How have I existed these past two years entirely unaware of Mehdi Zannad's Fugue? How! It is incredible. More, soon. Fugu, fugue, perfect, perfect.

Princeton Remembrance of Things to Come. An expatiation on the concept of prettiness. We've spent a lifetime admiring Paddy M for understanding loveliness, for embracing it and documenting it throughout his life and music. Princeton are not so old. They were an indiepop band from a large city. Now they are more ambitious, enough to match their origins. This is texture. A repeating motif, layered percussion, parched falsetto and meaninglessness all in a swirl. It's pretty. Pretty is pretty. The strings grow to a gentle cacophony and then his voice, very Ruby Suns, falls into place and it's emptiness on tape. Did their fancy friends with the designer paraphernalia object to their sweetness and cause them to move their preferences to icier climes. This record is Finland or this record is Lapland. Second track, their indiepop skeletons betrayed, a looping keyboard line and some twinkly accompaniment, the drummer had a conference call. Repetition is meant to be hypnotic. There are loads of people who will make claim that their favorite Spacemen 3 record is Playing with Fire, but they lie. Or they are dull. Sure the three gospel tracks are earth shatteringly revelatory but only most especially when looking back through your best mate's Spiritualized endorsed mirrored glasses. Princeton probably own Playing with Fire. But do they understand, does anyone really, that it was a dress rehearsal for Recurring? And what have Spacemen 3 to do with this? Nothing at all. That Sonic Boom was a child of wealth is immaterial. It's something more reminiscent of a Baxendale record actually. It's still cute. I suppose they are wealthy and hang out with Nora Jane Struthers and make comment on her saddle shoe blog and they are precociously talented. This is dreamy and vague and pleasant and what it lacks in drama it makes up for in precision. But the first Princeton records were for love and falling and sharing that feeling with friends on pop tapes and this is not. This is studied isolation and the Super G. It's meant to be sophisticated and so this may disqualify my own ears. Daniel Barenboim dismissed modern music makers as people attempting communication more than music. And perhaps he is correct. A great deal of importance is placed on lyrics in popular music. Princeton's lyrics are suburban travails writ microscopic and are easily waylaid among our greater concerns. While someone will hear this record in a record store and love it immediately I can't imagine they will spin it at home except when they are alone wishing they were somewhere else. The most glorious pop music is for reveling, for choosing over going out, for the experience of pop music itself. This is for the soundtrack of being anywhere else but here. Pitchfork and real reviewers will comment on the lyrics, and they will dismiss the record because of it. Can you break out of the indiepop ghetto and move in more cultured circles with a sampler and a Casio SK-1 preset or three? Bob Wratten was not successful even with the championing of Everett True. This is the Field Mice gone house music. But this is 2012, or it was, this is 2013! We're much more savvy connoisseurs of pop music. We have Miley Cyrus and Grimes and Alice Glass to inform our sensibilities and allow us to live as adults do we need Princeton? We also have Ruby Suns and Discovery and there does seem to be a small cottage industry of bands seemingly indebted to the Beta Band and Bitmap and 64 bit graphics and vacuousness. Paddy Mcaloon spoke of strophic song construction in Uncut where the music does not change from verse to chorus and it fits storytelling and vignettes perfectly but Princeton are too young to have lived and their souls are too antiseptic fro them to have anything meanginful at all to contribute to the frontline of human emotion. It's remarkably taut and economical. Did they hint at this on the last record? No. But there is Kisses you see. There is music for Holding Teeth playing at the moment and it has achieved some sort of enchanting groove, twinkles and dazzle have made up for the vacant lead vocal. I don't mind wealthy people. Would that I possessed wealthy friends I would turn them on to this because it is music for those with means. This is for racing in European autos with formula one tuned suspension and the signs racing past your window pasted on with umlauts and leather panted models advertising the next Arling & Cameron show. It is all about layering and crescendoes and on records that attempt to achieve bliss in this manner it is about gently maneuvering air currents and sound waves and trimming wavelengths deftly to not upset the balance of the room's atmosphere and here they are most effective. Scalpels have been wielded. If Auburn Lull made dance music it might sound like this. I begin now my involuntary leg waggle. First rule of not being a real record reviewer, (1) read other reviews while you are writing an entry on the very same album. I am reading a review now that claims the first Princeton record sounded a lot like Vampire Weekend. Hmm...and then he goes on and on about how this almost sounds like Owen Pallett. It does have strings, loads and loads. Owen Pallett is a marvelous human being and his vocals in the Gigi record are sublime