Egad, A Pas/Cal side project Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship. It's pretty ok. He sings like Eric Matthews?! The music is a bit off like the Moles or West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. Only occasionally does the drummer make a muddle.

Update: Ah, it's cack. A modern day Stilicho, the Pas/Cal idea still holds sway over my heart.

Elvis How Great Thou Art. There were links to my parents childhood all throughout my own. There was the I Love Lucy on Channel 50, Welsh Rarebit, Muscle Cars, etc...I would watch I love Lucy religiously with my mother when waiting for my brother to come home for lunch to walk me to kindergarten. And there was Elvis Presley. I don't imagine this situation is in any way unique. Although, for my fastidious and sterile neighbours it was actually Neil Diamond as popular icon of note. I remember once house sitting when they were away, cutting the lawn, cleaning the pool, and always there was a cassette copy of Live at the Greek on the stereo. But for my mother it was Elvis Presley. Forever and Always. I went to a local meeting concerning the pending construction of the Wabash Bridge here in Arapahoe County and everyone there looked more to be of the pro-Bing Crosby crowd rather than the legions of teens that lost their innocence to Elvis Presley and Joe Mccarthy, according to Clooney. First track is the title track. It's epic and gorgeous and filled with a swagger for Jesus. It is miles apart from say the Soul Stirrers who seethed with a fire of angst and passion of rebellion in their "devoutness" as stand in for racial injustice where as by contrast my friend Elvis seems more of a "Jesus" fan. Elvis' and Sam Cooke's relationship with their saviour must have been incredibly nuanced seeing as how they had somewhat liberal or unorthodox views on what adhering to the major tenets of their faith meant. The crescendo here is just marvelous. I don't remember a lot of Elvis gospel on the stereo when I was a kid. it was Stuck on You and Return to Sender and Elvis movies on Sunday afternoons. Swagger is the key, Jesus is his rock, the real head of the Memphis Mafia. There is swagger that has followed on down a thread long after Elvis passed, there in Peter Hook's bass, in Betty Marie Barnes' voice, in John Thain. Second track has finished, I am distracted, it was deliriously pretty. Third track now. His voice in crooner mood but without any sort of skeezy pick-up artist quality. Elvis never made anyone's skin crawl did he? He did have the angellic spirit in his voice which contradicted his true nature but I still bet that even the aggrop-geriatrics in the crowd at my zoning meeting thought he could be a good boy if only he'd gotten a haircut. But then they were adults by the time they turned 18 and my parent's compadres are still reveling in their adolescence. Before Elvis there wasn't anyone to write the rule book for being Elvis was there and therefore as trailblazer he's forgiven for his excesses. There was Sinatra, maybe he was comaprable, I don't know, he's older than dirt man and did the girls swoon when he sang 'The Trolley Song'? He may have dated Ann Margret or her mother? My own relationship with the ten commandments is not pristine and there was never a rulebook for living as me either so I know where Elvis is coming from. Insecure, awkwardly handsome, intelligent, frontal lobe detachment syndrome, the works. Next track, again this is preposterously gorgeous and moving and pure delight. Farther Along. I went to Sunday School every Sunday for a long time. I was also confirmed. I was once an acolyte in the United Church of Christ but my main concern at the time was less the solemnity of a call to religion and more the deep red shag carpet that when combined with the drafty 115 year old chapel caused there to be an ungodly surplus amount of static electricity in the pews during each and every ceremony so that the wayward acolytes spent most services shocking each other at inappropriate times during the service. Better than Paul Theroux. There was the good Reverend Zink. Surely he was an Elvis fan. Would he sit in his ofice after a stirring Sunday morning sermon and put on Farther Along in order to relax? I would have. "You Shall Have No Other Gods", shall is interesting, I work with a great deal of OSHA regulations and they use the same quasi-religious language, I suppose it was Nixon then that came down from Sinai in tweed with the shall requirements that I am much more bound to than the hebrew commandments. Stand By Me, most of these tracks have but a lone piano as accompaniment, laid far far in the background and his and the choir voice's booming together elegantly way out in front. Could you imagine Clay Aiken singing like this? No. He doesn't have any swagger at all. You know people like Jerry Schiller and Joe Esposito may be the only people I could look down upon for having wasted their lives even more than I have. Were they proud when they went home for Christmas to see their parents for their once annual visit and they discovered that they still made their living remora like, as a parasite on the King of Rock'n'Roll? I would have been proud. They bought Cadillacs because Elvis didn't have the time. "No idols", I have this one covered, my apartment looks as sterile as the day I moved in. I can't bring myself to define myself by sentimentality, I think it's the inner existence that is sealed off from the real world. So High, oh this is glorious, praise be, it swings and rolls and it's obviously influenced by a youth spent in Black churches, bravo, this is so bloody great. Did Elvis worship himself and thus violate big number two? Probably. But really how could Elvis not fall in love after the 68 comeback special when he saw what was staring back at him in the mirror? "Lord's Name in Vain", I don't swear much at all though more than I used to. I don't swear in front of people I care about. Even so, God D**n, would not rank as a favorite anyhow. Where Could I Go But to the Lord, fingersnaps and a deep resonant vocal, probably recorded on top of the line four track technology. And here I foolishly think that Peter and Graeme Jefferies made remarkable use of archaic technology. Pah. Does Elvis have any cache? He's like General Motors or IBM, a brand, an ideal that needs refreshing. I quite liked that remix that came out a few years ago. Would an entire record filled with likeminded moxes rekindle the imagination of America? Who knows. Have you noticed how Joebama is completely out of his depth? It's remarkable that he looks so clueless so soon. These are not the end days but he's making thm out to be so he can secure that 1 billion dollars for the pearl of the American industrial prominence- Amtrak. Cheers. "Remember the Sabbath", ha, I work more Sundays than I rest. I did not work this past Sunday but I missed the Super Bowl anyhow. I watched Down to Earth and Morning Glory instead. Down to Earth is mostly dreadful except for the happy acquired knowledge that Heaven's Gate borrowed so liberally from such a dreadful movie and its prequel. Rita Hayworth was well cast as goddess. Morning Glory is amazing by comparison. Sure sure it is shoddily constructed, more interesting things happen off screen than on but Katherine Hepburn is rather amazing in it. There are still songs playing in the background and there is a feral nature to the worshipping going on now, Run On. Elvis at the halftime of the Super Bowl, oh what a dream. Would Elvis have made a grand old man? He'd be 74 years old, not that much older than tired old Bruce Springsteen. I could see Elvis in a stylish track suit and crocs belting out Burning Love to the grandmas all over the world and he would not have fallen for Joebama's fluff. Surely he would have been a Ron Paul man. Where No One Stands Alone, tender and sweet and powerful and dramatic. It's funny to me when people complain about Elvis singing while pretending to play the guitar. Wy would he need to play an instrument for justification as an artist when he can sing like this? Should Placido Domingo play the french horn while singing too? Silly. Crying in the Chapel, I went to take my contacts out, sorry, where was I? "Honor they parents", yeah sure, I am the pitiable adult son out with his parents watching Tom Cruise movies and listening to the June Brides in the back seat of a minivan while they lament over my miserable existence with that thousand yard stare out the window at the endless rows of Southern Pines. Crying...is played regularly on the radio, it isn't the best song here, but it's the most "pop", I'd like to hear the Clientele do a cover. There'll Be Peace in the Valley. The second to last track. I don't know who sings the chorus. It isn't Elvis. Right? They can't quite compare to Sam Cooke, it's sedate and inhibited, it's the difference between a celebration and a death cult. This is my least favorite track on the record since it's so monotonous and staid. No sex appeal for Jesus? Who better to make love to than the lord. Elvis the monophysite in some sort of psychological incest. Oh wait, that was the last track. Fabulous stuff.

