Glum discovery, it appears that Possession has already been made into a Gwynneth Paltrow movie. How sad. I'm almost at the end, I fear my good feelings may now be forever spoilt. An entry on the Ballet coming tomorrow. I quite like them.

The Ballet Mattachine. Being from New York must be an impediment for bands. Being as being from New York likely would make you think you are more interesting, more central, more profound than you actually are. But are there any bands that are truly from New York? I think this band lives in New York, but are they from New York? This is very nice, a Magneitc Fields meets the Baskervilles kind of vibe happening. Two archetypal would be from New York City if they could have designed it bands. His voice is a bit Ladybug Transistor. A New York band might think their interests set them apart from the world at large. If I was in a band and not from New York, instead I hailed from Aames, Iowa I might try harder to be worldly, learned, catholic. These guys are gay. I am not sure if it matters. But it seems requisite to mention it in mentions of the band and thus to compare them to other gay bands like the Hidden Cameras and the Magnetic Fields. Guilty. What if Skip Gates had been gay? I really like this first song. I've only skimmed this album once. I am not sure if it is good or merely great. Second song, more strings, toy sounding strings, bohemian strings, strings from the back of a Forced Exposure catalog. His voice, nasal and pinched, his scope shrunken and the words about life in a snowglobe. I really enjoy this song as well. This would have qualified as indiepop in the 1990s. Now it is far too macho. It is too adult. It has personality. DQ. Another band who risk dating themselves rather quickly by mentioning instant messaging. Instant messaging has had a remarkable shelflife for the era though, they might be safe. Before this week's end a non-New York band come to our fair city on the edge of the Rockies. Trash Can Sinatras. Yay! I've seen them once before. Long ago. In Detroit. It was frightfully cold, I remember listening to Francis conduct an interview with a subsuming cold with the local alternateen station as I was driving to the show. It was at St Andrews, the boys must have felt at home. It was a marvelous show. I even remember Thirsty Forest Animals as the opening act, some proto-quavering emo shoegaze band from Detroit. Do they still exist? Could they be opening this Thursday? Not probably. We'll get someone horrible like Mr Pac-Man. Its alright I'll wear ear plugs and dream of the Summer air pressing down on the clouds outside. This song is very Magnetic Fields. Back before the Magnetic Fields starting releasing really uninteresting albums. No mention of the Magnetic Fields in 500 Days of Summer. I did see it. I enjoyed it. You may revoke my credentials for being credible. But really there are two sorts of people in this world, those who think There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is the saddest, most romantic song in the world ever and those who don't. Well, there has been speculation in the relevant literature that there is in fact a third variant on the species the I Love Music sort that hates everything that they might believe would not be approved by the greater consciousness of Asperger nation. But they are sad and pitiable and I don't want to think about them. They've got their 3 x 5 cards in their back pocket with their ready to be updated at a second's notice list of the top 10 albums, singles and reissues of the year. They use abbreviations like Dero and "the Dean" and can quote Simon Reynolds vital statistics at you as it is him they picture while they spend quality time alone in a bathroom stall with a copy of Smash Hits circa 1983. I am too cruel. I was once a music "critic". I wrote for an esteemd publication-"Tweekitten". I washed out, I couldn't handle the pace; I went crazy with the women, the drugs, the rock and roll lifestyle. Now I am here. Fifth song already, the last two were great, by the way. This is very Charm of the Highway Strip, surely the Magnetic Fields are their favorite band and they must know that they are a complete ripoff of the Magnetic Fields. Vitesse knew this as well. Did they not? Is it an homage? I wasn't aware that Leon Trotsky had signed the surrealist manifesto. It is part of the reason the Christopher Hitchens apparently has thoughts of Lev while spending quality time in a bathroom with a copy of the battleplan for Operation iraqi Freedom. But sad old men like me have a dark dream that corresponds more or less exactly to the scene in the elevator in 500 Days of Summer, perhaps the song is different, some may chose Joy Division or the Teardrop Explodes, I might have plumped for the Chills Satin Doll but only to seem more obscure. Are there really Karaoke machines with the Pixies on them? I've never done Karaoke. I wouldn't know. Sixth song, hand claps and drum machines. Does The Ballet have a facebook entry? Do these things seem like a requirement for the bands of today? Part of the CV to make them more appealing to tastemakers like Skatterbrain and Shelflife? I hope not. I would hope they would be excited ot do their bit to enhance the fabric of the false universes of Facebook. Sometimes when I am bored I will search these sites for people I work with or when given suggestion to by someone I work with will find