but he's never been one for me as a solo artist. I can appreciate his own strain of genius which is colossal but his music doesn't fit my own soul's template. This is closer. There are horns, there are mantras made into vocals, it's almost, but not quite, as if they have a copy of Screamadelica as a hidden track in the soundtrack of their conscience. Inside of their heart plays music with soul. But Bobby Gillespie really means it. if he could he'd plough the same furrows as those on the frontline at the great fast food struggles of 2013. But when people compare music to bands such as Primal Scream they often go awry or say you want to compare the Raveonettes to the Jesus and Mary Chain because they have a bit of distortion but you end up being silly with egg on your face and all down the front of your shirt because the Jesus and Mary Chain made soul music and if you are soulless and make distorted music you end up sounding like the Maryonettes or indeed the Raveonettes which is cruel but they sound wonderful and their music makes me want to move to somewhere where music hasn't yet been invented. Poor Labrador records. They lack cachet. The new Club 8 record is astonishingly lovely all the same and I can't wait for anything from Sambassadeur soon and they did once release a record or two by Sound of Arrows but the Maryonettes are really not good. Now it is a bit more fully realized, the electric keyboards sound as if they were recorded in the garage. Their garage must have diamond plate floors, ceiling fans, a hydraulic lift, maybe a microbrewery for the kids? It's also very short. Forgettable. Next track, Andre, metronomic chimes and his voice is in smoothed out indiepop mode. It's still indiepop kids that will truly understand this- no? I know indiepop kids are desperately conservative musically but this is hardly revolutionary. Princeton have invested in a sampler or seven and they looped their cool sounds the same as Chris Knox has been doing since 1981. But the voice is so very pleasant and I wonder in between the notes whether his speaking voice is so poised. What is his vocabulary like? To which side does he part his hair? These are the inspirations that come from this very "pretty" music. More strings, perfectly placed in the mix, it is impeccably assembled, and then the move back to the verse which is mechanistic and in the 17th century and discovering the clockwork mechanism of everything in life with a vital force breathed into it at the beginning but Princeton caught an ill breeze and it sounds a bit asthmatic. I love it, sure. But I have very low standards. I have vicarious ambitions for these young men, clearly they are talented and they have constructed a gorgeous record but will your younger sister trade in her roller skates for a copy? Even with the factory aping cover art? But imagine this album in 1983. It would have sounded world changing, the european chill ambiance, the minimal sentiments(very Talk Talk) and the knowing pretentiousness of perfection tuned sharply. But now the world is so very small. My recurring theme. If I want to find out everything about Princeton the band, the university, the township, the seminary, etc...it is but a few clicks away. Click once and I will load a youtube clip of them describing their favorite records growing up and not be surprised that they loved Bell Biv Devoe and that they wear v-neck sweaters in the summer time because they are thin, on second click I will discover the value of the home they grew up in, on third the summer they spent with Josh Hartnett making sailcloth, etc... I was looking for upcoming rock and roll shows here in Denver because I am a rock and roller for certain and came across the RiotFest with a who's who of 90s has beens on the bill from Blink 182 to Rocket from the Crypt and down near the bottom of the roster is listed Stars. Imagine the music of Princeton mixed with the wit of Torquil from Stars? Sublime! If only evolution could occur within the span of a lifetime, I would breed these twin boys in Princeton and their gorgeous music with the charms of Canada. I do not want to pay 89 dollars to see Stars. But Byers, Colorado is lovely if you are a paleontologist or a funny car racer, and you should all come and embrace the Colorado aummer which has only just arrived. While browsing the website for RiotFest I also noted that somehow Alternative Press magazine is involved and while, most probably, that magazine has plumbed the same depths as Spin now does it was an historically important periodical during the days when you had to write witty correspondences to record labels hoping they would throw in a lyric sheet for an Able Tasmans record, a Rodan button, or a kind word for your penmanship. And you would write because some proto-blogger in 1993 compared some band you never heard of to the Smiths because they mentioned Philip Larkin in a lyric or called some shiny new thing the new Stereolab because they bought a farfisa but never learned how to play it. Uphill both ways my friend. This track is amazing. I may have to change my mind about this record, it may, in fact, be the greatest record ever. This is Louise and it sounds new and original and daring and gorgeous and all of the things you long for in life. Is it my own eternal sunniness that soured me on this record at first? I can recall the puzzlement when first I was listening to it