The Love Language Libraries

I love this album. There's my objectivity then, shot through and diminished. This was my travel record. I didn't actually require a travel record this year. Last year, I needed, desperately, a travel record. The year before it was a Frida Hyvonen record. The weather outside my window has turned to Frida weather. The walk through the half empty terminal this year upon returning home felt different, instead of the willfully obscure it was tender exuberance. The Love Language is endowed with this marvelous spirt, an enthusiasm that is a really remarkable force acting upon my psyche. It impels motion. I listened while I sat next to mute airplane rowmates who misspelled react on their Ipod scrabble and when running in the South Carolina snowfall and along the beach that was truly deserted save for a few people taking photographs beneath the pier and a man running in shoes where his toes fit individually into each toe hole, and I listened alone but then music is always a lonely endeavour for me. 'Pedals" sounds like Stephen Cogle singing indiepop, it's a tremor of human consciousness. He's a crooner. He possesses a powerful croon, with power enough to knock over buildings in some rampage of emotion, it is a voice to crash brash cathedrals and to make the stars feel strangely close at home. I have never heard the first Love Language album. It is meant to be intimate and forlorn. I am not sure that was his calling and I would certainly not want to diminish his mien by calling him a sad sack troubadour without ambition. Maybe it is the producer but...this voice was meant for cataclysms and monuments. Stephen Cogle is honestly the closest approximation I can offer. But the Terminals? No, it does not sound like the Terminals. Not even when the Terminals wrote their gothic renditions of garage pop such as Frozen Car. The organ is prominent and soaring, the drums are thunderous, everything is to the red actually, it plays very loudly in my ears near to the point of distortion and dissonance but it wouldn't be as thrilling if it didn't seem on the verge of collapse. It is indiepop, I suppose but not in the epithetical sense of the word, the song just now, Brittany's Back has a country-ish twang to it but still his voice is as insistent as a steaming train. Incredible. This year the new year brings different emotions. Death shrouded my heart last year, from Seattle to home, sitting in an airplane waiting to see the end of an imaginary existence. There are diaries that provide the backing story and it is interesting to read about your imaginary existence in someone else's marvelous penmanship. This year my mouth has opened and words have come out. A rare feat. Track now is This Blood is Our Own, still incredible, the organ crescendo bit now is spine tingling, so many cliches, it seems as if when I really am impressed I lose my ability to express myself. There was once 'celestial braising', oh dear, and now it is 'marvelous' or 'incredible' or whatever. I forget who it was that said you should never use a cliche in writing ever, if you recognize any phrase as one that has existed in any prose or poetry anywhere then you must jettison this. But no one reads this, not especially since I have lost my heart when it comes to music and only occasionally have the flame stoked tepidly by majestic records such as this. I could look up the quotation I mean to impress you with but I was watching a show on Joe Strummer today and a cavalcade of unimpressive figures rolled out their own quotations and I was bored by them all even as I find Joe Strummer fascinating because the man was a genius in the sense that I think he knew exactly who he was and how he was meant to interact with the world. That is power. I am still unaware of what I mean to anyone or anything other than the first breath each morning. Summer Dust is on now, well actually it has just finished, more brilliance, a slowie, a country croon. Beautiful. Each track is a wonder. Blue Angel has started now and it sounds like some relic from a distant age. Again, perhaps these are all manipulations by a clever producer but the voice is no feat of science and labour. The words? Hmm...I suppose they are serviceable. Aside from the 'powdered cannons' bit in the first song nothing can move past the bombast of the performance. This is no slight. Perhaps it will take Gordon from ballboy to come along later with a stripped down acoustic recording with cello in tow to help me realize the brilliance of his pen apart from the magnificence of his voice. I am maybe overstating things. It's the heft of his voice, the musculature that impresses me so, it is actually a bit nasal but in this world of muffled mumblings it is a joy to hear a voice so distinct and prominent. Winter arrived only yesterday. Now to a jaunty, jangly number with rockabilly lyrics and back alley rubbish bin lid percussion and joy, armloads of joy. The first record was a lament. His girlfriend let him. His heart died. I may have been more open to that last year. My heart didn't die, it was paralyzed. New Year's eve is the saddest night of the year. A retelling, nay an audit of 12 months of regret and wasted opportunities can make for a weary evening spent alone in the dark writing about sunny pop music. Anthophobia now, marvelous. I can't tell you if the songs are great, perhaps not, I've sen other reviews and they are occasionally tepid but his performance is inspiring. When I recount the highlights of this year I think only of one night when I discovered I might mean something to someone sometime. When someone proposes to you there is that brief glimpse into a possible future and it doesn't seem horrible. But when you say no, there isn't a possibility of recovery. I could play The Love Language the next time, if ever there is a next time. But fear of being alone isn't enough. Next track, Horophones, loud and dissonant and still sooooo good. I find that when there are long absences I tend to describe my past recollections only vaguely too timid to reveal anything other than my visceral reactions instead of a logical examination of all that lead to my demise because it is a loop that I have grown tiresome of. I could make a resolution to change editors but at this point it may be genetics. And a bad haircut, I have the world's second worst haircut, second only to some person from the Joe Strummer documentary. Wilmont, starts off as a tender distantly recorded lament and now has bloomed into a glamourous ballad. Is this the album of the year? Possibly. I tend to discover albums of the year always in December. The most played record of my year is perhaps a toss-up between the Lucky Soul album which dominated the early part of the year, the Club 8 record which I thin is completely genius however unlikely that sounds and Sally Seltmann. I think record of the year comes down to this and Sally Seltmann. Sally Seltmann touches my hart with her joy, my heart is steamrolled by the truckloads of joy here.

Add My Autumn Empire to my list of favorites oh and the Memoryhouse record too, beautiful, both. Reading 'The Zimmerman Telegram' now, oh Barbara Tuchmann.

Hi. I've been busy. Someone proposed to me. Even before she had read my book. Afterwards, after we parted, she said she didn't like it. I intend to mend my foolish truancy. Intentions are grand. My favorite records this year, the year of indiepop-Lucky Soul, Third Eye Foundation, Club 8(really grea), Allo Darlin', Electric Pop Group, Amiina, Beach House, Klima, Brave Timbers, Candy Claws, Cats on Fire, The Drums, Kortney, Gigi, Hello Seahorse(no longer really boring indiepop), hildur G, His Name is Alive, jj, jonquil, Legendary Creatures, the ocean tango, pascal pinon, procedure club, sally seltmann(so wonderful), sambassadeur, seabear, she & him, the sonnets, stars, suede(best of, oh how foolish I was in diminishing them in the past), vampire weekend.

disappointment-The School.

The heart worn tenderness of the new Milky Wimpshake record makes me smile warmly.

Whoa! Suddenly Hello Seahorse are interesting. Especially the singer who seems to have gone post-menopausal with her sudden archness. Very excellent!

