Candy Claws In the Dream of the Sea Life. I spend about 2 days in 20 in Fort Collins. Candy Claws are from Fort Collins. Not a fascinating fact, I know. It is a nice little town. A college town. Lantern Fish. Static and a few moments warming up the instruments that they could mythologize about being found at yard sales on Saturday afternoons in Fort Collins, maybe off of Harmony Road. Possibly. This first song is pretty vague, some vague meandering on the instruments and vocals that you can barely hear. The lyrics could be killer! Possibly. Who could understand them what with the poor recording quality, the vocoder and the other whatevers. Whatever whatever, it is great. I am not feeling inspired at the start of this post. Sometimes I spend the day thinking of things while I am driving but today I spent a lot of time talking while I was driving. I was exceedingly chatty today. This is not normal. I was polite and charming and engaging. It was strange. I don't know why this is. I've stopped eating during the day and so maybe it is a side effect of subsiding on Glycogen stores rather than the immediate gratification of glucose. Who knows. I spent a bit of time talking about Toledo with someone from Ohio. Toldeo is a college town, "the Rockets", I used to work in Toledo as well, 1 day in 60. This may be a geography lesson disguised as someone writing about music without anything interesting to say even though I do really enjoy this album. It's in the Ruby Suns/Seabear/Panda Bear realm. Does such a realm exist? If only. The second album will be on Fat Cat records and some guy who used to play recorder in Our Brother the Native will produce and all of the kids in I Love Music land will loathe it! Hurrah. The first song has bled into the second, hard to say where things end and where they begin. Something like an earthworm. Earthworm rock. How do scene names catch on? Is there a central naming policy institute that hands down EU-wide dictates on what bands fit into which genres or scenes? Candy Claws are the vague rock band scene newcomers, they are following in the eminent footsteps of the Yes Girls. This could be a Yes Girls special edition of 50 limited special edition of 50 release. Damon T writes lyrics for the muddled, they are sometimes clever, always wrongheaded but he's bright and he is clever and he wears glasses very well. My head is too large for glasses. I need some sort of tortoiseshell oversized lenses to cover my fatfaced head filled with all of the things meant to disambiguate uncommon unsightliness. This is Animal Collective-ish as well. I think I've talked about Animal Collective influence before, they are not acarpous. It is both good, see Ruby Suns, and bad, see Architecture in Helsinki and Our Brother the Native. But in general I think the athletic, loosely structured, pop song disguised as a drone scene is something to emulate if you are a young band from say Nederland and you want to make it big just the same as Candy Claws have done. Look for Candy Claws to be selling out the 15th St Tavern any day, you will probably be able to hear them over the Galaga machine even. I am meant to see Candy Claws on the 10th. In Fort Collins. I've only been to one show in Fort Collins, it was a beautiful rock and roll show with Ladybug Transistor, when they were playing their beautiful Albermarle Sound record, Of Montreal when he wasn't slapping people in the face with his phallus, and the Apples in Stereo just when they started their rawk phase. Come to think of it we did not stay for the Apples in Stereo. Third song. Soft soft voices, droney music, it sounds prefabricated and jellied, compressed through a tube onto a popsicle stick. I still can't make out the words, loads of drop outs to just a voice and some random recorded effects. Could they be discussing local politics? It could be a manifesto on the outstanding failures of the Hutchison administration! A scabrous attack on he and his wife Cathy and their ineptitude. Or not. Doug looks a little above ridcule, well groomed, moustache, besuited, I wish I could present a reasonable appearance in public but I can not. I always look as shabby as Candy Claws sound. In their case it wears well, in mine it does not. Next song. It is sailing on sounds made is in different rooms in the same suite. They gave away their first record. It was worth the price of admission. It is meant to snow in Fort Collins this weekend and here in Denver as well. So much snow. No snow in the winter but now that Spring has sprung it is all snow all the time. It is around but a few hours and then *poof* 8 inches of snow has sublimated and been carried over the border to Sibelius-ville. Maybe