some of their entries somewhat surprising. Some resemble JC Penney catalog photo shoots, some reveal surprisingly stunning significant others and some reveal levels of physical fitness not easily confirmed by visual inspection. I don't participate. It would be a lonely facebook entry without any friends. There is someone that has claimed the URL for my full name. I won't reveal it but my first name is Keith and I am not Sarah McLachlan's brother though I could be mistaken for it. I was Canadian after all. My name sharer is a bit of a ponce. He's got all sorts of advice for getting rich though it doesn't appear that he's all that wealthy. And then there is the poetry! It's marvelous! There is another person that shares my name that writes books on Africa and the Middle East. I don't imagine he's wealthy either. Our name could be an anchor in the financial stakes. I like the current song. It sounds less Magnetic Fields-ish. This is decidedly indiepop. Remember when bands were not ashamed to be considered indiepop. Back when there was fire and fury in an indiepop song, possibly. There isn't that possibility today. Perhaps the assault on wealth by the Joebama administration is in part a response to his disappointment at what the unprecedented generational wealth has contributed to the parlous state of indiepop music. Maybe Joebama hypes himself up for staff meetings with a 30 minute session with London Weekend and laments quietly to his 13 year old chief of staff about how the new Bats record is great but god he's sick of bands like the Pocketbooks and Smittens being so safe, dreary and middleclass. Let's raise taxes on their parents, let's shake up the world! Another nice song. This sounds Canadian. I have Candar. Are there Canadians in this band? The Manhattan Love Suicides have called it quits. How sad. Not really. They looked as if they wanted to pretend that they were dangerous but dear god, the music. I am surprised they weren't on Slumberland. Apparently Slumberland is going to release a new Bats EP soon. Woo! Hopefully it wasn't infected by that dismal Clean record that Merge is fighting tooth and nail to keep anyone from hearing because it is so crap. The Bats could play with Trash Can Sinatras, two of my comfort bands, warmth and consistency and nostalgia all wrapped in wrinkled, grey packages. Song number 9, Corduroy back with the Magnetic Fields pastiche. I Don't mind. Originality is overrated, I am unoriginal besides no one sounds like Our Brother the Native and this doesn't stop them from being horrible. Summer has finally arrived. It was the year without a Summer until now. But Summer will be short, only 30 days. Who will write the breezy sounds of summer when it has been overcast and unseasonably cool for almost the entire duration? Will Mr Pac-Man have it within them to write a Double Summer? Ha. Maybe Brian Cox will step away from his duties as populist physicist to the teen set, his poster on the walls of millions next to Joe Jonas, and move back into his role as guitarist for Shed Seven and write a brilliant paen to the summer that wasn't. It could be a lament. Is he really an eminent physicist or has he just grabbed his high profile status because he has an angular haircut and probably listens to Her Space Holiday? He looks like Johnny Greenwood. Do they hang out and discuss the foibles surrounding the LHC and what a wanker Thom Yorke is? I don't know. He's boring. I'm boring. You're boring. This record is wearing out its welcome with it's uniformity. I think they think they are more complicated than they are. Is this a political statement? I Hate the War, ha, I am dense, but it is so apathetic and automatic sounding, yeah I voted for Joebama, I'm meant to hate the war even though it hasn't really affected me at all except to have forced me to attend a demonstration every other weekend for credit in my Gender Studies class. It's a bit dreary, like the war is a war on the proper use of a half-stop and you're surrounded by a group of education majors. Two songs left. I am running out of steam. I am on vacation this week. There should be loads of entires then, but there probably won't be. I am looking for a house, I saw 4 yesterday. It is astonishing how universal bad taste is, dark paneling, purple carpeting, copper wall hangings, ugh!!! My childhood home had all of these things save the purple carpeting, ours was evergreen and we had a plastic eagle hanging over the fireplace. If I had been in a band I might have been interesting because I grew up in such mundane circumstances, the highlight being the breathless newscasts from a helicopter searching for the Liger that had been rumored to be stalking the grounds near Freedom Hill. The might Strut used to play at Freedom Hill. Whatever happened to Strut? Maybe they merged with Thirsty Forest Animals, times are tough in Detroit. This song sounds resigned, more silly talk of revolution. The imagination of would be dissidents in a free country like this is funny. The imaginary struggle, throwing verbal punches to the air, the aggrieved child driven home to his palatial estate in a 2004 Volvo is stirring. Now the last song. Chants and chants, blah blah blah. Will there be a political record of consequence now that there is going to be a reversion back to the poverty of the 1960s and 1970s I hope so. It won't be written by the Ballet. They're from New York.

