it? Or are all songs meaningful only in the sentimental attachments that each person affixes to them? I don't know. Got to Get You Into My Life makes me think of the 'tilt-a-whirl' at Boblo Island.

Puh, new God Help the Girl ep is mostly a drag. He's seemingly now a creepy old dude.

Rudi Arapahoe Echoes From One to Another This is the most beautiful thing. There are soft plucks and hints and smudges and perfectly aligned moments of melancholy all coalescing into some alluring feature of bliss. Take a spoonful and live to be 100 years old in a day, live your life in a song, here the majesty of tiny earnestness, a tender whisper, a gentle reminder to watch, see the wave before it consumes you. That's the first song, only a few moments stretched. A brief instrumental passage that opens the door to greater passageways hidden beneath the floorboards. Beneath the paving stones, the beach, as Ian Brown might say, I wonder why he didn't mention the gendarmes and their blue capes with lead sewn into the hem to keep the wind from roiling their flouncy capes about and to beat the protestors and their lemon fresh faces. Of course, Ian Brown would not have mistakenly referred to the French police as gendarmes. But I am not sophisticated. In the wake of rudi Arapahoe I fall apart. I don't actually, this is but hyperbole, but imagine if I truly meant every word I am about to type. I might. I have heart, soul, I just keep them hidden tucked in a box hidden within a paper box hidden within a box. Wordless bits accompanying tingled pianos and symphonies dreamed of by the wind or poured forth from bellows or a hand crank, you come across an orchestra in the forest and turn the crank and something close to this appears in front of you with minstrels and gymnasts and shooting stars all for effect. It's gorgeous. The poem bit was a bit Even As We Speak, oddly enough. "Just occasionally a whale song" indeed. Third song, To Gather Flowers, nature song=field recordings of a rain storm, bubbling underneath is something more sinster and lovely. A heart beating outside of a box tied by expectations, beating loud enough for anyone to pass by and be entranced by the sonorous rhythm. When your heart is tied and bound and held in wait it lies unaccompanied, alone, forlorn. The music is not morose or melancholic, it's beautiful. Normally I associate sadness with beauty, it is my natural inclination or mode of recourse but this is beautiful only for beauty's own sake, the goal is loveliness, a place where emotion is indefinable except in vague terms of sensory perception that can't be exposited. A theremin breeze, a harp's trail of softness, it is all mesmerising. I've had this album for some time. I never thought to write about it because it requires the right frame of mind, a state of being where you can listen to the music and simply allow for a jettisoning from the disappointment's in all of the hollowness of life. But then a moment, a sitting down, a kind word taken for what is actually said and appreciated for what is actually meant. And then the haunting aura underlying all of this loveliness. Rudi Arapahoe is a monster. The dream is insidious, you hear this record and the dream is that it can be this lovely, that two hearts can compete for hope. But it isn't real. One heart in a box, one heart served already to another ready to be eaten. Better to sign up for the pro-med mailing list and feel the whispering ache of sadness that reverberates across an ocean when a young man is struck down with Hendra Virus. A young man who may have awoken that morning and imagined all of the possibilities of what life had to offer and bounded forth into the day and then the ugliness in shadows slipped from behind the curtains, took hold of the day and turned it to blackness. But, breathe easier, the Ebola outbreak in Uganda is not real. A herd of sheep in the Levant with scrapie and a man allegedly testing positive for both Avian Influenza and Swine Flu with a possible scenario fitting some ridiculously written, best selling right wing spy novel about a sleeper cell making the Haj where biological warfare is being enlisted in his immune system, a breeding ground for sentient jihadist bacteria to be unleashed in an unholy land. The responses on the Pro-Med list are excellent as well, I rather love when smart people slap down less smart people. "Don't be silly that's Buffalo Pox and not Foot and Mouth you fool!". It is all very civilized which is calmingly serene when we're essentially reading casual correspondences about the four horsemen of the apocalypse in a test tube. Dionysian Birds has ben playing in my ruminations on tragic deaths and the fascinating microcosmos. When extinction comes to the human race I hope to be listening to Rudi Arapahoe. At least this is my choice for today, a perfect Sunday Morning. Soon my Sunday mornings will be spent somewhere else, a higher plain, ha, in Westminster the elevation from sea level is actually slightly lower than here, imagine the triumph of the lungs. Dionysian Birds is a respite track, field recordings and sparse accompaniment. Next a briefer interlude, a retiring from a respite, an insistent whistle and a poem. It's silly poetry but it works. "Every time I sleep my internal organs fall into decay, little by little..." then marvelous pluckings roust the soul. Next we move into first His Name is Alive record territory? It could be considered a modernist