Arnaud Fleurent Didier La Reproduction. The rioting by students in France has seemingly lost its glamourous luster in recent weeks. Protesting over not being able ot retire on a government funded pension at 62 versus 60 does not rival a blood soaked campaign to rid your country of a murderous dictator I suppose. Poor french students must be soaked in collective existential angst. I keep using the word ennui and so there I refrained. I can imagine Arnaud at the barricades, pulling up the cobblestones, oh wait, Chirac paved over the cobblestones in the 70s. Can they pull up the asphalt and fling this in sympathy with the peasants of the past? The first song here is French Culture and it may concern pulling up the cobblestones to discover the beach but i am not sure. I took two years of French in high school. I took French mostly because my mother is French Canadian and I had this vision that I would return home from school and hand her my homework and she would hand it back to me in five minutes perfect and complete. But my mother can only speak French when she is speaking to her family members on the telephone and even then she is so out of practice it is more a crepuscular mix of French and English. Arnaud would be appalled. I don't quite understand those who defend specifics of their culture. Is he moaning about McDonalds or Baby Gap when he sings of the "praises" of French Culture? I don't know. I am at a severe handicap here because I am an ignorant American. Second track has ben playing a bit, so lovely, soft strings int he background, some chansons-esque guitars, his tender voice. His voice is hard to categorize, it's not as fey or effeminate as say the guy in Orwell but it isn't a pop voice the same as Fugu either. A good deal of the time he's speaking melodically. Such as in the beginning of song three. Part of the reason I don't understand defending your culture as if it is under assault from the barbarians outside the gate is the difference between being an American and a European. I imagine Arnaud strives to be identified as continuous in a tradition of french exceptionalism in the arts He's a student of the tradition, he's probably excluded a good deal of the world outside of his narrow worldview(this is all hopeless speculation, could be he's got a photo of William Peterson on his wall and thinks Jeff Foxworthy a god among men) and so he's concocted some sort of emotional algorithm and alters his position in it based on his level of mental health for any particular day. As an American I don't feel part of any cultural progression. I explained in the last entry why I feel American culture is in a dominant position in this past century and that is because it is not identifiably "American" because it is malleable and it is permeable to diverse ideas from all over the world and more importantly we don't have guardians to ensure the quality of what reaches the public. Government funded art is censorship. It isn't any different than the state compelling participation in a state religion. But somehow if the state funds the arts we are meant to think the money just organically flows to artists in need regardless of their political intent, their politcal connections and the whims of fashion. And as a privileged member of said tradition it has probably come to pass that Arnaud feels entitled, as entitled as anyone else, to the public largesse that he surely requires to continue his music career. He's brilliant. That's a certainty. But if the world did not have another Arnaud Fleurent Didier record we'd survive. It is strange how there are all of these anti-consumerism movements apace at the moment which are just reheated socialist manifesto nonsense "to each according to his needs" but we are meant to perpetually fund lavish benefits for "public servants". They are public employees. They work for a paycheck the same as the rest of us and probably for less than that. We recruit young, college educated types to our workplace and as soon as they have the opportunity they abandon us and our ruthless demands for efficiency and move onto the public payroll. The flight from risk. Anyhow, what song are we on? I'm listening to Frankie and the Heartstrings at the moment, if we are being honest, it's exciting, stupid and fun. The track playing now is Reproductions, and it's marvelous, a mid tempo piano led ballad and he's singing in a lilting tone and it's marvelous. I said that. Who to compare him to? When he was more prone to flourishes of baroque overstatement it was easy to compare him to Neil Hannon. The french Neil Hannon. What an insult! I imagine this is more complex than a Divine Comedy record, musically speaking. Is it as witty and charming? Unknown. Doubtful. He once recorded Dominique De Villepin's rebuttal to the US's referral of Iraq for violating UN sanctions and put it to music and released it as a single, that seems more in line with someone who takes himself rather too seriously, desperately so. But part of the charm of sophisticated pop music is knowing the creator probably thinks very little of his average listener. I imagine David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke having very little patience for their listeners, especially should they deign to express their opinion in