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.