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.