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.

All sorts of posts coming up. My book writing adventure is over. I am a failed writer now. That's something. I have an unread book on the shelf, now I have something to write about, or something like that.

Update: See Allo Darlin' post below.

Betty and the Werewolves = big fans of Talulah Gosh.

Hey Marseilles remind of the Decemberists and yet I have only positive physical reactions to their music. I don't miss air conditioning. What is this humidity we battle here in the semi-arid plains? My lawn is just peachy these days. And then there are the tomatoes and strawberries and some other things I haven't quite guessed the genus of just yet.

Soda Fountain Rag has made a record with a real band. I am not sure that she should have.

Should you be caucasian and a proud user of Facebook well then you are a RACIST! I, as a non Facebook person, am, of course, enlightened and definitely not racist.

I quite like the Drums record. Are they fashionable? His Morrissey affectation only arrives when they play live. Strange.

Update: The chaps and chums on I Love Music are conflicted about the Drums. Not really, mostly they despise the Drums. That place, ILM, is an odd place, formerly it was filled with pudgy, soulless types who looked like they should be in Elbow who would post pseudo-academic treatises on Timbaland and now it is filled with bearded, twenty-somethings in thrall to their perpetual teenage angst and unpopularity except for their prodigious list of escapades across OKCupid.com where everything is a rebellion against their older brother who got the chicks and listened to 311 and couldn't even finish an Euler integral. They are frozen in that state of obnoxious teenagerdom where they hate everything or at least profess indifference with different degrees of passion. Extreme ironing. I am the bridge between the two periods, I don't know anyone on that site, I don't really speak to anyone on that site but I have been there since the beginning, since the days when they envied Nanette Wargo, pre-Jeopardy millions, and to the days know when obnoxious kids rule the roost. I am the clock on the wall. But anyhow now they don't quite love anything or everything, including the things they secretly only hate because they think Brent Sirota will respect them for their indifference. Musioc is to be respected, kept at a distance, certainly not to be loved. The Drums record is rather good. It is also, umm...twee. There are few insults that are irrecoverable from and well twee is one of the more powerful denigrations in the English language. Not really. Am I twee? Not really. I am a dreadful human being without any friends. Is that twee? Possibly, but it is more of a literary affectation really, truth is "they love me around here, I'm a swell guy". But I like twee music. I like the Drums. I like them rather a lot. Are they twee? Possibly. Really I picture as something out of time, the missing link between the Rave-Ups and Aztec Camera. Possibly? It is very dated, very 1980s, very John Hughes soundtrack material. First track is Best Friend, maybe my least favorite on the album. It's about the irresistible momentum of the guitar and the cloying harmony vocals and it's only pretty ok. The keyboard wash comes in and it's like Will Sergeant is happening all over again. They are also, ssshhh....somewhat earnest. Dreaded earnestness will be your doom. But then it isn't an earnest that has them adopting the pose that what they are doing is important. What they are doing is not important. They realize this. And so it's a refreshingly simple and charming record. No lyrics on grammar or architecture, just catholic inanity. Things improve on track two, the echoed(gated?) drum rhythms, the Strokes vocals, actually it is very much the Strokes but these guys sound more rural Pennsylvania than urban foragers. The Strokes are clearly a big influence, I imagine these Drums fellas were teenagers when Last Night was all over the Mtv and it seems to have influenced them a bit. More synthesizer and more 80s guitar. If they are not, in fact, hip enough to be the Strokes, who