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.