Odland The Caterpillar Ep. Whatever happened to Emily Lloyd? It was Emily lloyd and Helena Bonham Carter that mattered to a young sensitive boy once upon a time. Helena Bonham Carter is off having babies with a creepy man and dressing like a goth. I found a website that made calim that Emily's dissappearance can be traced to Larium and fear of Malaria and the Dalai Lama's dog. If true it seems a marvelous story! Tragic sure, but certainly worth a soundtrack in its eventual retelling. This EP could provide that soundtrack. It is all things French. It is desperately serious. Dramatic. Beautiful. The first track starts off with some toy inclinations and a whispered spoken word bit in English. Then a dour violin accompanies the piano, ukulele, ah, but...it isn't anything at all like Beirut. It's decidedly more glamourous than the American Southwest. It's Lillian Gish movies, the White Sister, Lillian posing with a book, looking over the cedars, tears on her cheek, Italian aristocrats in love. The music falls away, the voice returns, it sounds like a school lesson, a teacher explaining the horrors of life to young children in her role as fading spinster relaying the dastardly tales of romance to innocent hearts sprawled on berber. It's dancing now, the music has got up and swings across the room, delicate steps and effortless grace, more English. How did L'Academie permit this? It feels perhaps more sophisticated, worldy, learned and charming than it is. I am not a musician. It's constructions like these that once enticed the Huns to take a stroll in the east. Is there such a thing as French camp? They don't seem embarassable when it comes to their inherent pretension. This is desperately pretentious but it is arrived at so effortlessly we feel privileged in being condescended towards. The voice is a young French actress. On song two she is speaking her spoken word bits in French, oh it is a ripping yarn! There is a Merlin handheld in the background, a cell phone, pianos, violins, the collision of civilization and the civilized. This was recorded in a bedroom. it does have an amniotic evocation, a warm atmosphere to turn the moments cordial and agreeable no matter the state of British finances. Emily Lloyd was rumoured to have been the choice for a British version of Sex and the City. I would have excised her from my memory box had she agreed. She shoudl never be so agreeable. perhaps a move to France and a role in some terrible Emmanuelle Beart movie where Emmaneulle Beart does not shed her clothes. This is artfully vague. There is a storyboard imagination painted in the listener's head with the well thought out structure and loveliness on display. Third song, a bit more song like. This is on Aerotone records. I've only just discovered Aerotone records. Well three members of Aerotone records. There is this, this is marvelous. There is Anois, Anois is marvelous. There is Entertainment for the Brainded, which of these band names does not belong, and she's marvelous anyhow. A German Emmy the Great if I mean to be rude by comparison. Third song is turning playful, vaudeville, sound effects, tiny tiny tiny little hands on very large pianos and scarves and boots that riddle the ankles. She's singing now. Almost. They have an album on the way. Terribly exciting news. Hopefully it does not end up on Bella Union. It might I am not certain why I am anti-Bella Union. These are complicated songs, they are filled with spaces filled with hollowness. The echoes search for the hollow. Marvelous. I received a note from someone in regards to the Palms entry. I did not read it. I re-read the Palms entry to see if someone could have found it objectionable. I didn't think it was all that disgraceful except for the reference to Amerikkkans but this is my being ironic. I am aware that not all Amerikkkans are racist and that it is Europe that actually elects nationalist monsters but you know, I feed the animals in the zoo animal crackers and honey. It is always curious when bands write me. There are 3 readers for this website. an unscientific guess sure because I don't have a counter but it's not that interesting to learn about the Hendra virus and wonder why I haven't breathlessly recounted the tale of Unnikrishnan the tragic Elephant as compelling as it is as a story. I am not clever enough to craft tales as splendidly rich with detail as an elephant dying of anthrax, a lament over the difficulty and expense of burying an elephant, the process of elephant decomposition and the threat to human drinking water as a result. Third song was beautiful. Fourth song was more beautiful. It is more French now than it once was. It is all very declarative at the moment, Gerard Langley's influence and now singing. Chanson! She's clearly imagining herself in a sailor's outfit saluting the drunken patrons as they dream of Tuaregs and Yves Congar dancing across the horizon. Dilapidated spoons or toy telephones have joined the delightful discombobulation, it's rather smart, it features smartly in my repertoire as a fromerly anglophilic dandy. Baudelaire and Manet. Let us just make a list of French notables. Back to spoken word, and squeezebox sentimentality and now to a player piano outro. Beautiful. I love this label.