Update: Have you read Lapham's Quarterly. Yes yes, of course you have, you are sophisticated, posh and wise. It is a thrill to read an article by Gustave Flaubert about then contemporary French theatre. Is it not? Possibly not. I've been listening to the Kort record every morning when I drive to work. It's "authenticness" soothes me. When I arrive at work I have forgotten it's balm and in the evening after a day's worth of frenetic haranguings from clients and employees I am in need of something more difficult to deal with those who would be difficile. To me! I listen to Moonshake in the evenings. How great would it be if everyone of the country thicks that listen to the Kort record then turned around and found themselves a copy of Boys. Cortney would blow up their heads. It would be a terrible mess. Someone would need to clean up later. It is nearly election week. It is very exciting, we are soon to be ruled by racists and bigots. Tom Tancredo may even win the Colorado Governor's race and soon after he will construct a 17 foot electrified fence to not only prevent people from getting into Colorado and stealing all of the jobs but also to get out. You may never hear from me again, he could have someone in line to monitor all communications exiting the state. Hello Seahorse! will certainly be verbotten in Colorado after his election. They are...whisper...from Mexico. They used to be chirpy and annoying twee but now well it seems as if they've started listening to the Cocteau Twins and quite possibly, be still my heart, Pram. Her voice has gone from familiar and kindly to something altogether more interesting and shrill. I keep saying interesting because well most indiepop bands are not. Listen to Northern Portrait, they are as dull as dishwater. First song is almost over, I haven't said anything about it, Tancredo's shadowy fingers lingering over my keyboard, and it's dancey electro pop. Loads of fancy keyboards, less guitar, more of a production footprint than in the past. Everything is in Spanish. They could be as annoyingly chirpy and twee and I would be none the wiser but switiching exclusively to their native tongue has done wonders. It is months later. The election is over. We are free from the oppressive fear of a Tancredo administration. First song has finally finished, whew, it is a long one. Second song has started, Casa Vacia, very Pram-esque beginning, keyboards on ironing boards keyboards and a nostalgic childish voice, very excellent. In Spanish still. I did not receive a Rosetta Stone language kit so I will not be able to translate for my two readers. They were once so cloying. They were once so dull. What happened? This is truly terrific. And now of course they have been abandoned by the kids. I have ben catching up with some twee websites recently and Tangents guy was skeptical of Allo Darlin', sheesh! Unfairly I have neglected them in mentions of best record of the year. I also made mention of her Englishness in my previous mention, in fact she is Australian, and this may have ben a case of xenophobia. But she hangs with Hefner. And she writes amazingly charming pop songs that don't sound amateurish, uninspired or derivative. A rarity. This is mainly why I don't read twee websites. They have the same totems and have progressed at the same pace along an evolutionary path that leads to rubbish such as Northern Portrait and Standard Fare, it is the same process that has afflicted indie rawk websites. Evolution seems to spread at an even rate all along the spectrum of websites from the world changing to the narcissistic exercises similar to mine. Why is this? I have people who attempt to send me free records. Why? No one reads this site and I don't take what I write about music seriously. I enjoy music, I love it actually, given a choice I would rather be listening than not, but if you are given a free cd are you inclined to treat its donors more kindly? I don't know. Maybe if Kanye sent me a cd I'd feel more appreciated. Fourth song now, still Pram-ish, it has a spooky undercurrent among the electronic explorations. They didn't use to be nearly all electronic. I don't think. I recall having had the first album. I listened a few times. There wasn't the goth, semi-industrial Depeche Mode element that this song has and it wasn't nearly as good as this. I've been having an email conversation with someone that I don't know and the idea of not liking anything in the mainstream has arisen, she has come off snide and cranky and frankly a bit conservative and close minded when discussing popular phenomenons from Twilight to 500 Days of Summer. Do I sound the same? Possibly, but among the hipsters i know I am comparatively open minded. I am not probably classifiable as a hipster. My mother buys all of my clothes as birthday and Christmas presents. That's not very hip. I am wearing a nice pullover at the moment, a Christmas present, it came in useful as I was shoveling snow thre days after it had snowed. When the snow falls here it falls as snow and then in the evening when the humidity falls away, when the mercury deeps close to zero the snow changes. It turns to crystals like tiny pellets of graphite that lubricate the rapid steps between automobile and front door. A groovy disco number has started, jungle whelps, and urgent vocalizing. A bit Electronic Tomato? Rather good. They are from Mexico. I've recently finished the Zimmerman Telegram and am amazed to discover how events in Mexico were in turn so influential in deciding whether the US would join the allies side in WWI. It's a terrific read. It is short. I recommend it, also everything else that Barbara Tuchmann has written. Pancho Villa, Carranza, they all had Wilson's number, knew he would roll over and die, somewhat similar to how the thugs of the world today know the same about our current administration. But whatever. There isn't any snow in Mexico this time of year. Well I suppose in the mountains there may be snow. This is not snow music. It is not blood music. they aren't passionate or thrilling but it's clever and entertaining. It could be that I am some tepid admirer in the same reference frame as my tepid colonialism as embodied by the recent Club 8 record. I could find real Mexican dance music. I love Murcof. He's pretty authentic although I imagine his upbringing was even more posh than Hello Seahorse!. Will they jettison the exclamation? It is terrifically twee to place an exclamation after your name. Oro Y Plata, now. I imagine the next record will be more minimalist, members will depart during the sessions, disgruntled over the change in direction, I'll love it and then there will be two offshoots one that sounds like this record and a band that records the hum of their hair dryer. This song is basic, loops of sound, her voice, that's about it. All of the songs hover around the 4 minute mark. i can't burn many calories dancing to a 4 minute pop song. It's still an album, it isn't a movement. Next track, Me Has Ovidado, this one is really sparkling. Maybe the kids do love this record. They should. could it be that I just rebel against what everyone else likes? Possibly. I am not much for Captured Tracks and everyone else loves them. I listened to the Soft Moon record and it was like easy-listening The Gordons. I think they meant to be menacing. Perhaps not, perhaps easy listening lack of menace menacing was the effect they were reaching for. I kinda like the Beets. Wild Nothing does little for me. This makes me uncool. Also I like the Pomplamoose commercials. I am uncool. Will Hello Seahorse! have their own car commercial soon? I hope so. They can repatriate the funds and help out those who use to build Fords and Chryslers in Mexico but who now must commute to China to make cars. There is a fascinating photo series in the Guardian showing the ruins of Detroit. Hello Seahorse! are just melancholy enough to soundtrack the accompanying documentary, should it ever be made, and Peter Weller could host and he could mention his PHD in renaissance art and discuss the beautiful architecture that has ben abandoned in the city. Detroit was once a glimmering jewel. Sad. If this track was playing over the reliquary that is Michigan Theater or the United Artist Pavillions I'd be moved to heartache. I used to travel down Livernois, through the fashion district, past the convenience stores selling live poultry and lament to death of a city. It is dead. And snow covered. But their football team is much improved. Last track is a reprise of the second track, acoustic. Lovely things. I will assign this as ninth best album from 2010. Congratulations, you win nothing!

New Cortney Tidwell and Kurt Wagner record of country duets is stunning. All covers, but all hopelessly obscure, at least for my ears.

New Third Eye Foundation, who knew that a new Third Eye Foundation record was even a possibility, is amazingly awesome.

When will the new Panda Bear surface. 'Person Pitch' made me a new friend this evening. Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

Democracy has broken out in Belle & Sebastian again, I don't mind at all. Will their fans' heads explode when they hear Norah Jones on a Belle & Sebastian record? Norah Jones as the new Monica Queen. I would have preferred Monica Queen actually.

Update: Record is not great, mediocre, same as the rest. What was unknown was that we are all in anticipation of a Sarah Martin solo record which will not ever likely come to fruition. Sadly.

I think I really like the new OMD album. I've only listened once. Nostalgia could be clouding my judgement.

Sally Seltmann record is my record of the summer. It is romance and love and everything wonderful.

Stereolab singer solo record is not very good. Snoozy. New Fabienne Del Sol record is only slightly better, makes you wonder what a record with her singing Best Coast songs might sound like though.

Update: But the Stereolab record is very good, mostly. Why leave something good to do something not good? Is it all down to ego?

Whoo!!! The new Klima album is out in the end of October. I will be dreadfully unhappy at that time. I am always then, it is to do with work, or to too much of work, so she shall be my salvation. I am convinced. Now if only a Sound of Arrows record would materialise around the same time then I might even find true happiness.

Update: New song on myspace is playing now, beautiful, very.

There is a new Jane Weaver album about. Will it cause me to end my embargo? Unlikely. Her last album was really not very good at all. But I like Misty Dixon and her first album. Forever it seems she will be entwined with Corsica. Sad.

Update: Eh, like everything else on this planet, mediocre. We are all so mediocre. THe most Broadcast-esque are least mediocre but even those are merely in the highest quintile of mediocrity.

There is just so much awful music about. Hurts, ugh! I'll just listen to Moonshake for the rest of my life. and Pram. and the Able Tasmans. Nothing else. and Joy Division. nothing else. and Adventures in Stereo. that's it.

Update: On recent evidence I must include Kate Bush, the Verlaines and Prefab Sprout. Really, I could live on that alone. I really don't need a new Abe Vigoda record. I am sincere in wondering if perhaps we, as a species, might not be better off without a new Abe Vigoda record. Of course I have never heard Abe Vigoda but to be so lacking in creativity when it comes to choosing your name harkens dreadfulness alone. and Cocteau Twins. that's it.

Wintercoats remind of Spoonfed Hybrid, well except the singer sounds as if he recently escaped from Cody.

Once, whenever anyone would ask me who my favorite band was, the answer was always Pram. And honestly it was Helium on one side of the cassette and Sargasso Sea on the other. Now, I drifted, but for some exercise in futility for the ILM site I made a best of for Pram and it is the most beautiful thing that ever existed ever. Probably.

Bewitched (Plone Remix) 2:27 Pram Somniloquy Rock 16
Chrysalis 3:57 Pram Meshes Pop 4
Gravity 4:41 Pram Helium Alternative & Punk 1
Cumulus 6:35 Pram Iron Lung Rock 3
El Topo 3:43 Pram North Pole Radio Station Alternative & Punk 4
A Million Bubbles Burst (Sir Real Remix) 6:55 Pram Somniloquy Rock 2
Salva (Throwing Toys Into The Pram) 3:52 Pram Prisoner Of The Seven Pines Electronic
Space Siren 5:21 Pram Keep in a Dry Place & Away From Children Rock 2
Cape St. Vincent 3:33 Pram The Stars Are So Big, The Earth Is So Small... Alternative & Punk 1
The Mermaid's Hotel (Sub-Aquatic Refrain) 4:01 Pram The Owl Service Rock 1
Marianna Deep 3:38 Pram The Moving Frontier
Carnival Of Souls 5:00 Pram Music For Your Movies Rock 1
Play of the Waves 7:26 Pram The Museum of Imaginary Animals Alternative & Punk 2
Radio Freak In A Storm 3:49 Pram The Stars Are So Big, The Earth Is So Small... Alternative & Punk
Sirocco 4:26 Pram Dark Island Pop
Dead Piano 3:42 Pram Gash Rock 1
Sea Swells And Distant Squalls 6:12 Pram Sargasso Sea Rock 1

Do you understand how perfect this is? You should!

Cinema Verite's album will be released soon. Allegedly. Exciting.

Beach Fossils-meh. I want theatricality. Did the The Legendary Creatures grow up on a steady diet of Shelleyan Orphan? That would be terrific.

Update: Ah, Legendary Creatures are from Detroit and have an ex-Pas/Cal person amongst them. Argh. But really it is lovely. Sorry about the debut album then. Yet it was when the bass player left that Pas/Cal's wheels went and floated away. He was the key. Their website never did recover.

It seems there may be a Modesty Blaise record recorded sometime soon?! When it will see the light of day is still a mystery but allegedly the singer will have a solo single soon. Woo! It has been a very long time since Melancholia.

The new Sally Seltmann record is nice.

Update: Truly wonderful, a delightful summer record. Are her records as New Buffalo as so?

Update: The second New Buffalo record is almost as lovely. Will have a decision on the debut soon. I missed Rush live at Red Rocks playing Moving Pictures, I am dreadfully disappointed but I did not have $1800 and my car has died anyhow. It is a long walk past the dinosaur tracks to Red Rocks.

Update: The debut record is excellent as well, a bit more amateurishly adventurous. My car has ben resurrected. I replaced an alternator, I am very manly today. Grease as far as the eye can see.