update of Livonia, honestly. The voices are more arch and the music is even more fissiparous. These might be the descendants of pencil guitars playing on these tracks. It's devastatingly gorgeous, it is wordless and the singing violin expresses the human emotional lexicon in much greater detail than the voice. I've been doing some reading on this album and in some corners it did reign supreme as the greatest album of 2008. Not in many. This is a travesty. I am one who slept on it, I apologize Rudi. Rudi is some person who probably isn't named Rudi but he's more the architect of this album than anything else by more superficial skimming, he did the field recordings and made the tea. He did a wonderful job. He's in line for a position with the EU I am sure. The EU has begun to ban incandescent lighting. Epileptics beware! The story in the New York Times without irony held up the idea that Cuba is in the vanguard of this earth shattering idea as a beacon of ope to the rest of the world. Cuba! Ha. Germans are hoarding light bulbs. Oddly enough the legislation that has passed banning incandescent lighting in the US by 2013 has had a huge effect on my current occupation. I am the Lamberton Lamplighter, yes yes "I really haven't got much time for girls...". That is me! Not really. I am the prince of Christmas. Will Germans establish a black market in incandescent fairy lights to counter my good faith adherence to the dictates of our rulers on the Potomac? Possibly. Next track, aching piano, a vague ambience stirred up in the distance. It's similar to the first tow His Name is Alive records and its density approaches that of the Mark Hollis solo record. There is more space than music and it feels like an invitation to the warmth of human reflection. It is just the most beautiful thing. I've said this. I love this album. In Cuba ill they be allowed to play the new Manic Street Preachers record? Or have they soured ont he revolution since Raul has taken over for his deceased brother? Fidel is dead. Know this. He's been replaced by a double recruited off of the streets of Tegucigalpa by the SDE. The piano is having a conversation with the room. A short poem and now so His Name is Alive. It's is titled Conversation Piece and I allege that she is singing in English but it is indecipherable except that it could have been an out-take from Home is in Your HEad, it's gorgeous and plaintive and resonant and dramatic. A softly spun melody on an acoustic guitar and heartbeat percussion with the occasional tinkling of a piano. Beautiful. Beautiful is the key descriptor. I have purchased a home. I may buy a stereo and play this album at skull crushing volumes and send a gentle tsunami over the neighbourhood and announce to all of my neighbours that I have brought them the enlightenment in the form of Rudi Arapahoe. I will conquer hearts without a single blow except for the overwhelming sadness of love. Vulture Phantasy, field recordings, the ominous clouds, the tempered shadows and a silly poem. I could live without the poems. it really is the sequel to Even As We Speak's adventures in literary adventure but it always seemed theirs was a journey with tongue in cheek. I imaging the Arapahoe manifesto is dreadfully more earnest and sincere. Dreadful is not the word. The music rises above such human foibles. Pleroma now, space and lightness of touch, repeating figures on a guitar. Are these merely tricks of the light? These pieces that reverberate with melancholy and seeming profundity, is it merely my unfamiliarity with the cliches of human manipulation? I don't know. The voice has arrived, wordless once more, pitched steeply, a cappella, the power of this lies in the hollowness it evokes. Born in a vacuum all sensory implications are provided by the listener and it is a thrilling experience. Truly. I am perhaps overpraising this record. Perhaps you should proceed with caution. Now to another mournful lament keyed on a piano. an ode to the current dilemma in the global milk market perhaps? have you noticed that Milk is practically free these days? Has Jim Jeffords, hero of the New England Dairy Compact, released the stranglehold on the free market? I don't know but a gallon of milk is now less expensive than a half gallon of milk and less than half of where it traded a year ago. This record could be a diary of a struggling polish dairy farmer who must contemplate euthanising his entire herd because he can't make a profit selling their wares on the open market and the CAP has failed him and he writes this gorgeous tune My Shadow while contemplating death from removal of subsidy. Government largess is an insidious thing. I am mainly a libertarian but the idea of my uncle Barack granting me an $8000 tax credit for purchasing a home has me all a titter. I would never vote for the man because he is an absolute incompetent but I've had my experience at a home depot change markedly because of the possibilities of free government money. Of course it isn't free. My taxes will be raised and so will yours and you will live less well as a result but your rulers will have you convinced otherwise. You'll need this astonishing record even more, to provide sympathy to your inevitable decline into egalitarian.

New Sound of Arrows single Into the Clouds is marvelous! Technicolor masterpiece.

Gosh, Bachelorette, she's great, like a Cannonball Jane wandering about in the Radiophonic Workshop.

