Giorgio Tuma My Vocalese Fun Fair. One of the great travesties in undocumented pop lore is the frigid reception that greeted the second Majestic album when it was released just a few years back. It was an artifact of startling beauty, it was beautiful, it was lovely and it was charming. But seemingly only a few moments after being released it was being offered/cast off at cut rate deals on Shelflife's website. It did not connect with those scant existing Majestic fans who perhaps thought that they should have remained mired as shoegazing ideologues nor was it a hit with the unidentifiable thronged masses who remained blissfully ignorant even of Majestic's existence upon its birth and death. This record then sounds a good deal like that record. An ominous omen. The hushed, lullaby-esque tones remind greatly of Majestic. At least by measure of my inferior ears. It also reminds of the softer, less erudite moments of Simon Fisher Turner when he casts his ironic eyes on reverie and mirth. I'd offer comparisons to the High Llamas as well but I come here not to disparage Giorgio Tuma but rather to praise him. First is a brief instrumental. It passes by only as a soft breeze welcomed with lungs made from arms stuffed with good intentions. Second song , Two Happy Sad Guitars, gentle, flowing, romantic, dreamy, perfect. The first three minutes soar on a wheeze and then for the denouement a charged rush of vitality to the extremities, a pulse quickened, a shuffling business of steps made in time and brushed drums, syncopated rhythms. It's a marvelous entry into this Italian's expansive heart. Next, Saltamontes. Very Majestic. Of course, beauty such as this, it did not originate with Majestic, it is more legitmately descended from sun drenched 60s paisley pop, lithe, delicate and innocent as a fawn seeming. I need beautiful things to surround me. And not beauty for the sake of beautiful visions but that which derives from character and integrity and strength of being. Someone I work with, someone I was rather close to, not only by assocation died recently. Today, I attended the funeral and being the deplorable narcissist that I am, why else write about myself under the guise of writing about music, I reflected, in between silences of the catholic mass in Spanish, on my own death scene and the cast that would inhabit that lonely spectacle. I thought of an empty mortuary and some kind words from a disinterested pastor as he cast my soul into the abyss with a half hearted shove of encouragement mixed among paraphrased prayers for the departed. Last week, I watched, helplessly, as dozens gathered and lamented with frightful bursts of sorrow and thought first of the enormity of the tragedy that had betaken this family and then, later, to my own friendless existence. I have friends. I am sure they would grant more to me if I offered friendship in return but too often I advertise a dubious self-sufficiency and aloofness rather than warmth and compassion. It isn't intentional. It's genetic. Prevarications abound. But I am not hostage to nature. I should not take solace merely in beautiful pop songs. Let's Make the Steven Cake!!! now playing, easily do I drift softly into its embrace but I receive little to transport with me into the moments after its finale. It's gorgeous. But modern internet accessed man can not survive by pop music alone. Beauty is an essential. Beautiful friends that overlook your flaws and see the better purpose of being in you even as you desperately attempt to camouflage it from the world at large for fear of making a commitment to anyone or being dependent on anyone for happiness whose outlines are curiously unknown. But when Majestic released their album and it was universally ignored it must not have been labeled a soul crushing defeat, surely not, they must have fallen back on the hearts of those that lift them up in the moments when music is forgotten. They become renewed in the gaze of children and the kind words of sincerity. All of these things, missing. It is a character flaw to reflect on one's own travails when others are so so much greater but I am a failure at most things it would seem. My friends are like pop songs, beautiful and because of my coldness, ephemeral. I spend my weekends in libraries reading of Machiavelli and the Teapot Dome Scandal. I've seen photos of Warren Harding and his baby elephant/golf caddy and I would not have imagined him being the imposing ladies man that he was. He was, by rights, also fabulously corrupt, inextricably linked to his caddish appeal, and his administration one of no promise whatsoever but you know it makes for an interesting read. Nan Britton - the mistress of the broom closet, not played by Vivien Leigh, unfortunately, Emma Hamilton took precedence. What infamy unsung. But then to reach the point of conjecture of strangers it seems you need only to have been a scoundrel or scallywag. Good men like Fortino will be unremembered in print or legend but will live beyond their days in the blood that infuses hearts of those that loved them and people will strive to live to better serve their memories. I could only hope for anything to compare, anything at all. I recently had a physical, I am apparently in top health, unfortunately, so I am doomed to a life made longer by its barren nature. Unless, of course, I strive to listen to pop songs with the proper intentions, unless I embrace those who offer only kindness and cross out the deficiencies in my character that make me wary of anyone offering a