Sad.

Favorite album of the year 2011- Giorgio Tuma In the Morning We'll Meet, he's a god.
Most listened to record of the year - Sally Seltmann/Love Language , even if each is from last year.
Favorite Indiepop record - The Heart Strings Flap Your Crazy Wings, wonderful.
Others-Sound of Arrows, The Bats, Panda Bear, Acid House Kings, Frankie and the Heartstrings, Amor De Dias, Bachelorette, Beirut, the Blueflowers, Deaf Center, Dustin O'Halloran, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, the Drums, Epic45, Gold-Bears, Hildur Gudnadottir, Julia Holter, Lanterns on the Lake, Pj Harvey, Regina, Sleeps in Oysters, Summer Camp.
Pretty but boring - Still Corners
Pretty Blah - Sin Fang

Seems like a smaller list than usual. Oh well, on to 2012. Soap & Skin in January? That might be totally awesome and original. Or it might not be. Azure Blue out in December.

Update: Oh and I forgot Seefeel which I really did not care for at first but now I love, a nice companion to Panda Bear.

Azure Blue - The Catcher in the Rye from Jonas Börjesson on Vimeo.

Sound of Arrows Voyage. It begins. Into the Clouds. I have been pining for this album for a very long time and so when it begins with an only slightly altered Into the Clouds I turn slightly anxious. But of course this song is the dream. It is beautiful. It is gentle and technicolored and expansive. You might then wonder, oh, it is all downhill from here. It is not. I would imagine the Sound of Arrows support the Occupy people. But is this music not the antithesis of Occupy wherever? It is hopeful, it is ambitious, it is outward looking. Occupy wherever seems to be very conservative. Life as a static model, preserve my privileged position and inoculate me against my poor judgement. I made easy decisions. I was incurious. I am incapable of thinking for myself. Yes yes, these are all broad generalizations but I have driven past our local franchise several times in the past week and they seem a lethargic group in the main. There are four police cruisers that have them hemmed into a tiny portion of Civic Center Park. It is very quaint with their sleeping bags lined up along the sidewalk and their enervated spirits merging with the concrete. They have a website. I wonder if the designer is an actual occupier, or rather safely ensconced in an undisclosed location. Second track, next single Wonders, glorious, it's Fantasia re-imagined as a synthpop landscape, border-less, populated with the same mythical beasts and fairies that populate the lysergic fueled trips of those who want to indulge in all of the successes of capitalism while maintaining the dreary romance of believing that you are a dissident in your own country. It is all very authoritarian. There are surely a dozen Leni-wannabe's armed with digital video cameras documenting this momentous occasion. Third track, My Shadow, a bit more artful. Disinterested vocals, spare accompaniment until the chorus shines brightly. This is youth on parade. Do not assemble and collectively plead for your right to be inert. Start a business. Start an organization that has momentum enough to carry minds into fanciful lands and exercises. I am reading a biography of Rosa Luxemburg at the moment and to speak truthfully it is something closer to a hagiography but to be fair it was written when fascism was on the rise and communism seemed a lesser trial even with the bolshevik autocrats already on the march in Moscow. Not a single mention yet about the coercive tendencies of socialists. But she comes off as something of a scientist, trying to theorise everything about human existence and interaction into a compact set of laws to be interpreted and managed by a socialist elite, divorced entirely from human emotion and superstition. It is similar to What is to be Done minus the idea of events being driven from the top down by a professional political class. It comes off as absolutely absurd until you realize that all of these mad ideas have come to fruition. These occupy wherever dopes are pleading for technocrats to save them from their foolishness, the same as an inert Greek populace protests only to maintain the unmaintainable status quo. The current US administration is filled with people who want to manage a 15 trillion dollar economy without having any experience even in a micro sense. Magic is playing now and the video for this song includes children who awaken in a world depopulated with adults. It is where we exist currently. The idea of being an adult is terrifying to most people. The idea of being responsible for the decision you made to acquire a massive load of debt without any concrete logistical plan to retire it holistically is anathema to perpetual adolescents. My oldest brother ran up a considerable amount of credit card debt when he was a teen. My parents bailed him out. And then he ran up more. If you subsidise a behaviour you will guarantee more of it. Next track Ruins of Love, the long slow track, still dreamy, still ambitious, still wonderful. Will this take hold in these dreary times of austerity? Will life turn grey and uninspiring and only art will be composed of dreams and hopes and when you stare at a painting or into a soundscape will you feel these deep nostalgia for life as we once knew it. Rose Luxemburg was a genius, but she seemed artless, dour, too realistic except that she wasn't. She would look at events and miss the irrational components entirely. I also have recently finished The Instinct of the Herd and Wilfred Trotter is a contemporary of Rosa and he seemed to grasp events far more cogently. When individuals assemble and identify as groups they don't take on the nuanced characteristics of esoterica such as labor theories and economism but they acquire emotional arguments as cudgels and are carried along by the powerful instinct of the herd whether it was Germany as the predator or England as a mix of Predator and Prey partially paralyzed by the mistaken belief that they were indeed rational beings. Humans are not rational beings. How disheartening for occupy wherever to self identify as a terrifyingly insignificant minority as 152 million americans stop only just short of murder to secure a flat screen television. This is the instinct of the herd. Longest Ever Dream, a female voice, a lovely pop song, the next single? Sound of Arrows are from Sweden. They live under a false consensus. I claim it is false because I believe the most difficult thing to align in socialist societies is class interest. This should be the message of the proletariat, with Sound of Arrows in the background, do not listen to your counselors and parents attend a local university and demand a more rigorous curriculum instead of a new student activity center. I've mentioned this before but I interview prospective employees for my company and while I don't work for a prestigious or important firm I am still amazed to read the applications of college graduates. The inability to articulate anything meaningful is a dreadful disgrace and scourge visited upon the youth of today. Listen to an Occupy Denver protester, they haven't read Rosa Luxemburg or Herbert Marcuse or even Marx bur they are "marxist" because it is fashionable and they have tee shirts to smartly proclaim their allegiance to the tribe. It is romantic to live in opposition to the status quo. But they have won, marxism is on the dais and they can't seem to recognize their success. Conquest, a bit of heart worn drama, a bit of Wham!? Less Pet Shop Boys but more gay discotheque even. What has this entry to do with Sound of Arrows, nothing at all. But are you all that interested in Sound of Arrows? Probably not. You should be. They've taken ages to record this album and unlike Pas/Cal and their "let us have done with it, for now at last" it is wonderful. But then they are youth, i have said this twice. I apologize. Pas/Cal's sun had set long before and it is youth that we treasure above all else. Nova, another single, they aren't innovative but do not disguise a distate for non-innovation for the same concerning ambition. This is an album filled with grand statements, a treatise for escapists, the same as Rosa Luxemburg. Because as she was describing a world that did not exist and that could never exist so too have Sound of Arrows re-imagined our own calamitous existence. The music carries you above the dreary hollowed out reality of life as we live it and engenders a dream of something greater. It might still be a collectivist dream but slowly pop music will evolve to a more individualistic manifesto, celebrate as a group, come together and spread joy(I was at a christmas light ceremony yesterday with hundreds and it was lovely) but when you fall away from the bosom of the group do not long to re-enter it as a means of protection from the cold, venture bravely out into the abyss and succeed on your own terms. I say this as someone without a single measurable success. I know. I wait for my Bernstein-ian dismemberment. Now to There is Still Hope an epic seeming dreamy ballad that introduces itself as the summation, the final track contender but is in fact the second to last track. Washes of synths layered upon each other, tender anesthetized riffs rising falling and finally his tender voice exhorting love to will out, hope to capture the moment. It is an inspiring beginning, it is almost disarmingly earnest. I would hope that they are sincere, that these tracks are the true evocation of their hearts. In the age of irony or manipulation it would be lovely if someone who truly meant it and conveyed it could stand alongside the John Mayer's of the world as a counterpoint to unfeeling cynicism. Socialism is not feeling. Capitalism, the infusion of a life filled with risk and unlimited reward is the emotional choice. Choosing to live unhindered by the reality of tumult is not living at all. The last a tender instrumental, time to reflect, time to reassess, the world is about to end, feel melancholia and joy and retreat to the things that are important, life, love, happiness, noen of these things can be delivered by your fearless technocrats.

Amazing.

I am working 1 million hours per week, well, at least for the next 10 days. Sound of Arrows album is the only thing that can make me smile.

Listened to new Neil Halstead single about tennis, on my Saturday night, not very good. I am listening to Celia's Dream now, to counteract.

Update: Slowdive is the greatest band in the history of the world ever. For this Neil Halstead is forgiven for all past, present and future transgressions.