Have you read this stimulus bill? Preposterous. Alas, I've thus taken to listening to Elvis sing gospel in hopes of redemption. Next entry is all about Elvis and whether I hold true to the ten commandments. Sounds exciting! No?

Emmy the Great First Love. I've just finished writing about Animal Collective and its macho male energy and now to this feminine artifact of restraint and daintiness. Is that misogynistic enough? She has a bit of Natalie Merchant in her voice! A reach but still I am in love. Perhaps not all like Natalie really but it's archetypal folk. Melodica and now more urgency, marching band drums and lyrics crafted delicately to tell a meaningful tale of youth and exuberance erm...or something. Ah youth, Obama's dreadfully uninspiring speech was written by a 27 year old. He wrote it in a Starbucks. Word is that he reached back deep, all the way to 1997 for great historical allusions and passion for the golden days of yore when this country was beloved and brilliant. Surely youth is the defining characteristic for his position as official mouthpiece for the commander in chief. Raised on a steady diet of Dharma and Greg, I am anxious to hear more of his wit and bravura. Second song. A Bukowski reference. Emmy the Young, she's eminently qualified to be HUD secretary by that measure alone. It's folk music. A bit like a Kristen Hersh solo record. A bit Rodney Allen, a bit Delores O'Riordan. Really. Does anyone over 25 like Charles Bukowski? He seems dangerous when we were young and yet sad and pitiable when wake older. Wealthy drug addicts, well he married rich, always bore me. I suppose he was a poor alcoholic but they bore me as well. Next song. It's a bit pop, very pop, Carol King pop, brilliant, I am greatly enjoying this record, I like the emphasis on the initial syllable of each line it's at turns awkward and charming. Strings. Backing vocals, it's got an arrangement for grown-ups. Martin Carr killed Charles Bukowski. The thing about youth is that it mistakes passion for depth. Passion makes the young create brilliant pop songs and poetry and paintings but age and wisdom make one slow down before rushing headlong into asinine schemes such as Cap and Trade and extending the legal protections of the US Constitution to enemy combatants. John Paul Stevens is an adolescent. I know. There is an immaturity in monomania, it was why when I was young I listened to the Smiths mainly to the exclusion of everything else. Now that i am old and wise and reflective I recognize by errors but when in the throes of monomania passion overwhelms reason and so there it is. This is a bit Dolly Parton. Nice. Fourth song, The Easter Parade, a bit chugging, the music is so quiet, the keys on a piano are delicately impressed and the guitar played outside in the hall so as not to wake the babies writing the new rules for Collateralized Debt Obligations. I think I am meant to be listening intently to the lyrics, But you needn't, no really. This is the first I've heard from Emmy the Great and I was always under the sway of the mistaken belief that she was a personality driven artist but that is not the whole story not certainly by the given strength of this album. It's delicate and dreamy and romantic and beautiful. All things beautiful will help to carry us through the maddening years to come. We move from terrible President to terrible President, an everlasting cycle. Liberal made inroads in germany, Amity Schlaes heart must be glowing. I am also in love with Amity Schlaes you know and I am much more handsome than her husband but he's likely more familiar with the appealing traits of coherence and logic. So much about this record is subdued, subtle, hushed. It's a dagger in the heart of bombast and hysteria. It nestles in my being alongside the Cocoanut Groove record, it is as sublime and heraldic as that record is, honestly. Classical references abound, if only she would throw in a bit of Latin, oh wait...ah. I like the album cover, there should be more album cover collages, Lara Lockton should be a wealthy woman by now turning down one meaningful commission after another. Next song, starts off with a meander, turns to a menace, a slice western, insistent. She has some wonderful arrangements, I've already said that, but this is pop folk and an extremely accomplished sort. Her force of charisma surely powers the transition from delicate murmuring to dominant storytelling. My pet theory about isolation or the fear of it is buttressed by this article today. Like the song says 'Probst and Winfrey are on your side while Thoreau and Proust are on mine' or so it should be. But I would like to have friends. If I knew how. Next song, guitars and voice, she isn't a great singer but she works well within its limitations, the echoey reverb is on high. It adds a cosmic gentility that might be lacking untreated. So she then is one of a very small number of exceptions, an oddball in communion with her soul, isolated enough, turned away enough, separate from the clutter and noise of modern connectivity. But then connectivity is re-established to confirm the fruits of her period of solitude. As it should be. Ever have a brilliant idea arrive to a group engaging in brainstorm sessions? No, never, rhetorical. Consensus produces the average of all opinions, at best, it is less worse than the worst but it is always less best than the greatest. A bit like Capitalism. The gradient of risk and courage versus the tendency to be part of the herd is a difficult force to massage. I despise brainstorming sessions. Inertia is a powerful drag on the weak. Emmy is great because she's powerful, able to throw 18 kegs of ale over an 18 foot wall if she needed to. Next, War, racing piano and guitar, she joins us restless and breathless and afraid of standing still for fear of sniper attack from partisans hidden in the reeds along the shore. Racing strings join in now. It's frantic, a soft frenzy of emotion and now it