Update: Heart That's Pounding. Sally Seltman is married to someone from the Avalanches. I have managed to avoid ever hearing the Avalanches so far. It's one of those records that everyone on I Love Music loves. File alongside Kelley Polar, Junipr Boys, the Streets, etc...I would not find a way in. Whenever I see a photo of Elbow I think of the dopes on I Love Music. I imagine the Avalanches as some sort of tepid, pseudo-urban, effeminate seeming, sickly yet smoothly produced cack. Maybe it is great. This is great. This is her third album. I was completely unaware of her existence or the fact that she wrote Feist's biggest hit ever. She isn't Canadian. A lot of this has a tender conversational love poem feel, Norman Maclean writing love letters to the Montana wilderness and Jessie Burns and her within the Montana of his youth. I watched A River Runs Through It again this weekend and it is just lovely. There is an appeal to live in the Montana back country, seedy speak easy, underlying racist currents and eskimos. Second track, a love song, soft and gentle, "i know that is love and I know that this should be enough". Is it a song written to the Avalanche? It's a plea for room to breathe, presumably so she can make these lovely records, or perhaps fly fish in 4 beats measures between 10 and 2. There are horns, twinkles, sighs, whimpers and gentle caresses. Such a wonderful song. The piano rises from the drop, now carnivalesque coda with voices and horns and bass drums and twinkles and magic. Is this my favorite record of the year? Possibly. It is the record of the summer. Summer is always a disappointment to my heart. I am meant to be doing meaningful interesting things in the summer time. This summer I had a series of dates with people I was not interested in ever seeing again so I saw each of them once. I met the friend of one. She is a book editor, she proved valuable recently. I did not mention my book on life as a squirrel. I could start a franchise, squirrels are not so different from Owls are they? Instead of having Owl City to do the soundtrack hit number i could hire a reformed Squirrel Nut Zippers. Do they need to reform? Are they still a going concern? This third track is beautiful but I was sidetracked with my big ideas. But when the summer is over there is a melancholia, another summer of my "youth" extinguished and I've never had a brilliant summer ever. Well, there was one, but it was summer on the wrong side of the world, my pineal gland was all a twitter with melatonin flowing where it shouldn't have been flowing and so I forget these things. Fourth song, soft, dreamy, romance, beauty, all of the things that summer should breed fruitfully by its own nature and the surge of emotions and hormones and young people in love. But not for me. I emptily sit in rooms with books and an allergy to air conditioning and long for the end to come, the winter will be different, the darkness seems less fecund with opportunity. The crystalline snow on the ground has a dampening effect on dreams, the dormant landscape view tempers the melancholic itch. Next track, peppier. Marvelous still. i tink this has a lot in common with the Bachelorette record. it isn't bedroom electronica, it is a standard rock seeming record but there are uninspired vrses and then suddenly there are moments teming with beauty in choruses dropped from the divine and unchanging sphere. She's singing about being a little bit shy now over some Four Seasons'esque harmonising. Next track, more personal heartbreak, a Loudon Wainwright reference. I don't know Loudon Wainwright, not a thing about him or his music or Captain Spalding. I know his son. I am not a huge fan. i remember the first time hearing his son Rufus in the greenest room I've ever been in. A room I should not have been in. A room that made me confused once. The owner of that room would love this record. I am certain. her room must be severl hundred miles away from the green room now. I used to be a good person, filled with integrity and dreams of chivalric adventures. Now the big stuff is happening, the echoey bass drum, the pianos, her samey but dreamy voice, shurch bells in the distance, a tom. Heroic climax now, cheer! Rufus' first single is still the best. Don't you agree. He's just too knowing now. The conquistador. Next track, keyboards, a whisper, earnestness "i wear my heart on my sleeve, i used to lose it on the breeze", it is so delightfully romantic. Is that why I love it so? It represents all of the things I will forever be outside of, with my face pressed against the window pane, red nose, longing eyes. Even with my new fashionable haircut. I was in the book store yesterday and half of the store was on a cell phone. Will this continue always? Will new generations never long to be alone with their own thoughts? Will they need to share their every inanity always. I Tossed a Coin. There are Twitter versions of the classics. Brave new world. But then no one will understand even that cliche. All will be lost, the end is near. It is almost 2012. Thank goodness. Sally is not named Zinzi and she doesn't try to sound "hep" by mentioning "Heathcliff' by Kate Bush, aiieee, thank the stars. I would like to be named Zinzi. Apparently I was almost a Derek. I knew two Derek's growing up, I wasn't particularly enamoured of either. I don't feel much like my name, but then I am not much of anything at all, a ball of integrity wrapped so tightly in a cocoon spun by Arachne or Kate Bush or timid thoughts. I have a nice new haircut, this will have to tide me over for the time being. And the Princeton record, in spite of Zinzi, and Sally Seltmann, of course. This song, it is playing, it is a slowie, it has tender twinkles, her soft high pitched whisper, lovely. I imagine she posted a post on her facebook page advertising that she was going to be making a record soon and her dozens of friends responded saying "count me in", "sally you're the best, I'll be right over", "oh! amazing!". I wrote a book about people who wouldn't say such things, I didn't post it on my facebook. I don't have any facebook friends. I deleted two. I had one friend but I realised that she was oh so very busy, not apparently for anyone else but always too busy to see me, I don't mind, we don't have anything in common but she's kind and warm and we used to like the same music and movies but now she's super cool and happening and I am falling back in love with indiepop music. Indiepop is socialism, so says indiemp3.com. I agree. They are each terminal cases of adolescence. Their is this huge contradiction at the heart of collectivism. In their somber embrace of collectivism and greenism they don't seem to recognize how these are movements in conflict. Socialism, or more rightly said 'collectivism', requires the masses to pay and 'greenism' requires the elimination of the masses. Does not anyone see this conundrum? Richard Attenborough says there is hardly a problem that could not be solved by fewer people, but if he were to depart who would then provide such comely narration on those BBC documentaries? Opray Winfrey? Oh dear. Is there anyone more divorced from the natural world than Oprah Winfrey? I would imagine Sally voted Green in the recent Australian election. She's for windmills. No matter. I am divorced from the nature of the majority of my generation. Happy. It is beautiful. It is indiepop. It has ben accredited as such by the presence of Mark Monnone. It's simple, it's narcissistic, but endearingly narcissistic. Thus her socialism. It has grown into something even more precious with voices and organs and moans of delight. Marvelous. I wonder what the reaction when you read about how something you have created has warmed even souls that hide deep within layers of indifference to the rest of the planet. To people who can't drive, to people who can't identify "quickly" as the adverb in a sentence, to people who spend their days at work updating their facebook status. is happiness even possible? Existential angst is for the Radio Dept. They continue to release unintelligible political records. It is a brave move to couch your revolutionary sentiments in indecipherable mush. Bravo! What is a Swedish right winger? Next track, The Truth. Another simple pattern with her passionate pursuit of the basic arrayed above. I watched a video where she sits caressing a large egg, and riding in stationary automobile, and a tall indiepop looking person that isn't in the Lucksmiths runs alongside and then they cast the egg into a tiny body of water and it cascades as it sinks to the bottom. I am sure it means to be allegorical and poignant. I liked her clothes and her stride. This track is more of a typical blog entry. For people who give dinner parties and engage with other humans in ways other than through pop songs. I offer no psychoanalytical viewpoint to either editorial content of video librettos. Over, so nice. I love this album. I haven't any idea really if Sally Seltmann is as marvelous as this record. Is Leslie Caron 'Gigi' of course not, Jean Renoir saw to that. These are all nostalgic, everyday romance typ sentiments on display, we don't fault her for this, on the contrary, we cheer as it is portrayed smartly, humanly and as an adult. So then perhaps Sally is not indiepop, not all, but I am certain still a socialist aghast at Clare Werbeloff's success. If only my parents had named my Zinzi I might have the eche answers to all of my speculations. Now a paean to empty consumerism, to the pointless pursuit of materialism and the cult of being busy. Sally would rather see the rise of introspection and the dream of empathy and curiosity to become aroused in the population at large. Good luck. I am still reading Barbara Tuchman and humanity has existed and prospered not because of its complexity but because of its simpleness and predictable nature. Not because of Jean Renoir or even Auguste but because it was so easy for St Augustine and Aquinas to fit a straitjacket on the western world. Last track, goofy "darK choral vocals, it is a bit of a folk lament, a parting with depression? Perhaps. It could be personal and efficaciously therapeutic but who can be sure.