The Bats Free All the Monsters. " We have so little time to say the things we mean." Is it gauche, it is, unimpeachably, to quote Gus Van Sant movies as the heart of wisdom. But I will admit that I do like that contention. I do spend an inordinate number of words on this website not conveying much of what is inside of my heart. It is always what is in my head that spills out in among the pixels. Head or heart? Which is the more compelling? From the opening riff the Bats hit me in the heart. It is the tenderest Bats record ever. His voice, restrained, moved back farther into the mix, the sentiments gauzy and washed over and sweet. He's older, they're older, we're older. We are beyond the apogee of civilization. We need nostalgic reminiscences such as this to remind us of how beautiful life once was. When I was a child in the 1970s and we last had our existential crises I was too young to understand the decay and despair. I would watch Jimmy Carter parade incompetence in press conferences about changing the direction of the part in his hair and when I would walk home on my birthday I was super charged and energized and filled with joy and the world was dying. Now children are not allowed to walk home from school. They may not be allowed to listen to the Bats. And the world is dead. Why tempt them with hope and loveliness and joy. This world is going to slip into the abyss of John Mayer and 'Through the Wormhole' and Stephanie Meyer. The Bats will move on to another world, a better world...there must be. Second track, the track when we realize that Robert Scott has suddenly realized that Kaye Woodward has a voice and it is terrifically lovely. Was it as a result of a loyalty to Jane Sinnott that he seemed to have not noticed this previously? There's the incalculable bats jangle(is there an algorithm for the effortlessness that they convey with guitars). Do their riffs repeat? They are complex enough to disguise repetition. His voice, again, muted, hers tres super! And then a Kaye lead, ah bliss. The Bats writes songs about everything. They write songs about date rape, strangely cheerful ones about date rape actually, and political songs and songs about love and everything else important. Perhaps now that the end times are arrived the important things in life that have not yet bean sullied by bureaucratic intervention will come to the fore once more as a celebration of the traces of humanity that have not been crushed by the heavy hand of government. I was working on a municipal bid for our company this week and it is a minor contract, certainly in the face of our 4 trillion leviathan and yet the process of removing beetle kill trees in Summit County requires the oversight of nine different government agencies. At a minimum there are nine bureaucrats that we must be answerable to in order to use a chainsaw to remove dead trees. Madness. The current track is Free All the Monsters. They have been chained to desks by stifling federal mandates. Gamera not allowed access to restricted flight paths, Godzilla for not making his flame meshed breath safe for children's pajamas, Godzuki in violation of youthful curfews. It is all very depressing. It was such a rapid slide. It all began with bicycle helmets. I ride my bicycle to work, most days, when I am not lazy, but the scorn that is heaped upon me when I pull into the parking lot without wearing a bicycle helmet is immense. When did it become everyone slse's concern over the risks I choose to subject myself to? Robert Scott has children. I am sure, because his heart is pure and his soul unblackened by cynicism as mine has been, he makes his children wear bicycle helmets even though when he was a child he never wore a bicycle helmet. And he learned the limits of mortality. He didn't mature in a risk free society where you can choose all of the easy paths and feel entitled to a reward at the end. I work with a great number of first generation immigrants. They come from cultures of self-reliance and where the government was more likely to murder you than to suffocate by needless regulation and they have a spirit and vigor that has been nearly extinguished from the native population. But their children, their children are comparatively benign. Our overlords have nothing to fear from the children. They will Occupy Wall Street and demand more government oversight, more bureaucratic indifference, more state sanctioned mediocrity and inertia. Because it is safe. This is why indiepop music has stagnated over the past 15 years. Wealth, as ephemeral as it appears now, has blunted the rebellious instincts of pop music. There is only a retreat to isolation and narcissism worth commenting on. But this album? It's gorgeous. But they are not children. The Bats are old. The Bats are older, much older, than I am. They can be reflective and ruminative and it sounds romantic and wistful rather than inhibited. In the Subway not, a bit of kraut rock-ish motorikness. A groove. Paul Kean is married to Kaye Woodward. They also have children. I am not sure if Malcom, the drummer, has children. He was once in the Bilders. With Bill Direen. Is he a fan of cabaret? His drumming is not flashy. What would happen if he came in with a load of Can records and a Jaki Liebezeit haircut and an assortment of cowbells with mention to his band mates that he had a song. Where would the Bats be then? In the Subway is also great, it isn't gentle and demure, well it is, they are desperately unable to shed their genteel natures, but it is insistent and basic and charming and my gosh I love the Bats. I am so glad that they have returned to us. They were banished for a short period. The Bats released two dreary, uninspired records. This record sounds more polished, as if it has been more expensively produced than the last few records. Next track, more double tracked vocals, there is a very strong Daddy's Highway feel to many of these songs, a Law of Things confidence. It's marvelous. My heart is sometimes shrouded by an inexpressive camouflage called my countenance. My heart sometimes has a muffled heartbeat. I only wish for the beats to be obvious to everyone I meet. How brilliant for a lovely stranger to meet you and to be charmed and beguiled because the pounding of your heart is obvious to them and to everyone in the room, I am so desperately happy to see you that my heart can not be contained within the realm of this dust and flesh. Devotchka songs express that feeling. The Bats are more the subtle tingling sensation that travels up and down your spine in an unconscious realization that although the world faces Armageddon that a smile could disarm nations filled with belligerents intent on your destruction or the crushing thoughts of inadequacy that assume primacy in more private moments. Space Dust now, beautiful, it's got pace, it has jangle, his voice distant and sparkling. Her voice just beneath. Are the Bats a democracy now? Has Robert Scott acceded to popular convention and allowed his band mates a say on the musical direction of the band? Hard to say. This is a Bats record, he is the Bats, but after 30 years, they are the Bats. And they are Minisnap. It doesn't sound like Minisnap record. Minisanp is more bouncy, effervescent, fey, insubstantial, this is all of those things but in a stable mixture that comes out uniquely their own. Big echoey vocals at the moment, thick guitar lead, his charming rhythm track. Wonderful. On the Bank. I had two musical childhoods. The first I spent in England. My friends were Morrissey and Ian Mccullough and Paul Heaton and other minor figures of great importance. I have Paul Heaton's heart in a jar in the side drawer of my desk. I would, if it was available for purchase on ebay. The second I spent in New Zealand. With Martin Phillipps and Robert Scott and the Kilgours and Graeme Downes and they, neither, had greater influence, they wove a tapestry of insecurity and obscurity. I am able to hide in fantasies of exotic Aotearoa and Cemetery Gates and be made to only briefly escape for gulps of air at the surface after a vigorous swim through the viscous fluid of my own indulgences. I met someone this week and admitted my love of cemeteries, of the dead, and their life's journey and my need to fill in the gaps and spaces in between the epitaph and the earth. I admitted that my first date was at a cemetery near my home. I did not feel self conscious or strange. I realize now I am destined to be eternally hopeful, with pop songs to accompany my loneliness and my faux narcissism. I write laments over this age of narcissism but is it not true that shyness and introspection is the most damnable version of this social malady. It is. I deem the world as it exists unworthy of my interest. I deem the world as it presented itself to Ikhnaton to have been preferable to our own even though it is unchanged, essentially the same, perpetually uninteresting and populated entirely with people more concerned with the quenching of appetites than reflection. This is why the Bats are one of the most important bands in the history of the world. When the four of them come together it's for the expression of joy. It's a timeless act of human kindness and they should have monuments erected to them in appreciation. Last track, the acoustic ballad. Charming and effortless. Magic, just as the song says. Graeme Downes has morphed into Ward Churchill, Martin Phillipps hasn't written anything I would admit to owning for 18 years, the Kilgours want to be 18 forever but Robert Scott has been Robert Scott since forever and it could be this world's great under appreciated charm.

Exciting news--Sound of Arrows album is out on November 7th! Woo hoo! One day after my mother's birthday. Cast these pestilential spirits from my being.

Billy Bragg singing protest songs seems so quaint. Still clinging to Clause IV?

Gothy goodness.

A Winged Victory For the Sullen S/T. There is...err there was a five ton asteroid hurtling towards the Earth. Perhaps it has already finished hurtling. Update: It has. This may well be the very last record I hear before I am obliterated by space rocks. Update: It isn't. I would not have minded. This album is a dream. Song titles are unimportant. The first song title is languid and lovely. It is Dustin O'Halloran and some other guy. The "some other guy" seems to be appropriating all of the attention in online mentions of this album. I haven't any idea who he is. He's in a Kranky band which makes me think he makes dreary, overly long music when he isn't making A Winged Victory for the Sullen records. Remember the second Jessamine album? That was brilliant. It had complicated packaging. First track is drones and keys. I am assuming the other guy handles the drones and Dustin the piano? The piano is rudimentary. The drones are exquisite. Is the piano rudimentary really? I can not be certain. I am on this kick that every thing these days is mediocrity defined and so I have perhaps unintentionally disparaged Dustin's own virtuosity. Mediocrity on parade is what is causing the general malaise in our universe I believe. From politicians to artists to just the drivers of every day life, your parents, your bus driver, your ice cream vendor. Does anyone really appear to be trying for perfection? Most people achieve very little, even in measure of their tiny ambitions. Track two, again song title is unimportant but it is Requiem for the Static King Part 1. Strings and drones begin, heavenly. It sounds as if it was recorded in the corner of a very large room bereft of everything but the small group of musicians. I always lament my inability to judge the inherent worth of a piece of classical music based solely on an objective criteria of ability and quality of composition. But then is classical really so different from any other from of music and is it not all subjective interpretation. Possibly. I listen to the rocket scientists that are now occupying Denver and their world is one filled only with subjective pronouncements. They are unaware of any inviolable physical law which may govern the universe as a whole but fully cognizant of the miasma of emotional treatises disguised as academic arguments. A living wage? Oh, track three has begin, this is Part 2. But anyway. An emotional treatise composed entirely of music is difficult to describe for someone so inarticulate as myself. I could scan through obscure texts and lift ornate, flowery passages colored purple and impress people that same as Stereolab can do with their pillaging of record collections superior to yours. Bu my life as a student was not soundtracks by the sruminations of genius. I was ruled by Morrissey and Ian Brown and Slowdive. I was only able to attend classes part-time but I went every semester and I graduated without any student debt even wiping out a year of graduate school debt thanks to being part of a team that developed a fairly lucrative algorithm for Raytheon. But anyway. We must end Capitalism, mustn't we, we shall end the most amazing two centuries of progress for the human race, shan't we. We can listen to these beautiful records on our Ipods for the next 1000 years because when the government runs everything innovation is halted. Look at the most highly regulated industries in America, rail(innovation does not exist), air travel(innovation does not exist), finance(innovation is forced into dark recesses where risk is unnecessarily raised because the prospect of return in an over regulated market is minimal), etc, etc, etc... Is Morrissey occupying London or some town in Italy? Probably hoping for a government mandate against vivisection and the introduction of a vegetarian commando force to thin the population of carnivores. What has this to do with music? Nothing at all. But this is an astonishingly pretty album. Song five, the pre-release teaser. I know it was so overplayed here on commercial radio that it feels like an old friend now. Not actually. I have been dating people recently and am beginning to wonder if I am meant to be anti-social and a shut-in after all. I don't much feel a connection with any other human beings. I have a friend at work, a married friend, who I suddenly appreciate because she seems to have shared sensibilities with mine but then I have only ever seen her at work. I am confident, dominant and dynamic at work and at home I curl up in a corner of my basement pressed against an outside wall and read very long books and fall asleep with thoughts of the contradiction of the main tenets of buddhism in my head and heart. If there is no soul then how is one reincarnated? And why must men corrupt everything pure. This music feels pure, a salient distillation of perfection, minimal, spare, intense. Why can't all human emotion be channeled as efficiently and with such a staggering level of warmth and joy. These are my subjective truths. This is my emotional outburst. Dustin O'Halloran deserves as much credit as "some other guy", every records that he makes is gorgeous and the records that other people make where they seem to be offering tribute are also gorgeous--see Lanterns on the Lake. The longest track on the album now. The centerpiece, 12 minutes long, minor keys, drones, slow motion ambience, just amazing. I would walk about my neighbourhood this evening listening to the album whilst dodging raindrops but it never does rain here and there is the incessant intrusion of train whistles that are visited upon us nearly every evening. Will occupy Wall Street shut down commerce sufficiently to stop the trains from interrupting my sleep? And when I ride my bicycle to work I have this overwrought terror of the train tumbling from the tracks on top of me and my specialized bicycle as I race underneath the railroad bridge as the train passes overhead. And there are the skunks. This song is mainly empty spaces. What skill in recording to prevent this from being meaningless nothingness. There are slight crescendoes that weave slowly into and out of the mix, there is a ebb and flow of tender emotion. It does feel like a paean to loss, a soundtrack to decline. A nostalgic view of the once believed moment of permanence when everything was fine and nobody hurt. The mythical age that has never existed, ever. The title of this one is The Symphony Pathetique and it is let down a bit by the title, it sounds as if it could be ironically applied. Irony is so overdone. Give me the dreadful earnestness of someone like Chris Martin, however uninformed, over the knowing nihilism of Stephen Malkmus who seems genuinely terrified of expressing an earnest belief in anything. We have moved into the second half of he symphony, a slow draw down of forces until it is merely drones and their echoes filling the mix. A symphony for the autumn brilliance. Even in Colorado where trees are treated so rudely by the elements there is color enough to harken the spirit and allow one to turn a blind eye to the foolishness of our generation bathed in ignorance. I am eating chocolate and considering the gentleness of this album as a balm to counteract the disappointment I feel entitled to own. Slowly the symphony is reawakening and drones are cascading, drone upon drone, half filled with the minor particles of the standard model. I lied. It did rain here. It rained last Saturday and I was meant to be at work but I stayed home because of the rain. It has not rained since. It will likely not rain again until April. But if it does rain our hearts will be prepared, our souls strengthened and Dustin O'Halloran prince of stainless song craft will be there to capture our sudden elation. It will be drawn out, it will be slowed, it will be compressed into a fine distillate from a cacophonous colloid and it will rise to the occasion and save us from the mediocrity that has been so brutally cast among us threatening the existence of our entire civilization. When A Winged Victory for the Sullen is, by government mandate, proclaimed the only music worthy of public consumption then we will all gather in dells and city squares and in tiny hovels and we will look to the heavens and feel untethered by the paucity of our physical existence and truly experience timelessness as it should be visited upon everyone at least once in their life. And we will eat chocolate and Kate Bush will be there.

