Beirut The Rip Tide. Accordion, drums, horn, amazingness. Is there a more under appreciated band than Beirut? His is the oldest soul to grace a baby fat adumbrated face in a very long time. First track- a joyful sing along, effortlessly graceful, heart rending and majestic. Big. Not quite La LLorona massive but production wise things are greatly improved in the land of former gypsies, flugelhorns and Santa Fe area codes on mobile phones. I am meeting a great number of people from Albuquerque these days but not so Santa Fe'ans. I met an Albequerquean in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and two last evening at dinner. New Mexico just doesn't have the same sense that Colorado has, it seems more authentically part of the frontier still, barely tethered to the mainland, anchors oriented in the opposite direction, the soil radioactive by leeching and stiff breezes generated from horizon fall out and anasazi voodoo. Second track-Santa Fe, bouncy, music a trifle pianola-esque, music box music in repetition, his voice elegant and distant and the words just a bit out of focus. Are they masked because he does not enjoy the sound of his voice? It is truly the loveliest thing. The lyrics are always spare but most always gentle and poignant. Most always, perhaps always, a middle section of wordless worldliness and moonshot echoes and choruses uknown. Back to the pianola. Did he retreat to his inner New Mexico to record this record? Was the journey metaphysical? He's on and on about Santa Fe at the moment. I have never been. I was invited to Wisconsin on this past weekend. My roots are in the Midwest and as such the ghosts that inhabit these songs are foreign, disassociated, jin-like, relics of a mixture of betrayal and superstition. In fact they are clearly more interesting than an exposition of the darkness that lies at the heart of Sterling Heights, MI which is where I was raised. His voice is infused with a natural melancholia and the penchant for forlorn storytelling must somehow be tied both to genetics and the environment of being isolated on an alien plot. And Beirut is married now. I have been expressing my own delight at being in love. And now I am writing in a state of nervousness. When you are a loner used to being alone, enjoying Beirut in an insular existence it becomes doubly terrifying should you be wrenched back from happiness and cast back into a life without meaning. I mean to be a better person because I mean to be the person that someone already believes me to be. It is the most exciting process I have undergone to gain confidence that comes from without and from the feelings manufactured within because of the sustenance of joy and wonder. Love is everything else, Beirut is almost...but not quite. I had not had a proper reaction to this record for a very long time, it has not been the new Beirut record for some time but I have not come to terms even now. It's pleasant and terrific and smartly produced but hmmm...first there was the astonishment of youth, next the thrill of escapism not once but twice, the idea that brass could be so expressive and absolutely all encompassing was until March of the Zapotec unknowable to the likes of us. Next track, fourth track, Goshen, now my worries haunt my heart and I want to use this forum to express my terrors only. But it is the distance, the unfamiliarity of the silences spent in between the moments when life seems effortless, when with Goshen's elegiac horn refrain as soundtrack to a confluence of joy. Joy Joy Joy. I have found it outside of this existence as a conduit between the longings of pop singers and the soil falling over my head. Four tracks, four wonderful tracks, perhaps my expectations were too far evolved. I outpaced the boy wonder. He's married now, settled, content, professional. Fifth track Payne's Bay, is it all too familiar. The rustic west, the glint caressed from the big sky at sunset. The dryness can be wearying. Desmond Morris has called humans the aquatic ape. I am coming around to becoming an adherent. A lovely coda, a female voice has joined him and the song has begun its descent into dormancy, the middle of the day when the sun as terrorist drives the sane from view of the public into darker recesses where dreams of troubadours and retracing of the steps of Barbara Tuchman occupy a young man's fancy. Sixth track-The Rip Tide, the title track. I read an interview with Beirut that appeared around the same time as this album and I was let down that though his soul is surely antiqued and weathered it is from a physiological anomaly not through the following through the rabbit hole. I wouldn't imagine he will be penning a disconsolate ode for the Marechal De Retz or a celebratory hymn for the Lucrezia that deserves better than we allow because his depth of soul is a physical trait honed from birth rather than a sentimental attachment bolted on through experience and curiosity. And so the dripping horns that close out this track are from feelings bound in nerve endings and human emotion instead of a contrived nostalgia ginned up out of books and ancient paintings appreciated more for their age than their skill. Seventh track-Vagabond. Beirut by the numbers, still magnificently elegant, his voice wounded by instinct, the music weathered and restrained, the middle eight eclectic and playful, but then there are only nine songs. Should this have made the cut? Hmm...I find it rather easy to dismiss such goodness. Perhaps it is my nervous state. I only hope to make to Alaska, in Alaska lies salvation and the filling of senses and the removal of "Are you ok?", "isn't life strange" and "could we be this happy, are we so lucky". Perhaps there needs only the plaintive strains of The Peacock on wave generated oscillations perched far above to burst thought bubbles that lead hearts astray. The heart is the domain of Beirut, to listen to such luminous constructions without even the slightest tinge of agnosticism would reveal only the shallowness of your existence. Last track, such a song, a ukulele, his stirring tones, now a piano and the story seems essential and harrowingly meaningful if only be performance. The art of performance, the inheriting of a role, the transfiguration of a mundane existence by mere proximity to this genius. What an existence we lead, by technology we flit from England by way of Australia to Finland to Sweden by way of Australia and now to Santa Fe by way of a glamourous recounting of all of the magic conjured by all of the world's greatest pop songs with ukulele and a collection of tired consonants and dreams.