Bark Cat Bark The Final Letters. I wrote an entry on a Bark Cat Bark record last year, perhaps it was longer ago, I compared it to Beirut, I probably mentioned the gypsies though I suppose I pretentiously labelled them Roma, I mentioned that it was lovely surely. It was, it is, but who knew there was extant so very much more loveliness. He's been making records, loads of records, for a decade now, possibly more, possibly decades, possibly he is 58 years old. This was meant to be his final record but apparently he has since recanted, thank goodness. The first track now is just many layers of piano, dexterously maneuvered and dazzlingly lovely. Reminder: I do not know anything about music, not anything at all, all of my reactions are emotional cues probably predictable to any social "scientist" but this track is just a swirling maelstrom of prettiness. It could be that really there are tiny sausages glued to his fingertips and he plays like an amateur but I am blissfully unaware. I've been trying to find out more about him. He's handsome, truly, and allegedly he stole a track from some French Canadian duo but really nothing on their "demo" is remotely as beguiling as even the first song on this amazing record. It's a nice demo though, Eli Et Papillion, and allegedly after his thievery they have come to some sort of agreement and decided that he really did not steal their song and post it on Itunes but this hasn't stopped some rogue commenter from being present on every google result for Bark Cat Bark. No matter. If he has stolen all of these songs it only means he's a marvelous curator, something akin to Rudi Arapahoe. Just when I thought I was falling back in line as an indiepop simpleton I have again had a disillusionment with that world. It was very Truly Yours that did it, I was convinced they were lovely once, for a few fey wayward moments, but now, I am not. It is the emptiness, the hollowed out soul, the fact that they lack depth oh and the fact that they are probably upper middle class that makes me resent them so. I know, I am shallow. But there is romance here, second track, a piano and what sounds like a clavichord possibly? Something plucked rather than percussed and it's expansive beyond the confines of a bedroom, beyond the confines of a horizon, romance on a romantic scale. Now to harpsichords, dueling harpsichords, surely some musicologist would proclaim all of this silly and basic and without merit but I am silly and basic and without merit and so I can appreciate the loveliness of all of these things. It's wise that this record has less gypsy overtones than the last Bark Cat Bark record I had written about. In France it has been decided that gypsies are to be reviled, they are the source of evil in this world oh and Lillian Bettencourt. This second track should be the song that plays under the credits of a Mexican telenovela with some beautiful woman from Colombia in the passionate embrace of a moustachioed man with a silly hat, cowboy boots and a shiny suit. Perhaps he has identified a target demographic for each of these tracks. That the majority are instrumentals helps in this capacity. Third track. Jaunty. It could be mistaken for gypsies, gypsies time travelled forward from the court of Joseph II, arriving in the middle of Paris where Sarkozy can sick his fashion model wife on them and ship them back to Romania and Bulgaria. Isn't it funny how Americans present a case to the human rights council at the UN concerning the alleged draconian measures in Arizona and here it is France that is actually carrying out ethnic cleansing. Of course times are tough, it is easy for Politicians to paint unfortunates as scapegoats and it is easy for their constituents to hear them rather clearly. It is an ugly facet of human nature. My own parents are immigrants, they clung to a piece of cardboard as they floated across the river from Trudeaupia. Actually it was the mid 60s, they may have been fleeing from that autocrat Lester Pearson! They would sit quietly, in the corner, with the lights all dimmed and regale their children with tales of oppression from the dominion. it was frightening! Now I imagine that Tom Tancredo wants to hunt them down and send them back. I am an anchor baby. Actually my parents were here legally. But if they were gypsies I would be nervous. Now there are violins and atmosphere, darkening clouds on the horizon. Bark Cat Bark doesn't seem all that political. I've foun the most recent Arnaud Fleurent Didier record online and thankfully it did not include his recording of Dominique De Villepin's speech at the UN security council that he released as a single. I wonder where his recordings of people speaking out against the Afghanistan war are? Next track, again with the dueling pianos, lovely. Less of a Soap Opera soundtrack feel and more a fill for a drama where parents are considering divorce, their children are doing copious amounts of drugs and engaging in promiscuity and wearing snowflake sweaters from Woolworths. Now to Ukuleles and the hum of a refrigerator. What will become of people like Bark Cat Bark when the James Lee's of the world take over and banish refrigerators? What will become of Sonic Boom? Will he have to covertly record refrigerators in third world backwaters and sneak those records back into the west to eleude the green police. I watched Dateline a few Sundays back and they had a profile on the green gestapo in New York city where they pull over trucks randomly and test their particulate emissions to protect the kids in the neighbourhood who apparently have a higher rate of asthma than the national average. No mention of how green laws are an endless windfall for municipalities allowing them to tax all aspects of commerce and then to waste the money on brainwashing their greenshirt soldiers who seemed so very proud to be on the government payroll doing so little. And then I am sure these thugs go into schools and celebrate every day as earth day with their copies of the History Channel's life in 2100 to terrify the kids into submission to their new primitivism. No mention of the fact that zero people died in New Zealand when they had an earthquake, Compare this to Haiti where 230,000 are feared dead. Why? The New Zealand quake was stronger. But New Zealand is richer. Even in chile which is not as rich as Chile there were but 14 deaths with an earthquake even larger. Chile is not as rich as New Zealand but not as poor as Haiti. Look to your future. When you attack commercial enterprise either through endemic government corruption as is true in Haiti or through limitless regulation as is the future here as soon to be imposed by the greenshirts well you end up dying from things like earthquakes, and floods in Pakistan, and Japanese Encephalitis in India. Bark Cat Bark could be writing the requiem from human civilization with his plaintive tones assigned across the width of his keyboard. Now the accordion. Are accordions contraband in Paris these days? Surely only gypsies and people on Jean Pierre Jeunet soundtracks play the accordion. I don't play the accordion. Tom Tancredo would send me to prison for playing an accordion. Now back to the piano. Which track is this? #11. Eichendorff. I think Tom Tancredo might actually win. I will be shipped abroad. Although it was my brother that was the actual anchor child. My parents are American citizens now, they eagerly vote republican. Eichendorff was a romantic. Perhaps Maria Belen Chapur read Eichendorff in Spanish to the South Carolinian Republican governor when she was feeling excessively amorous. It's layers os pianos, or just one piano. I don't play the piano, I suppose with two hands you could play this. I am not certain if the armless Chinese man I watched on youtube could play this piece. Maybe Bark Cat Bark has just stolen all of that guy's material, the same as they stole the French Canadian duos mediocre numbers and put it up on Itunes for no one. It's possible. Why don't apes play the piano? I just read an article that defeated the myth of Koko the Gorilla and it was impressive, they ended by not celebrating Koko's dubious abilities but the sheer inventiveness of Koko's human companion. It was something to be celebrated as uniquely human and comments on the viability of the Mauri wildlife preserve were strangely absent. Song 13, violins. Does he play all of the instruments here? I am under the impression that he is a "solo" artist. This is haunting and ache filled, lovely lovely thing. Koko is part of the celebration of the Primitive. I was reading the issue of Scientific American where they discussed "the end". It's actually pretty good as it contains only a bit of moral preening and heavy handed "science". There is a short bit on Polynesian sailors and how they can tell the geography of the ocean based on how the water laps up against the edges of their boat and how this makes them far superior to modern man, especially modern western man. It's silly. Would this author ask first for a Polynesian boatman if he was making a trip across the ocean or would he rather have a functional GPS unit and a satellite phone with a direct line to the mainland where helicopters and hovercrafts and marines could pick up his distress call and rescue him from certain death because he's a soft consumerist with increasing levels of trans fat lodged in his brain. I would prefer a GPS unit, though I bet the man from Scientific American impresses the young co-eds in his Feminist Studies class with his breathless appreciation of neolithic culture. It's funny he's so impressed with this primitive technology but unimpressed with the idea that man has progressed so far, so quickly that even if the Cassandras were right and all of Greenland will fall quickly into the Atlantic in a few weeks that we might come up with a solution to the disaster. But but, the russian heat wave is the worst in 130 years! Well then what caused the Russian heat wave 130 years ago? Let's ask the Polynesian boatman. The issue of Scientific American does have some fascinating discussion on the role of time in Physics though. But most people will skip that and instead post pictures of the aboriginal in western clothes and body paint on the wall of their 4th grade class and scare their kids by telling them that because they needed that Wii for Christmas this man can no longer paint images of the marsupial tiger on his wall since it is extinct and there is no word for extinct in his language and so he is incredibly sad. Or something like that. They could play this song as soundtrack to the human drama in order to add its morose nature. It hasn't been a particularly warm summer here, some hot days, some cold days, but allegedly this is the second warmest year since 1998. Allegedly this has been a year of the second strongest El Nino since 1998. But how can we be sure these people are telling the truth? Their livelihood demands they receive funding and only crises deserve attention. Ia m reading a Barbara Tuchman book now and she poignantly states that only crises are remembered in history and so it is important to read bills of purchase and shipping manifests that are divorced from emotional investment to tell the real story. She's right. It's best to read data lists dispassionately rather than the synopsis created for politicians with messianic complexes. Next track. Piano. This is a really long album. 