flowers into a full composition of expanded temperatures and intensities. This sounds like a record from a very young person. It's bloody excellent. First Love, now. Lyrics here are a bit silly. But we overlook because it is first love feelings and of course it's meant to be sappy and ridiculous, it always is, no one has Petrarchian conventions when you are staring across a sixth grade classroom awkwardly. Leonard Cohen reference. I don't much like Leonard Cohen really, I know he's a legend and all but he never meant a thing to me. Even as I am a lapsed Canadian. I took very much pride in my Canada recently. I learned that one of my least favorite prime ministers ever, Mckenzie King, had a longstanding flirtation with spiritualism and the occult. Surely Mckenzie was aware long ago of the coming calamity of 2012. If only I believed in the onset of disaster so near it might spur me on to proclaim my heart's desires to that someone I mean to break my spell of loneliness. But even when I am with someone who wants to be kind and near I feel frightened of my own inadequacy. There isn't any appeal in that. Confidence. That's key. Where do I buy confidence? Emmy is confident seeming, she's demure and frail but there is a spark of defiance and intensity and a wit to cover any insecurity she might possess. I have wit. I have charm. I just don't have a belief in any of those things being able to overcome whatever it is that I feel camouflages my goodness to anyone else. It's all oddly narcissistic. This is another of the marvelous things on this record, there are furious chords, rustic squeals and an amateurish feel that makes it all seem earnest and pure. I don't think it really sounds like Natalie Merchant at all. It was meant as a compliment. I love Natalie Merchant, mostly just the Natalie Merchant from 1985, but I would forgive her for Please Forgive us if only for a smile in recompense. But then everyone is in love with 1985 Natalie Merchant. Next song. MIA, a quiet one, but then they all sorta begin with a tender restraint and then build elegantly into something more fierce and fiery. Some quixotic flute? Recorder? Melodica or accordion. Who knows. I've been watching Waterloo Bridge over and over and now that I am over the perplexity of anyone finding Robert Taylor attractive I can't get over the intense sadness of it. It's a beautiful melancholy that is portrayed. The ending is absolutely tragic but you can't help hoping that somehow Vivien Leigh will win out at the end. She thought he was dead. It was wartime. She fell in love with him before she knew about the heather and peat that is in Ireland anyhow and still the unfortunate outcome, so so sad. I recommend it. Vivien Leigh is highly underappreciated, the curse of being beautiful. Apparently she was mad, rather so, probably much more than any of these pixies with guitars and hair slides. Strings, lovely little violins and an acoustic guitar, a reprise, a bit of Palace Brothers atmosphere. Christmastime in appalachicolirmingham. Woo doggy. It's wonderful and lovely. So Lovely. She's been somewhat hyped in some circles. Deservedly so. Reprise complete. A folk chugger has begun. Emmy Lou? is it Emmylou? Not so flinty, warmer, more awesomer. I have a standing prejudice against any music made before I was born except for that from the Cowsills, the Left Banke and Caterina Valente. Those are the exceptions. I am running out of space on my DVR. I have dozens of movies recorded from TCM and I have watched all of them and I don't want to erase them. I really don't think that I can live without Sylvia Scarlett or Down to Earth(all through my head all day long "Terpsichore! Terpsichore!) or The Mortal Storm. Margaret Sullavan's death scene in the latter fully lives up to Gore VIdal's praiseworthy description of her unique talent for dying. The skiing scenes make me giggle. Frank Morgan as an eminent German Academic is even more comical but Margaret Sullavan the non-Aryan straddled between her racist Aryan half brothers and the kind and decent conscientious objector Jimmy Stewart is tender and affecting. Why are movies so awful today then? I don't know. Everything Reminds Me of You, long song, drum machine, slide guitar, slow organ, your traditional county song. Epic. it could be a love song from Bob Stanley to Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales' jumper. There was an interesting article on what makes people hate people who are not like them in the Christmas issue of the Economist and it comes down to identifiers and sex. Here then we break people into separate groups based on arbitrary characteristics such as race or religion or sexual orientation to sow our future destruction. But then I've never understood this need to feel a part of a larger whole. Perhaps this is because I am a member of a privileged sect-Canadians! Does Emmy the Great want to be part of the greater anti-folk scene? is she hoping to be unmistakably aligned with Kimya Dawson or Ani Difranco? Or would she desire to be evaluated on her own two feet? This was a bit of the foundation of Joebama's victory, there was, undoubtedly, a rising tide in his favour and people wanted to ride that to some utopia though deep in their hearts they knew the dream was filled only with disappointment. He's a socialist democrat, not a classical liberal, he is going to be hostile to business, he is going to raise taxes, he is going to favour unions to the exclusion of the average working stiff, he's going to instill resentment among different groups and merely accentuate those dreaded identifiers. It's just how things have always been. Nothing will ever change. Not until the Aztecs rise from Texcoco and with bronze blades rip the hearts from everyone on the board of the St Louis Federal Reserve. Last song, a plaintive number of urban wonder and regret. It's quaint and romantic and splendid and alive.

New Beirut is fabulously carnivalesque! So much baby fat face!

Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavillion. Web sheriff on the prowl. Are there any Animal Collective sorts that have not downloaded this album? Unlikely. The empty heads on I Love Music have been having quite an existential crisis with themselves and their insecurities. Early consensus seemed to favor a backlash was groupthink certified, a cooler than thou attitude, a 'who needs Animal Collective when we've got Prussia' attitude. It was remarkable and shallow. Here then was this amazing little, fluffy little, pretty little record and they couldn't dare admit to enjoying it or else risk fearsome ridicule fromt he clearasil brigade. Pitchfork approved. But later came people willing to express their own opinion for their own purposes based on how they felt when the record played. Such simpletons. We know. I had a brief serious phase. Did I ever believe what I listened to was important though? Unknown. I wrote letters to Peter Jefferies lamenting over the silliness of Stereolab. I made mix tapes of the Dead C (gasp!) for trade. I wrote record reviews as I believed a real record reviewer might. I gave a positive review to a Trampoline record. Oh wait...or oh dear! First song is reminiscent of all of the other songs on the album, electronic, vague, looping, loads of vocal harmonies, pretty vocals, no squeals, lovely. It's rather athletic. Every Animal Collective record is fit. There has been discussion of this being comparable to Brian Wilson. Nonsense. These aren't brilliant songs, hardly. It's a brilliant record based on the feral energy exhibited and the impressionistic dreaminess of the whole. Second song now, a Panda Bear song, and it sounds very Panda Pitch but with the lethargy extinguished in favor of the fevered pace of Animal Collective. The voices are pitched well forward, featured, multi-tracked, echoey and dreamy. They sing. They do. It's odd. A repeating sample in the background, the voice enmeshed in a crinkled electronic fabric. There are still elements of the heartbeat percussion that thrill my own heart so. The bass thump to convulse my soul, physical reaction, I am moved to spasmodic interlopings and meandering thoughts. There is nothing about any of this to focus the mind. The Ruby Suns finished in 635th place on the Pazz and Jop poll just slightly ahead of Cloetta Paris record. I don't think the Animal Collective learned anything from that Ruby Suns record though they ought to have. It's a brilliant record and if thee are 634 records that are better from 2008 then I would like to hear them. I was meant to write about a New Zealand record but all of a sudden everyone is on and on about New Zealand. That was my thing, it has been taken away, even Nocturnal Projections has been given the indiepop thumbs up, strange. Animal Collective informed the Ruby Suns, positively, they informed Architecture in Helsinki into making one of the worst albums of all time. Well done. Is anyone interested in a Jay Clarkson entry? Not likely. Perhaps a bit about This Kind of Punishment but then I'd be following in the colossal wake of ************. I am very rude. Graeme Jefferies was handsome in his youth, he filled out those leather pants smartly once upon a time. Some have been complaining about Panda Pitch's backing vocals while praising the Knife. Madness. These are songwriters? Are they. Loops and samples and meaningless trifles. It's magnificent. But I don't imagine there will be black and white photographs of them 30 years hence in some retrospective exhibition on New York hipster rock where they are hunched ovr a Steinway Grand, cigarette in hand, hair tussled just so, scratched out etchings of a popular life shuffled all about the floor in front of them. Not probably. Maybe a black and white photo of one of them drinking a yoo hoo. Are they drug heads? The music is by turns mostly wholesome and vitamin enriched. I have involuntary movements guided by the god of animals while I listen. The prowl of a leopard crawls down my forearms, the call of the howler monkey, the slithering of an asp in my smallest toe, all these literary turns from monoglots. Records should be listened to out of doors, in darkness and sunshine, in isolation and in groups, with hearts open and hair turned down. I could write lyrics like Avey Tare. This is a Panda Pitch song. All of the songs are rather long. I don't mind. It's the opposite of the Pas/Cal record, with the enduring length the energy level seems to cascade each moment upon the next needed to build crescendo upon crescendo, even as things are mostly unchanging and unflinchingly bright. Uniformity. Next song. Also Frightened. Very Panda Pitch again. I am seemingly obsessed over the failure of the Pas/Cal record. I haven't any idea why but I can not simply let it go. I was invested deeply, emotional interest was denied. I'd claim it similar to a relationship with a significant other but I've only taken part in those antebellum never while I was actually ever involved with someone the power of regret and nostalgia holds sway. Animal Collective are clever but I don't know if they imagine themselves more clever than average. They seem yeoman and workmanlike in their particular ethic. An album-a-year plus side projects. It's more of a job than an enterprise. I think Pas/Cal were attempting greatness, bombast, splendid tricks of the mind and they became all too aware of their 'cleverness'. Arguments were removed from those that ought to be had with the real world and became entirely internalized. Or something else happened on the way to the record's release. Who knows. As said by others, a great deal of this record has a uniformitarianism. There is a central theme and Warren Ellis from the Dirty Three says it is corny cheerfulness. Unrelenting cheerfulness. Whatever. I've never heard anything by the Dirty Three but to auger a case in the affirmative for being cheerful and bright is quite curmudgeonly. "You know I'd be into the Beach Boys if they hadn't been so keen on singing about the beach", I suppose he might have preferred some sort of bubblegum Goth record where they had a cheerfulness only for maudlin pursuits that the Dirty Three could champion. As I've never heard a Dirty Three record I am not sure what causes they would celebrate. But there are the albums which we wish we made versus the ones that are actually made, i.e. My Heart Was Razed by Matthew, Mark, Luke and Laura. Next song. Summertime Clothes, exceedingly cheerful, indeed. This is an Avey Tare song. He has undergone a transformation on this record. Pop music wunderkind. It is still somewhat frustrating in that it is frustratingly vague. When the Beach Boys sing In my Room it is simple, plaintive, direct, catholic. I suppose there lies the root of the problem of communication in today's world of which indie rawk is only a microcosm. The ironic detachment is enabled by the assortment of symbolic gestures available in lieu of human emotion that could be honestly declared. Instead of composing a sonnet or poem on the back of a bazooka joe wrapper you make a mix tape, mix cd or mix USB stick?!? You could write a poem on the side of a zip drive. It is not out of the realm of possibility. But a futile gesture as it would probably be a Steven Malkmus quote that didn't make any sense when Malkmus uttered it and less so as a profession of undying devotion. I don't make many mix cd's any more. I made one recently with the same motivation as I had had in the past and it was a bust. But for the most part it's an exercise to mark myself as a curiosity to people who surround me with a uniform sense of the mainstream. I do wonder about the internal workings of people that exist about me. I have lucid daydreams, lucid enough to have caused me to seek out a medical professional because they seemed almost wholly involuntary when they would arise while I was walking in Cherry Creek state park and the flashes of buffalo and gibbons and bats filled the