New Bats!



Pretty, but, aye the last couple have been pretty dud.

Still Corners Creatures of an Hour. The important question is whether Still Corners' taste in film and recorded music is as all encompassing and clever as Broadcast. My productivity has fallen off after a rather prolific summer. You are welcome. I have not been writing other things, mostly, I have been asleep. For two months. I awaken only to listen to music. This record is nostalgic. Trish Keenan, we miss you. This record is very good. It is unfair to compare, we know, but they are the ones that sound so very much like Broadcast. First track, spare plot, it's about establishing a soft focus. Do their record collections extend beyond the likes of Flowchart and Semi-Gloss? Unknown. They must be young. Can they converse convincingly on Italian film directors from the early 1960s? There are other less important questions. Second track now, more propulsive, repeating keyboard motif, shards of sound effects as guitars, spooky monosyllabic harmonising in the background. I should be at work at the moment. Christmas starts on Monday. I will go to work on Sunday. I will be alone at work on Sunday. This is our dilemma, we actively seek solitude from ipods and the general avoidance of people and then lament our isolation in blog posts. Consistency is not a virtue. Broadcast wrote the most perfect pop songs ever written but they were not a pop band. Still Corners are a pop band and they write very nice pop songs. But the voice, it is not Trish Keenan. Third track, farfisa, thundering drums, hushed vocals. Broadcast had a brilliant drummer. He was replaced by a drum machine. Did he ever imagine it a good idea to be the focus of attention. Is it even true that drummers buy records for drummers? More guitars as accessories. i don't mind actually. it's colourings and interruptions from more interesting conversations and then it is over. Track number four. Even if the Egyptians were the peak of human achievement they didn't have cool space age bachelor pad pop music. Would I have felt comfortable as an Egyptian? My lack of ambition might have predestined me for a life of slavery to be wagered over by Hyksos interlopers. This is another bit of vague sensory experience. The songs have words, they don't seem to function for any purpose apart from sound poems, a caption to the imagery, through the looking glass in invisible ink. It is raining today. This is the first significant rain since July. Thus the desiccation of my muse? Will now the words come flowing forth? Already this is the second entry of the day. Boffo crescendo just now, ten keyboards all in a row. Now to the toy town portion of our program. Her vocals as dramatised through a telephone wire, nice switch now into the age of high fidelity. I really love this album, in an inconsequential manner of romantic activity. I am stuck on the anglicised spelling infatuation of my youth spent in a northern suburb of Detroit. This is intense prettiness. They create pretty things almost effortlessly. When the last note plays it does not linger. Perhaps the Egyptians did have space age bachelor pad music and just lacked the means of carrying it forth to generations to come. This will be the torment of our own age, the age of the incompatible format. How will I listen to my 8-track tapes in 43 years? Will there be hipsters to sell me their wares while protesting capitalism along 16th? I do hope so. The only song I can distinctly remember listening to on my parents 8-track player is Jewel Akens The Birds and the Bees I have distinct memories of life on the top bunk with an assortment of wicker hampers playing wicker hamper drums along to this song. I did not grow up to eclipse the sun. Nor have Still Corners. This track is a bit of spy thriller soundtrack action, guitars, groove and her voice. Her voice, unchanging, ethereal, unaffecting and unaffected. I used to have a friend that grew up betrayed by love, unable to appreciate any female voice with even an artifice of emotional resonance. She will love this album. i love this album. You should love this album. If you are alone it will make the lonely beleaguerment more passable. Next track, the voice used as ornamental decoration, there are the lead vocals and then pleasant harmonising vocals in the distance that add a warmer touch than the aggregation of dreamy synthesized sounds constructing the impenetrable wall of sound. The production is not great. It is all loudness nearly all of the time. They did not grow up huddled around a four track recorder, this much is clear. Did Subpop inform them that the songs should not exceed 4 minutes? Only 3 breach that mark and only just barely, and even if that condemns this record in more learned ears as inconsequential they aren't interesting enough to carry a groove into a trancelike state of human circulatory system sympathy. It's pretty pop songs, her voice is sweet sounding, but we won't be listening to this when we are conducting a sit-in at Goldman Sachs tomorrow. It is interesting that the general level of human intelligence seems to be invested in an indirect relationship with the amount of education one acquires. I am a snob. My degree is in physics. Physics is a "real" subject, provable, objective. How to deal with a subjective field of study such as Lesbian Post Modernism? It is the difference between bowling and figure skating, one at the whim of human ability and the other at the whim of human opinion. Madness. Another pretty track now. I spent a good amount of time in university. I spent some time studying less utilitarian subjects, I remember a brilliant essay on the movie Shane in one class and I feel proud to have assimilated Jack Palance fully into my heart. I worked nearly full time while attending school and two jobs when I was not attending school. Now I am interviewing college graduates who have never had a job in their life and the are 24. Perhaps they were in super cool modern pop bands and decided to pack it in only just recently when they realized they will never be as brilliant and influential as Thom Yorke. This track Submarine is just over 4 minutes, it feels ever so much more enduring.

Lanterns of the Lake=Gorgeous.