knows how many of them went to Swiss finishing school, then really we should be comparing them to the Frank and Walters. They don't sound like the Frank and Walters but this sort of hyper earnest vocals remind of the Frank and Walters frankly. Now to the single, the surfer song, Let's Go Surfing. Can you surf in New York? How is it that all of these bands coalesce around one sound? Are they on a listserve mailing list where they discuss the surf music revival? Unlike say Best Coast or Trailer Trash Traceys they don't sound anything like the Jesus and Mary Chain but they have a surfing song. Is it just because surf music was identified by Newsweek as being urgent and meaningful for 2010? I rather like it. There is a utilitarian spartan quality to the album even as there is loads going on in the song, the production keeps everything separate in the mix so there is annoying whistling, spindly guitar, washed out guitar effects, machine head backing vocals and they all seem to coexist happily. Next track. I've watched a few videos of them while doing my preparation for this entry(ha) and it seems that they do not favor the gingham checkered shirt look that is so beloved of bands who are meant to be the next big thing. Why are seemingly all of these next big bands from New York? Are the Drums from New York? Or do they just live there? He has a Morrissey affectation when they play live so possibly they are immigrants only recently processed through Ellis Island and temporarily settled in Hell's Kitchen where they pay Ed Harris protection so that Gary Oldman doesn't tag their rehearsal space with "Hothouse Flowers are the Sh*t!". This song is a bit like the others. They don't do variety. But the earnestness is always on display and when you compare them to Vampire Weekend, which I don't think anyone does, well they compare because the singers seem invested and concerned about delivering a performance on record and they favor those goofy backing vocals they picked up by listening to Meat is Murder Next track. They totally could have been on Sarah Records. They could have been Sarah 97, Aberdeen were crap, let's face it. Possibly we could retroactively remove Aberdeen and insert The Drums or at lest Very Truly Yours if The Drums offend the sensitive Sarah Records snugglies. Vampire Weekend of course is not Sarah Records fodder, they are now allegedly massive enough to play Red Rocks. Beach House is playing with them. I am not sure how anyone in Denver can afford to attend shows at Red Rocks. Lowly Vampire Weekend is charging upwards of 90 dollars per ticket, Rush goes all the way up to $1858 and our hero John Mayer well he's a relative bargain, his top line is only $616 and if you are reasonably "hot" he'll probably sex you up for that. I am not sure if Vampire Weekend will sleep with me for $93. I've seen Beach House in a tiny venue, I am having a hard time seeing in my mind's eye that they can play Red Rocks and not look silly in their funereal get-ups and tender monotones. We'll see, well we won't see, perhaps some of you will see, the "richsome". Next song on the album has started, more of the swirly rollerskating keyboards. They would have been perfect for the skating rink when I was a kid. My local skating rink was SkateWorld, clever enough, and well while we didn't have many bright young people in our midst it was passable entertainment. One would skate in circles, it helped if you were an ice hockey player, for a few hours, drink peach schnapps in the restroom, furiously deny to young girls that you posessed a scrotum and then wait for your mother to pick you up at 11. Imagine if we had Elizabeth Ponsonby or Brian Howard in attendance instead and the scene is altered and well we would have had decadent roman costume balls on skates, we could have all smoked til we collapsed and we would have drunk gin and had loads on uninhibited gay sex in the center of the roller rink. Evelyn Waugh would have chronicled it, he would have called me Chump Jackson. I wonder if anyone from my school has become a successful writer. I don't mean as a journalist, I know that isn't possible, when was the last