horizon charging straight for me isolated on the plain. I have that unworked pet theory over the popularity of cellular communication relating to the idea that people's inner landscapes are barren and void and so they are compelled to fill it with gossip over people whose electrical storms bubble to the surface by more interesting means than their wardrobe. When I make mix cd's the Animal Collective song I select is usually, well recently, Reverend Green because I am attempting to amplify the stereotypes that surround me. I am alone for a reason. Fifth song playing now. Daily Routine, similar to the loping, slow songs that dominate the record but it's mesmerising in its cathedral soundscape production with absolutely no investment required of the listener at all. It is all surface. It's beguiling and otherworldly but hermetically sealed as if requiring a decoder ring from the bottom of a box of cheerios to decipher any greater theme or unity. It's a bit like the Dead C that I rant against over and over in that it is purposeless and vague but it has a pleasing quality that forbids condemnation. Really. Bluish now. If then the Beach Boys are the equivalent to an afternoon basking in sunlight then this might be the aural equivalent of a long car ride on the intemperate, sunny side, dust mote infected realm of the back seat of a Chevrolet Caprice. It is warm, it's bright, but it has a different quality due to the refracting properties of the tempered glass. Sunlight through a window is less life affirming and stimulating but it's still a mood altering substance and so here when injected into pop song we receive odd choruses that remind of 70s AOR radio. And now a falsetto that feels almost tropical, a bit of Bressa Creeting Cake Palm Singing, perhaps. All it lacks are steel drums and a pina colada. I rather like this. The entire album sigh, but this song in particular. Already 2009 has seen a myriad of fantastic releases with this, Pains of being Pure at Heart, Beirut, Emmy the Great, Burning Hearts, etc... Soon a Cats on Fire record! it could also borrow slightly from Mercury Rev's A Kiss From an Old Flame, it's sedate, it's a breakthrough for Animal Collective, easy listening afternoon slow jam. I used to work in a nursing home and there the sunlight there was a devious plot. A nursing home is a prison and the sunlight a tease. At lunch we would sometimes herd the residents out into the sunshine as a faint bit of torment to remind them of past glories and coalesce an exegesis of the pity over their withered existence. Is it worthwhile to live to a ripe age in such a state. I don't know. Could you desire death placidly? In the same home there were young that were infirmed from closed head injuries, the sunlight made no impression at all. The controversial ideas of social justice will surely be addressed with the preposterous arrival soon of socialized health care and it might be time for ugly sentiments to be brought forward into the sterilizing sunlight. Next song. A basic one, charmed, chanted mantra chorus, a repeating piano riff, it is very Mercury Rev, this entire album, but it lacks the comic disney sci-fi imprimatur. They have wisely avoided Dave Fridman thus far. I can picture him picketing meekly in front of Avey Tare's fashionable loft residence, sending them candygrams with a note advertising his services for some extortionate fee, sending along a testimonial by bicycle courier from Emma Pollock to plead his case. Will Avey Tare's wife bring her entire family over from Iceland now that I could buy the entire country with a halls cough drop and a pocketful of lint? They could have all of Mum, twins and all, under the same roof making the much needed Animal Collective/Mum split 10 inch, backwards. Next song. Taste, the shortest song on the album. Similar to the previous song. Electronic squiggles. heartbeat percussion has been replaced as a metronomic device by rote repetition, the vocals here are sly and soft, muscly backing vocals tower above in an aether surrounding the entire record. They turn the tap and delicious harmonies flow free. Marv lous. I could listen to the lyrics but I can not type and listen at the same time. It is why I am not a real music critic. I haven't any interest in examining the lyrics. None at all. I don't have a press kit in front of me to regurgitate incorrect information incorrectly and then construct that devastating six sentence synopsis to distill an album in the reflected heroism of prolificness. I am a coward, look at how long this entry has become. There is possibly a new Brunettes record this year as well. I listened to their last recently, it is in on the Pas/Cal levels of oblivion in this household. Why the need to be taken seriously? Who is it that we are trying to impress? Do I long to be recognized by Chuck Eddy as the voice of my generation? Hardly. There isn't any one that takes Rolling Stone or Spin seriously not with their name written on the outside of their undergarments editorial meetings and really what is the point of internet blogs and magazines? I condemn myself as passionately as you might really. I have approximately 1 regular reader. Not one single person is concerned over my opinion over the Animal Collective record and neither am I, I am just sense mining for a memorable phrase or two in my subconscious that is possibly elicited from the pleats of my cortex by the music within. Lion in A Coma, a punny Lucksmith'n title, this. Some heartbeat rhythm on this, muted, the vocals take point. There has been some focus on the electronics and it is mostly electronic but it's elementary. i could program this. All I would require is one of those Radio Shack electronic kits where you could build a telegraph/W.O.P.R. game in your spare time. I had an electronics course in high school. It was current to about 1973. It was almost 20 years out of date when I was touching my first capacitor and resistor and teasing out the realities of ohm's law. This is beautiful. It is music for pridefest. I reminisced with someone over their most embarrassing moment ever having been arriving late in torn jeans after an incident wth a water spigot at the pridefest. I can't categorize my most embarrassing moment as easily. Or, actually, I could. There was someone with a pair of knee high stockings, across the room, a vision, there was a community television with the television tuned to Days of Our Lives and I sat next to the person with knee high stockings, utterly paralyzed from the hair down with my oily skin and striped turtlenck giving off some odor toxic to human intervention. I was dead. But afterwards there was Blur's She's so High. my own symbolic gesture and triumph. Was that vague enough? It caused terrors even while typing it. This may be the weakest track No More Runnin', steel drum approximating samples, a pedestrian pace, blah blah blahs enough to make my mind drift to knee high stockings and bean burritos. Later I dated the person who killed me. So my embarrassment turned to revanchement against the fates, say it as 'em-bar-is-ment' rather than 'em-bear-is-ment' it sounds as easy on the ear as 'clee-on-tell' instead of 'cleye-in-tell'. Water. This song is a bit of a drag actually. It could represent the come down before the big finish. Over. Next is Borthersport another Panda Pitch song. Whoo. It is loads of voices, it's constructed from a repeating set of phrases, it's frightfully frantic and exciting, my involuntary muscle contractions have started to affect my typing again, I'm watching the pattern of my typing and it seems as if all of the patterns are circular and rhtymic in design. Now the verse, thrilling, can barely make out a melody, it's primal and fierce. It's just like how the old Animal Collective used to whinny, whew, at least the Pitchfork hatin' Battles loving kids have this song to keep them warm in the evening. Bless.

There are loads of posts coming soon. I'm suddenly struck by the Starlets.