Update: Often just a short period after I make this vacuous posts I retract my initial impression. I will not this time, probably. This is a lovely record. Bella Union's new Devics? A country Devics? The first tracks begins all Klima-esque, oh, my swooning heart. A distant whisper, unfocused electronics, strings, hums and delightfulness. I've been reading Stilwell and the American Experience in China and it is marvelous. Barbara Tuchman is a goddess. I have come to realize that as soon as I am master of the art of the Blitzkrieg that I will embody the reincarnation of Joseph Stilwell. I am him, he is me. All of her terms that she employs for the creation of a psychological profile of him apply just as specifically to me. It is both heartening and unsettling, heartening to think that greatness has flaws the same as I do but also disquieting because born with the same hopeless feelings of inadequacy he overcame them and marched into eternity as a giant of his time while I have dinner with breathless editors about my fancy disguised as a novel. I did actually have dinner with a book editor. I gave her a copy of my "book". I can't tell if she thought that our meeting was a business meeting or a date. Will I bribe her with food and wine in order to have my book read? Anyone. Has anyone read my book? Unknown. I could role play in the guise of Uncle Joe in the boudoir to liven things up a bit. This is me, at Rooseveltian angle. And this, after my earlier laments at the vulgar. My apologies. Second track, the male voice, gentle, soft, alright but then she arrives and it's terrifically lovely. Pianos and strings and dust shaded vistas and mountains cascaded out of the desert sands. They are from England. I conjure speculations. It sounds so terrifically polished for a debut record. Did Simon Raymonde produce? There is a Bella Union sound now. This is almost archetypal. Strings and prettiness, a gauzy artistic sheen, spare impressions of emotion. Affecting still. Handclaps arrive just now and it's suppliant of romance. Third track, more horse drawn carriages on lap tops and a fair distance between notes and her tender voice. Very beautiful. The Chinese do not emerge as romantic figures in Barbara Tuchman's book. When reading it is tempting to think that they have not altered greatly from the great traditions. Perhaps they have. i don't know. I've never been to China. My brother went, to work at a factory to build automobiles, he never actually left the factory except to depart. They lived at the factory because there was running water, there were security fences, there was food. Apparently these things were in short supply even within the near vicinity. Will the Chinese eventually come to love Lanterns of the Lake? Or will it go down the same as Noel Coward for the GI's in Ledo? "You know what to do with the pianos." An inside joke between the General, Barbara and myself. Pianos should be played ever more frequently on popular records. I love piano based pop songs. Is this pop? Sure. Ambient folk pop. Fourth track, very brief, a hymn like quality to it. As being from a former maritime power this references the Sea. Will England's resurgence only arrive when they once again take to the seas? When in gardens all over Albion men and women construct seagoing vessels bound for strange and exotic lands. There are still dramatic sea shanties pouring forth from the quills of songwriters all over the land, it should encourage the national spirit. All the hooligans and chavs aligning behind the gorgeous tones of Lanterns of the Lake. Next track, rock music. A bit Jack. The English do this so much more convincingly than the Americans. Is it part of the national character? This ability to write seemingly literate, melodic rock music. I have been all too dreary recently, all of the very and decidedly pretty. I miss rock music. I miss the Playwrights and Moonshake and Flying Saucer Attack. I want to be aurally beaten down, but with a smile on my face, always, with a tender lash. This is not intimidating. This is the louder version of their quieter moments. This is for the drummer's self esteem. We've built to the crescendo of drums and strings and hypnotic rattles and hummings. Very nice. It does remind very much of Jack, especially on this track, the rent-a-string section to add glossy pretensions. The martial drum beat. The gin soaked pose. This is vaguer than alcohol. This a hymnal to our times when everyone believes very deeply in empty and meaningless platitudes, where I search in glances and notice people not much differentiated from the primitives in Our Oriental Heritage. Where lethargic protest is seen as relevant and meaningful. At least Lanterns of the Lake seem more interested in loss, in romance, in the moves of the human soul through our dilapidated civilization. Will Durant does make an excellent case that civilization peaked with the Egyptians and that we have regressed since then. Sixth track now, after the massive crescendo that ended the previous. Tender laments on violins, feathery whispers, underexposed electronics and a dreamy mix. It's analogous to our current social experience, so very close to cacophony but held together by some unseen common purpose. The drummer is reading Negri in the corner, until rainstorm percussion and drama require that he place his Hatchard's book mark in place and render drama. A lovely piano coda at the end. I have been listening to this album when I drive home from work every night. I am nearly old now. I am aware that I will spend all of my life alone, as I always have, just Will Durant as company and without a Hatchard's book mark of my own. Next track, very Devics, but different. They are for the bombast, the poetic, the less personal. Sara Lov, with her flower in her hair, her not dainty ankles, described a more personal vision in her songs. Los Angeles has a port but it does not have a history intertwined with the sea. he sky. "Here, here, let's just stay here, you should love me here." There is nothing so nakedly hopeful here. And isn't that what is important, this notion of someone that you can just be with and who can make you happy. It is not concerning whether they love the Beach Boys Today! more than Pet Sounds, although that is important, it is whether they can breathe in complementary patterns. Tricks now and there is not much here that resembles Devics. Alessi's Ark? When she is 30 and making records with Ryan Adams. We will lament for poor Alessi when that day comes, from fascist blenders to "Fred Armisen in drag". Apologies to whomever it was from I Love Music that I lifted that from. Christmas consumes me now. It does every year. I wake up and I go to work, I go to work and drive home, in the dark and it is only the hope that records such as this continue to be released every year that carries me through. Thsi won't be voted anyone's favorite record on blogs. It may be mine. Every year there are amazing records released. What a lucky time to be alive. And there are a few that strike one's fancy more than others, you wouldn't campaign for their inclusion in any sort of pop pantheon except in the annals of brilliant human emotion only partly contrived through their sampling. But are they overly literate? They make no real allusions in the lyrics that I am able to discern, but this is the age of the pretense of being an artist or artistic is more important than the concept of beauty. The narrative has superseded ability. And so Occupy Wall Street is an exercise in myth making. Thom Yorke is an exercise in myth making. When I do work, on Christmas, on Sundays, some time is spent unproductively watching BBC documentaries on classic records. The series is titled Under Review and I watched the episode on Hounds of Love and then on OK Computer. The comment to be made is not on the comparative quality of the two records but on the admirers featured within. Radiohead's supported sounded all the less convincing of the brilliance of Thom Yorke because even though they may have a singular vision it is so vague and indecipherable, he is unwilling or unable to capture anything that makes him distinct from anyone else in his music. i am not concerned that his lyrics are vapid examinations of political subjects but that his vapidness is so impersonal. Kate Bush has a lion's heart(pardon the pun) in comparison, so willing to be ugly in the pursuit of beauty. Maybe I should have been the age that I am now in the 1970s and in England and close to the sea. Current track is I Love You, Sleepyhead. As impersonal as a Thom Yorke track but because I don't have any expectations of profundity it registers as exquisite rather than tedious. So so lovely, truly. Last track then. A short track. Pj Harvey-esque, a hint at future endeavors? Indeterminate poetic couplets, next to the last page of Kristen Hersh's The Letter.

New Kate Bush in November:) My birthday month.

I lied. Tomorrow. I finished a huge project at work today. I am suddenly weightless and I am smitten with the aroma of cleaning solvent.

Update: and then I was somewhat ill.

More regular posts beginning tomorrow. Julia Holter album is stunning.

The Heart Strings album is the best album of the year. If you disagree then you are sadly uninformed. I've been meeting vulgar people recently. Am I alone in my decorous ways?

The Drums Portamento. The Drums are really pretty great. I know...I can't even convince myself. But they are, really. They are certainly not cool. They exude earnestness. They seem manufactured, perfect haircuts, sharp clothes, contrived controversy??? If in the future someone came out and proclaimed that they had written all of the songs for the Drums but that he was forced to toil like David Cameron's treadle pump boy, impecunious and in obscurity because he didn't fit the image then well I might find that more convincing even than my own proclamation. In my last entry on the Drums I made disparaging comments about Anthony Powell. This was previous to my having read the first three volumes of Dance to the Music of Time. Now of course I want to marry Anthony Powell's worm riddled remains and name our first baby She-Evelyn. I was young, I made mistakes. Yes, the Drums debut album was only a year ago. I have aged dearly. This is the record where the singer says all of those things he meant to say on the first album. He's just not very interesting. But it is the sound that is important. "I've seen the world and there's no hell, and I believe that when we die we die". Profound. Sounds Assyrian. Now that I am planning on reading the entire collection of Will Durant's essays on civilization I can sound convincing when I compare pop song lyrics to Near East cultures. The Assyrians seem somewhat minor actually and yet a reference to their culture It makes me appear all the more obscurantist and this, by my reckoning, appears to make me all the more impressive. Of course this song may not be Assyrian at all but confident of the level of historical knowledge of my audience I will make the claim without fear of the "but I've read well and I've heard them said a hundred times, maybe less, maybe more" gotcha moment. This is not a challenge. But the typical Drums fan is the anti-me and wears product in their hair, loves Teen Nick and thinks Charlie Rose is sexy. Right? They are a boy band. I've migrated from Will Sergeant in the first entry to Will Durant. I have evolved. The song titles are very direct. The song about not having any money is called Money, there is one about not knowing how to love called I Don't Know How to Love and one about loving a person that is hard to love called Hard to Love. Time is short, he's moaning about wasting it on the lovely second track, he doesn't have time for you to misinterpret his metaphors. I had an email discussion with a stranger who was upset because I told her that her Robert Frost quote did not mean what she thought it meant. It was the pedantic Drums fan in me. She became very indignant but I thought everyone was aware that the line about "and I--I took the road less travelled" was ironic later justification of the path he chose and that the choice was the insignificant bit of the poem. But I suppose not. I imagine the Drums will have a track about The Road Less Taken on an album at some undetermined point of the future and it will be titled The Road Less Taken and because he is so desperately sincere and aboveboard he'll also misinterpret the meaning. Third track now. There are less guitars on this album. There are more synthesizers. They fired one of the guitarists. They had two, they don't have a bass player, although, there is low end on this album. There are his soporific backing vocals as well, the ones where he adopts his semi-Morrissey affectation on for the live performances on British chat shows. He has a way with a catchy tune. I mean he's basic, he probably thinks Rick Perry is a great thinker and likes RC Cola but that doesn't mean his songs can't embed themselves deep inside of your consciousness so that you are furiously trying to battle the echoes that ring through your mind at inappropriate times. This is the first single. This is Money. I spoiled the surprise by giving away what the song was about earlier. If this was David Scott he would have been more clever, a song about money would not have the word money in it, it would be Rousseau and Hayek arm wrestling on a chesterfield. But David Scott is in Scotland and they have trees and the smell of an ocean less polluted by sunlight and blue skies. Do they have eclectic trees in Scotland? I have planted several on my plot in the last few years, I try to be eclectic but this is Denver, apart from the Riparian Cottonwood trees do not exist. Trees are exotic, in and of themselves. So my White Flowering Redbud is decidedly exotic but then it is not as exotic as a contorted Redbud or a Turkish Filbert and my Prairie Fire Crabapple is semi-exotic because it is multi-stemmed but not as exotic as a Prairie Rose Crabapple. I do like my Bosnian Pine but it may not be long for this world. Tears. I will bury it in the yard and have a suitable service, it may have bean the reincarnation of Chandragupta! Next track. It is about someone he's having difficulty holding his affection for. It reminds a good deal of the first record, the second guitar being replaced by a digital bass line. There are squiggly electronics, did Flood produce this album? Perhaps one of his disciples. When Flood produces your album it is normally an indication that you have completely given up. You've pulled out the checkbook and written an absurdly large number in the box and given the rest to your drug dealer. I don't think the Drums are making that kind of money yet. Next track, maybe the best track, I Don't Know How to Love, I like the vocal treatment, very echoey/tremelo-y. There is a searing quality to his voice, stripped of nuance it just assaults the primeval brain, bypass around the cerebral cortex, and I have a physically pleasant reaction to the music. I can't help myself. They had sense enough to not be on Captured Tracks, why confuse us. Captured Tracks is one of the worst things to happen to music in a long time. I know everyone else loves them. I am wrong. I know. But it all sounds so hopelessly unambitious. I listened to the Soft Set again and it is lounge menace. Bah. I listen to the Drums and I am aware of their meaning in the greater scheme, he's a melancholy Smiths fan with his own band and he's probably an autocrat in charge of every aspect of the band's music and style and I can appreciate that. What is the Soft Set? It's tepid, it is meant to be hip and hundreds of thousands will proclaim it thus but they will be even less convincing than I am when proclaiming the genius that is the Drums but I will say it again--the Drums are gods! Sorta. If they were a tree they'd be an Autumn Blaze Maple, pretty bland, but Soft Set would be something that people would mistake for exotic but is really pretty vanilla like say a Golden Rain Tree which is really just an overgrown weed with lovely lantern seed pods that even the squirrels turn their nose up at. The last track was somewhat fabulous too. He's insistent with his drama. This track started off a bit meh but now the chorus springs to life and it's almost epic. If He Likes It Let Him Do It. Sadly, the title does not hide any deeper connotations within. This track is why they are much more popular in England than in the USA. It's a bit goth. There are probably loads of closeted Fields of the Nephillim fans that worship tracks like this, the hysterical Robert Smith-esque harmony vocals, the spindly guitar, the washed over synthesizers. It is all very grand and self-important, a bit like a 21st century Englishman born to a country whose idea of self-importance has grown as their nation has passed into absolute irrelevance. Americans will sound this quaint in 20 years. Next track. I Need A Doctor because his heart aches for love. It's silly but so were the Field Mice and you are plopping down 50 dollars for a mint copy of the Emma's House 7" aren't you? I still have mine. I'd be willing to part with it for 49 plus shipping and handling. I can't recall the last time I listened to a 7 inch record. I occasionally listen to LPs through my guitar amp. I have been somewhat remiss about taking advantage of the fact that as a homeowner I am able to play records in my basement very loudly without concern for my neighbors with glasses to their ears on the other side of paper thin fire rated walls. I could play the first Trash album very loudly this evening, followed by Palace Brothers Days in the Wake, if my neighbours heard Pushkin percolating through the foundation and through the earth disturbing the Cranberry Girdlers they'd be too moved by the Appalachian melancholy to phone the cops to report me for being a menace to the neighbourhood. I bet Soft Set plugs in his guitar or his computer and plays his music really really loud and yet his neighbors are far too sympathetic to his impotence as a musician that they offer only pity instead of outrage. This is In the Cold, not a Judas Priest cover, a soft synth ambient track, the set-up for the big finish. Last track now, How it Ended, subtle. Is this his Her Handwriting, did some lawyer swoop in and steal away his beloved? Will she reappear on the second record singing songs about how much he still loves her and how he really thinks they should give it another shot and all that he wanted while standing outside her bedroom with his guitar playing demo versions is for her to be happy even if it is not with him. But this is a nice pop song. He's a nice guy. Is he vegan? Will his eyes recede inside of his head? Will they end up on Sub Pop and will he end up dating Sarah Shannon? Questions. But the Drums are dreamy, really.

