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!