I have only just discovered the Sarah Kirkland Snider record on my ipod that is absolutely wonderful. More later.

Update: Above I linked to, well I never link to, Fire Escape Talking. I don't link because I am worried that I might offend someone although I don't think I've said an unkind word about them. They aren't one of the twee. Well I am always somewhat perplexed over their obsession with the Puddle but then that is not an uncommon affliction. Everyone in New Zealand seemingly has a story about some legendary Puddle show way back when. I saw the Puddle play. Lesley Paris played drums. It was pretty good. Then I saw George and his retinue in a McDonalds later in the week. I am not sure what he ordered. But I imagine it, the Puddle devotion, is the same strain of malady that causes some to champion East Village or to proclaim 'eh, it's ok, but you should have heard the demos'. Nothing to do with Sarah Kirkland Snider. She's labeled a composer. This is classical music or else how to explain it being named classical record of the year by someone important. It's not really a classical record is it? It sounds like a load of pop songs. A lovely load. It sounds like an Ian Masters record really. Surely this record took hundreds of fresh faces and dextrous fingers and reams of staff paper. Ian did his things on a computer. The singer is female. She sounds like Ian Masters but then he was always a bit girly. This is a magnificent record, based on Homer's Odyssey, stuff to rouse the soul. Dramatic climax now, lovely voice, shards of strings, thundering percussion, drama, whispers in the night, marvelous! I recently discovered some Ian Masters tracks that I hadn't heard before. Two Sun Tears. Sounds like Esp.Summer. it is one of the great mysteries of life, the relative silence of Ian Masters over the past 16 years. He is in Japan now, a Shogun, planning his usurpation of the Hesei, perhaps as the true Pindar ready to abscond with the rightful place in place of a Rothschild. Or not. But now we have this record and aside from the singer being female we can close our eyes and easily imagine this as a sequel to Spoonfed Hybrid. Second track, static, electricity, drum machines, violins, hush hush go the vocals. I am not closely following the libretto. A poet wrote the lyrics, well yeah Homer, but a real poet rewrote Homer, not some page from the time before relevance. I don't remember her name. She could sing like Ian Masters too. Strange that she should remind me more of Ian Masters than Meriel Barham. Kuchen covering Herodotus coming soon. This sounds like a pop song, like Efterklang without being silly, pompous and exceedingly dull. I mentioned beauty forever in the Third Eye Foundation record and this record has beauty covered. I haven't seen it mentioned in Fire Escape Talking. He's on and on about Ghost Wave in his most recent post. He mentions they are from Auckland. Auckland is on the North Island and so Ghost Wave are not worth seeking out. All that matters in New Zealand is the South Island. There was Bressa Creeting Cake and once I loved them and they were from Auckland and there is the Gordons/Bailter Space from Wellington but that is about it. I am not an expert. I bet the Mint Chicks are from the North Island. Short interlude. Now pluckings. This is a bit like a This Mortal Coil record. Whispers again, woven among the plucking, the tone of vocals is so Ian Masters, when she repeats 'now that i'm awake', eerie. Is it an insult to compare a woman's voice to Ian? Ian is god. Know this. George Henderson is not a deity. He's a bit shabby. Now to a crescendo of strings and her voice soaring amidst the fluttering notes. It isn't doomy or foreboding but effervescent, lithe, graceful. It's less Van Dyke Parks on Water Wolves and more Roald Dahl, more sunshine after a brief deluge, the end of the beginning. It's a shoegazing record without the shoegazing. New York Times people reviewed it, Texture magazine named it their third most favorite record of the year and if I had been more astute a few months ago I might have added my unimpressive voice to the chorus of ecstatic praise. Is it composed well? You might ask this. I haven't any idea. Multi-tracked voices now, elegant and stirring. Her voice is a bit affectless but warm and uncommonly serene. Beautiful. As another interlude piece floats by I will admit to my longstanding Ian Masters obsession. It was a small group, a cult, no radiators or Nike shoes, it began before Hale Bopp even. Perhaps his silence is because we have done so little to coax him out of his higher plane of existence. We mere mortals can't communicate in a way that inspires his magnificence to descend to entertain the likes of us err...me. But now we have this record. it is also somewhat reminiscent of Shelleyan Orphan. Perhaps we must offer a sacrifice to please. We can take a large dinner knife and lunge it into the neck of a member of the Twees, missing all of the vital organs and primary arteries and give him fright enough to cast a spell upon this dark world and offer a portal of enlightenment to our dear lord. Or not, again. The interlude bit was gorgeous. Now to another song, violin, scrapes and whirrs, hand claps, jug bands--no no not jug bands but in that spirit. This is very Shelleyan Orphan, pretentious just the same. I was downtown this evening and it was warm and the air was accelerated through the tall buildings and it rose from underneath me and leavened my spirit and imbued me with a certain energy to come home and listen to this delightful record. I know, such ambition. If only you knew. I am trying to write a book, another book, I have an idea about the idea of human