Alligator Indian seem pretty alright.

Phil Wilson God Bless Jim Kennedy. When you listen to the Beach Boys you must immediately realize that all of your life is encompassed in the futile attempt to find the human embodiment of a Beach Boys song. Or, perhaps it is just me. I have several times believed I was on the trail, blessed, but always it has turned out that the trail was false. Even better...what if I was the Beach Boys in a heart that belonged to someone else. That is highly unlikely. The Beach Boys are perfection. I could possibly pass time as a Drums song, maybe the Orange Peels or possibly the June Brides! There was a Beach Boys poll on I Love Music filled with all number of tracks that I was entirely unfamiliar with and I have discovered that each and all of them are brilliant and I am now on a mission to "borrow" all of their albums post Smily Smile. Old music is better. But nothing is greater than the Beach Boys. We mean not old music like 60s old music, apart from the Beach Boys and the Left Banke and West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band but rather music from the 1980s, the time after Vandenberg when I came alive. Phil Wilson made old music, in the 80s. Phil Wilson is still making old music, in the 00s. He's probably near 50 now. His music is not...but in the spirit of old music better, Phil Wilson is still making old music, and it is still better. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are making dreadful things for dreadful people, it yearns to be old music. It is not. But they are the children of affluence, coming along at the financial peak, the children of Clinton, devoid of passion, unimaginative characters and utterly charmless. Pains of being pure at heart, ugh, so efficient. The chords are strung together so that this seems literate. Were I to quote the lyric sheet I might be disappointed at its mundanity. It reminds a ton of Sneaky Feelings. Tarantino's next movie should be based on Positively George Street, James McEvoy as Matthew Bannister, sadly he dies because we can't bear to watch gormless James Mcevoy on screen. Emily Bronte concurs. Mark Ruffalo as the evil Chris Knox. Rose McGowan as Lesley Paris. Second track, more Sneaky Feelings, it is a bit more David Pine than Matthew Bannister. Matthew had the big personality. Phil seems more the reticent pop star. I wasn't aware of him in the 80s, at his own peak, I discovered him in the 90s. Along with the Shop Assistants and April Showers and Revolving Paint Dream. This is Found a Friend. It's marvelous, it is all truly marvelous. I made two mix cds recently for a stranger, I had to decide between warm and inviting and odd and eccentric. I went for warm and inviting. I made a mistake. Perhaps my first mistake was made when I had an epileptic seizure when someone decided they would not stand for illegally sneaking into the botanic gardens with me. I actually went to the botanic gardens later that afternoon and sat beneath an alder tree that needs to be pruned and pondered the Henry Moore statues that have long since departed. The new installation is far less impressive. Third track now, a bit of the nasal, he's probably political, less so than when he was in the trenches writing screeds for zines against the iron lady, poll taxes, coal miners' miseries, etc... Now he's against tuition fees and consumed with priggish laments because lasik is not covered by the NHS. Probably. He's always been so awfully polite. Thus he lives with Sneaky Feelings among my nostalgic reminiscences. He has a wardrobe full of splendidly tailored suits, spectacles to read the Guardian over and on the weekend he spends time with all of his friends he's known since the 80s. They are all overweight but he's superbly fit. He runs 3.4 kilometers each evening after the sun sets. These are the moments he memorializes in his songs. I could actually listen to the lyrics, but they do seem ultimately mundane. Is he married? Not probably. He works in tech support writing technical manuals for Ricoh and their Chinese subsidiaries. In weekends over the summer he attends indietracks and thinks Jyoti Mishra is a bit of a creep. Or not. He could be a real estate broker, a bank teller, special aid to the prime minister on Indian boys and their treadle pumps. I bet he's a fan of Annie Clark. I am a fan of her slender wrists, her fingers, her swan neck. but her music? Meh. i read someone compare here to Kate Bush. But there is a demon inside of Kate Bush, it has fury enough to escape and thrill the world in brief bursts of brilliance. St Vincent is two ply in comparison. it is all very polite, much like Phil, but even Phil fills a pan with burning emanations of fury much more than Annie Clark would ever be capable even while he's wearing his favorite red pullover, in Wales, on another weekend far from home with his best friend's sister who thinks he should have been married an age ago. I am jealous of this life I have constructed for Phil Wilson. My own life is apparently mirrored in the new Julian Barnes novel. I've not read it. I have recently read a review of it though. The review was concocted by a website intern. it was decidedly unimpressive. But he is interning at one of my favorite websites. He did not have to take literary license upon his existence and create a reality more in line with a beach Boys song than a Bros song. I hold no such comfort in my own reality. Because while I know a great many things I am never in a position to impress anyone with my useless mental accessories. I am in the corner with my headphones on at the St Vincent show leering. Phil Wilson has continued playing during my sojourn into the crevasses of my mind. It's The Sum Of, he is a fan of Love Dance. He invented Love Dance. He invented Sweden. This one is a bit monochromatic. his voice has aged, he's taken to camouflage to disguise its shortcomings I think. Listen to this record and then listen to the June Brides retrospective, marvel at their similarities. Is he wearing the same sharply tailored suits that he was wearing when playing private audiences with the Queen in 1987? He may. He may have been trapped in amber since 1987, the person from Cloudberry records discovered him on an archaeological expedition to find the remaining members of The Vernons. he took a bicycle pump and inflated Phil. This is Pop Song #32, he's probably written this song 93 times. In his life there are many moments that require an anthemic indiepop strummer with distant verses and singalong empty headed choruses about the circularity of life and the meaninglessness of life in general. heady stuff. I feel as if Morgan Freeman should be narrating in between tracks. is Through the Wormhole inflicting the amount of damage on respectable science that I imagine it is? Are children running to school with earrings in their ears and their hair frosted white and repeating the maddening gossip broadcast on that show? Where are you James Burke. Please, James Burke you must invade the United States of America and publicly insult Morgan Freeman and his partners on national television. "Oh yeah, time travel is possible, you just need to harness the power or multiple black holes. yeah, no big deal, I nearly did it last week while I was administering my "prescription" in my mother's basement. This is Give Me Consolation. It sounds like Phil Wilson in the 1980s as if this was a record enclosed in a time capsule and the earth worms and succulents had invaded the capsule and sucked all of the life force from the grooves. it's pretty good, it's competent, he's obviously a genius but these songs are pretty uninspiring. Will anyone hear this and demand an explanation for his silence for all of these years? Not certainly. I'd rather wait five years until the next Trash Can Sinatras is released and ignored. Strings, Celtic influences, Dexy's giddiness, I rather like this one but still his voice is neutered. has it always been neutered? I don't believe it was. The pre-chorus is brilliant and bountiful and then the chorus, his warbling is bad news man. This is why he is writing eloquent passages on making 2-sided copies from 1-sided originals with daydreams of the time that he faxed his privates to Elizabeth Price and she fainted from the vulgarity. Today I was in Boulder and I spent a short amount of time watching college students cross the road in front of me. An unimpressive lot. CU Boulder is a fine school. But it looked to be a bunch of social science majors who will leave university with massive amount of student debt and a head filled with cheetos and red bull. They will then come and interview with me and I will feel despair for the human race. Last track, a lament about how it has all been said before, it has, and better. But that's no reason to be disappointed. he's still marvelous, really, and when it is 3 degrees fahrenheit outdoors and I am traipsing alone through a darkened botanic gardens I will listen and life will seem only slightly better but that's a nice beginning, sometimes.