36 tracks. I have been at this entry for some time. I've started writing another book. I have been having thoughts of writing a book about Squirrels though. Is that wrong? I go to work on weekends and I am alone and I sit near the window and I watch the squirrels come to the same tree, a Russian Hawthorn, at the same time each day and they assemble in a different part of the tree each day and consume a portion of the fruit from the tre and then leave. If only Koko was a middle management suck-up such as myself to be there on weekends, unseen, to translate the Squirrels thoughts to me. But here I have this romantic notion of the sustainability of Squirrel culture and the romance of life as Squirrel because I am contaminated with this myth of beauty in nature. In the Scientific American from September they also describe the processes of human decay. I found it fascinating. Modern man is all about fluoridated water and freon. I had a thought of sustainable refrigeration with human decomposition on a mass scale. I also just finished Journal of the PLague Year by Defoe and it talked o Churchyards filled with 8000 human remains, imagine the possibility of mass refrigeration on that sale. Eichendorff or Eichmann? I am not well, Ward Churchill has failed me! Next track, birdsong and softly depressed keys on a piano, sigh. I am not a heartless soul. Honestly. Watch me gaze at squirrels in wonder like a little boy. I am assuming the rest of the tracks are just as beguiling. His singing on the last track is particularly striking. Should I end this now? Perhaps not. Perhaps I can Have Koko stand in for me while I take a shower and leave the music playing, of course Koko will be merely signing her impressions and so the screen will not be filled with witticisms the same as when I am typing. Or not. My first book was about a nursing home. I've printed more copies and am again trying to find someone that could possibly even feign interest. It doesn't read like this site at all because I don't edit this site and I don't worry about narrative or coherency. I worried about all of those things for 703 pages. I spent a long time writing. This is just me spilling the contents of my head. I have a really rather large head, not because I am learned but because I am sadistic and tortured my mother on my trip through the birth canal. When I would play baseball I had to borrow a batting helmet from my brother's team. A large cranial circumference means that I am unlikely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the future. If you have a small circumference perhaps you have fetal alcohol syndrome or you are destined to break your children's heart when they come to visit you at the Obama Geriatric center and you are covered with your own excrement and pustules and sores and you look at them with searching eyes because your soul has dimmed. I remember when I was a nursing aid in a retirement home and there was this woman Eithel and she was in the throes of dementia her family would arrive every Sunday with hearts chirping and an hour before sunset would leave devastated by the cruelty of nature. Koko is sitting next to me and actually described the scene with much greater heart rendered drama but I am a mere consumer and Koko is a master of nuance and metaphor. Accordions make beautiful now. Rieux-Minervois. It has been a while since I started this entry, have I mentioned that I found the latest Arnaud Fleirent-Didier record online? "Found" is a euphemism. Yes. I love the AFD record. it's less imposing, smaller, more human. French pop music is divine! Bark Cat Bark and AFD and Fugu and Orwell and Alexandre Longo. It's all a wonder and causes one to lament the success of the comparatively uninspiring Phoenix. Are Phoenix actually french? I wonder. Perhaps we could mail Tom Tancredo to France and he could produce an investigation. Tancredo would be preferred to Hickenlooper though. I am still waiting for Hickenlooper to do away with parking meters that run to 10PM as he had promised he would do in his campaign. I thought the whole reason he was elected Mayor of Denver was for his campaign commercials which depicted him merrily galloping through the streets of denver inserting coins into expired meters for all of the helpless citizens. Fraud! Now we have smart meters. He'll only have to bring his bank card. He does make a mean bowl of Gorgonzola Ale soup which goes great with the London Broil. But then I am considering changing my diet to an unalterable procession of dishes made from the fruit of Russian Hawthorne trees in my attempt to get inside the head of a squirrel. Track 17 is a long one with an english title and organ and some sort of stringed instrument. Is it something so parochial as a guitar? Football season begins today. Tim Tebow mania has hit Denver. Perhaps instead of a novel on the squirrels that inhabit the parking lot of my workplace I could write a biography of Tim Tebow and how is football play has changed the planet for the better. Perhaps I could quote the polynesian boatman who could tell if Tim Tebow's next pass will be complete by how the waves of the Denver brown cloud lap up against the dimples of a football in flight. It is a religious thing. Tim Tebow believes in God and so every god fearing football fan here in God's country make up for the sin of voting for Bill Ritter by adopting Tim Tebow as their most favorite player ever even though he is third string quarterback on a mediocre professional football team. I wouldn't imagine Tim Tebow is a big fan of Bark Cat Bark. iw ould imagine he's a big Carrie Underwood fan or Widespread Panic. I wasn't aware of the Widespread Panic love either. Not until Tim Tebow came to town. The events are not related but everyoen I work with loves Widespread Panic. What is Widespread Panic? It used to be that when Dave MAtthews came and played 7 sold out nights at the Univeristy of Colorado's mediocre college football team's stadium the ranks of workers at my workplace would be thinned only by those who live in fear of a random drug test but now when Widespread Panic is here there is joy and laughter and that Christmas feeling wells up in so many of my coworkers. Will they be as excited to see Pavement play Carrot Rope? You know Pavement's records are terrible. I agree. We all agree. But live they are a completely different entity. Maybe I will go. Are tickets over 40 dollars? If they play at Red Rocks will they project passages from Prozac Nation on the Flatirons? Pavement are the American version of Oasis, they have cast a long dark shadow over indie rock as the inability to sing, to play and to care have become modern virtues to be celebrated. Maybe Damien Hirst will encase SM in formaldehyde soon and save us a second reunion tour in ten years. Of course when he's doing reunion tours he's not making solo records. Trade-offs. Big dramatic number now, number 18! it seems orchestrated but has he done all of this himself? Of course it is no Fame Throwa but gorgeous all the same. He should sing more. It would mainly be in French and would consist of lamentations for the Roma but it would be nice. Next track, number 19, some of these are very short. Some are over 8 minutes. This one fels like a song he would play on the stoop with his buddies hanging out with him wearing backwards scally caps and smoking and playing the spoons or dreaming of their youth in Amiens spent on street corners not so dissimilar playing in doo-wop era Billy Joel cover bands. This is an amazingly consistent record considering that there are 36 tracks. It must have taken him ages to steal all of this coherent material. Could I be sued for that bit of sarcasm? I don't actually believe he stole any of this. I jest. Now an interlude, a moment of silence, a test pattern for the ears. Plaintive piano out of the break, a soundtrack to the highlight package of Tim Tebow's greatest incompletions from the 2010 pre-season. The starting quarterback from the Denver Broncos is also mediocre though he is paid handsomely. I'd figure the starting quarterback as a fan of Third Eye Blind with possibly a Libertines record given to him by one of his girlfriends in college hidden in the back of his closet. Quarterbacks get all of the girls, more than people who consider writing books for squirrels. This is a beautiful track, L'homme que voyageo seul. No translation offered. Koko is still teaching me Latin. French, for the moment, is out of the question as she is not sure I could handle the diphthongs. Next track, dancing on the piano, ache, romance, memorex commercials, the same as ever. i could listen to this for a long time without it growing tiresome. it is anonymous and artful, pleasant and ambitious, warm and inviting. he could play with Arnaud Fleurent-Didier and they could open for Andre Rieu at the ruins of lichtenberg castle and have a jam session when Andre breaks out Blue Danube. It would be terrific. Andre would then have to leave early in order to make it on time to Gare Du Nord to close the railway car door on Roma being shipped to Bulgaria to their doom as checkout clerks at Carrefour Sofia. Now a dramatic pensive number, the playing more dogmatic, more morose, more sensitive to the plight of Tim Tebow as he earns 34 million dollars for four years of sitting on the bench thinking about Jesus Christ running the 2-minute drill at altitude. Only five tracks after this, I may make it to the end before lunch. Now to accordions we arrive again, this is more carnivalesque. Is not all accordion music carnivalesque? Perhaps. I could map the way the sound waves lap the shirt collar I have crumpled up against my neck and offer a professional analysis but I am not a polynesian boatman, the apex of human evolution! Now we are dancing, Cossack style, out of breath, it ends so quickly and we fall back again to tender violins played across 6000 miles of telephony. Stirring. Clever. Beautiful. Is this his magnum opus? The defining moment of his career? He doesn't look old. Perhaps he could play with Beirut who seems to have done a fine job aping Bark Cat Bark anyhow. It would be a natural fit. I watched An Education again recently and yes Carey Mulligan is a dreamy english school girl but it isn't that great is it? I mean Peter Saarsgard is certainly no James Mason and it is essentially Lolita right? James Mason is the pinnacle of creepiness in Lolita with Shelly Winters his penultimate foil. Aye it was such a marvelously uneasy movie. His voice, her smoking, aiiee!!! But Peter Saarsgard is really boring. But then the important message of An Education is the idea that good taste is one of the rarest of things. I agree. When I was in search of a home I had time to visit 39 houses and I can assure you that bad taste is endemic. It is catholic. Go to your grocery store and watch the clientele as they enter in sweats, a sports bra and rolls of unsightly humanity hanging over the stretch band waistline. Watch as people flock to see Avatar watch as Widespread Panic play to sold out shows night after night. I would imagine Carey Mulligan is a big fan of Widespread Panic but then I've never seen her in anything else. Wait, she was in Public Enemies which was brilliant but even people with allegedly good taste held only disdain for it. I don't remember Carey Mulligan in Public Enemies. Ah well. Second to last song, the last was stunning. This one is over 12 minutes long. Conventional pop song start, Starbucks coffee girl type of pop. Pretty. It is all so pretty! Why is he not celebrated? Championed as last arbiter of good taste before France is depleted of goodness and left only with B-side compilations from Carla Bruni. Slow build-up, this could be the intro music for Tim Tebow as he comes out of the locker room to take his place on the bench! I met someone who recently expressed an obsession with James Mason. She was marvelous but I used her only for a connection to a book editor. I really don't think that I like my job and I would like to sit at home all day long and read books and shipping manifests and then write boring novels about squirrels for Koko and her best friends. Will it ever happen? Unlikely. This makes me very sad. Apt then for me to be listening to Bark Cat Bark, the king of melancholia. Oy, still 87 minutes left on this track, I am running out of steam. This is the alternate Ending. This was not mentioned in the Scientific American I mentioned earlier. But they did mention Lie groups. Which was also mentioned on that goofy series hosted by Morgan Freeman. I don't understand Lie groups but one of the major proponents surfs which seemed important to Morgan Freeman. But then Lie groups are tied to Murray Gellman who is godlike so who am I to complain about surfing, even if Murray did endorse Barack Obama. Now we hear the sound of Muster Mark's thighs and accordions and swizzled atmosphere and loveliness. Ah, France! This is an epic track, I thought it was over but now the gypsy campfire coda to leave us in a placid state of mind. An ode to Morgan Freeman's earrings! Morgan Freeman the closet gypsy, the silly old man with an earring, starring Martin Lawrence as Morgan Freeman as a silly old man who doesn't listen to gypsy music but should. Really. I love this album. Radio static, octonions, tenderness of the human spirit as his voice emerges from the noise. Amazing! Amazing!