time you read a quality piece of journalism? What is the idea behind a journalism degree? Learn from someone who themselves possesses a parchment with a water seal journalism degree but hasn't ever left the leafy greens of campus and so they teach their ideals rather than reality. I suppose that is all any university course is. People in universities now live this cloistered existence the same as the monks at Cluny and their Hughs and Peter the Venerable's insulate them from the agonies of the market. It must be a lovely state. I could have been a university professor. I am a very good educator but having to deal with really stupid people in a place where there is meant to be really smart people would be all too depressing. I mentioned the casinos in the mountain towns here as the most depressing places on earth because of the preponderance of ancient aged types pulling slot machine levers with oxygen tanks in tow and an endorsed SSI check in their wallet but University lecture halls must be a close second with the lecturers having dreamt of the lyceum and instead arriving at romper room. Surely everyone has the moment of awakening when you realize your high school teachers were actually a fair bit more open minded and intelligent than your college professors. Anyhow, I have doubts that the Drums ever experienced such a revelation as this is most definitely not smarty pants stuff, it's emotional pleas, it's ritalin fueled anonymity but I rather love it, especially now when it is all The Cure-like with the ghostly atmosphere and his tense vocals. You know "it will all end in tears", he's probably right, perhaps I underestimated his erudition. When they make their second record they will probably have Dave Fridmann produce and the ILM kids will jump on board and say "hey man this is the best record since the last Grandaddy record". Next track is still a bit on the Cure tip but only if Frank and Walters Singer was singing for the Cure. That would be a marvelous thing to see, Paul Linehan in his paunch ornamented orange overalls and his bowl haircut singing Charlotte Sometimes. Perhaps this is not for the Cure but for the Cµre, this is my imaginary version of the Cure that Lol Tolhurst will tour around seedy venues all across the American Midwest and Lol would play bass and Lol would play eight bass solos each and every night. Maybe the Drums singer would audition for the Cµre and be turned down. No matter, the Drums will probably be playing Red Rocks in a year or so, teenage girls should find this smashing. I Need Fun in my Life is playing now and it is a pleasant little pop song, with the Joy Division wannabe guitar and his soft voice. Poignant lyrics "I need fun, fun, fun, fun fun fun, fun in my li-hi-i-i-i-fe and I need li-hi-i-i-i-fe in my fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun". Killer guitar solo at the moment, not really, but this is totally Sarah Records, it could be a Field Mice side project. I ridicule it and offer faintly derisive praise but I really enjoy this album. They'd totally be in line for "Cute Band Alert" in Sassy if such a thing still existed. Second to last song, very dramatic opening, "I wish your mind was more like your hand". What does that even mean? It is something to do with swords. Why am I concerned about lyrics? Possibly because he is really attempting to sell it. The funny thing is that the Drums could be Anthony Powell while there are dozens of more talented bands from wherever they are from but they are the Brian Howards of their generation with all of their classic albums that they haven't yet written. At least the Drums have made a wonderful record, Anthony Powell never wrote a classic book(although other make claim otherwise) but at least he has Afternoon Men which I still think is best no matter what anyone else says. Last track now, more melodramatic singing over pedestrian pulses of music. The music is so understated and linear and so is is singing, they won't ever surprise you, occasionally a keyboard flourish arrives to make matters a touch more glamourous but this is an earnest, workman like effort that I can't stop listening to.