My Friend Wallis On Hawaiian Time. Vancouver is in Canada. I am expert on all things Canadian. Truly. Ask me a question. This is some Canadian girl. Crystal. One of the songs is called Crystal Formation, it is her journey from zygote to embryo through cleavage to fetus and her emergence as a lo-fi superstar. Which are the cool bands from Vancouver? Are there any? That would be a Canadian question. I may have lied about my expert status. First track, Sun Spots, repeating messy percussion, tinkles on a guitar, or two, whispers. I like it. Second track, more interesting than the first track. These are random doodles. It has a bit of Make Mine Music-ness to it. She's Canadian so most certainly she is a collectivist. She's a big fan of Ralph Bunche, as we all should be, this is when the UN meant something, when the United States actually had standards and could lecture other nations about the evils of colony administration and the virtue of self determination even as we colonized the far east and Puerto Rico and Polynesia. Ralph and Harry T sitting in a tree, talking bout diplomacy, first comes Guam then comes The Marshall Islands, then comes Ralph with a scolding for you. Ralph is from Detroit. I am from Detroit. He died only a few weeks after I was born. I could be the reincarnation of Ralph Bunche. I am letting down the concept of tanasukh. But then I get all of my knowledge of Arabic studies from Rodney from the Dead Milkmen's website. This track is called On a Whim, the alternate title for the collection. I am researching My Friend Wallis and they appear to be a band. There are beards. This is very disappointing. Why the preponderance of beards? I had a date this week with someone I think approves of beards very heartily. She granted me a stern proscription at the end of the night which could not hardly by mischaracterized as an allurement. So I have resumed my search for Ralph Bunche's karmic soul mate. I am not searching by my criteria alone, but by his. It makes things difficult. Crystal from My Friend Wallis seems wispy and ethereal and barely there but I discovered a photograph of her eating in Olympia, Washington, possibly at Miranda July's favorite diner, and she is eating quite a substantial lunch. Perhaps it was a staged photo, perhaps truly she exists only on the nutritive value of starlight and good vibrations. Third track, a bit of the tropicalia. Physiologic emanations, breaths...shaped into coos and whirrings and it's sensual and deightful. What do full band efforts sound like? I listened to one. It sounds a bit like Ruby Suns. It is the end of summer. I am pleased to see it pass. Summer is the loneliest time of the year because one is expected to be out and about, meeting and greeting and conquering the world and I spend it indoors reading books not about Ralph Bunche but Serge Diaghilev and Stillwell and other things that will never allow me to interject them into a decent conversation with lovely strangers. "Oh, I was just reading a book about Stillwell, funny that you should mention him...", oh but you did not. You stared out the window, into the empty street, across the way to the future site of bowling pins and fashionistas. I look much younger than my age when my hair is cut short, when it is long and when I do my impersonation of someone in My Friend Wallis and allow my facial hair room to grow I then look Arabic. The Tanasukh! Rodney! Next track, an instrumental? Over one half of the way through and there is as of yet no voice. She has an insubstantial voice, she may have Epstein Barr, perhaps she plays guitar while lying in bed incapacitated by the virus. Stuart Murdoch had Epstein Barr and it is there, in bed, that he learned how to become a rock star. He wrote songs about life sized models of the velvet Underground in clay because someone once mentioned that on Delia Smith's cooking show. We all fell for it. Then he visited my friend's house party with the other members of Belle and Sebastian and it was sex, drugs and rock and roll. Allegedly. Next track, the female Panda Bear. Panda Mother. Percussion on the underside of a laundry basket, her voice wordless, her voice multi-tracked. It doesn't sound very Canadian. One thing I am expert about is picking out the effete Canadian accent even amidst a clamorous crowd of thousands. I can pluck from the ether the dulcet tones of an les habitants and anglophones alike. My ears are dexterous. That was Rain Song, the percussion was meant to mimic thunder, I would presume. It was nice. Next track, Summer, but I've already discussed my summer lament. I will look forward instead, soon it will be autumn and soon after that Winter. I will step out into the cold and feel alive. Summer is the time of suppressed stimulation. My skin turns inside out and my nerves are shielded by melanophores that I fail to keep unexposed. I am not a big fan of the tan. I don't want rickets and I hold my left arm outside the car window as I drive IT work to avoid rickets, mainly, and also because i style my hair by driving with the windows down at the speed limit along i-25. Even in winter. This is a vague record. You can purchase it on bandcamp for 5 dollars. That might be an overreach. She could tour with My Volcano Playground. Similarly dreadful band name, similar sensibilities in creating popular music. Next track, the songs are possibly about something, it is difficult to notice. There are a great number of dreadful bands that are clearly influenced by Animal Collective, far fewer, it seems, that can trace direct lineage to Panda Bear. I would say that My Friend Wallis are huge fans of Panda Bear. We should all be fans of Panda Bear. Instead of people lining up outside of the new Ikea store here in Centennial, Colorado, four days in advance, in order to receive a new couch they should instead be lining up outside of Panda Bear's digs in Lisbon demanding he be far more prolific than he is. How is it that the Smiths recorded nearly their entire output in barely 4 years but it takes bands today years and years to record but one 9 song record. Next track, Sky Horse. Her vocals an oscillation, a wave building on itself, doppler. Christian Doppler is buried in Venice. I would like to have a catalog of famous interments. His father was a stonemason, I wonder if his tombstone is awfully impressive, I would hope so. If I had a catalog of the dead I could pay my respects in an efficient manner, mapping out a route, marking off the markers as I had visited them. Physicists and poets and mathematicians and architects only. Not pop stars, certainly not pop stars from Canada. When Neil Peart is buried there will be very many sad people. I've never been to Venice. I have been to Italy. Unimportant fact. Three or four notes, coos and whispers and moans of sensual delight. Are these the noises that are expelled in the throes of passion? I wouldn't know how to react to that. Last track, title track, a bit busier, guitars and ukuleles and the harmony of the spheres tapped into with a aluminum conduit filled with good intentions. It's dopplerish. A new genre-doppler pop, tracks that begin skeletal and slowly fill in and rise in pitch and intensity and interest. Compounded. Puns. No words. No voices, but this could be the most compounded track of them all.

Update: Of course Zumpano were from Vancouver, apologies. Ah but so were Skinny Puppy and has Vancouver ever apologized for that?

TRAILER: SOUND IT OUT - A documentary by Jeanie Finlay from Jeanie Finlay on Vimeo.