There and Back Again has posted the first Ego single. Do you remember being delirious with delight after hearing it? Remember then the disappointment when their album arrived a year or so later. The Lucksmiths had warned us off in Kansas. I fear for Northern Portrait suffering the same fate. The Ego album was like the sun having collapsed, gravity gone and given up, the stars took a vacation, etc...a bit like the Pas/Cal album.

Oooo! A new Murcof release. Why is this man not more widely heralded? Is he? Not in the circles that I sputter in.

jj no. 2. I haven't any idea what balearic is. This is balearic, allegedly. I could not say either way. I tell people it reminds me of Broadcast not, though reasonable it may be, because it sounds like Broadcast but rather because it exudes class. Broadcast is "classy" to my unsophisticated ears. Of course who exactly am I to tell this to? I told it to one person when we were on our way to see Away We Go. Now I tell you-my lonely readers. To continue an earlier meme Away We Go - Terrible. Actually "terrible" may be too kind. It so offends all of the senses all at once that stronger words of condemnation may be required in order to comply with the Geneva Accords. Do see it. There are loads of songs that want to be Badly Drawn Boy songs on the soundtrack, maybe some Cat Stevens worship happening as well. There is some caribbean flavour on this first track, a jumpy, reggae fake guitar strum, some strangely strangled disco strings and surely some steel drum hauntings that were deleted from the final mix. It's a tropical fizzy drink. It's delightful. The voice is poised. It is almost entirely affect-less. Normally I am for drama. Kate Bush. RockettotheSky. Frida Hyvonen. But I rather love this. I did watch Waterloo Bridge again last night and Vivien Leigh, sigh, a stunning beauty and the fierceness of her stare. The scene in Waterloo Station where she says her long presumed dead Captain Cronin depart the train platform, strolling jollily back into her life is just devastating and she doesn't even utter a word, it is the charge of terror, the flash of jubilation, vivid confusion that reflect in her eyes in full panorama that is an amazing treat to behold. Perhaps tomorrow I watch That Hamilton Woman. Apparently Vivien was meant to play Elizabeth Bennet instead of Greer Garson once upon a time. I love Greer Garson and that version of Pride and Prejudice is wonderful but I can't help wondering what she Vivien Leigh might have brought to the role instead of Greer Garson's wholesomeness. it might have darkened Austen into unrecognizability. Now the single. From Africa to Malaga a continuation of the breezy effervescence. Pops and taps and garbage cans for percussion, coke bottles and that black man from the Seven-Up commercials shaking some noisemakers and the exquisite voice reigning above this colourful swedish concoction. Next track is Ecstasy apparently this is some sort of take on a famour rap song. Lollipop by Lil Wayne. I don't know it. Am I clueless? Is it ubiquitous? I am not a rap fan. Skip Gates would think me a racist and offer me another of his 'teachable moments' if he ever heard anything so scandalous in his life. He could compare 2 Live Crew to Shakespeare by misquoting Robbie Burns for me. This is not a rap track, it's a dance track, hypnotic and spaced out, the looping sample might be from the rap song. I don't know. I would wager I enjoy this more than I would the original. Remember also that Joan Fontaine was chosen by Hitchcock ahead of Vivien Leigh for Rebecca. Why anyone would choose anyone above Vivien Leigh is a mystery. But history is filled with these sort of things. Fourth song, "you smoke like a young Belmondo". Was Vivien up for Breathless? I might have still chosen Jean Seberg even if she had been. All of this movie discussion. I am about to watch The Mouse That roared and it is obvious that Alec Bladwin has read the same wikipedia entry on Jean Seberg as I have. The music is filmic. Well this track isn't, it's a bit of a folky number with some twiddles underneath that come to the fore about midway through. All of the songs are very short. Nine songs, 26 minutes. Lovely canned string section at the moment. It's tender and reflective, mercy and romance. It could be a Neil Diamond number. How is it that the Velvet Underground are in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame and Neil Diamond is not? What a farce. It's true that a number of my favorite bands form some sort of multi-tentacled cult around the feet of Lou Reed but I do hate the man. Really. I shouldn't use hate. I get so depressed on I Love Music from the trolls who just arrive to tell everyone how much they hate something. But I despise the fact that people hear things in Velvet Underground songs that just aren't there. Neil Diamond wrote stirring soundtracks to heartbreak, joy and love than most anyone else alive and he's stuck recording with Rick Rubin in order to appear relevant, a reinvention along the lines of Paul Mccartney seeking credibility in the shadow of Elvis Costello. Guh. Melanie Lynskey is in Away We Go, she's just as awful as everyone else is. Perhaps Sam Mendes has some strange sort of fixaion with the cast of Heavenly Creatures. Wil he cast Mrs Reaper in his next dud? Intermezzo! We're pretentiously learning opera terms. This must be what makes this balearic. Why a 26 minute record should require an intermezzo is a bit of a puzzle. Sam Mendes probably has a fish named Murray O'Lanza. Actually he probably doesn't, that would be clever and cute and he's neither. What does Kate Winslet see in him? Who knows. Next track, following the intermezzo, My Hopes and Dreams, a stalking rush of momentum builds from the initial fog and it's marvelous. Slinky canned strings and whirling atmospherics and dreamism. I had my own HEavenly Creatures fixation of course. when I was in Christchuch I asked several people for directions to the cottage where Mrs Reaper was murdered. It was still too early, it was 1996. In New Zealand in 1996 people were wearing trousers under their skirts, they were driving three on the tree transmission and Ansett served these deviously delicious croissant chicken salad sandwiches on short haul flights. This is more Broadcast-esque than the first few songs. So is the next one Masterplan. This is a beautiful record. I was going to see 500 Days of Summer tonight but I am tired and we love Zooey Deschanel but cut hr open and she's a Death Cab for Cutie fan, she reads Dave Eggers and buys expensive handbags, that's it. I promised to write an entry for my unread website. It may be unread from neglect. I could write an entry on the new Clean record. It is so comically awful. I've come to realize that when record labels are especially vigilant about preventing leaks it is because the album they are covetously keeping all to themselves is dreadful beyond recognition. The Clean are simple boys. I don't think they see themselves this way. Why else would David Kilgour claim credit for the album artwork? I would make the claim that their best work has been done outside of the band. Robert Scott is obviously a god for the Bats and the Magick Heads and for Thumbs Off too, David Kilgour's first solo record is one of the greatest things ever and Hamish was part of the Great Unwashed with David on the ride too. The Mad Scene? Eh. I still recall a review in Option where someone dismissed the entire Antipodes based on one listen to the first Mad Scene album which isn't dreadful but it's not really great either. The new Celan album is a disaster. Look at how dedicated Seeland's label was in depriving us a sneak peek into their album and now we know why--it's an abomination filled with monuments to blandness, a dullard's delight. Last song, another folkie one, it is not a Taylor Dayne cover. I looked up the lyrics to Taylor Dayne's Tell it to my Heart and the words are not the same. Whew. My brother went to see Cathy Dennis and Taylor Dayne in concert long ago Remember Cathy Dennis' digitally enhanced green eyes? It made us swoon, we were innocent and naive. Now she would have digitally enhanced mammaries and we would laugh. I was only just informed of 12:34:56-8-9. I don't recall doing anything memorable at that moment. Did you?