Allo Darlin' S/T. This record may not be self titled. I don't know anything about them. But trifles concern us little as this album is fabulous. First song has a very C is the Heavenly Option quality about it. Mainly because she sounds a bit, should you squint your tiny ears, like Amelia Fletcher or maybe it is just that she's female and he's male and this sort of call and response thing makes me lazily recall basic mileposts and really he sounds more than a bit like Calvin Johnson or perhaps at the least any Spanish indiepop singer that you might know the name of and that you would care to mention. (Hey, it turns out that singer is keyboard player in Tender Trap, the same Tender Trap who actually sound more like Aislers Set these days than Heavenly but whatever). It swings. It is a bit like the Brunettes if they knew how to swing. It's a bit like the Brunettes if Johnathan Bree wasn't such a wallflower and not so dreadfully emo. How many releases have they had? I don't know. It could be the "day after a heavy rain glee" that fills me to the brim that is clouding my judgement but even if I pretended to be objective I could ostensibly claim that there is a sense of competence and ambition to be admired in all of these songs. Why doesn't it repulse me the same as the Northern Portrait record? I don't know. It is that whole European professional indiepop band thing that doesn't do it for me. I still can't imagine Brits as Europeans. There is also the residual charm to be found in the delusions of English football fans. England's team really is pathetic. And haven't they always been? Mostly. 1966. I don't know anything about soccer. I went to high school with Alexi Lalas though. I qualify as some sort of expert in these parts then. The little girls on the pitch rolling around and writhing in pseudo-agony still irks me and it does take me 4 years to overcome that before I am again interested in futbol. It must be the hockey player genetics woven into me. Little secret, Alexi was a much better hockey player than soccer player. On our team of cheaters he was tops. He was a year ahead of me. I imagine Alexi wasn't playing Heavenly to get psychd up for those monumental LA Galaxy v. DC United tilts. He looks like a Phish fan, a Dave Matthews Band fan, like someone who has 103 different bootlegs of Dave Matthews on his Ipod. He wouldn't play The Polaroid Song then. In high school it was Guns and Roses or Skid Row. People took sides, and it was very serious. I would have chosen Echo and the Bunnymen, at the time. But now I am a farmer instead of a Llas groupie and I listen to Allo Darlin' when I am farming my tomatoes and strawberries and lettuce. All I require now is swine. I am currently borrowing an internet connection from an unsuspecting neighbour. I could repay them with Beefsteaks and Super Fantastics! Is it truly a crime to put up my antenna and passively receive an unsecured signal? How would I know that they are not in fact preternaturally benevolent souls who wish to bridge the digital divide? I am poor. Not really, but I am over the internet enough to not really need an internet connection. The age of mediocrity and the age of anonymity don't coexist naturally inside of me. But I would miss aldaily.com. There was a lovely piece which contained an interview with an editor from the New Yorker. i could use an editor. I've never had anything that I have written edited ever. I could use an editor. Next song, oh but one last note on that previous song about Polaroids first for as I've listened to both this record(scads) and the Math and Physics Club(barely), yes, the one I said that I would never let into my house, I realise they are very similar and not just because they each mention polaroid film(as an aside you can get an app on the iphone which gives all of your photos that polaroid look) but because they are essentially earnest little vignettes about everyday life and possibly it is only because English life in the city is so much more charming that American life in the city that in comparisons made Allo Darlin' crush the nerds in Math and Physics Club. But anyhow. Next song, Silver Dollars. It's marvelous. This entire record is marvellous. In my aspiration to be edited by the New Yorker from this day forward I shall adopt the pattern of the double consonant before a suffix. My other anglophilic spelling tendencies are truly Canadian affectations, a childhood watching Knowlton Nash on the National at 10PM on the CBC say lef-tenant and shed-yule. Her singing style is very conversational and warm, it isn't particularly skillful or emotive but it fits in perfectly with both the narrative and the emotional tone. Is it criminal to label bands as earnest? Some days it seems so. But whereas the Math and Physics Club earnestness is seemingly a dreary and desperate attempt to show their sincerity here it seems a mark of genuineness of the proceedings. Is there a difference between sincerity and genuineness? I should get the number of that New Yorker editor. Even after reading her interview I still can't quite get to grips with the lie, lay, lain bit, at least not until I found the three blind mice song parody. Next track. Weezer song quoting going on at the moment. they don't look like fresh faced kids, probably they are grizzled old veterans of the grueling UK indiepop circuit playing club nights for indie kids that don't dance with the likes of Alistair Fitchett and the shut-ins at Indiemp3.com in attendance. I am a shut-in. i don't mean it as any sort of denigration rather as a call to arms. Locally we have new heroes(Candy Claws) about to embark on their conquest of the world their new record is sure to be splendid but I've never invited them to play my unattended club night for indie kids that don't dance. Will it charm the same as this record? Unlikely. Candy Claws seem to be unrepentant hippies. Next track. None of my tomatoes are green as of yet. I am keen on making a tomato and