My Autumn Empire The Village Compass. Epic45 have just released their masterwork. This is one of Epic45. Which half? Unknown. The one most influenced by Antony Harding. Possibly My Autumn Empire sits behind willow trees on the edge of the July Skies estate and swoops down on dusk born drafts and steals the scraps of discarded briefs of July Skies poignancy and earnestness that waft through windows and crevices and airspaces. First track should have been born as a July Skies track, it is rarefied pastoral nostalgia inducing loveliness. The music is scenery, it is coaxed from the rocks and trees and the mycelium that acts as conduit to the exhalations of rural England and transmit it across hilly fields and tendrils of common heritage. If july Skies is Fokine then My Autumn Empire is Fokine, oh wait...which is Massine? Hood? But they are in Leeds, they mine the same collective vein of homey reminiscence but with a determinedly more futurist outlook. Brave Timbers as Nijinska? My reading habits are transparent attempts to improve my random reference ability. I've been watching ballet videos on youtube to more greatly understand my own references. The Rite of Spring is amazing, truly. Watch, become and archaeologist just the same as My Autumn Empire and July Skies, trawl the countryside in abandoned RAF sites and discover fragments of the jawbones of Gerry's blown to bits by Spitfires and Hurricanes and mount it on an obsidian plaque and lean it on a mantelpiece in a place of honour. Anglicized. Next to photographs of Antoine Langulet and the consumption of the dead, like nostalgia more powerful than the present. Second track, this one has vocals, still nostalgic and warm. I made a mix cd for a stranger recently. I made two actually. Neither contained a song from My Autumn Empire though they are certainly deserving of a place of respect on any even middling mix cd. I did include a short July Skies track. Ethel Wingfield was a hero to My Autumn Empire, surely, and by connection and inheritance Thomas the Tank Engine and Optimus Prime. This track is a repeating soft acoustic motif, double tracked whispers, tenderness verging on subtleness. So entirely lovely. If people were as lovely as this track we'd all be much happier. We'd be duller. The looters prowling the London fashion scene would instead be armed with miner's lamps and a forensic sifter and possibly tube socks pulled to their knees over Timberland footwear. They'd be nose deep into the earth, sifting the past for flint blades impaled in skull bones from the 14th century looking for the next Towton. Giggling to each other when the new issue of Archaeology on Parade arrived and the next Leakey centerfold passed in secret among the mirthful assembly. Next track, more pace, acoustic guitars, it is autumnal, it is also spring-like, it is also wintry. It is not summery. Those are profound statements. I am aware, I have my application for the Nevsky Pickwickians on the windowsill. After turning down the Algonquins, of course, St Petersburg in the fall, with My Autumn Empire and Putin shirtless hanging over the toilet. This is incidental, it's a feeling, a jubilant mood springing from good news, perhaps a new postcard with contains another photo of a test pattern from BBC circa 1966 when over the air broadcasting ended at 8PM. Next track, Woodland Theme, Wood Alcohol. Our softball season ended this evening and a retrospective video of our season would require melancholy tones and maudlin sentiments. We finished 1-11. I was the coach. He sings on this track. I would not imagine that he is a fine athlete. I see the members of Epic45 as civil servants, toiling quietly in a field office in the Midlands, sneaking off early on Friday afternoons to watch Fawlty Towers and then to count the paving stones between the pub and the spot where the descendant of Forkbeard once purchased of the Sunday issue of the Daily Mail. Profound. Next track, more ringing acoustics, nicely recorded, backwards masking, a mellifluous mix and random loveliness. The effect is like a rainstorm in an empty parking lot paved with pea gravel and leafy spurge. BBC Telford, a recreation of a television call letter ring? Is this nostalgia to children of England? is this history? Piano Magic used to make academic papers disguised as pop records but they wrote dreadful songs and used thrilling titles like Artist Rifles. Better than the International Brigade. British history seems so much more sensible than nearly every other European country. I was listening to very intelligent people discuss the French Revolution and they discussed the Tennis Court Oath and the death of Danton and the lifting of the state censorship just prior to Estates-General which made late 18th century France seem much like mid 17th Century England, and yet Cromwell turned down an invitation to become King, granted after murdering very many Irish and sawing off charles I's head. But would Robespierre have done the same? Marat? Of course not. The latin mind. It is not chronicled in these songs. These are decidedly english songs by a decidedly english man. They are soft and sweet and beautiful and I like it very much. if they were anthropology buffs and if they did truly become agitated to the point of sheer overexcitement when they were invited to the reenactment of the Battle of Prestonpans I would be delighted because while I would never lose my soul to the daily grind of a war reenactment regiment I would like to have friends that indulged in such deliciously odd endeavours in their free time. When they are not at work in the meteorology office looking through single paned windows to weathervanes installed by the first clique from the Royal Society, erected when they were not out surreptitiously collecting urine in order to obtain a purer sample of Phosphorous. Merry and lovely, an instrumental. I love the word lovely. I use it in public and it diminishes my esteem among my more masculine colleagues. It is a cross that I bear, especially now, when my hair is so very short and I feel compelled to sing The Sound of Arrows pop songs near my work desk. Branch Lines in the Snow. Did this serve as a template to the new Epic45 album? That album is amazing, truly, this not as much but it is still remarkably warm and inviting. The Eggman to their Boo Radleys. Martin Carr is dead to me now. The Gatelings. Where the Boo Radleys used to pretend that they were disembarking at the jetway in Heathrow to rapturous throngs I suppose Epic45 dreamed instead of travel by train, in antique carriages, the sort similar to those described in ghastly passages from La Bete Humaine. And the very muscular women. Flutes, lithe, graceful, a dream. The denouement has begun, a slow descent into the parts that we are all assembled from, the ether, the star dust, the assorted detritus from 4.5 billion years. Last track, finger exercises. have they visited Hull? Have they communed with Salako, installed a table in chairs on a secluded beach and netwroked via ouija board to the saints of all sovereign nostalgists. This is not modern. It is not exciting. It is just very pretty and well deserving of your time. Take it home, cuddle its grooves and feel yourself forcibly inhabited by the harmony of the spheres. Thom Yorke writes music this inconsequential and he is proclaimed a genius. He is not. My Autumn Empire is not a genius but instead of playing at the populist carnival barker they live the life of a true collectivist, poor but principled, daring but not innovative, as self interested as anyone else at the fair. Lovely electric guitar mimicking the atmosphere of a rainshower at dusk, mimicking of anything else you might hold dear to your heart and with birdsong and many other beautiful things.

Luke Sutherland in a new band called We Can Love You. 2009 is pretty new. Isn't it?

I will need to go to work in order to prevent myself from ordering more used books. Rosa Luxemburg you tantalize me! i did get a raise and was terribly excited about putting more money in my 401k until the end of the world arrived. Time to dust off Fritz Haber's plan for extracting gold from seawater as a back-up?