public. I've never written about those two, here is my short summing up of their entire oeuvre-eh. I bought Camofleur once and listened a few times and nothing ever came of it, I think I decided I didn't want to keep packing it when I was moving and it died a terrible death in the bottom of a community rubbish bin. Oh dear. I could have repurposed it, gone green, as a present for someone at work celebrating their 10th anniversary on the job. "Congratulations for making it this far, here's a Gastr Del Sol record for all of your troubles. Cheers!". I really love the song that is playing now. It's surely something to do with the student protests of 1968. This was before the Chirac-ian asphalt. This was when lucky Americans were allowed to have sexual intercourse with Eva Green. Oh wait. That's covered in the next track which concerns Cinema. Does Arnaud believe that french cinema is in the vanguard? Undoubtedly. I keep impugning the man but this is a magnificent record. I am just exercising my xenophobic muscles. Not really. I am keen on French music and French Film and French Food. I am less keen on their politics or their societal covenants. I am not listening to the words. One of the joys of listening to music composed in a language I do not understand is that I can fill in my own plot based on the atmosphere of the song. Je Vais Au Cinema which I actually know the translation of "I go to the cinema" seems celebratory and cheerful and he could be singing about Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron or Emmanuelle Beart or Sylvia Kristel, who knows, he seems to be charmed by whatever. Next track, more of the brooding version of himself, it starts minimally with his speaking/singing and then a layering of choral vocals and then into a charming vignette type number where he's surely recalling some traumatic emotional event that has left him scarred for life but he's working it out in some sort of caustic catharsis in pop song. Surely. The song has ebbs and flows like a pop tide that tugs and pushes and girdles and exclaims all within a few bars. The backing vocals have returned but the "chorus" is gentle and rolling, like a spring through a idyllic french countryside. The tension has been relieved, it's a frolic through a tulip garden at the moment but slowly the steam builds to critical. End. Stunning. The bad thing is that he can probably understand English and so he will be doubly exercised by my ignorance. I apologize. Next track is My Space Oddity, another mid-tempo Piano led number. Whatever happened to Ema Derton? He released that split record with some Notre Dame/Arnaud songs and some Ema Derton songs and then nothing. Did Emilie Renaudat reveal that she voted for Sarkozy in the last election? Sacre Bleu. I can cliche. This one is wordy and dextrous, a bit Pearlfishers mid-tempo ballad. I would love to see a David Scott/Arnaud collaboration, it could be some dreadful exposition on collectivist politics. Has David worked that out of his system now? Eco Schools was an amazing track turned silly by the words. I suppose part of his boyish appeal lies at least party in the unformed political innocence. Ha, look at how condescending I am. I am part French-Canadian after all. They could write a track excoriating Scott Walker and his similarities to Adolf Hitler. It would be a laugh but possibly sumptuous and beautiful. Current track is a gorgeous piano ballad, piano leads most of these tracks, his voice is multi-tracked and impressively amplified in moments that are necessary to create pop singer drama. Now a avant garde moment of discordant fills and the piano melody underneath. It is all so lovely. I think this is better than the first solo record and on par with his Notre Dame records. Everything has fallen away but the piano and his voice, sigh. How is it that he is relegated to obscurity while disposable fluff such as Phoenix is loved and admired? But then Phoenix fit nicely in the pantheon of indiepop relics that are championed by the strangest sorts of people. Like when Pitchfork and their types went agog over 69 Love songs or Summer Hymns or The Microphones when none of those records, well Magnetic Fields are in a different category altogether but funny that every record since has been panned even the last which is amazing and wonderful, but then Summer Hymns and the Microphones are hardly seminal indiepop records and yet they have the seal of approval affixed that allows them to elude the derision offered for most indiepop music in certain quarters. Granted, the majority of indiepop music is a disaster and probably doesn't receive as much vitriol and denigration as it deserves but there are better things to establish the brand to the greater public and it is frustrating. Only slightly. Not actually. Last track, a soft acoustic ballad with delicate strings in the background now, this could have started life as an Ema Derton song. Again so many words. Must be a lot on his mind, pour my soul into the verses and let the world wash away all of my sins. Will this end up in the vault where all of the most precious bits of french culture are stored for protection from the coming holocaust? Possibly. It's wonderful. Dear nuclear armageddon progenitors, please do not bomb this record. A Recorder!