conscience being an extra terrestial parasite that arrived and through a long journey through lower buildings finally came into blossom in the human host. It isn't that interesting. I don't like science fiction. I don't read science fiction. I could claim that Homer was immune, his lineage leading through John Milton, to Dietrich Bonhoeffer to me. But this is a classical record with words by a bona fide poet, not a space alien. It is classical and I just finished reading an essay that offered a dissembling on the ills of classical music in our modern world. Apparently the focus on but a handful of composers and but a handful of their pieces has made everyone bored to death. Then they should listen to this record and then to Spoonfed Hybrid. It doesn't feel like a classical record. I don't know anything about classical music. I don't know anything about music. I used to listen to the Rachels and I listen to Peter Broderick and Johan Johannson and I assume it's low brow or possibly middle brow because I am not Terry Teachout. I'd rather be moved by something closer to my heart. There are monuments to the human experience and I can revel in those accomplishments as well as the next person but I am selfish in my desire to place a pop record close to my heart, near to my soul and carry on my symbiotic existence vicariously through the grooves of a beautiful pop song. I've returned to the Rougon-Macquart. I was a pretentious unmusical youth once and decided to read Zola's great cycle and I failed, I made it through 8 volumes. I just finsihed number nine. La Bete Humaine, it would make a fine musical with the farcical violence and heavy handed examination of the human susceptibility to lust and appetites. I particularly enjoyed the amazon woman holding back a team of horses in the path of a passenger train and the carnage so dearly detailed. It's a smashing read, very different to Germinal. Sarah Kirkland Snider could enlist me to write the words to her next majestic orchestration. Now to birdsong and hushed whispers, very This Mortal Coil. Are these synthesized birdsongs? Does anyone venture forth to deepest England's moth to record the fragile spring that comes 11 minutes earlier every year? I hope so. Mostly this song is A Cappella. Lovely. Now to plucks and violins, soaring bits right from the start, dramatic voice begins, beautiful, just so beautiful. Graham Greene talked about how it is so much easier to discuss the emotions of loss of misery than it is to recall convincingly the trials of happiness because pain is selfish and happiness involves the annihilation of self. I am not happy. I am not sad. I am selfish all the same. I don't want to compromise with anyone who would hear this record and not immediately decide to devote one's life dream to creating something only 10% as marvelous and wonderful. Are these classical drums? They sound like they might have come from a John Prine record. Drummers are unimportant in the greater scheme of things. I proclaimed the death of Chapterhouse arrived when the drummer arrived one day in possession of a song and failed to keep it to himself. Andrew Sherriff has won an Emmy and suddenly the drummer want sot write a song. Ugh. This song, Calypso is stunning, has the drama of a Jack string arrangement without the soppyness of a Jack song. What did ever happen to Jack? they made that dreadful EP on Elefant, I think it was Elefant, and then another record. I lost interest. Too Pure lost interest, by then they were slaves to the Mcclusky phenomenon. What a strange phenomenon when people will listen to Future of the LEft and not declare it absolutely the worst thing they have ever heard in their entire life up until that moment. A short symphonic swell in the surf. Fizzy. Next track, vinyl record crackles, dreamist undertones, fairy tale adventurism. This is very Water Wolves, the tyranny of the deep with its hand outreached waiting for a sacrifice to the dark underlord. Now to a guitar, singing violins or violas or whatever, conventionality. Did this really win the best Classical record of the year as voted on by really important people? It's a pop record. Did they also vote for Helleborine so far back? I hope so. Baby Teeth, Bones and Bullets, I love that title, now to a splendid crescendo, strings effortlessly gliding above the aching voices, shall i compare thee to an ochre sunset? No. The Indelicates it is not. There si so little of ambition to be spread around, could it be that I am overwhelmed by the idea that this is complex, intricate and above my station? Possibly. But in this world where so much mediocrity is praised it is nice to find something to pin to the mast as truly brilliant, something to cause all who catch its gaze to weaken and buckle at the knees and to fear the wrath of greatness of Penelope. Fear the Penelope. I've been driving with this record all week, getting to know this record, in a hostile environment, my driver's side window will not roll up and when I drive to work the temperature is still in the tens and so bundled up with the invigorating morning chill to brighten my senses I have come to appreciate this record deeply up until the last track with its bells and Louise Rutkowski-isms and if there were cassette versions safely stowed away in the wall mounted cases at Record Collector I would make a sojourn to Livonia and purchase these cassettes along with the remaining copies of Pail Saint and send them to all of my imaginary friends with love and affection and it would be perfect and when the left side of my body thaws n the early afternoon The returning sensation is bathed in the sense memory of the way my being was moved by this record.