Cocoanut Groove Madeleine Street. I've mentioned most of these songs before. This includes the first song. End of the Summer on Bookbinder Road. Blah blah blah I think I mentioned something about Rodney Allen growing old and joining the Clientele having decided he needed to add intellectual to his resume. I've since learned the the Clientele and the Cocoanut Groove are fast friends and ardent admirers of each other. Well done. This record was recorded a long long time ago. Not sure how long ago actually. It is only out on vinyl, thank god then for unscrupulous sorts who leak records to internets. I haven't purchased a vinyl LP in a long long time. Perhaps 7 years? Or perhaps not that long, there was the Orange Cake Mix/Knit Separates split lp. That was actually rather good, if I am remembering correctly. Whatever happened to the Knit Separates? They were lke the Clientele if they played under the tread marks of Mog Stunt Team. They were members of some extremely uncool collective as I recall. Second song. The Castle, very sixties psychedelia bubblegum cloud this. Very Siesta Reverie compilation worthy. Simon Turner will surely be covering this in ten years time. It's fabulous. Heaven is Below Your Head lamented over the sad slowies in his reluctance to label this as album of the year. I harboured no such inhibitions initially but then I shied away and made Frida my "official" album of the year. I don't want to change my mind again, but this is very close. That album thrills on the drama of the performance. It's awkwardly rapturous. This one is just, well...perfect. It sounds hermetically sealed and arrived from some unreal existence perfectly formed and well tended. It's as if the Clientele weren't so fumblingly miscast when trying to convey the 'let the good times roll' sentiments. Pianos, strings, acoustic guitars. It's all so terrific, really terrific. Maybe this is "official" album of the year 1a then. This song wasn't on the seven inch single. It's better than anything that was on that seven inch single. Richard Davies should be taking notes. Is that "new" Cardinal album really going to happen? Third song, A Dream of Two Summers, more spare, sparse, skeletal, two guitars, his voice, on nature concerned lyrics of aboriculture and love. It's all very pretentious, delightfully so. Some words seem more profound when sung than read. "Crimson August Sky" for instance. Bass drum arrives and things take a turn more melodramatic. This is seemingly basic but it is hardly a demo. It's fully formed , delicate and gorgeous. This isn't indiepop because its all rather competent. He received four votes for album of the year but he came some distance behind the overall album of the year winner which was "First Frost". That's probably the wrong choice but then you know how consensus words, but then you also know it is on Matinee and ears are deformed, and it is the Lucksmiths, and it's rather nice but man it's just another Lucksmiths record isn't it? I love the Lucksmiths but they've never made my album of the year, not ever. Next song. Hummin. More acoustic guitars, shadowed vocals, tenderness, words that turn poetic in his arms, twinkles to caress the loneliness of the sentiments. Just fantastic. Now the strings to add an elegaic flourish. How has this had such a difficult birth? There should have been a protracted bidding war over this album. Gareth Evans could have stepped off the 18th green and signed them to some oppressive recording contract on the same label as Everclear, changed their image, got them a gig in Chanctonbury and it would be madness all over again, trainers, flares, bowl haircuts and me at a distance longing to be a part of it maaannn. Next song. I Wanted You to Step Into my World, another from the previously noted EP. What was the purpose of that EP? It included half of the songs on the album on it. Was it a shot over the bow of the record company that somehow thought it wise to not release this album five minutes after having taken possession. There's a feeling of The Young Tradition on this. I think earlier I had mentioned Morrissey, it has a November Spawned a Monster vocal feel. Really. Doesn't it? More assured than a Kenji vocal surely. It's laconic and steady paced and yet never dull or pedestrian, it's perfect, accept it. I listened on the beach, I listened while I dreamt of attaching bait to young children and attaching them to kites and flying them into flocks of seagulls patrolling the seashore. It was all just so desperately romantic. Next song, Lately. And the songs are brief. There is word that the Joebama speech will last just 20 minutes. The Gettysburg address was but 2 minutes long, not quite actually, and Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream went for a mere 16 minutes but it seems that as politicians have less profound things to say they take longer to say them. Much like pop bands. Prog bands like say Pas/Cal have excised the brevity from the situation, they love to hear themselves pontificate in song, that album is a taxing exercise to endure for its duration while the ten songs here breeze by so rapidly events seem almost ephemeral. It's an interesting effect that arises, the brevity makes everything seem new on each listen because you don't focus on any one thing(usually that which annoys you most "you bigot, you racist") instead it's an oscillating intensity that feeds the soul deeply. The Looking Glass. Horns, all very Eric Matthews, but there is an airy insouciance to the vocals, it is in now measure ponderous, a lithe step into the sunlight, not tentative or shy just romantic and aware of the possibilities. Popular music. It's basic, that usual pop chord that bands usually only discover by their third record is here and on the debut, quick studies. His voice is a bit lower in the mix, the words more difficult to manage away from the cacophony, comparatively, of the music. "Loooking glaaaaass". I caught that. See-saw organ in the verses, it adds a disorienting motion to the arrangement, where up to this point everything else has been precise and dogmatic now it's almost vering into the unknown, a vortex enveloping the familiar horizon, horns return and once more it's elegant and stately. It's music for prep school orientations. It's delightful. This really may be the album of the year. It could be a shared honor. It's all meaningless anyhow. Frida Hyvonen did not make the front page on the Twee Net poll. Scandal. Title track. Madeleine St, not to be confused with Walking to Madeleine Street, very Simon and Garfunkel or the Zombies or someone else, tell me who. "Pale suburban sky". his enunciation is time displaced from the jocular end of the 1960s, it is much like the Hollys or Peter and Gordon. My second Peter and Gordon mention in under a week. It's haunting and disassociated and dreamy and dire. He's really very smart. Again what is his real band? Are they this fabulous? I'm reading The Great Cat Massacre at the moment, I fell for the title, it was not a good moment to be a cat in the 18th century in France, not especially. Should you have a major fall it is best to suck the blood from the freshly amputated tail of a tom cat, or else you should eat the warm brains of a cat to cure yourself of being visible. Hurrah, I hate cats. I would have been invisible in Brittany. Shadow again one we've heard before. It's quieter than the other numbers. The person that writes on the very excellent Heaven is Above my Head which is soon to be Heaven is Below my Head since he's moving??? to New Zealand loves the new Bats album or wait was that Fire Escape Talking? Fire Escape Talking is trying to talk up the Puddle, you should have none of it, the Puddle are a drag. They are a wonderful singles band but the albums suffer from their extended visit. Will the National party have Heaven is Below my Head then? I've found the recent Bats album as well, also thanks be to unscrupulous pirates, praise be upon them. It's not so memorable, not least on first listen in my car while I was distracted by hunger and dry skin along the side fo my nose, but it's another BAts' album, it won't be album of the year but I will listen 1000 times before Labour day. This is a delicate little thing that turns haunting and affecting with the creaking violin that comes fully dressed during the last third. His lyrics are very english. They mention parks and rain and autumn shades of crimson and football. It is all very Alasdair Maclean. Perhaps this is Alasdair Maclean's alter ego? Perhaps. But he has a sweeter voice, his whisper less affected by self conceit. Who knows. He's in some other band. Really. I don't think I remember the name of the band. Are they brilliant? They must be if they don't let Cocoanut Groove man write all of the songs. It would be like if the Beatles let John Lennon write half of the songs...oh wait. John Lennon, what a farce. When Heaven is Below my Head goes to New Zealand he can ask the members of the Strangeloves why they wrote a song about John Lennon rather than Paul Mccartney. Are they still David Kilgour's backing band? Thanks to unscrupulous pirates I've also listened to a few of the recent vintage David Kilgour records and they are really not much cop. He's has been the anchor around the Clean records of late as well. Sad to think that the Mad Scene are your superiors in every conceivable dimension. Last one is Walking to Madeleine St, this is the Rodney Allen tribute song, it's blushing and warm and charming and filled with enough angst to make the listener exquisitely uneasy and become filled with earnest pangs for where exactly the future will arrive this tomorrow. I love this so! Album of the Year!