I've decided--the first Bows album is better than the second. I didn't always think it so. Important. I have an entry on Devotchka done but a lot of it is about my dismay over people who propose on the jumbotron at baseball games. I am not sure it is an issue that will intrigue the average reader. Can you express, metaphorically, 'flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone' next to the guy shoveling nachos?

Oh...Charlie B Backpackers has been mostly destroyed in the Christchurch earthquake. I stayed there once. The pictures are heartbreaking.

Devotchka 100 Lovers. Let us not mumble. They gathered together at the Blue Bonnet, gathered their plastic lawn furniture around in a semi-circle and decided to make a pop record that eschewed slurred speech. I am not allowed within the inner sanctum of Devotchka even though we do share the same city. Amazingly there is room enough in our quaint metropolis to contain the media clouds of the both of us without a great amount of interaction between us. This is a record for grand statements, for momentous occasions, for those sad souls who would ambush the love of their life at a ball game with a marriage proposal. I can imagine a young man playing the first track on a tinny speakered boombox back at the hot dog stand while his girlfriend's mug is larger than life on the jumbotron. He could be a hacker and hack into the stadium sound system and play Devotchka for everyone. I suppose it is the thrill of knowing absolutely, one direction or the other, how someone feels about you. But then you do not. Not really. I wonder if there are still manners enough in this world for someone to say "yes" but then quietly on the light rail ride home declare that they had only answered affirmatively because they didn't want to make a fool of someone in public. But is there that sense of decorum that exists in our world any longer? The idea of thinking of someone else before you think of yourself. It is dead. This is a miserable entry. I am feeling quite chipper. I've decided I really do like my house and if I have to, in the future, not ever leave this place again I might be amenable to said situation. I need more trees however. I can not be inspired by looking out at the Tree of Heaven(ailanthus for pedants) in the corner and notice the butchery completed by Xcel energy and feel compelled to change the world with my pen. When I ask someone to marry me I will do it in welsh, it will be to a stranger, she'll be wearing ear buds and think I am plain. But then I don't have any moments that would feel right being soundtracked by music this epic. Epic seeming? It's big. Big for a Devotchka record. Not 30 Seconds to Mars big. His voice is heroic. If I did have moments that required monuments to be constructed in order to document I might come back later with an eraser and erase all signs that I had ever disturbed the aether in any noticeable way. Not many people are aware of my existence when I leave a room. I carry everything with me, in a tiny pouch, held close, zip locked. When I play this record very loudly on my ride home I sing loudly as well. I open my zip locking pouch and scream my heart felt sentiments within. I am saving them for a time later when I can express them into the void. It befits my status as the most anonymous person in Denver, Colorado. Is this my narcissistic moment? Undoubtedly. How wonderful to live in a perpetual journey from one memorable moment to the next. I wrote a book. I told one person. Actually, I told two persons. One I have since decided to never speak with again, not for any reason at all, and the other I haven't spoken to since, not necessarily by choice but she had 4 other men to meet that week. I could have sung '4 men'. I could have melted her heart. A gay love song. But it's a big number too. My heart is small. Third track now. The pop song. I heard this on the "world class rock" station. If they had any sense they would be playing all of the tracks from this album. But there are John Mayer songs to be played and John Mayer collaborations to be played and then Eric Clapton. He shouts the verse. It's odd. It's marvelous. And now the chorus which reveals the album title among the other words and it's marvelous. There isn't a great amount of space on this record. There wasn't much on the last one. But they have muscled up. He's a film composer now. He's Jerome Kern? Bernard Herrmann? Korngold? Maybe. I read something that said that because he writes music for movies now that Devotchka's records are now cinematic. They've always been desperately visual. It's passion. When he sings he carves out a vision in the shadows, it's clear to anyone with a soul. My soul is partially erased and very small. Next track, jaunty baroque-ish opening, is it baroque? here's me trying to be erudite. I don't know anything about music. handclaps, violins, accordions and now bass and his voice, lovely. So incredibly lovely. Is this the best Devotchka record? Hmmm...they have abandoned their oddness, mostly. The odd moments pop up as singularities within these dramatic