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.

Loving and tragic.

I am terminally melancholic and sometimes the Gigi record lifts me above. Believing that you are worthless is a lonely existence. It is only the things that escape that have meaning- quips, clauses, or exhalations.