I've already written about the Dribbling Darts album. Watch the video below. Long ago. It is dead and buried. But Hey Judith is so filled with joy and glee that I am keen to write about it again. Or maybe I should do the first couple of eps, though they aren't nearly as much fun. Such unlove was never less deserved. I blame Chris Knox.

Old Splendifolia Swaying Boldly Afar. This is two people. One of them records for Morr and he sounds very Morr. German. Dull. Polite. The usual. I've not ever heard of the other person or of her "real" band. This is splendid doings. I know I did a fine job building up to that. It's of the sort of thing that seems to set my fancy alight these days. Off kilter, folky, minimal, female vocals, minor electronics. My pleasure system is wired for symptoms that derive from exposure the last Mum record. I think. From Joanna Newsom. From Kate Bush. First song was piano led, then it falls away to a trill on ukulele???...some rustic horn, then a descent into obscurity. A dream. Her voice is very faux rustic as well, a polaroid voice, shake her and she's got halo and shine. It's a conversational experience, her voice, over celestial seasonings about the weather in Bhutan, the price of petrol in Melbourne, the median home price of beach front homes on the Black Sea. Second song, minimal again, it's lovely, again. It is head-phone music. Perhaps this is at the root of my appreciation. I enjoy living inside my own head and the headphones allow me to seal off all sensory interaction with the world save from impressions from my increasingly poor poor eyesight. It's even more sensationless when I wear my expired eyeglasses and walk through near crowds where I lose focus when people are but ten feet away from me and the world turns to sea and sky and the words are my friends and my dreams and my loves and I build up a terrific arsenal of regret with a cracked face grin that means nothing at all. I have seen things that don't belong on my journey to blindness, my imaginary creations frighten but it's certainly a more brilliant exposure to the real life than people who possess 20/20 x-ray vision. People are always uglier than they allow and yet when the edges of that existence are fuzzy and glazed over then it is a more temperate exstence. I was listening to Frida Hyvonen while walking through the hometown airport and it was brilliant. Lost amid these cell phoned masses each exercising their banal reflexes and me, on the moving walkway, walking lowly, dreamily, drifting apart from all of these people who would despise me if they knew how little I thought of them while thinking of them often. What a dreadful thing to say. Are there that many worthwhile conversations to be had so that people must spend their entire life on the cellphone? What if human interaction is a zero sum gain and there is a finite number of syllables available to a species before extinction. What if. Is one so stultifying in your internal existence that you can't bear to be alone with your thoughts? I don't know. I interview myself. I dream of being interviewed. I write songs in my head. I work out entire storyboards for future novels knowing I will forget them as soon as I blink my 100th blink from the moment of conception but there are dozens more to take root after that. None will ever come to pass. And Ugg boots, ugh. Third song. Similar to the first two. This is much better than Gregory and the Hawk. It's sophisticated, or seemingly, it's much less yankee, it's from an electronic tendency so I think it's less wedded to the idea of formalism. Next song. Banjo, endless supply of rustic horns tapped once more, tender, wheezing, beautiful, wordless, Over. Next song Contch. I was out running this evening and it was not warm. The temperature is probably in the single digits. There is a palpable difference to the cold here versus the cold in none semi-arid climes. While in South Carolina I watched the evening's cheer collapse when temperatures tested support levels in the 20s. It was embarrassingly uncomfortable, for a pseudo Canadian indeed, the moisture allowed the cold access to the core. The moisture increased the permeability, calorimetry be damned, blast. Here cold is different. Even when running it doesn't enter except by inhalation and it feels exciting even in my preserved lungs. It is an external feeling, our cold, we can maintain internal body warmth, and the madness is sadly restrained, but the extremities become victims instead. The night stillness a thief of suppleness, tenderer of amputations and noseectomies. It has little to do with this music. It is weak prose. It could be tempting to classify this as winter music. It isn't definitely not summer music. It could be autumnal. I had a friend who was a perfume model, she stood in fancy dress at the Mall entrance and doused unsuspecting strangers with colognes and accepted the phone numbers of strangers in front of her boyfriend. She labeled me an autumn. Am I? I am pale. Music is delicate and fragile and wisps of it break through occasionally to capture minor moments that thrill. Her voice, very Joanna Newsom now without the Abercrombie and fairy tale production. Very sparse accompaniment, a guitar and some tiny trebled acoustics from an emaciated sampler. Multi-tracked voice, something almost mistaken for passion, it is all rather beautiful. Is it German? I am not expert on any thing german. I lie, I did pass the German citizenship test with flying colours. Look at my european spelling habits. A youth spent summering in Chatham, Ontario. Baseball cards with RBI's en francais. It's rather the best thing to have been released on Morr in a long time. Oh. Has it been released on Morr? Apparently not. Next song, more of the same, more amateur hour banjo. It feels charming. Her voice is a bit more spine curdling at the moment, more multi-tracked goodness though, I like the oddness, it's a welcome reverse from the sedate nature of the record opening. She's possessed of something more esoteric and decently adventurous, more than we would have suspected. Bravo. It would be lovely to listen to this in a crowd, if that crowd was fast asleep, anesthetized by an invisible gas seeping from the airport ventilation system, an entire airport asleep on moving walkways and me stepping softly on their flat heads while listening to fertile pop music in my ears. Song has now run low of steam, slow degeneration, a respite, a drift into the womb of electronic twinkles. Next song, louder than bombs. More electronics come to the fore in this section. Distant vocals recorded out of doors, along the beach , under wind swept Douglas Firs. Munich turned inside out. Morr, home of the eccentric skatting, I really enjoy this. It is better than Kuchen. Damnable. I have been listening to Stump the Professor or some other such on the local radio news station. It is their science "call in" show that they play on Sunday mornings and it