portraits of their worldly existence since they first met Greg Kinnear. How come there are two such romantic and stirring vocalists in Denver as John Grant and Nick Urata and neither really has attained the level of god among men anywhere outside of their small coterie of sycophants and handlers? Why? The world celebrates mediocrity these days. Look at our President, look at our Carmelo, look at our Johnathan Franzen. He's a much more accomplished writer than I am. But then so are you. But he's really boring and there isn't anything in his new novel that surprised me. I have recently finished Cloud Atlas as well and while there is some thrilling moments within their givens are so obvious. It is a given that David Mitchell is going to use a lame analogy to the holocaust when discussing clones and their demise. Or it was just obvious to me. Now to my favorite track on the album, The Man From San Sebastian. This is one that would have been weird. Back in pre-Hollywood Devotchka, back when they were odd. Now, this is merely thrilling. Oh and there was an interlude, just before this. There could be a hip new western composed while listening to this. How many hip new westerns are being filmed in the wake of the success of True Grit? Justin Bieber and Sam RIley(he's 17 don't you know) in a remake of Young Guns? Awesome. This will be on the soundtrack, but remixed, with a vocoder and a Snoop Dogg cameo in the video. There is tremolo, his gliding affecting voice, accordion, the old Devotchka standbys and it is marvelous. Really really really marvelous. I love the slight pause, the build-up, the payoff with the sinister space cowboy guitar riff just after the accordion riff and the express reason of this song being sonic pleasure. That's a pretty standard record reviewer type of thing to say. This is the one to crank in the car when you are getting off of the turnpike at Pecos driving past the Bodega and the Chinese restaurant that was once a car hop station. Then back to the uplifting folk on the next track with whistles and acoustic guitars and tambourines. A sequel to the title track? Really they should be composing music for all of the new westerns that will come soon. But then there haven't Ben any swashbuckling seafaring adventures in the wake of Far Side of the World, oh, a pun. I loved that movie. Perhaps I loved the ideas expressed within more than the movie even. The romantic notion of always trying to better oneself through achievement both personal and outward. The Captain and Ship's Doctor with their impromptu musical flutterings, the duty to country, the pursuit of knowledge, all very heroic and it would sound perfect coming from Nick Urata's mouth. his lyrics are alright, it is heart felt sentiments wrapped in a seductive package. I could write lyrics for Devotchka songs because it is hardly John Milton is it. But we don't require John Milton to have our heart carried above the uncaring masses. Devotchka normally sells out when they play here. I think. It is similar to how The Tragically Hip could somehow fill 20,000 seat arenas in Detroit but only 800 seat clubs everywhere else. Right? The Tragically Hip were never a national phenomenon. Right? In Detroit we were held hostage to CanCon on the alternateen station and because it was desperately important for Canadians to hear mediocre indie rawk made by authentically Canadian indie rawkers we were sometimes served up the Tragically Hip in overdose, Alanis Morrissette was alternative and the Gandharvas First Day of Spring was on the radio nearly every day for a decade. CanCon has done a great deal to advance the state of Canadian Culture, I am sure. But why is this in the purview of Government and do they do audits of records to insure that it is sufficiently Canadian and apart from almost always being mediocre what is so distinctively Canadian about Canadian indie rawk? Devotchka could be Canadian. I could be labouring under some strange misapprehension. They could owe all of their success to Chretien's culture minister. Who knows. But it seems that a culture that needs protection from a bureaucrat is one that is already terminal. This is the vibrancy of American culture and all of itinerate degeneracy in that it absorbs everything and creates something out of the seeming state of being spoiled for choice. But this is the wonder. The Gandharvas can release their godawful records here and we can ignore them and this is no great crime, they are horrid and deserve their fate, but then the Arcade Fire can come along and in spite of their dreary dreadfulness they too can win a grammy. Ah, but their singer is an American and they've only just been cleared to play the Fete Nationale. I am certain some talented bureaucrat with a guaranteed pension tied to the Hibernia project agonized for months over the decision to allow Arcade Fire to sing in English. Think of the children. Another Devotchka song is playing, another of the sweeping ballads with the thrilling production, the flamenco guitar, the dramatic vocals, the strings, ahh...we can become accustomed to luxury