I've been listening to the newest Cats on Fire more recently. Funny, I hadn't before noticed, but they've become the Bats! Morrissey fronting the Bats, who could help but be smitten? Oh and I've recovered rather quickly from my pseudo-heartache, this is what happens when life as it exists in your head is editable and prone to rewrites, I feel something close to invincible these days.

Bark Cat Bark Cittadinanza. Music is a struggle to establish air superiority. It is a mere struggle against the tides of physics, your forceful strum or fearsome plonking of keys or tense thwapping of the drums is an eternal bond of resistance to the atmosphere that stands fiercely guarding the little bones that evolved to protect the former reptile jaws on sides of heads. First song here, introduction, instrumental, has the air claimed its first victim? No. It's stupendous even though it is gypsy music, like the way they used to make it back when Beirut used to make music, oh wait...A Beirut/Devotchka hybrid? Possibly. We love the Roma! And French, yes another French band! Drole. But I was thinning the waves of humanity and thinking of ghosts and their relation to the air and their comparison to songs and the likes of say Auburn Lull who coax the waves into long sinuous threads that become visible because they are crystallized by a suspended current of emaciated ambition with the notes dressed in pressurized diving suits working diligently with tiny hammers and shovels and analog steam driven turing machines. And then in contrast there is the Pantera struggle, loincloths are key, as is the will to overpower the age of the air. It rarely succeeds, normally the air haughtily places an insurmountable obstacle in place of tunefulness and heads are smashed and bottles emptied and souls desiccated. There are the ginger folk pluckers who try to dance in an out of the waves, trying to kep their toes free, sucking the juice from juniper berries as the gentle eddies circulatd by their effeminate wails threatens to consume them at any moment, dressed in fabulous little shorts and striped socks. But gypsy music? it's indifferent seeming. It has discovered a hole in the sky, a place to hide, an anachronistic cuby hole in a modern world. This should be soundtracking a Jeunet movie that no one will ever admit to loving but will secretly harbour an undying devotion to. Third song. The second was called Benque Viefjo. Beirut played on it, I am imagining that it was his trumpet I heard. Some more exotic flavouring on this song. Some sort of antiqued manipulator of the wind played delicately and rather marvelously. This is a beautiful record. You might wonder what a Beirut album without the singer would sound like and whether it would be worth the investment. It is and it sounds spectacular. Ghosts are dancing acros the neurons. The juniper juice disassociates the linings of the nerve casings and so thoughts dance free and jump to ceilings of the skull muckraking before their fall back from grace spiraling into a pleasant journey towards the abyss. Music, air. the new Epic45 is beautiful. When will Antony Harding's new project come to fruition? But this is Bark Cat Bark, tattoo it on your heart. Viravira Fever, some sort of thumping organic percussion, the tenderizing of yak meat in Ulan Bator? Possibly. A racing fiddle, humbleness abounds. It's meant for a dance about a roaring fire with desperate types reveling in a coming betrayal of modern sensibilities and a retreat in pre-modern bacchanalia! Oh dear. It's not nearly as exciting as I make it seem, but it's still plainly lovely. Next song. Now we've moved into Coen territory. Berovo Berovo Brava. What do the titles mean? They're instrumentals, what does it matter? The music seems a flurry. It is difficult to anticipate a climax in purely instrumental music. Is this a set-up for the melancholia to level the audience up next? Unknown. I listen to electronic music but aside from perhaps 2 or 3 tracks I can name only a few. Lyrics dominate. It's sad because there is as much spirit and slice of life ruled by temperament, as Zola might say, as anything with banal scribblings over top. Listen to God Help the Girl, wonder how it may have been improved by having been wordless instead. We can dream. This isn't the devastating avalanche of macabre ambience we expected but a shuffling jazzy roll, smart, effortless, delightful, physical. When I listen to Beirut it's a cerebral sensation, who convulses involuntarily to Sunday Smile? You dance tenderly with flugelhorns but always your ears are perched high atop your head searching out the nuance and tender phrase. This is messier, warmer, well made but human. It's closer to the spirit of the heartland. It is a simple matter of geography. In America you may find a roving band of gypsies in the airport welcoming lounge in teal coloured robes and bad braids and sensible footwear with tambourines, finger clackers and a bouzouki. But in Europe those same sorts are about always, looking to lift your wallet, sell you their daughter, etc...wow I've just made a turn towards the racist. Sorry. But the Roma culture is vibrant as it exists not as some sort of pastiche. Next track, The Panther in Zavanthem. Just beautiful, that's all. I watched a hasidic Jew that does not live in this complex walk past the trash bin and surreptitiously deposit a large bag of trash. His beard shavings? Unknown. But when St Peter turns him away at the pearly gates he'll be searching his heart for the reason and come to discover it was his trash trespassing that kept him from paradise. St Peter's got a new boss--Gaia. That song was marvelous. Now the piano. Apparently Beirut is his hero. This is one French person. He's done a fine job living up to his ideals. And the songs