The Ideal Husband No Bye No Aloha. Is that a Breeders reference? If you are going to reference the Breeders it should be from the Pod days, not the silliness of the last record daze. Actually, it wasn't the last record was it, they did another. I've not heard it. I was learning hospital corners when the Breeders were "it". That period's Animal Collective. Oh how we've progressed. This is hawaiian indiepop music. Who knew such a thing existed. I am used to longstanding rules when stealing pop music on the internet 1)Never download anything from anyone with a beard and 2)Never download anything from Belgium. This record is the proof of my wisdom when it comes to the second steadfast standard. The exception if you will. One of the girls is Belgian! There are two girls, who knows where the other is from. The other one sings, she does a magnificent job singing. It is a magnificent record. It sounds as if it should have been released on the Brunettes label and honestly had the Brunettes the sense to release this instead of their emo-riffic last record I might still be in love with the Brunettes this day. This is Saturday morning music, it's delicate, wispy and fragile but there is enough delightful romantic ambience to move it to the physical category. It isn't for mental lounging on a Sunday morning filled with ennui over whether they really are going to ban plastic bags at the local Safeway and whether this will be the last sacrifice, will it be enough to save the planet from impending doom. It is almost 2012. I presume that plastic bags figure prominently in the apocalyptic imagery on the temple at Tikal or why else the hysteria? I need to rent Alien vs Predator 2 in order to bone up on my Mayan astrology. This is Hawaiian music merely because steel guitar is prominent? Do the girls intend to make Hawaiian pop music and if so then what is the inspiration? Daniel Inouye? Don Ho? I hope it isn't because of the fact that our new fearlessly incompetent President is from Hawaii? It's possible. But this record is from last year anyhow. It was cruelly kept a secret from me by those in the know. Second song, I'll Stop to Play With You, similar to the first, only less steel guitar and more steel drums or xylophones and some ukulele hey hey and some regular old guitar too. It's all rather good. It's involved and intricate, this masks a gliding ambition and thus is it disqualified from an association with the epithet indiepop. I read the line-up for this year's indiepop "Woodstock" at Indietracks and I managed only a sigh of indifference. I need to move to new scenery, I despise the Manhattan Love Sucides and the Indelicates, really I do. I was never really a subscriber to the indiepop scene. The closest I had come was when I was threatened with bodily harm by a "luminary" of the indiepop intelligentsia. I don't think he knew who he was about to tangle with. I once had someone exclaim at the sight of my muscles, once, but when you are among Field Mice fans even the world's tiniest gun show will impress and in this case negatively. Muscles are not a part of the twee revolution! Next thing you'll say that you play sports and eat your children. Third song. More hawaiian. So nice. Is Hawaiian music fabulously popular in Belgium? This song is already over. Most songs are brief. i've not ever been to Hawaii. My brother had his honeymoon in Hawaii. It is for honeymooners. He did not take me along. I am not married to his wife. My brother's wife is not fond of me. I am a dreadful brother in law. Hawaii is Polynesian and so is New Zealand. I can name only a few polynesian outlets Tuvalu, Samoa, Phoenix, Cook, Rapa Nui, argh...I've been to new Zealand. The Polynesian culture is a bit masculine, I don't think it lends itself to "twee" interpretations if taken literally, but these songs are not much about polynesia, mostly about love and friends and good times and it's wonderfully successful in its efforts but what about a treatise on Frankie B as his merry gang of coupsters in Fiji. A political record in the sing-song measure of Hawaiian music such as this would be incredibly subversive. It could arrive on planes in the bellies of brown tree snakes, a million usb drives surgically implanted under the skin of Norway Rats let loose in the wild to be consumed by the ubiquitous reptiles. And when the sakes climb into the landing gear compartments of commercial airliners and hitch a ride to Fiji the snakes will die from the ravages of overpopulation and they would decay quickly in topical clime and the lonesome villager with a political ambition for good governance would find the USB drive and plug it into his Sony Vaio computer and hear the music and start a revolution! Bravo. Next song. Another marvelous song. it is called Lullaby for a Betrayer. What is the history of Hawaiian music? Is it their equivalent of the blues? Their Bluegrass? Are these semi-laments on the nature of misery in paradise. It seems that it would be difficult to moan about the plight of average coffee farmer in paradise. Hawaii is a socialist basketcase now but what bout when Don Ho was just starting out? Was it songs about Karl Malden and lost travellers checks and the days when the sand is too warm for the soles of your feet so and you've forgotten your sandals in the cabana? Oh so full of woe is Don Ho. Perhaps it is that Hawaii Five O was extremely popular in belgium? Jack Lord was a god. How old is this girl that wrote and recorded the music? I don't have any idea. But I will now go look during the instrumental interlude that is playing now. It's gorgeous, mind. Ah, she's 32 or 33, depending on her date of birth. I found that the year was 1976. The year I put up my first Kiss poster on my bedroom wall. My