so easily. Will we ever be able to return o the days of QUeen of the Surface Streets? Probably. I sometimes think that I miss the spaces, the coldness that infected Dearly Departed the biblical passages that informed the hollowness. This one is called Ruthless. Very nice. Of course the Gandharvas are named after the protector of Soma. Does Jean Chretien know that his government is advocating the spirits of the air and essence of everything and thus endowing Hinduism with the government seal? Probably. Jean was probably a fan, he had probably first reached over on the night table for his Gandharvas cd to clobber Andre Dallaire with but after a fiery admonition from Aline decided instead to hide under the bed while his wife slammed the door and called the cops. Another spicy track, horns, insistent voices, pace, drama, lovely. It is over. Last track now. Sunshine, an instrumental that has a bit of a Primal Scream Screamadelica or Vanishing Point feel to it, a slow build-up and some strings all mixed in the mid range, tinny drums played on pots and pans and just a listless emotional tone. Should this be the last track? Uncertain. It could be an audition for the next movie project. I do like the moaning violin, there is a sophisticated ennui in the track and there are sharp implements introduced as a spruik in the mix that occasionally overcome the thickness and the desert of Wally Lamb.

Watched Sunrise this evening. Stunning!

For Sunday--

Lonely Drifter Karen Fall of Spring. First song, Dis-In-Motion, a bit Karen Carpenter? Yeah. They are European. I don't think they are part of the professional indiepop scene though. Not nearly as odious as Northern Portrait. I know everyone loves Northern Portrait but to my off kilter sensitivity something seems very not right with them. This, Lonely Drifter Karen, is delightfully odd. Her voice is odd, it is not longer anything resembling Karen Carpenter but really it is a dead ringer at the start. Or not. Why do I not like the Northern Portrait? You might ask but then I know it isn't the question that anyone has asked. I imagine them having really expensive equipment, smoking girly cigarettes and wearing three piece suits while recording their albums. Suits are great. I love them. But I just imagine that these guys don't look good in suits. They seem to be the EU approved version of indiepop as if some bureaucrat from Brussels arrived at their recording sessions and gave them a manual on how to write soulless pop music. I am far too harsh. But what about Lonely Drifter Karen? I am indifferent. If Kate Bush had been born in the back seat of a Balaton and raised under a cheerless communist dictatorship and then later made a record for lonely EU bureaucrats it might sound like this. I was going to write about the Northern Portrait record but I won't. I never listen to it. Everyone else loves it, read what In Love With These Times has written about it, he's much more talented than I am. But remember this that everyone else loves Captured Tracks and we'll see in three years who is right about that one. Are these synthesized horns? I like jaunty, bouncy bits. It's ecstatic. They look northern European, not very cool. Something like people from Denver. One of the things I disapprove of Denver is there isn't anything that distinguishes people from Denver from anywhere else. Perhaps this is true of most places now with the global hegemony of mook culture. Tattoos, slang, red bull, Colbie Caillat, it's the same everywhere you go. I grew up in Detroit. That is the problem, everyone here grew up somewhere else and so this place is less defined by the people than by the geology. Second track. Gentle plucks on guitar, more whispery coos, a bit freak folk, Coco Rosie or Joanna Newsom. I glanced at a bit of biographical information for LDK and relentlessly are they compared to Joanna Newsom. No idea why. This is pop music. It isn't precious. The voice is definitely Joanna Newsom or Coco Rosie, I am unsure why I have taken umbrage at the comparison. They have received loads of mainstream press for a band I've never heard of. It is amazing how in this world we live in I can go from being entirely unaware of a band from Belgium and to an uninformed essayist on their music just a few moments later. I don't take writing on music seriously. The worst thing in the world would be to sit down with this record and make academic observations over the timbre, the production, the whatever it is that matters to music critics. Music critic must be a dreary existence, there is so much dreadful dreadful music around and people are mostly completely unaware of how awful they really are and so without inhibition they post their dreadful recordings to music "critics" all over the world and out of a sense of obligation to to the music critic guild these poor schlubs labour over three or four sentences that pronounce judgement on some dozen of months of effort. Such power. Laud-able. I am full of English Civil War puns. Well not full. But I am on my way to being an expert on the English Civil War, I have finished