Beirut on late night television. Graceful.

Jens Lekman I Know What Love Isn't. More examples of Scandinavian subset of the male on the way. Jens is old news. In fact by recent photographic evidence he appears to have transformed from Scorpio Murtlock into Kenneth Widmerpool. If only Anthony Powell had been a visual artist as well. I always have held Jens as esteemed because of his earnestness, his dreadful joke lyrics and the fact that in his lack of fear of presenting life as a technicolor adventure of woe and baleful existence he endears as a bargain priced Barry Manilow. First track was a tender piano introduction and now straight into the soft rock of Erica America, the croon, in tact, the music gentle and peaceable and the testosterone extinguished. It's a halting introduction, minimized from the widescreen pop of the last record. Is he living still in Australia? Was he imprisoned in such a desolate region by the tortures of love and the tyranny of the heart? I can't imagine Australia wrapping a loving embrace around his ephemeral frame. The life he paints is mainly pitiable. Is the life of a rock star so difficult? He's been feted for certain, even in the most pecunious indie locales. But perhaps it is that the life of a rock star is not that interesting. See Allo Darlin'. Their second record isn't a patch on the first and seemingly all that has changed is that she is beloved the world around. Perhaps there is an adjustment period when people transform their reactions from that of a friend to an admirer from afar. Distant even when a few inches away in the same room of a cold house. Turning this new form isolation into an artful discourse is perhaps more difficult than a delicate outpouring of love for your friends that supported you always when you had only a ukulele, a heart and flat footwear. Jens was always to handsome for his melancholy. Third track. Still with the restraint. A rolling piano melody, pocket sized strings, his gentle voice reflecting somber meditations rather than an epic calling forth. Perhaps he is in Sweden, perhaps this was recorded in the heart of Summer and the sunshine that is escaping from the grooves on my mp3 player is a coming to terms. He's beautiful. He's immensely talented. We will grant him absolution for his inadequacies always because of this. I wrote of Cats on Fire previously and their arc is different. They were minor figures and slowly they've accumulated a comfort level with the world's turning away from indifference. Mattias from Cats on Fire seems more firmly ensconced in his principles and integrity and mores whereas Jens is the fragile soul who will sing always for hi supper, the next track as desperate as the last for fear of love slipping through his fingers like sand. Cliche, my apologies. They are mainly non-existent here. Earlier today I was listening to Cocoanut Groove and his grasp of he cliche is tenuous at best, at least in his adopted language, but Jens shorn of his ill-timed joke lyrics sounds effortless in his pathos. Here a sampled kitchen sink drip, a piano loop, strangely acidic strings and saxophone renderings in the background. My mother would approve, surely. The last title was so lovely, She Just Don't Want to Be With You No More. Are all love songs generally written from fear? The genuine love songs, the earnest love songs, those written from the despair of waking to a dawn alone. I have half of a lifetime filled with emptiness and now I have discovered my heart's complement and I am afraid. I write about it only tenderly, too timid to caress it fully for fear of spoilage or exposure. This is a bedroom record. His first. I can imagine him sitting shyly with lights raised only slightly, his guitar on the stand in the corner and hands outreached trying to comprehend the retchings of the human experience. Love is a potent word. Sue Johnson has said as much. I am a devotee, truly. The heart leads. There was an evening, recently, spent with laps filled and arms entwined and the words came quickly and poetic and I felt proud that I was able to express all of my heart's emanations without hesitation or stammering or yammering and I meant every word. Hyperbole has been deleted. I am no longer capable. And so these past few entries have expressed mundanity while my fingers dance lithely and my soul warms it is only that the tendrils across her face have me overcome. There is an Andromeda heights tender docility, a boyish grace, more synthesized saxophones and digital whistles and flutes and fragile accompaniment on the chorus. It's utterly lovely, you will despise, I am sure. Because Jens Lekman exists outside of this world, writ boldly in skywriting letters a thousand hands high, and now there is Jens Lekman. He was always there, but there was always this cloak of panache, this edifice of dashing elan, and the beauty that caused the gentle soul to succumb. I Want a Pair of Cowboy Boots. Is he a fan of the Pearlfishers? This nostalgic recollection of life as a recreation of all of the travails of children magnified, with larger handprints left on handrails reached for after recurring stumbles. Calypso Jens has arrived on The World Moves On. While listening and while writing I have sneaked a peek at the trailer for Cloud Atlas. I once read that Cloud Atlas is the novel that Kate Bush would write should she ever put pen to paper. I disagree. The trailer looks lovely, if you are able to remove from your memory all images of Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. In my ideal world actors would retire from the screen after their debut