I've constructed a Trash Can Sinatras playlist and find that they may warm my heart more than any other band in existence. It's all down to Francis' voice, those chiming chords, the softness around the middle...sigh. The new record has some duds, sure sure, but it has Morning Star and Easy on the Eye and The Engine. It's a miracle, to quote Francis from some days ago. I almost feel guilty for not having contributed to possible future successes. I have a hard time with guilt. Recently an episode dealt with crackers.

Tonight I watch Waterloo Bridge for the 8th time. Tomorrow I write...something. If not then I shall kill this blog dead with large bullets and opium.

I am years behind the times, forgive, but Possession, of which I am nearly half of the way through, is just the loveliest thing. Are any of A.S. Byatt's other novels as sterling?

Update: Oh dear she wrote Angels and Insects, erm...well Morpho Eugenia. I've not read it but it is one of the worst movies ever made now. Is it not?

Summer Cats - terrible.

Update: New Clean Album Mister Pop - terrible.

Update: New Neil Hannon side project thing - terrible.

Update: An email - "This blog - terrible". True enough.

Oh how I love the JJ album!!!

Update: 2009 is half over-- most listened to records??? Napoleon followed closely by Giorgio Tuma. Two breezy summer records. JJ may join them shortly. Now to find the first Giorgio Tuma album.