four books on the subject, just seven more and I qualify as expert. After I am certified as an expert I can confidently appear in the amazon reader review section and tell you what I really think of Blair Worden. Strangely I am reading, in another window, someone praising Gerrard Winstanley, He's from the same town as Richard Ashcroft. Has anything of value ever emanated from Wigan? Perhaps after I have achieved my expert status in my current discipline I will then move on to the favorite sons of Wigan. Fourth track now, more of a torch song, jazz blow, pretty nice. This isn't a fabulous record. It is why I can write so lucidly about things that have very little to do with the music because for the most part even as it is pleasant and mildly diverting it is easily cast aside as I meander down tender tangential avenues of inquiry. This is a bit Norah Jones. Is this why they have received much acclaim? Are they part of the Starbucks generation? This would not be out of place on a Starbucks playlist. IN the burrito restaurant today I heard the Smiths Please Please Let Me Get What I want. No one else in the restaurant seemed as pleased as I was by its inclusion on the soundtrack to an early dinner. Finally they've removed Animal Collective. Next track, not jazz, quirky pop. The Cardigans might have made a record like this if they hadn't married someone from Shudder to Think. I saw Shudder to Think live once. They opened for My Bloody Valentine. They didn't look like the sorts that might marry a Cardigan. The Cardigans wrote brilliant light hearted pop songs. Then they wanted to be taken seriously. So strange. What is this desire to be taken seriously and why can you only be taken seriously if you are not writing catchy pop ditties? Who wrote the serious rock star manual? This track is very nice. I am meant to be writing about serious music I suppose. My favorite record from last year was probably Sally Seltmann and it wasn't very serious but it was the record I wanted to listen to more than any other that was released. I wonder since most top records of the year lists at more important publications than this included mainly the same 50 records in different order does this mean that those records that mostly I had never even heard of were listened to more than any others? is that how the worth of a recording is measured? When the Dead C foolishly win a poll on I Love Music for favorite New Zealand record does it mean that people actually listen to the Dead C? I find that very unlikely. Is it humanly possible to endure through an entire Dead C song? the Dead C should be on Captured Tracks. Again, disclaimer, Bruce Russell is a marvelous human being, he sold me records in Dunedin. I am tiring of this album. I may delete it after I have finished not writing about it. I was thinking of including a load of nonsense about To The Lighthouse but that novel is astounding and marvelous and gorgeous(perhaps the most beautiful book I have ever read) and this album doesn't deserve to be in such elevated territory. Another track has started, my dad might like this album. I don't think I am really into this at all. Why am I writing about it? Unknown. There are beautiful things to revel in instead, there is To The Lighthouse and there is Sunrise. There is the lament for FW Murnau who died, tragically, just a few years after Sunrise was released. What masterpieces lay unmade within his heart? Surely not enough people process his loss with a longing in their heart for the genius erased from the pre-ordained continuum. Janet Gaynor is far more attractive when she does not speak. I hope that isn't rude. I've only seen her in one speaking role. Squeaky. Did Margaret Livingston have a career later on? We are on track 8, 2/3rds of the way through. A scrolling piano-led melody, her whistle vocals, blah blah blah. Gerrard Winstanley would support my having "borrowed" this record. He was a digger. Not a member of the rubbish Scottish pop band, not a member of the Aussie Infantry, but rather one of those who proclaimed that god's bounty belonged to everyone and that untilled land was free to be exploited by the common man for the common good. They don't come off as well as the Levellers in my mind. But I am a jingoistic war monger. I would fall for autocrats such as Rainsborough and Lilburne. Ninth track now, a bit odder, I like odd ones best, she is wailing the chorus into an empty conference room, there is some wailing on creaking instruments accompanying her but it is not so interesting. The new PJ Harvey album is much more interesting. I should have decided to write about that one instead. But I did not. In a new history of our own time written four hundred years in the future will Sean Fanning assume the mantle of Gerrard Winstanley of his age? Possibly. It will be written in mandarin. Another slow temptress number, a bit dull. I am still drinking so much milk. I'd rather be drinking milk than listening to this actually, we'll call it a day, I am sure it's more brilliant than a Northern Portrait record but then so was my last glass of milk.