this album is anti-Kansas. I don't know the nuances of growing up Coloradan. I know in Michigan we all thought Ohio mainly a waste of time. If we could have annexed Sandusky and had little else to do with the rest of the state no one would have minded. Next, Flashy Storm, field recordings, dissonance, whispers. Pehaps they will follow in the footsteps of the Fray and end up on Grey's Anatomy and become big stars and have their posters on teen girl's bedroom walls all over the Midwest. Are there Fray posters on bedroom walls? Those guys are pretty square. That new song of theirs is a bit of a drag eh? Denver's favorite sons. I am not actually sure which suburb they are from but with a sound that vanilla I am betting on Highlands Ranch. Who knows. This is like toy music, it should come with a handle to crank a little music box and the music will come out of a long tube that you need to hold up to your ear in order to hear. It's faux rustic goodness. I don't think that I am going to see them on the 10th. Sad. It was meant to be a blizzard today, but it was not. I did go out in the elements and a rabbit commited suicide by running underneath my car tire while I was driving along Orchard Road. Next song, Island Grows, more vagueness. Vagueness is the new non-vagueness. It was a strange sensation of guilt I felt after murdering that rabbit. I had seen rabbits die before. My brother was a faux rustic/outdoorsman when he was a kid, he was 10 years older than me, he would trap muskrats and beavers and opossums and occasionally a rabbit. i think he sold the pelts for drugs. Once he decapitated a rabbit right next to the Vega in the garage, the eyes fluttered, the body jumped around, my stomach went swoosh. He then chopped off the leg and I actually carried around a live rabbit's foot in my pocket for the next few months at school. Perhaps this rabbit was a distant relative. A member of the second diaspora of rabbits driven from Australia by the calicivirus(created by the mad scientists at Shrimper records?) and newly arrived on the brave shores of Greenwood Village. But he obviously could not escape the isolation and identity crisis as he was shunned by the natives due to his strange accent and unorthodox eating habits. In the days before the evangelicals arrived with their megachurches and rabbit proof fences it was a land of tolerance, a seeming Al Andalus under Abd Al Rahman. Greenwood Village an analog to Cordoba. But then came Ted Haggard. And it all changed. The rabits started to abandon the native language of their church and started to speak Ladino as a memory palace of the heart. But it didn't help the little friend that I now wear on my front passenger side tire. Next song, a bit of the Pony era Swirlies, small and tinny, unfocused, pleasant. In the future they may make an epic record which will cause the world to reconsider this plunge towards the apocalypse. But until then it's pretty good listening without consequences. I'd rather be listening to the Napoleon record, but it is a hometown pride thing. Not really. I am more excited about Michigan State beating Connecticut than Candy Claws making a fantastic record. It sounds as if their recording budget was around 11 dollars but that is part of the charm. As a songwriter myelf I can appreciate the tough economics of pop music in 2009. The tough times have not yet resulted in a flurry of quality releases. I like a few records this year but there hasn't been a standout release as of yet. Has there? Not Strange Winged Snail. I should be commenting on thir choice of wildlife. Should I not? Are winged snails good eating? I am looking at the shared Limewire playlist of the person I am stealing my internet connection from. It is interesting. Not to my tastes but if it makes her happy. I don't have any misconception that the music I listen to is better or more important than a Kid Cudi track. Most of what I listen to sounds amateurish and in this homogenized pre-digested world it requires a set of standards lower than the average person to appreciate. I met one of my neighbours today, she's lovely, I am thiking of baking her cookies. Sadly, I hope that it is not her that I am stealing my internet from because someone that lovely really should be listening to kate Bush and watching Vivien Leigh movies. Shouldn't they? The anlgophile girl of my dreams, all she needs is a hidden goth persona where she wears olive green cardigans, brilliant red lipstick and maintains the pallor of a corpse and we'd happily catalogue the demise of old England as it is neatly bookended by Vivien Leigh in Waterloo Bridge and Kate Bush on Hounds of Love. Candy Claws, they're American.

,