are mainly so very short, this a sort of intermission after the whirling goodness of the last track. So quiet, impressive in its quiet. Next track, nature song. He's not as fond of the ukulele as Beirut is. There will soon be another entry here, soon could mean anything, on Sophie Madeleine and I mention it only because she's also fond of the ukulele. It's an expressive choice. Another quiet number now, a bit July Skies really, I must have subconsciously recalled the similarity when I was mentioning Antony hArding earlier. In this record is a similar aesthetic, a dreamed over nostalgia for the past, the misery of boredom bleached out in favor of studied indifference to modernity and the triumph of the betterment of the individual. It seems a marvelous picture to paint of the sole musician along in is bedroom crafting these wonderful wonderful melodies and being almost surprised at his own character coming through in such a shining example. Long song now, the centerpiece? 9 minutes. will I have the stamina to make it all the way through? Unlikely. I could discuss whether I will make it through nine minutes for nearly nine minutes and then for the last precious seconds lament over how I merely discussed my stamina for nearly nine minutes. the record has turned sedate. From galloping cradles of violins and their kin to pensive piano pieces and dissonance pressed flat into the foreground. This is tender and haunting, a slow build towards a precipice overlooking the utopia of full hearted romance. It really is very reminiscent of those things that normally appear on Make Mine Music, it could have been. but then there is a sense of ambition in the nots, the little men dressed in surgeon scrubs burrowing beneath the skin, tracing the circulatory system, raising the internal temperature to a tepid boil, tingling all about. Nothing is happening. This is not the centerpiece, it is the contemplative core of the record, he's worn out, the lullaby for exercised minds. Lovely. I've said lovely too many times but I honestly love this record. The title is Draugur, norwegian for "ghost". It is an appropriate title. I cheated, I used wiktionary so really it could be Danish for danish for all I know. But it's fissiparous and fragile and filled with transparent sentiments layered one over the other like a flower pressed between velum pages of a scrap book. Beautiful. Last track now. Shorter. Perhaps the longer track should have ended things on the reflective somber plank. But now with backwards horns and Wee Willy Hymn-ness we sense a collective habitation with people like Alastair Galbraith. Beaks and claws, barks and dogs. Last one, piano is prominent again, very The Young and the Restless, very memorex commercial from the 70s, classically inspired, a draught from his composition class from back in Lille? It's responsive to the listener, now a waltz-like jaunt has enlivened the heart a dance about the room filled with chandeliers made in Macau and candelabras from Papua New Guinea and cleavers pointed at stone hearts. Everyone I know is getting married. A wedding needs a waltz, this could do. The sad waltz to lament the end of being alone, it is something to be feared, more than you know.

Diving With Andy Sugar. I had forgotten that I had *ahem* acquired this record. When did I acquire it then? I don't remember. The death of music as a fetish article. I am moving into a house soon. A nice person I work with has offered to help me to move. I wonder if she has heard on the street that I don't have anything. Is word going around on the street that I travel lean? This first song is just terrific. I have had a succession of purges of my Itunes library and this survived, it may have been camouflaged as it resides in the same neighbourhood as the Divine Comedy and Dolly Mixture. Stalwarts. It's a bit like a french pop band. Are they french? It is slickly produced, right now there's a cornucopia of dissonances and disaffected voices and now a slow burn trumpet outro. Pretty awesome actually. I went to see Deadgirl the other night. It's excellent. Decidedly twisted and unhinged but wholly entertaining. Interesting that the dream figure of the male lead or at least the real life analog that the big screen character was based on was sitting but two rows in front of us. It was a loud row. Two obnoxious girls and bald men and a muse. I sat next to a muse. A muse for the gentle heart. The fragile thinly filmed thought bubbles swim through the air around her filled with clever thoughts and doubts and anger that never breaks the surface. It's a difficult world. The person that has offered to help me move is engaged. Not to me. I had had thoughts of engagement but that's all it is with me, thoughts of engagement, thoughts of disengagement, thoughts of estrangement, thoughts of derangement. or thoughts that lead to derangement. Second song is also fantastic, her voice wan, the music charming and rote, canned strings, sophistication, polish, now a bit of Gallic sonic gallantry. Her voice is the female equivalent of crooning. What is the female equivalent of crooning. I don't much like the female equivalent of crooning as a speaking device but it works in song. The muse next to me, she didn't belong to my muse seeking inner slacker but to a greater world that requires the presence of those who step softly on pavements and leaves and around the oil swirls in thrift store parking lots. I gave her a copy of The Roaches Have No King. It's a quick read. I am reading a book on John Snow and the great Cholera outbreak of 1849. It's a quick read. I'd love to write a book about Cholera in 2009. Ether is not a efficacious remedy. Are Peter Snow and Dan Snow descended from John Snow? I really like this song that's playing now. Coulour Blind. A