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?