performances. There is no shortage. We could employ the fresh faces that would better match the composite of humanity I created in my mind. Luisa Rey is not Catwoman. Bargain basement calypso, the vocals carry the cheer, the cheesy horns like a fitful rainstorm in Denver in August. This summer has been cheerless. The fires, the heat, the lunacy of murder spread across the landscape and dictates the tenor of a macabre aura infecting everything that is still and the living move tentatively through the underbrush. Jens is more necessary than ever. And Cloud Atlas. It isn't as brilliant as you hoped it would be. The writing never matches the conceit. Does it? I do not think. A film version is an audacious idea, but again, Catwoman. Argh. Is Jens now lamenting Fredrik Reinfeldt? Recently divorced Fredrik. Wants to retire at 75 Fredrik? Possibly, the title of this track is The End of the World is Bigger then Love. How very unlike Jens is that title. Love is everything, he's wrong, the world could end tomorrow and I would not be unhappy with the world, we would continue in the aether as spirals of dna remnants floating out among the flora of the cosmos destined to forever recombine and become enjoined and live happily ever after. If only Fredrik was so all powerful, then the Radio Dept might actually write an interesting political song in response, up until this point he's an enervating presence on the state of Swedish pop. Title track now, a jolly rollicking strum, innocent queries unto the nature of romance. I can answer him, I know the answer, I know what love is. "Let's get married, I'm serious...". I will choose to ignore the next line. I am in love with this album and I have been in possession of its endless charms for only a few moments. The chorus so sincere and sympathetic, he's written an album that could be mistaken for resignation but I think it's a third party transcription of life as a pop star that was once destined for greater things but somehow set agee by the fact that world has not yet been destroyed and so it is populated with people whose greatest virtue is their incurious nature and their conservative approach to living. I was one of them, I have broken free, I am high above the clouds and the last track echoes softly back to earth and if only ears were more precise and if only hearts were more resilient this hug would fell the specter of disappointment that awaits almost all of us. But we're the lucky ones, we've discovered the undiscoverable, we're happy and Jens and his genteel songs are our lovely companions.

Cats on Fire All Blackshirts to Me. I shan't comment on the title. But...I am always puzzled at the pride that collectivists hold in their own brand of enlightenment. Pardon me. I've been reading about the epicureans. Indulge me love for Will Durant for only a few sentences. But why is it that these permissive life philosophies so rarely attract more than a tiny minority? Examine the current crop of fashionable socialists, the committed, the hard core. They exist in the arts, in the academy and in labor. All areas of diminishing importance in every day life. Is this fact tied to economic theorizing? Unlikely. The masses have always been lax, it is now that the elite have turned sloth-like as well. Gore Vidal has died today. First track has been on for a bit, it's lovely. Cats on Fire are the most wonderful indiepop band around today. They have panache, style and a genuine commitment to expressing their politics and I find this admirable. They would love nothing more than to be world conquering pop stars, I suspect, though could they live with the guilt of material advantage that would arrive with such success? Second track, the lead single, My Sense of Pride, it's marvelous. There's this huge chiming lead guitar and of course the impeccable and mannerly lead voice. Lead singer resents comparisons to Morrissey. But be fair, you sound a great deal like Morrissey dear sir. It is in the richness of tone, the confidence in melancholy, the strident obeisance to fashion. This is the second mention of fashion in my entry. They dress smartly. They have an ardent pursuit of elegance and refinement and it is expressed beautifully in their music. But back to the permissive set of life philosophies, if only for an uninformed moment, but there is this pendulum in human history that appears unending. Inevitably the gifts of every generation are concentrated in a mere few and so inequality is a never ending reality, throughout history and neither Savonarola nor Winstanley or Bakunin or Marcuse will be able to halt that wheel. Will Durant himself says you can either have equality or freedom, you can not have both. The pervasive cancer of the French revolution has allowed many to live as if this dictum is untrue, by biology acquired by genetic reassortment mankind has been transformed into a perfectibility. Impossible. Third track was amazing by the way. But lead singer has a marvelous diary and he's inspiringly creative and rightly proud of his brilliant work as a pop singer and pop songwriter and he admirably refrains from Cats on Fire's lack of impact on the world at large. Is it preferable to be fanatically adored by a devoted core of tiny proportions or to be superficially appreciated by the unwashed? I am not sure. I am adored by the tiniest coterie of one, red hair, brilliant laughter and a body whose integument is composed of goodness, kindness and depth of soul with inerrant ability to make everyone in her sphere of influence to feel the saintliness of love. Cats on Fire have devoted fans. A relatively