Welcome to the Wetherbeat Scene. This is high school in Leeds. My high school resembled this not at all. Were there bands in my high school? Yes. My classmates had well coiffured parents to purchase for them very expensive guitars and designer shoes and shag haircuts for their Volvo's rear view mirrors. Do I sound bitter? No, they played Rush and Black Sabbath and the Who at talent shows. I did not much care for my high school classmates. I attended a posh high school with the Dart children, with Dennis Deconcini's son, with other assorted famous sorts-Selma Beitner. I didn't know any of them. I wasn't in a band with any of them. Stewart Anderson would have started a band with all of them. He started one with nearly every one in Leeds. Fun fact, Richard Adams was once in Boyracer, I was completely unaware of this. Fun fact, again, Hood somehow sounded a lot like the New Zealand band Trash surely even before they were aware of New Zealand and Mr Blucher and Killing Kapitalism with Kindness. Stewart Anderson is a cowboy now. First track is by The Liddles. i don't own the book that accompanied this release so I am not sure if Stewart was in the band, the vocals bear a striking similarity but it could be a Leeds/Gedge wannabe thing in general. It's buzzy, fast, the vocals are distorted and they are urgent. It's marvelous. It could be a soundtrack to Stewart and Richard running loose in a cemetery with swords drawn and battling to the death over a copy of the latest Sha La La flexi-disc. A slashing curve through the air, a whiff of menace, a tunic turned inward and a boom box in the corner playing the House of Love's Destroy the Heart. Second track, a casual mumble along, a bit Beat Happening-ish-ness. He's having a conversation with his friends, instead of writing meaningless aphorisms in a yearbook he's written a song and put it down "on tape". It's terrific. Next track, number three, more pace, more punkish attitude, snotty vocals, incompetence, dreaded cool. Oh, it's hood, it is very Bruce Blusher, it picks up in pace as it goes along. Were they listening to Boogie Down Productions before they recorded this? Was it technical limitations that kept them from their love of hip-hop and experimentation back then? How did they come to know nearly all of the most tedious backpack rappers? Next track, this sounds a bit more serious, like when they were ripping their jean jackets they intentionally left heart shaped holes in the breast to safety pin a set list from the Shop Assistants to? This is definitely Stewart Anderson. Was he the pivot around with the world rotated in Leeds? he is a cowboy now. I've said that already. There was a heartbreaking story about his family in a local Arizona paper with Stewart and his wife and their Autistic children and their struggle to get their children to speak before the age of 5. I've never done anything worthwhile and here's Stewart who displays passion and heart and earnestness in nearly everything he has ever done and this sadness is visited upon him. The Paisley Springtime is next. Sounds like the Hood stuff. Was there competing factions in Leeds? The Hood faction and the Boyracer faction? It is Joy Division for kids. They make splendid noises with guitars and it is surprisingly well recorded for kids allegedly between the ages of 14 and 17. When I was 14 I was playing ice hockey and delivering newspapers and taking standardized tests that convinced everyone that I was special and then I spent the rest of my life convincing them otherwise. I did not have swords or passion to wear on a scabbard around my waist. Next track, a female singer, Baby Doll Lounge. A girlfriend? A cover of Primal Scream now. There are two types of people in the world, those who believe Velocity Girl is the climax of Primal Scream's career and those who do not. I sued to, but now I've become one of those other people. Can you really believe that this is better than Higher Than the Sun? But Jim Beattie means a great deal to a great many people, possibly the majority of people in Leeds. Hood, again, sounding like Trash. Trash, the band, not the commodity. Boyracer now, sounding more listenable than they were apt to have been as they matured. It's wonderful. Boyracer only made one great album and one great single. The rest, I don't like as much. It's hard to say unkind things but one doesn't need to like everything, how to decide what you truly love if you don't mind everything. Even me, the king of low standards, can stand back and in a pseudo-objective manner evaluate the Boyracer canon and find it wanting. It was about productivity. It was Robert Pollard versus Paddy McAloon. But that Boyracer that just finished was ace. Now to another Baby Doll Lounge number, more sophisticated arrangement, the girl voice, the David Gedge in the song title, the Sarah Records nod, the implied socialism. What is the Hood reaction to the riots in England? Do they approve. Their politics are always murky, they focused their energy on the sound of England, the smell of England, the leaves and sand and abandoned air strips and stale lager. The Harbour Pilots Mr Magoo now, I mentioned Trash and this does have a whiff of kiwi compilations. Xpressway records, a sympathetic access shared across a commonwealth. This would be part of the Hood sounding bits. The two factions were the more kraut-rawkin' elements and the more sugary fuzz pop action. Hood now. Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse. Inaudible voice. Their first album was released a few years after these were recorded, there wasn't a great amount of growth from then to there but since then of course their evolution has been immense. Currently they are making dreadful records on their own. One day, soon, the Adams brothers will reunite and we will be spared future Bracken and Long Declining Winter records. Sunlight will banish the shadows. Bastard Postman, mumbly nonsense. Now to another Boyracer track. Why was it that he was seemingly so concerned with melody and tenderness in these days? Were all of these songs written to impress the Wetherbeat music faculty? Did all of the bands here attend music class together, play Ave Maria on the recorder, move into the private practice rooms and trade mix tapes of the Velvet Underground and Mighty Mighty? Dream of having Amelia Fletcher as the date to the prom? This is really terrific. Better than anything on their first few albums. Apparently Stewart's fellow cowboys have had a great deal of mirth shared over his photos of him with pink hair. He is in New Mexico now. Amy Linton came from New Mexico. She used to drive to Denver for Wax Trax records, still boggles my mind, but now she's living as a man and she would probably appreciate a cowboy in Sweden with pink hair. Baby Doll Lounge again, another lovely number. I think it is Stewart and someone else. It's almost sophisticated, it's almost Carousel to Boyracer's Heavenly. It would have been even more marvelous if they wrote songs about the other bands. If the lead singer of Baby Doll Lounge was seen out with the singer from the Liddles then the singer from The Paisley Springtime could write a song about how dreadful the new Liddles song is. There could be comic books, a full length movie starring Michael Cera could be in the works. Michael Cera as Stewart Anderson. Canada on the River Aire. Another Baby Doll Lounge number, they were clearly the stars. They would have had the full page foldout in the center of the annual. Where did they go? Was Stewart in the band? This singer is very nasal and flat and wants desperately to be the new Lou Reed and can't stand Doug Yule. Who keep the archives? Were there more bands in the scene? Maybe there was the Brian Howard of the bunch, the most talented of the lot, but who posterity will never have a chance to judge because of their lack of proximity to a four track recorder? There was one band in my high school that everyone was impressed with. I looked them up on Facebook when I was searching to see how far my colleagues from high school had lapped me in the quest for life's greatest prizes and discovered that they are still playing bars in the same corner of the world. At least I have moved to Denver. At least my novel respiratory infection that has infected my spine is from the other end of the continental divide. of course, I am the end of the family line, the Denver lineage will be as barren as the infertile hypoxic soil beneath my feet. The Spires now, sounds a lot like a more primitive version of Boyracer. Was this young Stewart? I could drive to Arizona. I could stalk his ranch. I could drive the new friend that I met this week that has spent nearly 17 years in bed. She was awoke to the world anew, filled only with the sarcastic worldview of John Stewart and in spite of a lifetime beneath the sheets a pretty healthy outlook on life and probably more interaction with the world than I have when I am not forced into it by my job. But I made another new friend this week, a former literary agent who is reading my book and I admitted to people that I work with that I am writing a book, and I attended parties and was intoxicated and clever and charming and there may be hope for me. But then there was Sunday, and my respiratory affection settled in my feet and my feet settled in concrete and fear. A hood song finished. Now the Liddles, it's a bit Sea Urchins. It's a heartache/lament. Baby Doll Lounge again. Flat voiced singer. he may have gone on to Exeter university, studied urban planning, married a good looking girl who gets on well with her family and spends his time looking up his friends on Facebook seeing if they have lapped him as well. I am not unique. My pathos are not extraordinary but they leave me hollowed out. That track was not a William Shatner song. Hood Tractor now, haven't I heard this? Isn't this a rarity? I can see all of the members of Hood being big into Urban Planning, with backpacks and their ipods and large can headphones filled with the new Kanye album and filled out prescriptions to codeine in their wallets chained to their belt loops. Were they the pretentious kids? Were they listening to Radio Ethiopia and Fifty Foot Hose and did they have a mentor who worked in a Leeds record store and excoriated them when they made anything approaching melodic? A Talulah Gosh moment now. Baby Doll Lounge again. Sounds like a demo. But then these are all likely demos. But then there is this, there is Apricot crumble and apart from the lyrical conceits it sounds almost sophisticated in its recording quality. It sounds like Stewart, before he was winded by too many years of smoking, too many times he had skipped cross country practice. Spent his afternoons in the library reading William S. Burroughs and Salinger. Would he read Catcher in the Rye, reading might seem a bit too static for Stewart Anderson, he is a man of action, he might read for action, the same as John Milton, but for enjoyment? He doesn't visit the English Literary canon a great deal in his musical corpus. When he is riding horses I imagine he has an ipod on and he's listening to Joy Division and Ace Frehley's solo album and his horse is more sympathetic to the latter. The equine fever. Orchid Sunrise by the Harbour Pilots. It doesn't sound much like Sarah Records, any of this, it is clear that Gedge was the dominant influence. And Bruce Blucher, newly arrived from the future. This is a bit more motorik, dexterous drumming, a bit of a Loz from Ride fan, and some artsy guitar and monotone vocals. I like this. Maybe top 10. There are 36 tracks here. I am running out of steam. I've never been to Leeds or else I might compare the songs to the geographical signposts of the surrounding countryside. I could compare the youth of this, my generation, to today. Now instead of creating fuzzy pop bands kids burn down cities. An improvement? but you can understand why the Guardian horde would cheer on the mindless looters and rioters because they mistake nihilism for passion. In a world where everything is met with mild indignation for fear of offense causing it is nice to see primal emotion on display. This is the essence of the human experience, selfishness. I had a long discussion in Chicago with someone over the motivation for altruistic acts and my contention was they are always self motivated, that people are not moved by the greatness of the cause but by the emotional reward. This person disagreed with me and he has 19 service companies and employs over 800 people and has his personal assistant sleep in the same hotel room as he does. The Liddles are a more Smiths-y Boyracer. Was Stewart's favorite band before his favorite band was the Wedding Present the Smiths? Does that last sentence make sense? i don't think so. this track is about the existential angst of expectation. Surely being a cowboy in Arizona was never part of the equation. Surely a group with this prolific attitude towards recording had also the same industriousness when it came to recording happenings on video? But then video cameras were very expensive then. Telephones still had cords and John Major was beloved. Or not. Sympathy by the Special Guests, sounds like Boyracer, martial drumming, distorted anarcho-guitars and ethereal voices floating in the mix. Now the voice is double tracked. A deeper voice in the foreground, clever. I think maybe Stewart Anderson was the most popular boy in school. I have typed his name more than one dozen times. He deserves the acclaim, I am attempting to entrap all of his Leeds friends who are using Facebook to see if he lapped them in life's great pursuits. He has. Hood She's Caught in Sunshine, this is rather good. All of their tracks were pretty samey for the first few years. Leeds then not known for diversity. Which are the great bands from Leeds? Aye, Gang of Four, that seems obvious now. Oh and Chumbawumba. The kings. But of course towering above them all is the Ian Saints or the Pale Saints. Ian isn't a cowboy. He's in Japan. Did he go to this high school? He is probably slightly older than these kids. What did his high school recordings sound like? Was he the most popular kid in high school? Who signed his annual? Boyracer My Town. Another great Boyracer track. As curator did Stewart craft this compilation to put himself in the better light? Unlikely. Maybe he's just a genius. Maybe he's just shy about displaying it. There are a lot of Boyracer songs and most of them are not great. Each of these Boyracer songs is great. A conundrum. I am back to work tomorrow morning. I haven't been to the office in nearly two weeks. I haven't missed it. This is the beginning of my period of misery, between now and Christmas. I turn into a dreadful person, curmudgeonly, like Gedge, without the benefit of a tribute album such as this. I used to love Christmas. Another small Baby Doll Lounge song. A bit Red Sleeping Beauty. Racing acoustic guitar, the passion of the moment, the need for struggle, the age of rioting for a cause greater than self enrichment. The Liddles now with the last official track, a bit Spacemen 3? Not really, maybe, slightly. maybe more House of Love, maybe there was a photograph of Terry Bickers hanging on the wall in young Stewart Anderson's bedroom and when he left to form Levitation there was great excitement and joy and then crushing despair and ultimate defeat when Coterie and Need for Not were officially released. Why hasn't there been a Levitation resurgence? Shouldn't LTm be reissuing them any day now? Terry Bickers later rejoined House of Love, did anyone care? I'd rather see angelo Bruschini back in the Blue Aeroplanes actually. This track is a bit more ambitious. It's like the prog numbers on that greek compilation that was released a few years ago. It's like the Bilders. it's like Boyracer gone progressive. Morrissey would frown. Last track now, the hidden track, a live track, from the talent show? Sounds like at least 53 people in the audience, drums, a Run DMC cover, ah youth.

Legendary Creatures The Burgundy Demos. Woodland nymphs escaped from the motor city. if you had seen the Life Without People episode that focused on Detroit you may have noticed that they did not need to do any special effect alterations. The city is mainly empty. Soon it will return to prairie, the buffalo will roam, the timber wolves will swim across from Isle Royale, the Moose will nudge up next to the Black Bears that will move out from their marshmallow hunts in the local dump and roam the city streets overrun with cheat grass and plantain. The Legendary Creatures will fit right in, with their jug band ethic, their shuffling drumbeats and rustic organs. First track was some O' Brother Where Art Thou goodness. Second track is more, it's a bit more confessional, A bit more Patsy Cline, but it's homeward bound on the midwest that adheres with sod houses and snow fences and riparian settlements. There is one from Pas/Cal in the band. And unlike all of the other Pas/Cal offshoots this is marvelous. It's intimate, her voice sounding newly arrived from 1953 and the music minted on wax cylinders and played on analog tubes and analog wash basins and digital dreams where the city has reverted to rural splendifolia. Lovely. Third track. It is the bass player from Pas/Cal that left before the Pas/Cal album came out. perhaps he was their final filter. perhaps it was Nathan Burgundy who would stand athwart the mixing board and yell stop when Casimer Pas/Cal thought let me just add 19 more tracks of guitar and disastrously annoying vocals over top of this. He might be the Tim Tebow of Pas/Cal beatified by exclusion. Until he plays a single down/note he will forever be the hero. Third track has a male voice. I don't know which male voice. It's soft, it's gentle, literate, considerate. her voice is the loveliest of the pair and she is prominent on the backing track but I don't mind his voice, he could be nice for a track or two on the debut album. But let's not overpraise him just in case. I really love this set. Last track, opening with some expansive organ, Mo Tucker'd out bass drum, her dreamy voice, rustic americana as played through a His Name is Alive filter. Why don't more bands from Detroit acknowledge the debt owed to Warren Defever and Karin Oliver? Unknown. These people probably have spent many hours in the Noise Camp. Is Warn a dreadful host? I've ben to Noise Camp. It is a difficult navigation to winnow through the popular front, the terrain of like minded homes with their red brick exteriors and inadequate dream lives until you reach the land where the Dirt Eaters came to roost, where Love's A Fish Eye was born, where Lovetta Pippin once stood tall. So very tall. But the Legendary Creatures don't sound like His Name is Alive, perhaps Tarnation(who were once produced by Warn) with a mind to the bloodline of colts and fillies. Horses are important.

Update: Well, of course, there is an album available, already.

Update: Unknowingly prescient as the "album" versions sound very much more His Name is Alive'ish. Not sure is this is for the better, they have lost a bit of a foggy gloom of the demos.

Update: Just two new tracks on the "album".

Update: Warn co-wrote two of the tracks. The two new songs are fantastic.

Update: Warn will hold the land in grady steam.