oldest brother would discard them and I would fish them out of the trash basket and place them on my wall. I was less than five for most of 1976. I may have had the same illusions about Jimmy Carter back then as full grown adults now have about Joebama. But I was a mere toddler. Joebama's legions are busy saving the planet, they are busy collecting their shower water to water their organically grown eggplant. When 2012 comes will these people reopen their Y2K shelters? Possibly. I spent the last couple of minutes not listening to this record but first watching Sandirne Collard, she of the Belgian exceptionalism, and her video for 'le coup sensass', it was decidedly dreadful, the sort of thing that the fools on I Love Music would drool over when taking breaks from self-love over the Junior Boys. And then the video for The Ritornello from The Ideal Husband! It is a beautiful video. It's main character is a vespa carousel. I will link at the bottom of this entry. And hey back to the record and The Ritornello is currently playing and having watched the video filled with beautiful hipsters and vespas I've been reminded of the chansons. It is a bit Ema Derton this, or Jane Birkin if you will. Will the Ema Derton record ever see the light of day? Will Joebama deliver us Ema Derton? I am still attempting to understand how implementing a 'cap and trade' program that will increase the cost of energy produced by fossil fuels in the name of making renewable energy economically feasible because it cannot compete without lavish government subsidy, but then at the same time we shall be subsidising the most inefficient users of energy at the lower end of the income scale to continue to use energy at no reduced volume because the pain will be borne only by those at the top of the income scale will do anything? Can someone explain that to me? When you subsidise a behaviour you increase it. Of course we won't mention the whole idea of existing atmospheric opacity with regards to CO2 and the fact that the earth has not warmed for 10 years even though CO2 levels are increasing. And why really the panic over the current recession if Global Warming is the greatest threat ever facing mankind, I think Justinian might object to that, but anyhow if the end is nigh then we should be encouraging widespread misery and joylessness and economic destitution for all so that we can save the planet for the bushbabies and slugs. Let's scrape the visage of teddy Roosevelt off of Mount Rushmore and replace it with John Thain. I don't know. Religion is kooky. Eponymous track now playing, another instrumental, elegant and charming. Marvelous. I am offering my apologies to Sandrine Collard for going off on a rant that had nothing to do with this record but you know when the earth warms 4 degrees celsius over the next one hundred years this sort of music might be in vogue all over the planet as England turns tropical, as Siberia becomes the tony retreat of monied sorts from the Northeast, ah Antarctica! Next song playing, beautiful. It is a slow record, no hurry in any of the notes but I feel it moving my electrical capacitors that are stored up in forearms and tendons and in my teeth inside and outside my own head. This is the third best record from 2008. Retroactive assignation! Fight me if you disagree, i will dispatch you as easily as my previous tormentor Seo Hui. Two hits, me hitting you and us dancing to The Ritornello in the middle of the island formerly isthmus of Florida. Belgium will be under water in 100 years. Antwerp will be a coastal capital by the year 3000. Aloha to 1/10th of Belgium! Aloha! Belgium is a bit of a basket case as well. It is a permanent coalition of the unwilling, power equally divided up by ethnic divisions, the rich Flemish vs the grubby Wallonians! Sounds like an HG Wells contrivance. Dutch speakers vs French speakers, the francophones vs the flemish, Kim Clijsters fans vs Olivier Rochus fans or whatever. What is this association with ethnic identity? It seems so foreign to my American, slightly Canadian ears. Here divisions are based on obvious markers of race and religion and we pretend others do not exist. But by geography? Should I despise everyone from Maryland? Anyhow this record is still playing, moving along gingerly on an effervescent spring tide. The second to last song now, Where Ae Kisses, gorgeous. Apparently Sandrine was influenced by Ry Cooder. I don't know Ry Cooder. Is he a genius? This might be song of the album, place a sash across your ipod. The chorus with the echoey Clientele-ish reverb and now with the theremin and ukulele singing in harmony. What is the breakdown of The Ideal Husband? No Wallonians allowed? I hope not. For humanity's future hangs in the balance. Ukuleles are hip these days. Was it Stephin Merritt that made it so? He's fond of a ukulele. And now arrives Beirut and The Ideal Husband as modern champions. It is difficult to look suave while playing a ukulele, you look as if you suffer from gigantism, hands strangling necks and strings too tender for human fingers. Perhaps there is a race of Wallonians with delicately structured phalanges made to strum the ukulele and their recessive gene permeates the genome. It seems as if Polynesisans would have fingers too fat for ukuleles but then the ukulele could have evolved in leaner times. There's the racist in me. Sorry. It is the introduction of a western diet to Polynesia since WWII that has resulted in an epidemic of big bonedness. I could be Polynesian. The "man" is standing on the throat of American Samoa. Last song now, a beautiful twinkly construction called Water Lillies, vocals eeked out and the music at turns serene, icy and crystalline. Marvelous ice cubes in a tropical drink.