Belleisle Longstanding. I visited Montreal when I was 14 or perhaps I was younger. My family was visiting my uncle, to witness his impending nuptials. Before he committed suicide. He was still enamoured of his full length wolf coat. It still shed unmercifully in my father's back seat. We marveled at the old building facades that disguised modern amenities in the building innards. We went to fabulous restaurants and even though my own mother is French Canadian, a daughter of Quebec! We were not served in the fabulous restaurants because her French was deemed not up to it. She has a habit of sprinkling in English due to lack of use. The scandal here is that Belleisle sing in English! Satan's tongue. Is there not a law in Quebec that all records must have a match in the mother tongue? If not then surely there should be. First song is beautiful indiepop. Acoustic, dreamy, beautifully voiced. Second song is the same. Second is where they display of hint of that Birdie charm and elegance. Where have Birdie disappeared to? We need them more than ever. Do we not? What with every Saint Etienne album being more dreadful than the last. Softly patted drums, a slow strum and here drifting gorgeous voice and now an electric guitar solo, so gauche, ah but still so lovely. Quebec is an interesting place. For a long stretch in order to be Prime Minister of Canada you need have been from Quebec. Only Kim Campbell had broken the string and she was Prime Minister for about eleven seconds, long enough to be comfortably labeled as evil by the measure of Liberals all across the land. Third song now, beautiful again, a bit more upbeat, the electric guitar cosies up right from the start. In most reviews of this record the loveliness of affairs is easily picked up on and appreciated at a distance and then at fear of acknowledging the worth of something that might be considered "twee" it is dismissed as insubstantial, lightweight and filled with fluff. The girls are much too skinny so there really isn't any fluff here. It's lean and efficiently pop. I could play drums for them and I am the world's worst drummer. My parents bought me a drum set and then took it away from me, it may have disappeared into the same deep dark void as Birdie. I miss my drums. Next song, already, everything is brevity. What are these things that are not fluff embedded? I am not sure but it appears that people like MGMT are chiefly important, the world would fall off of its axis without their last record, apparently, much the same as the laws of Newton might somehow fail without you having heard that last Fleet Foxes record. Pah, that record is more twee than this, Pitchfork is so twee. At least these Belleisle songs have subjects that are transferrable to anywhere other the stone forest. But I don't feel as if any of the music I listen to is imoportant. This isn't important music in any lager scale outside of my heart. But it is interesting, as I noted in a previous entry, to notice how the arc of every single Belleisle review mirrors one another. Its almost as if they read each other's reviews before sticking their neck out and having an opinion that separates them from the herd, behavioural economists have studied this phenomenon when it comes to financial transactions perhaps a new branch will deal with would be egghead record appraisers. No one reads this so my own herd is but tiny. Me, myself and the other person that lives inside my heart but doesn't know. There was a string that began with Trudeau, then Turner(thogh strictly he wasn't from Quebec), Mulroney, Chretien, Paul Martin. Imagine if every presidential candidate came from California, actually it would be Texas as Ontario has the largest population in Canada. Texas seems most at risk of threatening secession but Texas might actually mean it rather than holding it over the head of other parts of Canada as a damp sword to extract concessions. Of course there was Joe Clark but he's a footnote. I was formerly Canadian, I spent most of the summers of my youth in Canada. Just a note. There have been a few songs while I trawled the past of towering figures of Prime Ministers past. The Pm's are an ineffectual lot in fitting with their country's primary ethos of "first do nothing". Trudeau shaped modern Canada to its detriment of course but then he was something of an anti-semite fascist sympathiser, a poor judge of character, really and well we'll not go into that, he is on the post. These qualifications of course likely make him something of a sentimental figurehead in Europe as anti-semitism is all the rage these days. Notice how an incident of Muslim terrorism elicits calls to not retaliate against muslim civilians, rightly so, but no such call is made when Israel engages in "controversial" activity to not retaliate against jewish civilians. Interesting, not really since all Jews are secretly in the employ of Mossad. Sarcasm. This is not a political record, I apologize for my own drift. Old Noise now, just before it was the rather remarkable, Waking up Slowly and Good for You. But Montreal is a beautiful city. They do maintain the old facades and renovate the interiors of buildings and its a marvelous thing because of course modern architecture is a bore. The architecture here in Denver is offensive and rank, for anything later than the turn of the 20th century. And I hope you love Shademaster Locusts for it is only they which adorn the cityscapes, shrouded in shade and vehicle contaminants holding some pale vigil over the city's lack of identity. A monoculture to blend nicely with the mononucleosis afflicting the culture of Denver's intellectual life. Diana Degette has a stranglehold on politics here in spite of being rather more dim than the sunlight filtered though seventeen feet of steel and tinted glass. More Birdie-ish tenderness, the pace is laconic and the playing is restrained the voice as well, but it is not a whisper, it's a gentle inflection that holds sway and now the echoey electric guitar adds a slight heft. It does remain slight and somewhat disassociated but it charms most magnificently. Next song, a twee anthem, Winter Under Covers. Are these girls from Montreal? I make that blanket assumption with the insinuation that I believe all of the rest of the citizens of Quebec to be provincials, semi-marxist and rustic. As if they stepped straight from a Zola novel. This is, again, beautiful. Belle Isle is located in Detroit, Michigan. Did you know that? Are they referring to that Belle Isle? Perhaps not. Belle Isle was where the suburban hooligan contingent of the Detroit metropolitan area would gather to ogle each other in their Mustang GT's, IROC's and Chevy Novas. I believe it was also a nature preserve, before they decided to run the Detroit Grand Prix across it. There are sharks in the Belle Isle zoo, more than at the Detroit Zoo. It is in he center of the Detroit River. Detroit started as a French outpost, Antoine De Cadillac. I met someone who was something of a Francophile and attempted to use my knowledge of the French underpinnings of my hometown as an enticement into her heart but it failed. I am always looking to steer conversations into areas which might be labeled as 'pedantic' on a map of human condescension. Unfortunate me. Coasting, this is more of the same, moments pressed gingerly into the ether and now a slow elegant organ to gird happenings to keep them tethered to the ground, ethereal and ephemeral bonded in a moment of geometric frustration at turns blurred is if insubstantial and fissiparous or sturdy and elemental. It is both. I spent the afternoon at a lecture on Ice, it wasn't that fascinating. The lecturer was rather young, rather more than me, and he struggled to incorporate witty anecdotes into his talk but his lack of wisdom meant there were only superficial links between his topic of expertise and the larger world outside of his large head. Kurt Vonnegut received a mention. I wonder if Kurt was fond of Trudeau. It would have been contrary to his primary nature, no? Fascists = Bad = Truman was a Fascist, etc...The title track is playing now, more of the cathedral organ and voices joined in unison, slow, everything deliberate and dreamy, more of the electric accentuation. They do look like girls from Monreal. Olive skinned, dark complected, a smokiness to their gaze, usually dark hair but the features do spread evenly across the spectrum of melanin hues. Is that racist to classify french canadian girls thusly? I share these traits, my mother and I are twins, I look very much like a French Canadian woman, rather the most unattractive French Canadian woman ever. But truly these girls are marvelous creatures, they create marvelous delicacies of indiepop and in the absence of Debsey Wykes reign supreme in the sophisto-jazz-indiepop sweepstakes that is ongoing forever. Last song, folk dreams of greater visions of the future than are currently allowed by circumstance.