The new OMD song History of Modern 2is actually rather nice. Would that the album could be as lovely? Fingers crossed.

Are you aware that you can Download everything from Bark Cat Bark online? You should. There is quite a lot and really it is all amazing, truly. Perhaps I should write about all of it, what better way to understate its marvelousness?

Beach House Devotion. Beach House is playing Red Rocks in September. Tickets are 87 dollars. I am betting they won't sell out. Well Beach House is not playing Red Rocks. Vampire Weekend is playing Red Rocks. Their tickets are 87 dollars. Possibly they will sell out. Are there than many kids with long sleeve striped polo shirts in Denver? I hear Vampire Weekend in Chipotle though. Rush tickets for their Red Rocks show go upwards of 1800 dollars, but at least with a Rush show you may get projections of passages from 'the Fountainhead' laser projected on the flatirons and Neil Peart will look creepy all through the show. Will Vampire Weekend hand out 20% off coupons to Abercrombie & Fitch? This is the second Beach House record. I saw them on tour for this record. I think. They played the Hi-Dive, it was considerably less than 87 dollars. They wore white suits and had a disco ball and it was glorious actually and I really should have become obsessed at that point, but I did not. Second song. First one was a tender ballad. Next one is a tender ballad with a drum machine. her voice is vacant and Nico-esque but there is a warmth to the proceedings, we aren't walking around wishing we were listening to Consolidated. Pretty piano. They look like hippies too, the same as Candy Claws but they must favor the sedatives over the lysergics. Big moody chorus with backing vocals unsuitably muted to create atmosphere. So lovely. The Hi-Dive theater is tiny. I went there recently by mistake. I was intending to go see the Trash Can Sinatras at the Larimer Lounge and on autopilot without thinking I ended up at the Hi-dive where a load of local bands were playing their uniquely dire dirges and I was squinting towards the stage and all through the crowd thinking "Hey that's John Douglas, I should go say hello". But it wasn't John Douglas, it was some random person from Denver, who may have been flattered by my attention but probably did not deserve it. Could I really point John Douglas out in a crowd of more then 2 people? Unlikely. But I do really enjoy the last Trash Can Sinatras record, this is how an old band should play songs written by an older band. Beach House are still reasonably young I imagine. Their music has an old soul. I could see lame old rock bands like Primus thinking they were pretty alright. Are they still on Carpark records? Carpark used to be an exclusively electronic label, I have a few releases from the early years. In my earlier guises, where I wrote essentially the same entries as I write here, let's face it all of my entries are the same, I wrote about Marumari The Wolves Hollow and i still love that record and I still love that his mother produced the album cover work. It might have been even more awesome if his mother had produced the record but you know. This isn't electronic other than they probably plug their instruments into an electrical outlet but it is from Baltimore. Carpark is from Washington D.C. I also wrote about Jake Mandell. I really liked that album as well. I don't own anything else on Carpark. Lovesongs for Machines. I was ridiculed on I Love Music for like Carpark records. I have never recovered, obviously. Next track. More morose keyboards more tender monotonic vocals, more loveliness all around. When they play live they create a roller disco atmosphere and the skeletal remnants of song seem more fleshed out, the bones sport sinews and tendons and semblances of musculature. i am not sure how this song will go over in Red Rocks, perhaps if they project passages from Paul Theroux novels on the screen. Some bit where he's on about his sexual exploits, he's always on about his sexual exploits so anything really. Or something from A Diary of a Century by Edward Robb Ellis. it is amazing how really poor writers can sustain a career as a writer. Edward Robb Ellis kept his diary for a very long time and it summation, at the end, he seemed most proud of the fact that he slept with a lot of women even though he was particularly unimpressive, physically speaking. His description of Kruschev at the Waldorf was great comedy but by comparison this site is Gogol. next beach House track, a bit more pep, her voice leaned out by effort, strident and spectral. Nice. Update from the Pro-Med list? There are a great many undiagnosed fish die-offs all across the country, most are attributed to unnaturally warm waters and depleted oxygen content. Oh and more bats are dying from White Nose Fungus. There are suggestions to place Wax Worm Larvae in caves, or to install a bat house near your home or to install very large dehumidifiers in caves to make things uncomfortable for the fungus but who knows. At Junkscience.com they seem most sensible since the fungus doesn't actually kill all of the bats they make the sane suggestion that the remaining Bats will be stronger for the effort because only the non-susceptible individuals will have survived. But then they are not likely searching for a research grant. Are their songs about Bats on this record? No. I can't quite make out the lyrics, it is a gently slurred delivery she has with enough reverb to make it sound dramatic and grand. They could soundtrack a Sophia Coppola movie in the future. i was watching the Fox Movie Channel and they recently showed The Virgin Suicides and there was Peter Bogdanovich going on about "yeah, it's ok, I know Sophia, I starred in her first film when she was nine but Virgin Suicides is only ok" which it is. Ii watched it, the males in it are just dreadful and Kathleen Turner, ugh! But there was some fanboy blogger on there talking about the socio-political impact of the film or how it is a flawed masterpiece or it's disturbing ambiance and then he moved onto the soundtrack by Air. It was disgusting. Critics are a revolting breed. Why would anyone want anyone to consider themselves to be objective about art? Is art not the most emotional and visceral of topics? I enjoy the fact that I am enraptured by Beach House, there isn't any objective reason to explain my reaction it is entirely emotional and the fact is I could play this for 99.3% of the people I know and they would not have any reaction to it at all and that's beautiful. I can't sit atop some soapbox and cite statistics or graphs and explain to them how they should be reacting, they just react. Of course they have biases and prejudices but so does everyone and the fact that anyone likes anything is a triumph of the imagination what with all of the manufactured guilt and fear of the apocalypse that is present today, better to have art to lose yourself in than to revel in its greater importance to the cause. but anyhow I bet Sophia Coppola is a fan, and Paul Dano. The hated Paul Dano. Heart of Chambers is playing now. An attempt at a pun? Not very funy. But they don't do comedy, see. What will they do at Red Rocks to rile up the crowd? Unknown, maybe she will appear onstage wearing those frilly, lace gloves like the Arcade Fire wear to show people they mean it. I remember seeing the Throwing Muses open for REM on the Green tour. My first year at University, I saw friends from high school in the crowd, I had just discovered Throwing Muses. Throwing Muses didn't seem to have won anyone over that night, my brother thought they were men. it was at Pine Knob. A poor man's Red Rocks. Pine Knob was a converted landfill turned now into an amphitheater/ski hill. Ski Hills in Michigan are different than Ski Hills in Colorado. I've never ben on a real Ski Hill. Red Rocks is not a Ski Hill but there are Dinosaur tracks that were laid down 150 million years ago. Honestly if I was at the Beach House show I'd feel a tug towards looking at the Iguanodon tracks alongside the mountain rather than looking at the Paul Dano quotes projected on the Flatirons but that is just me, I'd feel cheered having a beautiful soundtrack while staring at the Sauropod indentations. Astronaut is just finishing now, so pretty, ponderous and delicate. Very much unlike Sauropods I would imagine but then perhaps Sauropods were more graceful than you'd guess. Next track, so beautiful. Is it difficult to sound vacant, unengaged, staring into the void-ful on every song and not come off pretentious and dull? It is. I wouldn't ever consider using those adjectives. They have a sense of lightness of touch. There isn't a melodramatic form of posturing here, not like say a Cranes album because the music is basic and inviting, it is just her voice that seems intimidatingly melancholic. But it isn't it's lovely, sadness is more natural than happiness. Really. I rarely feel happy but I'm often consumed with melancholia not because I am depressed but because I am reflective and curious and observant of those around me who are seemingly endless in their pursuit of happiness. Better to embrace your natural somberness. Last track, finger snaps, ginger taps on a keyboard and echoed, atmospheric guitar. Really nice. if Jason Pierce produced Beach House they would turn to an abomination, if Sonic Boom produced Beach House it could be amazing. When you look at the stars tonight after making love to the leafy spurge on the side of the road lie back and dream of the perfection of inadequacy and create an image of this album in your mind and be contented at the wonder of aesthetic humility. Is that pretentious? Or is that merely incoherent?

I am obsessed with Beach House these days. Years after a friend told me of her obsession. I am slow. I've been adding posts in the past. A Radio Dept post should appear soon. Scroll backwards.

Yikes, the new Pipettes album is something tragic.

The new Candy Claws record makes my heart feel delightful.