smile. Astroland by Bus, very Simon Fisher Turner this. At least until the chorus arrives and then it is once more rather Majestic. So majestic. I've mentioned that this is Italian. He sings in English. It has been released on Elefant. A public monument of exquisiteness to savour. When at the library in between pages of political scandal, and after reminiscing on Leonardo's efforts to divert the Arno for the means of torturing the Pisans I look out the window to monuments of our own age. Have you noticed that all public monuments now are abstract and fleeting. Reading the story of the philosopher of power or that of the pope's ceiling it was much different then, there was a shared understanding that art was a reflection of the graceful nature of relatable experience so that even the illiterate among the thongs crushed beneath the heel of Il Papa Terrible would understand the genesis of Michelangelo's masterpiece. There is a recent addition to the skyline here in doleful Greenwood Village. It is several stories high but it most closely resembles a vertebral column. It doesn't possess any poignant influence outside of the designer's mind. It's a pleasing shape, for the visually obsessed, but it doesn't have any power to disrupt the soul's workings instead it is a purely sensory appeal and I suppose it is the tenor of the age that celebrates the engineer over the artist but I can't help imagine it was also the result of some bureaucrat championing the generic over the possibly vulgar. At the aiport here there is a flaming blue horse that greats those that are about to leave our fair metropolis. It's hideous, but at least it sparks controversy and opinions from each side. It is also baleful since it took the life of its creator, Clerval escaped harm. The spine barely registers. If a rogue chinook were to compress the air and topple it tomorrow the fury of outrage would remain nonexistent. It would defy Hardy's paradox. But all public monuments here, now, are similar. Marsico is playing. Funny. The name Marsico means a great deal to me. For no obious reason to anyone but it shapes a great deal of my existence. Aside from that it's a marvelous track. More of the Elefant earnestness mixed with a Siesta elegance. How did this not end up on Siesta? Clearly someone dropped the ball. We're experiencing drought conditions once more and I imagine the monuments to the dust bowl days of the "oughts" will be something sensibly vanilla, a sombrero on top of a bench or some such. But what if instead there was a physical manifestation of La Nina. An epic casting of the fiery fates nude and controlling human existence in broad defiance of engineers and bureaucrats. Marvelous dreams. Giorgio Tuma could be booked to play the unveiling to a scattered mass of shocked onlookers. A cure for the boredom of consensus. But who are these heroes of the age that doesn't exist that have yet to be born. Apparently Michelangelo was molded into caste genius by fact of having been subcontracted out to a wet nurse from a stone mason's background. I was subcontracted to a plastic bottle, a recycling stamp on my forehead. Others suckled from obsequious middle management types that live in fear of the thrills of everyday risk. Better a variation on metal vertebrae than a human face to threaten the imperious natural world. What cowardice. Are you aware that there still exists in France a law banning the positive depiction of cowardice in literature? Implausibly, it led to the popularity of Tin Tin. What happens when Spielberg defaces all that Tin Tin people hold dear. I don't know, secure the banlieues. I am rude. Apologies. There is the new movie Polytechnique which chooses to absolve the brave souls that walked out when a crazed gunmen demanded all of the men leave so that he may deal with the women, to not have granted them absolution would have made the film illegal in France, and later they sit paralyzed by consensus when shots rang out. Who knows what we would do if faced with a similar situation but it is not wrong to reflect that the wrong choice was made even among the vagaries of uncertainty. Giorgio Tuma is not concerned with this, however. I am perturbedly focused on death. I apologize. Giorgio Tuma is filled with the spirit of the living, a calm set of notes in this torrent of unease. Faye's Flying Shoes. Beautiful beautiful. Beauty is an anomaly. It should not be thus. There should be romantic troubadours populating the public consciousness like some pestilence but sadly public proclamations deal less with affairs of the heart and more of the satisfaction of appetites and desires. Giorgio Tuma will arrive in Denver some day and walk through the streets wounded by the indifference of the city around him. He will carry these pop songs safely in his heart and shelter them from cruel iniquity of fate and stare at the sun and attempt once more to extract the life giving affirmations and process them into heart stirring delicacies but he may not be able to sustain. We will all then be to blame. I've contributed to his downfall because instead of rushing up several flights of stairs onto towering high rises and proclaiming the greatness of Giorgio Tuma to the world at large I will selfishly hold him close to my heart and mind. Sirens Pray For Us. It is a perfect pop record, really the sort of thing that Pop'n'Cherries could describe much more effuisvely and with much greater efficiency than I could ever imagine. Last song. A wordless outro of assured farewells. Many happy returns. Our wish.