and now it sounds fresh and exciting and my spirits are lifted. This benighted country has a new savior and it is the twins in Princeton. We thought we were meant to have twins not so long ago but there is only one heartbeat. My wife has two heartbeats at the moment and so the layered percussion could be a wombedelic interpretation of existence. Clamouring for your Heart. It started off as a small dream of a romance and now the looping has been layered and they have these cathedralesque group vocals and its a bit mesmeric and sparkly and my involuntary dance spasms are acting up once again. This is dance music for the head. I have a friend that is a DJ for a club night here in Denver and she might play this track and be very successful or she might opt for the new Minks record instead. Coming soon - my new conversion to the charms of Captured Tracks. Second to last track, very indiepop. How do they decide to keep this track as a tiny little indiepop track, polished only slightly and the others turn into attractive dance epics? This is really very nice as well. I am convinced, this is a wonderful experience. Perhaps sound is important after all. Here the strings support the chorus and turn this from filler to endearing and hauntingly remote. His vocals have a narcoleptic quality, wan but crystalline, the same as a frosted early morning in November just after the time change when we conserve the days to save them for summertime. Last track, falsetto, he sounds constricted, it does not feel effortlessly effeminate. Twinkles, a female voice in accompaniment and an exiguous arrangement and it's very close to perfect. Spacemen in prayer.

Prefab Sprout Devil Came A'Calling. I do not often read my blogger statistics page closely. I will admit to a certain frisson when the peaks are obvious but then I notice the traffic, that it is mainly for the very short posts where I say nothing at all rather than the loquacious entries where I say just as little. Brevity is key. I should start a twitter account. There was a not clever person on I Love Music who sold a box set of his twitter reviews. He's a small business owner. Now he's editor of Spin possibly. Paul Krugman should release a box set of his music reviews. I came across an entry of his concerning the Civil Wars recently and it was much more compelling than his economics pieces. If only politicians were wise enough to believe in the fantasy of the multiplier effect and spend 100 trillion dollars per year so that we would have an economy 1.8 times that size. And we'd all own New Zealand jet packs and first editions of Moose's Honeybee with the free seven inch inside. Paul Krugman's territory on the interwebs is called Conscience of a Liberal and he's devastated by the split of the Civil Wars. I am as well. But this is not the space for cynicism. This is about the new semi-unofficial record by Prefab Sprout. We were in pause, we were waiting for a new Sally Seltmann record to recharge our depleted wells of optimism and then this album appeared. Theoretically. Will I be committing some sort of egregious breech in protocol by expressing my love for this record? I haven't yet even discussed the last lost record that came to the surface a few years ago. Paddy Mcaloon was always, in interviews, discussing the roster of records he had recorded and abandoned and we laughed and dreamed and thought he's mad, he's really laying it on thick. But then these records have arrived. late. In the shadow of detached retinas or cataracts or deafness or tinnitus or any other catalogued harrowed disability that stalk the constantly infirm, whichever. First track is Adolescence and it's marvelous. I have just read an interview with him in Uncut and he states that he alone produced this album. None of the others are able to play on the record because his ears have let him down. But have they? No. This is marvelous. How does this boyish charm remain so effervescent and glowing even in the wake of apparent darkness and misfortune? There are electronic sounds that are abounding and just twinkles of electric guitars, no real percussion, but it's marvelous. Truly and effortlessly marvelous. Digital horns now at the end and it's marvelous. Like a brilliant novelist who has lost the use of his limbs dictating the genius that he can not contain within through a voice box to the undeserving world. Why will the world persist with its ignorance in the face of this? It's amazing. I am mad, truly. But song two is playing and there is a synthetic??? harmonica now and it sounds like a rush, as if he feels time's stalk over his shoulder, through shadows attached to even the day's brightest hours. His children had to learn silence. But then the house may have been filled with The BEst JEwel Thief in the World which means their home and hearth is blessed with joy. The last record was from 1992 or 1993 and it was filled with romance and paens to his optimism and ability to find beauty in the ordinary world of the ordinary. Strangely, for demos, that record seemed more ambitious than this record. This is smaller, closer to something like Protest Songs. THird track now, Devil Came a Calling. I was listening to a lecture by Daniel Barenboim and he had the same vitality in his voice as Paddy conveys in all of these songs. He must know that there is not anyone writing songs like this these days. There is David Scott, yes, but