Update: I am a subscriber to the pro-med medical list. Mostly because I read The Ghost Map which was about the last major Cholera outbreak in London and it mentioned the mailing list as some frightening sentinel for the end of time or something like that. It isn't that frightening. Sometimes it is sad, I confess to a long distance feeling of heartbreak when learning of a young veterinarian who died of disease caused by the Hendra virus for seemingly no other reason than his love for animals, or the death of all of the birds in City Park here because of civil engineering blunders. But sometimes tragedy almost turns silly. For some strange reason hippies are rather prominent on the list. A woman in a drum circle?!! in New Hampshire somehow contracted a rare form Anthrax from beating a drum made from animal hides from Africa. Now, drum circles are inane and preposterous efforts of rich white folks patronizing indigenous cultures but they are not normally dangerous. More comic/tragic is the increasing prevalence of stories about hippie/new age types forcing their kids to consume raw milk and the inevitable bit of salmonella or brucellosis or e.coli poisoning they inflict on their helpless kids. There was a local angle recently, in Loveland, recently and it's sad. This fear of technology is a more common sort of voodoo than is helpful. Panjandrums at the Sierra Club and Al Gore's Investment service would have you believe that companies like BP are like modern version of Prometheus and the fisherman of the gulf are the ones having their liver daily plucked by eagles. But it is the nature of a society that believes in the healing power of drum circles but worries about contracting brain cancer from a cell phone, who will have an feng sui consultant rearrange their furniture but won't eat something unless they are aware of its trans fat content, who will believe in the fantastical imaginings of computer climate models but not trust their bank. Into the breech then come Candy Claws. Uh...not really. There are different types of hippie, the outward types (see Candy Claws) and the inward types (see the creepy teachers at the Earth Day event I attended that brainwashed their kids in hopes of advancing a political agenda or said differently the "truth"). But Candy Claws are not political. Thank goodness. This record is about animals and insects and their teeth and the plants that are their best buddies and the live giving rain that drips from the bottom of leaves onto daisies and daffodils. They dress like hippies, they spout meaningless pabulum the same as hippies, but they make really lovely records. The first song has been playing for a bit, it is vague, meandering, its a wave of sound built to wash over without breaking, certainly without breaking your heart, because while the music is pastoral and tender it is unceasingly sunny. It's always sunny in space. I didn't know that hippies were prevalent in Fort Collins. It is a university town, a charming little hamlet, always ranked highly on best places in America to live, but they study things like corn, and public planning, and uh...beets and radishes. It's hardly Silicon Valley. The drive from Denver to Fort Collins takes about an hour and it is one of the more dismally unimpressive patches of real estate in the area. There are the mountains, always on your left, but between the automobiles and the mountains is semi-arid prairie, the occasional riparian cottonwood, the occasional oil well, and a whole lot of beige nothing. Colorado Rocky Mountain High doesn't really begin until you reach the foothills. But its easier, when you are a farmer such as myself, to farm the flatland. I put a cayenne pepper fresh from the garden into my omelet today, I haven't any idea if it was ripe, it didn't taste like anything other than perhaps how one imagines grass to taste. It is possible that it was not yet ripe. Nothing much happens on the first song, he whispers, she whispers more, the music is some pleasant hum, but it is an invitation to the womb, the circle if you will, apparently each song has a sample from the other songs on the album and all of it was recorded on keyboards which they don't know how to play. They did a splendid job of mimicry then. That was me relaying third hand bits from the press release, probably. I am so helpful. Now to song two, the single, if there is a single, this has some synthesized bits that sound like horns, and more amniotic hum and noise, the production has been improved slightly on the album, it sounds less like the vocals had been surgically reattached as on the last album, more cohesive and insular. On some journeys from some portions of the Denver metro area you would need pass through Commerce City to reach Fort Collins. I drive through Commerce City on my way home every day. It is aptly named, there are rubbish dumps and gas refineries and dog food factories and cement recyclers and most of the homes are filled with people who'd rather live anywhere but Commerce City but I find it romantic. Possibly my nostalgia is for those cold winter nights driving home from Sarnia, after visiting my family in Chatham where the steam pressed apparitions would crawl across deserted city streets as I was in a state of semi-consciousness and the windows of the Chevy Caprice were fogged slightly by the exhaled condensation. Or it could be similar to the lunacy of people who are travelling to Cuba to get one last look at the deprivation and charm of rustic living before the lot of the Cuban people improves with the introduction of evil Western entities like McDonalds and KFC. I don't know. I only drive through. In the evening, especially in the rain, the lights and just on the edge of obsolescenceness appeals to me. I have enjoyed living further from work. I listen to the tunes that warm my heart, though this is more of a headphone record than a driving record, song three is on, by the way, very similar to the first two and well the whole thing works nicely as a pretty pastoral suite. Like say How Green Was My Valley works as a whole but seems really uninspiring in small bits. That's wrong actually, there are all sorts of pretty bits in here, there's one now, the beginning of song four, it's like a Swirlie demo played in the Von Trapps living room on a lyre and with a drum circle. I haven't recognized the samples, I am not an observant listener. Lyrics are indecipherable. Apparently the lyrics are drawn from a children's book. I couldn't say. Possibly the children's book is written on Catalpa leaves in charcoal made by the rustics in Cuba. Poverty tourism, how charming. What disappointments lay ahead for the man in charge of the Sierra Club when Cubans start hanging plasma televisions on their walls. But then the problem with the Sierra Club or any of their similar organizations is that they don't actually have a stake in their topic of interest. They have an interest, sire, the more panic they can create the better the fundraising and the easier the accommodations are at the fancy Climate conferences in Bali, in Rio, in Copenhagen. Where I work there are trucks that might be considered "common" in that everyone has access to using these and invariably these are the most poorly maintained vehicles in the fleet. Expand to "common" resources. But anyway, the next song has started, The Breathing Fire. Dragons? I'd imagine that they consume healthy amounts of cannabis, possibly with a prescription, possibly Mr Candy Claws was in a car accident and suffers the same chronic pain as everyone else who has a prescription, or possibly he gets it from other sources. The same place where he purchases his beaded headbands. I don't know. It's his own business. This is as lovely and non intrusive as everything else on the record. It's bliss, over and over. If the lyrics are charming or incidental I haven't a clue. Next track, sounds like it might be a guitar, tambourines, his voice, it's a bit thicker, the vocals sound like he recorded them with the microphone stuffed inside of a stuffed animal, possible a stuffed inside of a baby seal that he had just clubbed. Drums sound real, tapped gently with gladiola stems. My gladiolas have finally bloomed! Might I carve one up and put it in tomorrow's omelet? Unknown. The first to bloom was white, to be expected, i did register for facebook recently. using flowers for drum sticks sounds like a smashing idea. I could play the drums while Julie Christie played her tuba, I could feign broken ribs. I don't expect any of the drums in the drum circle had a warning sticker concerning anthrax before anyone played them, I assume a movement in New Hampshire is already afoot to make sure that all African drums are in fact locally made and have properly affixed a warning sticker warning of the possibility of death from Anthrax by participation in a silly drum circle. The young woman did not die. She's alive and kicking. The electrical outlets are all sterilised. Thank goodness. Another song is playing. I wonder what it would be like if the vocals would be decipherable, would their hippy claptrap make the sublime errant? Possibly. They have pleasant enough voices as effects. It's difficult to attack this record in my normally objective manner, I kid, but really these records cause me to drift and moan about things that are of interest to practically no one else on the planet. I could retell the story of when they closed the St Paul bridge and the sadness it caused in a friend and the recompensed joy of its reopening some months later. They are now building a bridge near my work, on Yale Ave. The locals were all aghast, bridges are evil and it is probably Halliburton that is contracted to build it anyhow but I went to the neighbourhood meeting because the bridge affects my work and well it seemed rather reasonable because currently emergency vehicles need to take a circuitous route to reach certain parts of town and this would alleviate that congestion in emergency services and well most of the malcontents protesting the bridge were on the verge of requiring emergency services but they seemingly all had flashbacks to their youth protesting the man and listening to CSNY's Ohio so a bridge equaled evil. Or something like that. No worry, the bridge is being built, and a new intersection. Candy Claws could do a concept record on this bridge next. They could visit Peggy Lehman's office, nay, they could have a sit in, were their beaded headgear and play these pretty songs to all in the vicinity and change the world, just like Country Joe and the Fish did! Some other song is playing now. Hmmm...it's hard to know where you are at with this album, it is all similarly gauzy and not demarcated by anything like say human emotion or change of tempo. Some synthesized this, some synthesized that, some low whispers, some high whispers, etc...Maybe they should be playing with Vampire Weekend at Red Rocks, the rocks might rise up and sing along. It's a bit like the theme to Star Trek now. Nice. Second to last song. Sun Arrow, nice title. It's reminiscent of Spectrum's Highs Lows and heavenly Blows in its amorphousness, the lack of density, etc...Spacemen 3 recently had a reunion. Well, not really, there was fat Kevin Shields instead of Jason Pierce. But they played Spacemen 3 songs. I don't even think Bassman was there. Did they play Darkside songs? This is much better than a Darkside record. It's beautiful. Listen while dreaming.

Club 8 The People's Record. Swedes in Brazil. Goth Samba? The music is still a trifle bloodless but tiny quibbles about platelet count aside this is terrific, really, even more than in the anthropological sense of terrific. Is he a big fan of Os Mutantes? Or perhaps merely the world's biggest fan of whatever other famous Brazilian psych-pop group you may know of? I am unaware of any others. The last Club 8 record was soft and gentle and dreamy and wonderful. This record is almost fierce, it's decidedly social and wonderful in its homage and yet it is contradictory in that certainly the music is vibrant and electric and yet somehow still the lyrics are infected with that decidedly morose and introverted genealogy. But this is not Pitchfork, we won't spend 99% of the time on our "funny" rejoinders(we are not funny) and 1% of the time on the lyrics and their psychic impact on the fabric of spacetime. Singer delivers the words nicely, indeed, she has given them with more enthusiasm and fire than ever before, her blood possibly supplemented by iron rich carnivore delights. Beef from the Pampas, the gauchos traveling north to the beach with marbled slabs and where thus formal albinism is thrust into deeper oblivion. Did they recruit authentic natives to give their bit of musical imperialism that genuine creepiness? I would have preferred if they had listened to the aforementioned Os Mutantes in Gothenburg and simply proclaimed themselves a Samba band by right of tenure. Enough of this cultural tourism where we do research and embed ourselves to create a greater understanding of anything. Let's keep it superficial, all we need is place a black man with the voice of a carton of newports on the end of the record. Second song. I mean, come on, they are hardly Flaubert. Someone might have justifiably emailed me a complaint about my last post where I compared a fictional creation (Crabbe) with a non-fictional creation (Flaubert). I could have mentioned Salammbo instead, or done it more proper still with Hamilcar Barca who of course is both a fictional presence and an actual resident of history. But I did not. I am not that clever. But then how many have read Salammbo? I met a French-English translator earlier this year, she was then working on a novel by Dumas, a lesser known work, I told her I didn't know the more famous works even. I've not read the Musketeers and so even though apparently this lesser known work was also about dashing cavaliers and the like and she was terrifically excited to not be translating manuals for installing dishwashers I only feigned my excitement for her. I never saw her again. We could have danced to this record. That would have changed her mind. Second song has a riff slightly altered from the first song riff, both tracks are sprightly and energetic and lovely. Is this my favorite Club 8 record? Possibly. I am certain that it is light years ahead of the last Legends record, I think, I've only listened to that record once actually. When is the next Acid House Kings record anyhow? Third song, it starts off with a bounce, is Samba dancing all about fluid shoulders? Much of it seems to take place between the neck and the waist. I am unable to dance the Samba. It is all about the rhythm, and I am formerly Canadian. I imagine the Samba beat here is synthetic, a pre-set on his sampler. But I am a hopeless cynic assuming everyone possesses the same degree of sloth as do I. There is even an exclamation point at the end of the title Shape Up!, hopes for an exercise video endorsement or soundtrack? Johann and Karolina Samba to the Oldies oh dear I forgot the exclamation. I jest, really, this is a beautiful record. Now to the Goth Samba, the echoey anemic vocals and the slinky beat and skeletal Joy Division-esque guitar. Have they created a new genre? Unlikely. Surely there is a video on Youtube to expose them as frauds the same as there are for Stereolab and Broadcast where fiends have unearthed the original source material and revealed those two bands as better fans than originators. Of course we still love them. Sound Dust soundtracked my time spent preparing for my last encounter, a coffee with a woman who claims she will sell 300,000 copies of her book of interviews with people better than you or me. I hope she succeeds. I haven't sold a single copy of my novel about people less good than you and me. I could have staged my novel in Carthage, a sequel to Salammbo, burned elephants inside of bronze statues dedicated to the cult of Obama. She's "dancing with the mentally ill". This is the best Club 8 record. It is official. i like to listen to it in the mornings at 5:30Am on my drive to work with both of the windows open, the Ipod misfiring(only one channel comes through, another triumph in the history of Apple engineering!) and forget that my hair is all disheveled and ridiculous by the time I reach work. The young ladies to impress at work all look much older then their 32 years, with their assorted children, unwedness and smoking fetishes. I retreat to my cubicle and dream of moving to Brazil with Club 8 and feeling the sand between my toes while thinking the child prostitutes have a future as a call center representative someday. Next song, slow, could be a Sundays song played through a filter, covered by someone like the Xavier Cougat. It's that great. Still the words. Is this meant to cause the blood to warm, to stand the hairs on top of your head completely erect and turn your hair musclebound even, well then it is let down by the moroseness of the lyrics. Of course, I, as a legitimate disregarder of anything authentic, love it. But a more serious connoisseur of the samba might feel let down and yet they are unlikely to be let down as they are unlikely to be aware of Club 8's existence and for this we will feel doubly sorry for their ignorance. I am on vacation from work, officially. I will spend it in solitude contemplating my future or lack of it. I am old. I am childless. I am starting to believe I find most of my species disgusting and ill-served. I am just dreadful. I will listen to this music and it will round my shoulders and tone my hips. I already have my stomach muscles somewhere, I could tone my obliques as well. There were samples of car alarms in the last track. Nice. Now what sounds like real drums or a sample of real drums, short stabs on the organ, sounds sinister, sounds like the soundtrack to a dark episode of Airwolf where Jan Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine come to blows over Marty or Shelly Winters' performance in Lolita. I am staring out windows at my neighbours wondering if there are John Shade's among them. I could stalk the shadows and peer through 1970s aluminum paned windows and dream that I was the king of anything but then I have to move the sprinkler. The saxophone now blazing is a relic from the 80s, blazing sax solos are now ironic when once they were iconic, is the path to Shelly Winter's heart paved with saxophone, I can see Club 8 on soundtracks to future films from the New School mavens. Paul Dano or Jesse Eisenberg slouching in a corner with a glass of ironic grape soda, beautifully lit statues, thinking how gauche it would be to show that you are alive, that you care about anything, and that you had ever perspired in your life. Over. Now with the spindly guitar solos again, and now strums, and now high pitched keyboard whistles, it is a jug band samba revival. Are these drum programs? It is nice. Club 8 are starting to show their age, they may be older than I am even, they were once impossibly beautiful and now well they are merely beautiful. He is too desperate to appear the ramshackle teenager still. He is a proper music titan, honourable progenitor of the Labrador dynasty. He releases really very dreadful records by the Maryonettes sure, but we forgive him for that, because he releases records from Club 8. He releases records by The Radio Dept sure but perhaps he will make up for that by releasing records from Death Masses in the near future. Perhaps. Song over. The reason that no one has read my book is because I didn't write it as I write these entries, without thought or any sense of reason. I attempt only to accommodate the tone of the record by syncopating my typing to the rhythms of the music at hand. Now "poor kid from Sao Paulo" choir background vocals. She's so poised. Perhaps they did make a pilgrimage for burgers to Argentina and they stood alongside the avenues as the royal retinue of Nestor And Cristina Fernandez approached and tossed alms and subsidy coupons for inexpensive LPG from Trinidad and Tobago. This is a cheerful number about the certainty of death. Maybe they listened to what Cristina had to say and worried about their vast collection of sovereign Argentine debt. Is Club 8 merely the alter ego of a corporate mogul? Is Johan some sort of corporate titan swooping with terrific wingspan down upon tiny telecoms and paper mills and selling off their assets so that he can get really expensive haircuts? That would be fantastic. Sadly, he probably thinks Radio Dept is just about right on. Last track now, a dreamy, drifty number, a bass drum repetitive in the heart of song, her voice vague and small and lovely and some more choral vocals from street urchins for that "beachy" doom heart that the Scandinavians love so dearly. What is life like on a Swedish beach? A midnight tan from the midnight sun?

