Azure Blue Rule of Thirds. I am watching youtubes this New Year. I have just discovered a "documentary" on the Auckland music scene from 1983 and a very young Russell Crowe with mudflap has just appeared on screen and apparently he was someone or had something to do with alternative music in Auckland in the early 1980s. Delightful. Apparently this is when the Dance Exponents were meant to conquer the world. They did not. Azure Blue's friends do not harbour such ambitions. I wouldn't imagine. This is synthpop. This, the fella from Irene. We miss Irene. We miss Corduroy UTD. We miss all of the more earnest young Swedish bands more than we will miss the Radio Dept when they appear on/in documentaries praising all things Gothenburg that you missed the first time around. If there was a documentary about the local music scene from my own days of teenage rebellion I will be absent. I was there. I watched the shows, I taped a cellophane K to the front of my shirt and fell for girls who complimented me on my purchase of Long Fin Killie records and the like but I was as inscrutable then as I am now. First track, Fingers, decent, loads of Sk-1 presets, his nice voice, earnestness, can you be an earnest synthpop artist? It did not work all that successfully for the My Favorite man. Alister Fitchett might approve. I have also been watching youtubes of feverfew performances. My namesake, smiling in the studio, very sad, to die when people love you. If I were to plunge several stories to my doom it would not be as sad. My mortgage banker might be disappointed. Second track, Catcher in the Rye, not sure what the chorus has to do with anything. Is it meant to convey he's sensitive and cliche'? I read The Catcher in the Rye when I was in high school. It never meant as much to me as the Great Brain did. But it is a cultural touchstone, it is wise to name your song Catcher in the Rye, perhaps Azure Blue has a sophisticated business plan for his new venture. Irene were only minimally successful after all. I loved them. You were indifferent. Perhaps instead he should have played slowed down, dramatic covers of classic indie songs and sold them to companies producing holiday advertisements. I could watch it on Youtube. Third track. More rudimentary synthesizer. I nominated this on the I Love Music best albums of the year. I am not sure I should have. I will be tempted to vote for dreary things over this, do people really love Atlas Sound and King of Limbs and that screechy person Tune-Yards? She sounds as if she grew up listening to the same records as all of my favorite bands on Too Pure but then she was in a car accident and airbags deployed and it was serious and there was a coma and she woke up and made this. Would Too Pure have realized her dreadfulness in 1994? Possibly not. White girls being edgy and obtuse is the new thing. Will there be bands doing occupy tours in 2012? Have there already been? A guitar, an ipad and really nice boots. The symbols of poverty! Fourth track, a bit dramatic, his voice further in the mix, more scientific. Is he an avid follower of the development of synthesizer in popular music? It doesn't seem so. This sounds like a Small Factory side project circa 1996. Mediocre. It is on Matinee. Is Matinee still the taste maker in indiepop music? They held that position shortly. But the state of indiepop is one of turmoil at the moment, I am not certain that is a title anyone wishes to hold. There is Allo Darling, there is the Heart Strings, and then there is this. It might have been lovely with a guitar instead of a keyboard. I am no Luddite but he isn't a synthpop person. He's the guy with a scarf, a striped shirt and a tattered copy of Folksinger's Guitar Guide. Isn't he? I mean this all sounds serviceable but sometimes synthpop is a cheat, it seems easy to happen upon a lovely wash of dreaminess but it wears thin after a few moments especially if the voice is melded with the landscape so that it is only sound, the story is removed, the narrative turns cold and uneventful. Case in point, this song, the drum pattern used in 3 million and one Freezepop songs, a voice mixed low into the mix and a two note chord on the keyboard. It doesn't mean a thing to anyone in the world. Feverfew mean more to me as a voyeur staring 20 years into the past with a young woman with crisps, reel-to-reel tape decks and Paul Stewart with a dreamy haircut and all of this potential clinging to him like an aura of stately elegance. This is the sound of underachieving. The meme of 2011. The world is being run by underachievers with ecstatically elevated levels of self-esteem. Isn't it? Will people love this record? There is not anything to latch onto. It rushes past in a blur, the individual components seem not differentiated from the whirr of the whole, contrast this with Sound of Arrows. Certainly Sound of Arrows had a more munificent budgetary master but they seem to have corralled their ambition with their heart and created a stereoscopic, technicolor landscape to become lost in whereas this record is sterile and icy and remote even though it is tiny in comparison and should, by all measures, be easier to wrap your arms around. Should you wrap your arms about this record I fear emotional disappointment. The Shore now, prettiness, it seems melodramatic and heartfelt but the words are smudged, the emotions muted, the humanity dressed down. It seems a very long album. Does Matinee fund these recordings? This person has a pedigree so it seems he would easily be able to discover financing in all sorts of unexpected places but I can't imagine Matinee having given up his occupation as urban planner is capable of funding recordings even of this rustic, homemade sort. Can you get synthesizer modules on your macbook that are more interesting than this? Or do you have to fully commit, buy loads of programming manuals, excise superfluous consonants and write your own code. Two Hearts. More synth wash as foundation, shifting sands, too much noise, coy effects repeated every measure, lifeless backing vocals, meaninglessness piled upon meaninglessness. Oh dear this is decidedly negative and rude, it has, just now, become more interesting, he's previously excitable but here he has been neutered. I am in good spirits, truly. I was intending to write a lovely piece on this but this is the risk when you engage in a bit of automatic writing. You could write samples lifted from the back side of bran flake cereal boxes. last track, a bit more space, oxygen has returned to the mix, but it still isn't wonderful, dreary mostly, Russell Crowe would feel let down, absolutely. 2011, sigh.