cayenne pepper omelette sometime soon. This next track is about making chili. English people seem to hold food in high esteem even as the nation is almost singularly incapable of producing anything edible. I am anglophilic, remember, but I have been there three times and found that all of the quality fare is imported. Sorry, I had to go move the lawn sprinkler. My neighbour's limewire shared playlist shows up on my Itunes when I "borrow" their connection. Bone Thugs n' Harmony are ubiquitous on their playlist. Friends at work were terrifically excited to see them a couple of years back, that entire phenomenon passed me over, will indie kids five years from now sing ironically about their love of the BTH? Perhaps. but then when I was in high school Luke Skyywalker was all the rage among the sheltered kids of the suburbs and I don't recall seeing people being ironically appreciative about Luther Campbell. Next song has been playing for a bit, it's fantastic as well. The one criticism that could be leveled at them, the same that could have been leveled at any Heavenly record really, is the flatness of the emotional landscape. It's effortlessly charming but it is like when I am writing correspondence to people and at first I come off clever and fearlessly witty, but then well sometimes cleverness turns redundant, less piquant and then merely trite and you appear less than charming, familiarity breeds contempt and while Allo Darling' almost instantly declare their cleverness and charms they don't really surprise you ever in the next slate of tracks. I don't mind though. Not really. But I have low expectations. Next track, oh this is a bit peppier, but still with the standard issue jangle, the requisite Woody Allen reference. If they played here, at my next club night, they would need then visit the Sleeper house? Oh, the song is called Woody Allen. I never had a Woody Allen phase myself. I was an outcast in enemy territory, I was an athlete and a good student, but I haven't any self-esteem and so while I spent days in the orbit of Alexi and friends I spent evenings and weekends in the orbit of Morrissey and Marr and James Burke. Circumstances have not improved greatly. My best friend is a tiny black box filled with songs about Polaroids and directors I don't have any sort of affection towards. Next track, a bit of a change-up, the low resonant hum, the whispered intensity, the geography of isolation rundown in the lyrics. Lovely. For a period I had lost this connection to music. Is it the severing of the link since I have not been in a real record store for years? Technically real record stores do not exist in Denver. However, I have been in Boston and Seattle and Portland recently and there are real record stores in those cities, surely, and I felt no affinity either way. Music seems so disposable these days, certainly nothing to be fetishized over. When I go to the bookstore and occasionally stroll among the compact discs I feel numb, the stacks almost anachronistic, the idea of purchasing a CD seems almost irreducibly simplistic. i am not in any sort an audiophile and so the tinny sound invested in these mp3s that waft in among the aether and pollen doesn't cause me any mind. This is a dreamy adventure of a song, I rather like it, I could play this before a Senior League game next weekend. I realise now that I could have incorporated Math and Physics club more into this review, a comparison review, if you will, because the records are very similar. But I am lazy. She's endearing as a front person, I imagine they might be affable and delightful as an entity. I don't know how those adjectives exist except as modifiers for others. I go on dates relatively often these days and I have only discovered that I don't think I like people. Not at all. A quirky alone? If people were incarnations of pop songs it would be so much simpler, with tiny barcodes encoded on their foreheads and when they walk in a room an led display would display their affections and if Allo Darlin' showed up on the display I would run to the door convinced that they possessed all of the most lovable attributes whereas if Cathal Coughlan or Widespread Panic appeared I would run in the other direction. I used to revel inside when someone at work would call me weird but now that seems only to be a synonym for loneliness. Last song, slow dreamy number, almost country. They've a great country record in them surely. There is an earthiness that would translate wonderfully with steel guitar and Dr Pepper. There is the closeness in this song that pervades the entire album, as if they are in a room playing an intimate show just for you, very Lucksmiths in that way. The male voice reappears, not as successfully as on the first song, he's got an awkward, goofy tone, doesn't work on a "serious" song. Not especially since she started off the proceedings so brilliantly. It works alright in duet. But as producer I would have surgically excised his vocals when he was out trainspotting or playing footy or whatever it is that english indiepop bands do when they are not recording charming pop records.

Update: Looks like Pitchfork already cited C is the Heavenly option. My apologies, I am no Scott Mcinnis, really!

TCM had been a bit of a downer for the past month or so or maybe it is that life without a DVR is finally catching up with me and it means I can't record the gems that seem only to be programmed overnight and so my overall impression has been made fuzzy. But anyhow, they played "The Delinquents" the other night and it was cornball genius and then yesterday the trifecta of "An American in Paris", "The Wizard of Oz" and "Meet Me in St Louis". "Oklahoma!" just finished, just now. One day people will remember again how movies are meant to be made and M Night Shymalan will be arrested. The Allo Darlin' record is rather good, more on it later. I read an interview with jj, affectations are silly.

Update: Gregory's Girl is on tonight:)!