infuriates me. Always. Allegedly the host is a PHD, I've run out of scare quotes, a lecturer in physics but I have been left searching for examples of radiant erudition and I can't find it. Will he sit next to me next Saturday? How much does a lightning bolt weigh? Argh. But gladly the Saturday Physics series is about to begin for this season. No answers for the lightning bolt enthusiasts but instead a delightful discussion of the world of the hypercold. It will be 61 tomorrow, how rude and inappropriate. I always attend these lectures on my own. If only I could being someone along and we would make fun of the footwear of the really very brilliant presenters. I have a keen memory for disastrous footwear. Strangely, the ones freshly arrived from MIT seem less brilliant than they believe. Why is this? Another song now, it's once more very indebted to Joanna Newsom or whomever she has ritually sacrificed for Bill Callahan's benefit. Harps are missing but there are squeezy wheezy strings and rustic guitars and a dash to irritation. It's lovely, all so lovely. I have teased a 10000 Maniacs explosion of love earlier. It will come. I can't stop listening to them. I was once madly in love with Natalie Merchant. Sure she's insufferable, sure she probably always has been, but I was young and strong willed. I was going to bring her around to my way of thinking. I was going to quote Lysander Spooner in earnest. Next song. Thump thump on the bass, clockwork electronics, it's all very jazz noodly. Morr would seem destined some day to accidentally metamorphose into a jazz label. Beards ahoy. Does FS Blumm own his own beard? I bet he does. The photo that accompanies this record is miniature German. I've just finished reading a biography of Harry Houdini! Allegedly he wrote over 150,000 pieces of correspondence in his lifetime. I am astonished. I am a prolific emailer. I email loads of people who decide not to write me back. But I am not that prolific. I write long diatribes of emptyheaded gibberish and then punctuate my randomness with a question like "So how many pieces of Werthers candy did you eat out of the community candy dish?". It's all inscrutable and far from enthralling. And I don't talk. I get nervous around my boss. I feel like he's sizing me up always when he's speaking at me. I do also get nervous around the one person I would consider a friend at work. She terrifies me. I have no idea why. Well I do. But it's work I should be able to ask her the mix rate for Oyster Shell Scale injection. Shouldn't I? This is jazz. It is an instrumental. It's nice, very nice jazz doodling but with banjos, homogenous whistles and tenderness. Next song. More jazz underpinnings, turning suspicious. I am going to need a better photo to make a thorough examination for facial hair. Her voice is less Joanna Newsom than I suspected earlier, I think, it's oddly phrased parchment chanting and then cheerful, dreamy choruses waft in under the blue skies. I really enjoy this record. I will make it a point to never use that sentence again as I do tent to use it always. Wanda Fleumer. Is this the Queen's English? I've never heard a FS Blumm record. I assumed he would sound the same as Styrofoam or Populous or Herrmann & Kleine or any number of suspected beards. It's easier to write about albums that I loved as a child because all of the records that informed my youth are deeply associated with specific events or dreadful habits of youth. I don't do anything at allto Old Splendifolia. I am writing about Old Splendifolia while I am listening to Old Splendifolia. Will I feel nostalgic for this moment when the record is over just 6 minutes from now. This song is beautiful, the multi-tracked vocals are somewhat call and respond but they seem to be exist in different songs I love that they used the word Verdant. The Houdini biographer, who also ghost wrote two Howard Stern books, now there's pedigree, used 'verdant' to describe a palm. That seems a thesaurus reach. No? I used 'verdant' in a work meeting. It went over unappreciated. I have minor goals, I long to use verisimilitude soon. There is a conference in town soon for fellows entangled in my profession and they are of the most fashion challenged sorts, more so than others in other industries that you might come across. The mullet lives. I am always desperate to search out a big plastic comb sticking out of the back of someone's Sassoon jeans but I am constantly disappointed by my lack of success. Another instrmental, all deep tones and low-end, sounds like an assembly line for bath tubs, now some distorted radio program jazz coming in over top and the harmony of the spheres afterwards, it's all very first album Bjorkness. Nice. What does she do on the instrumentals? Is she eating celery in homage? Banjo goodness and strings, banjos and strings, strings and banjo goodness. Erm...well those are horns actually. Sorry.

2008 in review. Fonda 500 released an album. I've completely forgotten about it. I should listen to it sometime. I think of the same person every single day, every hour, minute. I don't recommend it. It isn't myself although by tone of entries you might have considered that possibility. Ah Pas/Cal. Ready to taste a thousand joys, the too transported hapless swain found the vast pleasure turned to pain; pleasure which too much love destroys. Or some such. Regina is really very clever. I don't mind the Pains of Being Pure at Heart after all, it is an allergy to the prevailing opinion, I am taking injections. It's lonely being wrong all of the time. I received one Christmas card but my beam was sickeningly overdone. Three people love Flann O'Brien because of me, success. I woke up one day and it was 17 degrees below zero. Pretty things-Hauschka, Auburn Lull, Ballboy, Beach House in concert, July Skies, Midori Hirano, Library Tapes, Mogil, Old Splendifolia, RockettotheSky, Devotchka, Ruby Suns, Las Escarlatinas, Sin Fang Bous, Vapnet, Tenniscoats. No new love. No new automobile. Same old apartment. I thought I had a home but they turned on me at the final moment in a misjudged grasp. I was fortunate. This year. Klima should release a new record soon, how exciting! Frida Hyvonen is the artist of the year, her voice almost operatic, listening to it in an endless sea of indifference is startling Most listened to album of the year? Moto Boy, second-various things from Stars. Pages written this year, 153. Only 18 in the past 4 months. When is a novel complete? I've determined that I need to acquire style this season. Wear my inside on my outside. I strive to learn the rules of grammar. In Flann O'Brien's place will be Graeme Downes. Or the Starlets. Beauty under rocks unturned. The School v. Camera Obscura in 2009. I didn't receive a raise. I worked 170 out of a possible 173 days. I'll likely do the same this year, exhaustion attenuates disappointment. I gained a stomach muscle. I lost a year. Next belongs to the 10000 Maniacs.