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.