large smattering, large is comparative, surely, but they have more fans than the Receptionists had, surely, and fewer than Embrace. The first half of that statement is axiomatic, I have more fans than the Receptionists, and the second is criminal. Fifth track, After the Fact. Brilliance. It has a new whiff of the slinky. In his diary he admits to a drearily straight laced past, straight edge, ideological purity, a cloistered sense of purpose. Now he's out and about, he's above the crowd, eleven feet tall in pointed ankle highs. He's got an amazing guitar player in tow. The guitar player may have even better hair. They have astounding hair, truly. Google image search should you not believe me, cuffed jeans, smart jumpers and smooth coiffures abound. Next track, softer, but still there is new confidence in his emotional register. He's been a marvelous singer always. Now there is a tenderness that comes from respect for the art, the professionalism of repetition and the reflection of life in a liberal democracy bordering the hegemonic soviet tragedy. The Sea Within You. He's bright. He's charming. He's beautiful. Why is he not a pop colossus? Why isn't Moto Boy either? Nordic and statuesque doesn't seem to have the same cache as it once had. While recording this album they posted photographs of the spartan accommodations that housed the process. Was it lead singer's home? I've forgotten his name? No. It is Mattias. We're friends, yes, but I keep my distance for his comfort. I am in Denver and Mattias is in Finland. I sent him a link to a Giorgio Tuma track once, it was a celebration of Yuri Norstein. Mattias had just posted his own tokens of admiration for the man and I chipped in with a youtube and he thanked me for sharing such beauty. Is that not the honorable life? This should be the credo for this website gone unread, "thank you" because while I rant on and on about politics and the absurdities of collectivities I have a deep desire to impress upon the 8 people, on average, that read most of the posts on here that most everything that inspires me to incoherence deserves your love and adulation. Cats on Fire are artists. This is an inspired monument to cleverness, passion and joy. There is joy even among the tides that lap mainly melancholic. The female voice has joined the lead male voice and it's folk music and I imagine he's authentically rustic and enviably ascetic. I lead a mainly ascetic lifestyle. But love turns ones soul profligate in so many ways, outpourings of emotion and reception of life's possibilities allow a short circuiting of one's previous allegiances to stoicism and monasticism and uprightness. Pah, I am still upright but I am off to Alaska soon and desperate to make regular journeys all over the world to show off my new sense of pride in the art of living. I could label the music of Cats on Fire as a manual on that particular aesthetic, even the shabby attempts at social commentary, because they have an unerring sense of quality control and commitment to each moment they share with the world at large. Second track with the sloganeering group chorus. Idealism. An ode to Leo Jogiches? In my heart it will be a tribute to Leo's hair. Why are not all pop songs concerned with Eastern European socialist hair? It's a bit Housemartins, a trifle McCarthy. It's jolly. Next track, It's Clear Your Former Love. It's marvelous. Even in their spartan amenities they have produced a pristine sound. Here the guitar gathers momentum and his voice louche and reserved and piercing and with a clarity that is so unique in "indiepop" these days. They were a band for a fair amount of time before they were officially released. They did release demos on their websites and the like but you can tell there is an accomplishment in their craft. Here it was clearly what they decided to not include that has influenced the joy in listening. Joy. The word is pervasive in my life. In a world impecunious with this emotion it can trigger guilt. It can turn the brightest day into an evening tinged with dreams haunted by fears of departure, loss and despair as if in this existence the only constant is disappointment and the fact that unfathomable happiness has visited cannot entirely detach the forlorn sense of suspicion. A Few Empty Waves, an anthem, starts off a gentle plucking and flowers into a romantic wash of dreamy ennui. It is so Morrissey. Again why would anyone take offense at being compared to the master? I live most days lamenting the fact that it was my brother that was able to model his hair on Morrissey and not me. I was stuck with Sonic Boom's hair. Little Snack Debbie. I also lament the reality that there has never been anyone ever that has compared me to Morrissey. I was told once that I looked like George Clooney or more frightfully that I resembled the singer from Train. I am fairly certain the singer from Train is 73. Do I look so haggard? But Cats on Fire are youth. They exist in their blissful landscape, sui generis, and I suppose as a grown man it would be deflating to see your identity reduced to a postulate or addendum to another's well worn path of deteriorating successes. Also Morrissey has a very large head. Last track, tinkles and a chorus of melodicas? Accordions? Unknown, but oh so lovely. A symphony of the expression of their previously described youthfulness. The anthem of the lonely punching above their weight and carrying a message to the faithful, apathy is appropriate in the face of the destruction of the utopia you worked so sparingly to create but to which you are absolutely entitled to.