female Fugu? They are French, I've confirmed this, but three French people making big, polished pop. It's so lovely. Peter Snow has the voice of someone whose beaten up people who wring their hearts out in the rain waiting for their muse to come to the window, a soft silhouette, sustenance for the soul, a "gentle" infusion into the near night air, waft down three floors to the streetscape filled with the lonely and forlornly decadent. I read my book on Cholera in a Subway. I have decided to stop going to chain restaurants, well except for Subway. It's relatively inexpensive, I like the tuna sandwich. I could make my own tuna. I will make my own tuna again. In my new kitchen, with hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances and airplanes leaving contrails in the shapes of engorged boa constrictors and seal intestines. My muse lives in jars of maraschino cherries in the loneliest aisles of the super market. My favorite supermarket is a large chain super market, altered slightly to appeal to their upscale clientele, the Organic aisles are loneliest of all, the Indian frozen food section lies in the suburbs of this alienated nation within a nation. Next song, jazz, ugh, not fondly reminiscing about my time in Paris at jazz clubs and screenings of Scream 3 with young american high school girls to be impressed with my trivial pursuit abilities. This is not so horrible actually. Your greater muse, the spirit of Denver, the gossamer light of the spent breath shuddering able hearts the night has disowned, left alone to its demise on the curbside, alongside 32 gallon rubbish bins. Uplift. Now to The Greatest Stories. There are many people getting married where I work. Some in the shadows and others in the sunlight. Some will play Diving With Andy. I lied, none will play Diving With Andy. I love Diving With Andy, I would not play them at my hypothetical wedding that is destined to occur sometime to someone better than I am, my wedding has taken leave of me, disgusted by my timid flailings against the buffeting winds of mediocrity. But mediocre people that I work with are already married. I subscribe to the idea that I am the victim of my own cowardice. if only I had a muse to overcome my cowardice. Cowardice has been prompted by the lyrics of this song. It is difficult to sleep when your stomach churns over the physical deprivations of imaginary romance. The perils of having a ken imagination and the curse of remembering every word she ever said. Next song, piano, Anna May, very pretty. Very Very pretty. When I have a home I could buy a stereo and listen to this at volume, in my basement. there is a workshop in the basement. I will use it to build an enclosure for the gas line that snakes across the basement ceiling. The only thing that unsettled me. What if I raise my hands in triumph when I hear a new Napoleon record and blow myself into smithereens because I struck the gas line and the fierceness of my blows cause spontaneous combustion. Cutaneous combustion. My face had skin cancer. He's had it since I was a young man. I recall taking him to one of his myriad surgeries. he was in a anesthetic coma and he longed for a McDonald's Big Mac. I drove him to McDonalds, in his Cutlass Cierra. The gutless. It was candy apple red. Now he's without his left eye, I walk around when I can with my left eye closed in sympathy, I wish I had sympathy with his spirit. I live in fear of a young woman at the corner desk and he's bravely charging into the world with Cancer dripping from his left temple. I drive a black vehicle, better to disguise the shadow over my head. How unpoetically vulgar. My apologies. I could get a girlfriend, easy. Tell me, are there dilapidated Mental Hospitals nearby to my new home? I don't know. Rabid dogs and undead naked women under visqueen, probably 4 mils. Industrial material. Love at first deprivation. The hooligans in Deadgirl were portrayed brilliantly as equal parts vile fornicators and lonely outcasts. This song was a tad saggy and plodding and now it has turned lithe and agile. Marvelous. The strings are very french, it is all very French. Well except for the singing, it is very English as in English. A relief, at least I have my anglo-american cultural chauvinism to fall back on. But all kidding aside this the flower of youth. The sort that is trampled on by large booted people who can't feel the souls that cling to the underside of their feet the ethereal sprites that exist all around them unless they are stepping over them to ruin the world on purpose. There are those who would chose to abandon hopefulness for despair, it saddens me, a tender shoot taken to a tannery and molded out of shape nto another grizzled panel on the unfeeling superficial skin of the world. I will warn someone before they read this, the obscene incoherency. It's typing by sense, eyes in the dark, exultations into the vacuum. I can't speak. I don't speak enough, I am losing my ability to speak. I could sing. Meet people I love and sing them love songs from french trios unaccompanied. But then I remember that I am afraid. Next song, some fabulous electric piano. Rather awesome! Rather! Big strings, her voice is key. it sounds the same on every track, but we don't mind. Last one, another piano ballad. This is a marvelous marvelous rcord. Is it from this year? There aren't many released this year that are better. Are they unheralded because of the protectionist clauses embedded in national stimulus programs? A retaliation against the refusal to buy asphalt from asphalt conglomerates in Sudbury. I spent a summer in Sudbury. Underground. Buried alive. Escaped all but dead, born to receive the word from Diving with Andy, 'no matter what i do, no matter what i say...i'll always be 20 for you'.