Motion Sickness of Time Travel Seeping Through the Veil of the Unconscious. I just read an article or two about the conflict between elites as the champion of "high" culture and the undeniable yankee spirit of contempt for the elites by championing of middle brow or "low" culture. I wasn't convinced. Except of course when they discussed the fact that all best movie, best record, best book lists are nearly identical, a random reassortment of rankings is all that divides them. Well except for the ILX best records list because I haven't heard of most of the things that have appeared on it thus far. But I am not interested in indie rock or black metal. The one article seemed to champion the american ideal of "contempt for contempt", I believe that is how it was put, but I would put it down to laziness. One article was in the Guardian and the other was in Chronicle of Higher Education. One lambasted popular consumers for not challenging themselves and the other applauded the lazy for setting the critics straight. I haven't seen "The Social Network", I bet it isn't great, mostly because Jesse Eisenberg is in it and I bet he plays young billionaire as fidgety, blinking Lightning Bolt fan, the same as in all of his movies. I've only seen one other of his movies. I am making a fool of myself. I know. What has this to do with Motion Sickness of Time Travel? Nothing. I haven't seen it appear on any best of lists. I did see that Sarah Kirkland Snider appeared as third best record on Textura.org. Bravo! I have picked up loads of exciting things because of Textura.org. Things like Twine. This is the sort of record that might be praised on Textura.org. It is filled with long songs, repetitive figures and charming wordless vocals that evolve to a vaporous coo of tender thoughts. First track is soft, unobtrusive, a bit shoegazey. Second track has begun a bit more insistent on the programming, static and brutal ambience. The wordless, well there may actually be words, one would need an aural microscope in order to make them out within the mix. Words are unimportant. It has a chant-like quality, she isn't chanting but the movement in and out of the mix remind of the child sucked into a television in Poltergeist and the intermittent quality of her communication from the netherworld is duplicated nicely. I know even less about Motion Sickness of Time Travel than I did about Saturday Looks Good to Me. Did you know Betty Marie Barnes is in Sweden now? HAs she married a Swedish pop star? A swedish footballer? Is she modeling Swedish footwear? Unknown. Motion Sickness for Time Travel is one person, female, a student. This could be her dissertation on isolation the amniotic sensation created by the record is conjuring seraphic images, elusive and distant, perfect. I could make a record like this. I always type that. But really it is a repeating pleasant sound and her voice processed through eleven layers of reverb. I could do this. if I had ambition to. If I made my vocation my avocation, as Robert Frost once demanded, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. I read books for work. I read Xenophon. I have read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, what better manual for organizing a corporation and exhibiting entrepreneurial zeal could exist? This record feels like the next logical step for Cloudboy. This is the record Demarnia Lloyd would have made the next time she spent a month in a grain silo. I am almost certain of this. So really it could come disguised next Halloween as a Demarnia Lloyd solo record and we would all be convinced. It's a dream. It has been unfathomably cold today. Our workforce was shrunken considerably due to this and so I was able to play music at work at more reasonable volume levels. I did not play this. I played Kort. I played Jonny. I played the Love Language. Everything about them radiated warmth. This record sounds more like the emptiness of space, the stillness of absolute zero even as it causes my senses to flutter about because there is more going on than one would first discern. Is it a dissertation on the need for meaning in human existence? I have finished half of To The Lighthouse and I am in love. The idea of writing a book from the point of view of each of the main character's unknowable thoughts is brilliant. Perhaps I only believe this because I live nearly all of my own existence inside of my own head. I don't display and signifiers to the world at large. Am I happy? Am I sad? You would never know. Not that anyone desires to know. The inside of my head could sound a lot like this record. Now more wordless breathiness and guitars??? and ambience. The empyrean force that envelops all o the tracks here. Her next record might really be amazing. Sometimes you can sense that songwriters or sound recorders have an innate sense of likability