Steget Forandrar Allting. A voice and a piano, that is all. Well mostly. There are the occasional stringed things and some washes of synth but the majority this is stark, black and white, amazingly lovely stuff. First song is in English, yay English. I reactivated my facebook account, yes, I am opening myself to charges of racism from faceless MIT researchers, but I don't mind, my racism having already been confirmed many times by my taste in music. I have spent part of the afternoon looking up elementary and junior high school classmates and I am confounded at how many of them have the same list of friends and how they revolve a core set in elementary school and by geography. As comparison I had two friends who didn't know each other and who I barely know these days. I deleted both of them. I now have zero. They were probably racist anyhow. It is that sort of scholarship that is funded by your tax dollars. In this time of economic decline grants for research at major universities are at record levels. The money is being well spent. I once worked in the university Chemistry office and I would help prepare grant proposals, basically my assistance consisting of my typing or copying or whatever and back then if you wanted to get funded you had to insinuate that whatever you were researching was some how cogent in the fight against Aids. So if your area of inquiry was volcanic aerosols you threw in some nonsense about compromised immune systems or the like and you crossed fingers and counted on bureaucratic incompetence because the idea that these things are allocated based on merit is obviously a silly conceit. I suppose now there are studies on the racist tendencies of social network user proposals sprinkled liberally with allusions to climate change and how water shortages in the middle east caused by climate change models are leading to flame wars on Myspace. First song is over, it is the only one in English. I don't speak Swedish. It is alright for this is an affecting album no matter which language you are able to comprehend. Of course I will now lazily invoke Frida Hyvonen because she does sound a bit like Frida Hyvonen but as the lyrics are in Swedish I can't tell if the words are as silly. Now, I do love Frida but her lyrics are, if we mean to be charitable, charmingly esoteric and vigorously teenage, the mundane made dramatic if not quite an umbrella and a sewing machine on the dissection table. There are hints of brushed percussion and now some spooky cello bubbling underneath. It is a romantic record this. Oh, just now the drums are less subtle, a gentle rumble brought to a climax and her voice sailing over above, it's all wonderfully lovely! Call the adverb police. The joy of not understanding the lyrics is in the lack of being disappointed by the triteness of the sentiments on hand. Instead I can imagine these songs as the pinnacle of western civilization's potential in conversation on human interaction. Third song, a bit more persistent, racing chords and her at the top of her register, beautiful climax arrives somewhat earlier with some male vocals added to the richness. This is an incredible record. Interesting to see which of my elementary school friends turned into republicans and which into devotees of christian rock and which have essentially morphed into their parents. A good number. One of my best friends is now a politician and seemingly a successful one at that. Surprising as once his nickname was "shellac" owing to an incident when he was locked in a supply closet and came out claiming poisoning from the solvents in the room, including the formerly innocuous shellac. Third song over. Awesome. Next track is slowed down, a bit of Air Supply riffing on the piano, her stark voice, smokier and relaxed. I found the facebook page for an overachieving neighbour that ended up at harvard law and apparently now works as legal counsel for NBC Universal. Theirs was an odd family, the two girls were gawky and awkward for a fair portion of the 80s and suddenly one summer they both bloomed into supermodels but somehow the kids in the neighbourhood could never come to grips with their transformation and combined with the fact that they were obviously more intelligent than the rest of us, well it was intimidation all around. She's probably not a republican. There were non-republicans along the freeway the other day when I was driving to work. Over the freeway they unfurled a banner that pleaded for us to 'Free Palestine". I couldn't be certain but they had the look of facebook users, ie Caucasians! So this must have been a clever ruse to masquerade their obvious racist character. But then it may have been the idyllic romanticism of the life of a dissident that tugged at them. It is romantic to imagine yourself as a dissident in your own land, how better to have your arents fund a semester abroad in Tallinn? But the problem is that all of these people are fighting battles that have already been won. The MIT researcher claiming all of the white users of facebook are racist is fighting a non-existent battle, the kids unfurling their banners are fighting a non-existent battle. Popular culture has accepted the equivalence between Israelis and Nazis without much resistance and there exist strange classes where white kids of privilege admit they are racists and work on the struggle of living with such flaws inherited from their oppressor parents. What has this to do with Steget? Nothing, and actually I do diminish the gloriousness of this record with my incoherent ramblings. The current song, number five, is the pop number, the piano, handclaps, tambourines and squiggly synths, it sounds french, Kom Igen being easily misinterpreted by a non-native as 'combien'. Now to song six, male singer arrives, still in Swedish, his tones are pleasingly generic. It is a duet. He's ellicited a deeper well of emotion in her case, it is particularly dreamy, the piano muted, gorgeous and now the piano feels as if it has been moved to a grand coliseum and the echos range freely across the plain and wash gently over everyone that listens closely. Tender stirrings. It moves even in its alienness. I will end my racist association soon, I will return to my farming, and to peeling back the skin under fingernails to see bones. When you peel back the skin of some people you see the hidden flower underneath, in some you see just the skeleton, the already decaying bones, the osteoclasts with miners helmets and pickaxes, the hollowed out decadent ways. If you were to peel the skin of the average attendee of the "New School" you would find nothing. I watched "Gigantic" the other day. With Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel playing the leads. Lets set aside the fact that Zooey Deschanel is in so many awful movies for when we discuss her lovely pop record separately and talk instead of Paul Dano. He's a disaster. He's Thom Yorke turned actor. The movie was ridiculous. John Goodman in his one guise created by the Coens. "Gale". He merely modifies the pitch up and down on demand apparently. Next to last track, delicate traipsing across the keyboard and her vocalising a bit more intense and loquacious. it sounds like quite the swedish tongue twister until the insistent chorus with the dramatic underpinnings of stylistic synthesizer. Beautiful. It is all so beautiful. I would love to see them live. Starkly lit, a chilled evening in February, the grey on grey sky architecture shading their tender aches in melancholy. Oh wait, there are still a few more songs. I will have to continue typing. I could discuss the impending financial doom soon to arrive from China where allegedly a third of all commercial real estate loans are duds. Did you read the article in the Economist about the gender disparity in China? In some rural backwaters the ratio is something approaching 230 boys to 1 girl. Nevermind the racists on Facebook what is going to happen to all of these young men with no familial prospects? Will they annex Myanmar for the lovelies? Will young Chinese girls be sold off as prizes in this new capitalistic hedonism? And all this with china growing very old before they grow even partly rich. It will be an interesting experience, these next 50 years. The US has an advantage because its fertility rate is approximately 50% higher than that in Europe and developed Asia. Have a child, it's your duty to create consumers. Far from the Wanting Seed, we are not Victor Crabbes barren and guilt-ridden but we are Paul Theroux in comparison, we are Flaubert spreading our seed all across the levant. Last song had a piano riff that reminded of Bruce Hornsby and now what is this? An acoustic guitar, sounds a bit Lori Carson even as the piano gently chimes in the offing. The title is deceivingly anglo-Jonatan. What does it translate to? It is as lovely as everything else. Now the stepped up strings, it is sure to build to something exquisite and dramatic and I can't wait, more strings join the fray, the acoustic guitar falls away gently to the bottom of the mix and the piano speaking louder in more substantial phrases and her voice swimming fiercely above. Stunning. Are they meant to be big stars? Will the hipsters in Shoreditch be found with their bound notebooks copying out clever turns from Steget? I hope so. Now to an elegant finish, sigh. Last track, more of the racing piano track, her voice more urgent, and some drums just the same as those that a real rock band might play. Hmmm...I am not for this conventionality really, I preferred the spartan intimacy myself but really this is still rather nice it is all so rather nice.