Is one meant to dance to this?

Betty & The Werewolves – David Cassidy
Cola Jet Set – Suena El Telefono
Morrisey – I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris
BMX Bandits – Disco Girl
Rachel Goswell – Coastline (Ulrich Schnauss Instrumental Mix)
Radio Dept – Freddie & The Trojan Horse
The Metric Mile – Codebreaking
God Help The Girl – Funny Little Frog
The Wild Swans =- English Electric Lightning
East Village – Here It Comes
Remember Fun – Train Journeys
The Besties – The Bone Valley Deposit
Rose Elinor Dougall – Start/Stop/Synchro
Harper Lee – Train Not Stopping
Town Bike – Dougie
The Lucksmiths – T-Shirt Weather
The Lovely Eggs – Have You Ever Heard A Digital Accordian?
The Mary Onettes – Dare
La Caza Azul – Deberia Plantearme Cambiar
The School – All I Wanna Do
Mo Tucker – To Know Him Is To Love Him
The Parachute Men – If I Could Wear Your Jacket
Bye! – No Baby Don’t
Northern Portarit – A Quiet Night In Copenhagen
BMX Bandits – I Wanna Fall In Love
Prolapse – Autocade
Hong Kong In The 60’s – Footseps
That Petrol Emotion – Big Decision
Kicker – Since You Left
Kitchens Of Distinction – The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule
Dinosaur Jr – Pieces
Talulah Gosh – Beatnik Boy
Pink Military Stand Alone – Did You See Her?
Yeah Yeah Noh – Bias Binding
The Manhattan Love Suicides – Don’t Leave Me Dying
Nirvana – Love Buzz
The Ramones – Sheena Is A Punk Rocker
Liechtenstein – Postcard
BMX Bandits – e102
DJ Liebowitz – Holiday In Cambodia
The Manhattan Love Suicides – Kessler Syndrome
Cats On Fire – Tears In Your Cup
The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut – Hey Dr Beeching
The Damned – New Rose
Speedmarket Avenue – Way Better Now
The Groove Farm – I Couldn’t Get To Sleep Last Night
The Clouds – Get Out Of My Dream
Nico – I’m Not Saying
Help Stamp Out Loneliness – Pacific Trash Vortex
Primal Scream – Velocity Girl
The Manhattan Love Suicides – Heat & Panic
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Young Adult Friction
Teenage Fanclub – Starsign
Joy Division – Disorder
Magazine – I Love You, You Big Dummy
Crystal Stilts – Love Is A Wave
The Kinks – I Need You
The Kingsmen – Louie Louie
Razorcuts – Big Pink Cake
The Sparkles – No Friend Of Mine
Jackie Wilson – (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher
Felt – Penelope Tree
The June Brides – In The Rain
Wire – Mannequin
Joy Division – She’s Lost Control
Echo & The Bunnymen – The Cutter
The Manhattan Love Suicides – Kick It Back
Josef K – Sorry For Laughing
The Fall – Victoria
Butcher Boy – Profit In Your Poetry
God Help The Girl – Perfection As A Hipster
The Concretes – Seems Fine
The Vaselines – Son Of A Gun
McCarthy – The Well Of Loneliness
Belle and Sebastian – The Boy With The Arab Strap
The Magnetic Fields – Too Drunk To Dream
Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out Of This Country
Hefner – Painting And Kissing
Pixies – Debaser
Gang of Four – I Love A Man In A Uniform
New Order – Blue Monday
The Wave Pictures – Leave The Scene Behind
Pocketbooks – Fleeting Moments
The Smiths – William, It Was Really Nothing
Jens Lekman – You Are The Light (By Which I Travel Into This And That)
Cats On Fire – Draw In The Reins
Helen Love – Beat Him Up
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – This Love Is Fucking Right!
Orange Juice – Rip It Up
Belle and Sebastian – Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying

The last one would have my toes tapping most especially! The night is called Scared to Dance I had assumed it was ironic but apparently not. I don't think I understand English club nights. Would it not be best to have everyone issued a pair of headphones and have accessible jacks at their tables and they could listen and admire the DJ's awesome taste in music? Who knows. I never leave my house.