I don't know if David Scott is as self aware as Paddy Mcaloon, as comfortable in his brand of genius. David Scott is still the shy troubadour trying to win her over with his next song more beautiful than the last. There is a new Pearlfishers album soon as well, woo! But Paddy inhabits the characters that he creates so vividly in all of his songs, he's the Lothario, the winsome lover, the story filled outsider that somehow captures a moment pure and distilled with only a quick glance. Billy now. And he sticks with the music. He doesn't comment on the larger world. Are we let down by his reticence? I don't think so. Daniel Barenboim finished his lectures with some utopian nonsense about how music can build bridges because he has a tiny orchestra filled with the caring dissidents among the blood thirsty. Music can't change the world, sorry Paddy, sorry Daniel. And there is in our world only grievances paved over, grievances still simmering but only political correctness keeps us blind to these differences as if somehow we could just listen to Tristan and Isolde with new ears and a thoughtful posture we'd awaken to a brave new world. But it will not happen. I will play Billy to my co-workers, I won't actually, and they will abuse me for my lack of masculinity and the world will continue to spin on its current axis. The artist will never slay the wicked. It is the sad truth of reality. But when the wicked rest it is these monuments of grace and beauty which allow us to have a reason to stand up against the tyranny of darkness. We will blow up buildings in Syria and eventually force Assad from power by bribery or deceit but the root cause of this current disease will not be cured and Prefab Sprout will hopefully continue to release songs as strikingly loving as Grief Built the Taj Mahal. The veil of genius is what attracts me. I have been downloading many pleasant country albums recently to share with my bride and I wouldn't label any of them genius. Certainly not. But truth is the new Leann Rimes record is really rather brilliant. It's as if she had to become a dreadful home wrecker in order to discover the darkness that resides in her soul that allows her music to become embedded with a new passion and resonance. She's justifying her treachery through her art. In a modern world we would pay artists as proxy's to speak for us in their works of creation instead of boorish empty suits like John Kerry who is so consumed with the postmodern reality of not believing anything that he can't create a single cogent thought that could convince anyone of the rightness of even the most righteous crusade. Paddy would be my diplomat in these stakes and we would be run over by a silly tinhorn dictator the next day when his jolly tales of magicians and their assistants weary of being sawed in two creep over the airways through the official channels of diplomacy. I would double Paddy's pay however and he would write an inspiring patriotic anthem about he nostalgia of childhood spent in freedom in the lap of tyranny and we would fend off the invaders and park our Specialty bicycles on the graves of the vanquished and plant flowers as a requiem. MYsterious now, amazing. It's jaunty and cheerful and fills my heart with sweetness and love. I am as happy as I have ever been. Happiness has become a habit and I don't need reminding of its joys but then there is music such as this, or Sally Seltmann or Romantics Anonymous and I realize that habits need reinforcement. A tender kiss, a tender word, a tender thought shared in a turbulent moment can hold sway even as the world seems to collapse all around us. The Dreamer. I was a dreamer. This website was my own proxy in my struggle with life. I shied away from the difficult process of living, the connectedness of the living appalled and I hid alone with my nose in a book, my head in a pop song but now the Push Kings are nearly 40 and we've realized that Michelle Williams is a dreadful actress and many of the things we had hope of have turned to dust. Once I would close my eyes and like the protagonist of this song "become the dreamer" but I want now to sleep little, to welcome our child to the miracle of life and play Prefab Sprout records for our babies and have them grow up open minded and cheerful and optimistic and libertarian. And I would like then to be Mariners fans. I think. It seems off kilter enough for a child in Denver to grow up a fan of the Seattle Mariners, well versed in their history with posters of Tom Paciorek, Julio Cruz and Floyd Bannister on their walls. And when the impossible happens and the Mariners win a World Series they will celebrate only quietly and with a spin of The List of Impossible Things. My children will love Prefab Sprout, this will be our mantra as parents. And they will believe that magnets have souls and in Pythagoras as a reasonable alternative to divinity. This is glorious. Honest. There is Graeme Downes, there is Steven Millhauser, there is Pierre Mondou and there is Paddy Mcaloon and they represent the world's greatest sins of nescience. But we few will treasure their edifice of majestic inspiration and will pass it on to the generations coming and write in uninspiring sentences of the greatness that was Prefab Sprout. "Really, you should have heard the first four songs of Steve Mcqueen, for a college student cast adrift they meant everything...and even more".