in that they are able to create things that are instantly pleasing to the ear. The doofs on ILX would decry this as sentimentality or earnestness but this is a gorgeous listening experience. Or so I would opine. There was one point in the Chronicle of Higher Education piece that hit me between the eyes and that was the refusal of many people to say whether something is good in any larger context other than subjective experience because we lack the capacity to describe why something is good or at least why something is better than some other thing. I laughingly disparage my inadequacy when it comes to assessing music because I don't know anything about music. This is purely an emotional website. I record my emotional reactions to records and do not attempt to extrapolate those feelings into any larger sense of objective truth. I wish that most music criticism would flow from the same motivation. I am not ever convinced by anything Pitchfork writes. They lack gravitas, sure, the lead review tomorrow could be written by an 18 year old who wants to tell you about why you should vote for Olivier Besancenot in the next election for President in France while also insisting that Spoon is the greatest thing ever. Is there a more soul deadening band than Spoon? Probably. But my reaction to a Spoon record is sheer diffidence, I can't imagine having a strong opinion on them either way. and this record is hardly revolutionary, it is static and whirrs, it is not unlike the new Seefeel record in that but there is a human warmth that permeates everything even through the wires and circuits. How it is that some electronic music conveys this and some electronic music does not is probably explainable through music theory and simple deductions but the moans and dissonance coursing through my headphones at the moment seems like basic, primal emotion created the same as a painting, the same as a poem, or a soliloquy by Lily Briscoe. Are all Virginia Woolf books this brilliant? I had only read Orlando previously. I will read them all now, of this I am certain. Especially since when I tried to find more books on the Levellers I was dismayed to find that copies retailed at several hundred dollars. How will I read the Putney Debates?! Online? Ugh. Track now is Magnetism and it has morphed from a cacophony of human emotion to the gentle rumble of a warp reactor, the chiming repetition of a Frigidaire, the rapturous calls of a Gray whale. Very Nice. Second to last track now. Auto Suggestion some things more closely resembling notes in the introduction. More spare, narrower, more intimate until the gradual accumulation of momentum. Artificial birdsongs, a bird feeder with nine volt batteries attached, a garden symphony on an October morning. All of the tracks have a smoothed out simplicity, it is very Sonic Boom in that. Vocals have arrived, more ethereal still. A very long track this. Why dod some bands make exceedingly long tracks such as this and others write short pop songs? Does the nature of this sort of drone music lend itself to duration? Is it an attempt to mesmerise by the repetition of simple musical phrases over and over, the reversion back to secure notions of childhood lullaby. I don't know. That was my attempt to sound pretentious. Now rain song. The sky pouring forth, a baptism. As I said, or as I meant to say, this music fits the weather. We are very near to absolute zero at the moment. It did not reach above 0 degrees fahrenheit today. Cheers. It is on evenings such as this and when listening to beautiful records such as this that loneliness seems a less than viable option. As I worry about pipes freezing and the thin layer between life robbing congelation and my dream life I wake always alone and always plagued with melancholia. It is cold enough to freeze human blood, to turn the soul stirring animus to crystal dispassion in a moment. This music has turned my meteorological ear to poetry. Last track, more disjointed, again very Seefeel. How excited she must have ben to have finally heard a new Seefeel record. I've listened to the new Seefeel record. I prefer this record to Seefeel's new record. I prefer Succour to this record. More coos and babels. Could I make a track similar to this? Possibly. I went to graduate school and many are unaware that my first website on Geocities was a disaster on 'How to Construct a Time Machine'. I know, rather unimaginative of me to appropriate a bit of Alfred Jarry's glamour for myself. I never did get around to making a time machine or to wearing a holster with loaded pistol but I did talk a bit about shiny bicycle handles. This is an odd track to end on. I would have reversed the order placing this Ch-Vox'ian atmosphere as second to last and the previous bit of extended bliss as the record's final farewell. I wouldn't change anything else. The end. Unplug.