Update: And now, having received enlightening emails, I can share in the knowledge that this is more the soundtrack to a night out with like minded souls. Ah. Still don't understand why you would play the same band twice. Requests? And why would you play Felt at all? Self-flagellates in attendance?

Glum discovery, it appears that Possession has already been made into a Gwynneth Paltrow movie. How sad. I'm almost at the end, I fear my good feelings may now be forever spoilt. An entry on the Ballet coming tomorrow. I quite like them.

The Ballet Mattachine. Being from New York must be an impediment for bands. Being as being from New York likely would make you think you are more interesting, more central, more profound than you actually are. But are there any bands that are truly from New York? I think this band lives in New York, but are they from New York? This is very nice, a Magneitc Fields meets the Baskervilles kind of vibe happening. Two archetypal would be from New York City if they could have designed it bands. His voice is a bit Ladybug Transistor. A New York band might think their interests set them apart from the world at large. If I was in a band and not from New York, instead I hailed from Aames, Iowa I might try harder to be worldly, learned, catholic. These guys are gay. I am not sure if it matters. But it seems requisite to mention it in mentions of the band and thus to compare them to other gay bands like the Hidden Cameras and the Magnetic Fields. Guilty. What if Skip Gates had been gay? I really like this first song. I've only skimmed this album once. I am not sure if it is good or merely great. Second song, more strings, toy sounding strings, bohemian strings, strings from the back of a Forced Exposure catalog. His voice, nasal and pinched, his scope shrunken and the words about life in a snowglobe. I really enjoy this song as well. This would have qualified as indiepop in the 1990s. Now it is far too macho. It is too adult. It has personality. DQ. Another band who risk dating themselves rather quickly by mentioning instant messaging. Instant messaging has had a remarkable shelflife for the era though, they might be safe. Before this week's end a non-New York band come to our fair city on the edge of the Rockies. Trash Can Sinatras. Yay! I've seen them once before. Long ago. In Detroit. It was frightfully cold, I remember listening to Francis conduct an interview with a subsuming cold with the local alternateen station as I was driving to the show. It was at St Andrews, the boys must have felt at home. It was a marvelous show. I even remember Thirsty Forest Animals as the opening act, some proto-quavering emo shoegaze band from Detroit. Do they still exist? Could they be opening this Thursday? Not probably. We'll get someone horrible like Mr Pac-Man. Its alright I'll wear ear plugs and dream of the Summer air pressing down on the clouds outside. This song is very Magnetic Fields. Back before the Magnetic Fields starting releasing really uninteresting albums. No mention of the Magnetic Fields in 500 Days of Summer. I did see it. I enjoyed it. You may revoke my credentials for being credible. But really there are two sorts of people in this world, those who think There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is the saddest, most romantic song in the world ever and those who don't. Well, there has been speculation in the relevant literature that there is in fact a third variant on the species the I Love Music sort that hates everything that they might believe would not be approved by the greater consciousness of Asperger nation. But they are sad and pitiable and I don't want to think about them. They've got their 3 x 5 cards in their back pocket with their ready to be updated at a second's notice list of the top 10 albums, singles and reissues of the year. They use abbreviations like Dero and "the Dean" and can quote Simon Reynolds vital statistics at you as it is him they picture while they spend quality time alone in a bathroom stall with a copy of Smash Hits circa 1983. I am too cruel. I was once a music "critic". I wrote for an esteemd publication-"Tweekitten". I washed out, I couldn't handle the pace; I went crazy with the women, the drugs, the rock and roll lifestyle. Now I am here. Fifth song already, the last two were great, by the way. This is very Charm of the Highway Strip, surely the Magnetic Fields are their favorite band and they must know that they are a complete ripoff of the Magnetic Fields. Vitesse knew this as well. Did they not? Is it an homage? I wasn't aware that Leon Trotsky had signed the surrealist manifesto. It is part of the reason the Christopher Hitchens apparently has thoughts of Lev while spending quality time in a bathroom with a copy of the battleplan for Operation iraqi Freedom. But sad old men like me have a dark dream that corresponds more or less exactly to the scene in the elevator in 500 Days of Summer, perhaps the song is different, some may chose Joy Division or the Teardrop Explodes, I might have plumped for the Chills Satin Doll but only to seem more obscure. Are there really Karaoke machines with the Pixies on them? I've never done Karaoke. I wouldn't know. Sixth song, hand claps and drum machines. Does The Ballet have a facebook entry? Do these things seem like a requirement for the bands of today? Part of the CV to make them more appealing to tastemakers like Skatterbrain and Shelflife? I hope not. I would hope they would be excited ot do their bit to enhance the fabric of the false universes of Facebook. Sometimes when I am bored I will search these sites for people I work with or when given suggestion to by someone I work with will find some of their entries somewhat surprising. Some resemble JC Penney catalog photo shoots, some reveal surprisingly stunning significant others and some reveal levels of physical fitness not easily confirmed by visual inspection. I don't participate. It would be a lonely facebook entry without any friends. There is someone that has claimed the URL for my full name. I won't reveal it but my first name is Keith and I am not Sarah McLachlan's brother though I could be mistaken for it. I was Canadian after all. My name sharer is a bit of a ponce. He's got all sorts of advice for getting rich though it doesn't appear that he's all that wealthy. And then there is the poetry! It's marvelous! There is another person that shares my name that writes books on Africa and the Middle East. I don't imagine he's wealthy either. Our name could be an anchor in the financial stakes. I like the current song. It sounds less Magnetic Fields-ish. This is decidedly indiepop. Remember when bands were not ashamed to be considered indiepop. Back when there was fire and fury in an indiepop song, possibly. There isn't that possibility today. Perhaps the assault on wealth by the Joebama administration is in part a response to his disappointment at what the unprecedented generational wealth has contributed to the parlous state of indiepop music. Maybe Joebama hypes himself up for staff meetings with a 30 minute session with London Weekend and laments quietly to his 13 year old chief of staff about how the new Bats record is great but god he's sick of bands like the Pocketbooks and Smittens being so safe, dreary and middleclass. Let's raise taxes on their parents, let's shake up the world! Another nice song. This sounds Canadian. I have Candar. Are there Canadians in this band? The Manhattan Love Suicides have called it quits. How sad. Not really. They looked as if they wanted to pretend that they were dangerous but dear god, the music. I am surprised they weren't on Slumberland. Apparently Slumberland is going to release a new Bats EP soon. Woo! Hopefully it wasn't infected by that dismal Clean record that Merge is fighting tooth and nail to keep anyone from hearing because it is so crap. The Bats could play with Trash Can Sinatras, two of my comfort bands, warmth and consistency and nostalgia all wrapped in wrinkled, grey packages. Song number 9, Corduroy back with the Magnetic Fields pastiche. I Don't mind. Originality is overrated, I am unoriginal besides no one sounds like Our Brother the Native and this doesn't stop them from being horrible. Summer has finally arrived. It was the year without a Summer until now. But Summer will be short, only 30 days. Who will write the breezy sounds of summer when it has been overcast and unseasonably cool for almost the entire duration? Will Mr Pac-Man have it within them to write a Double Summer? Ha. Maybe Brian Cox will step away from his duties as populist physicist to the teen set, his poster on the walls of millions next to Joe Jonas, and move back into his role as guitarist for Shed Seven and write a brilliant paen to the summer that wasn't. It could be a lament. Is he really an eminent physicist or has he just grabbed his high profile status because he has an angular haircut and probably listens to Her Space Holiday? He looks like Johnny Greenwood. Do they hang out and discuss the foibles surrounding the LHC and what a wanker Thom Yorke is? I don't know. He's boring. I'm boring. You're boring. This record is wearing out its welcome with it's uniformity. I think they think they are more complicated than they are. Is this a political statement? I Hate the War, ha, I am dense, but it is so apathetic and automatic sounding, yeah I voted for Joebama, I'm meant to hate the war even though it hasn't really affected me at all except to have forced me to attend a demonstration every other weekend for credit in my Gender Studies class. It's a bit dreary, like the war is a war on the proper use of a half-stop and you're surrounded by a group of education majors. Two songs left. I am running out of steam. I am on vacation this week. There should be loads of entires then, but there probably won't be. I am looking for a house, I saw 4 yesterday. It is astonishing how universal bad taste is, dark paneling, purple carpeting, copper wall hangings, ugh!!! My childhood home had all of these things save the purple carpeting, ours was evergreen and we had a plastic eagle hanging over the fireplace. If I had been in a band I might have been interesting because I grew up in such mundane circumstances, the highlight being the breathless newscasts from a helicopter searching for the Liger that had been rumored to be stalking the grounds near Freedom Hill. The might Strut used to play at Freedom Hill. Whatever happened to Strut? Maybe they merged with Thirsty Forest Animals, times are tough in Detroit. This song sounds resigned, more silly talk of revolution. The imagination of would be dissidents in a free country like this is funny. The imaginary struggle, throwing verbal punches to the air, the aggrieved child driven home to his palatial estate in a 2004 Volvo is stirring. Now the last song. Chants and chants, blah blah blah. Will there be a political record of consequence now that there is going to be a reversion back to the poverty of the 1960s and 1970s I hope so. It won't be written by the Ballet. They're from New York.