The Radio Dept Running Out of Love. This is an alleged polemic. But the problem with a political record where you can't easily discern the lyrical content is that unless the music is made with chainsaws and the samples of republican virgins screaming as they are sacrificed to Mammon it does become difficult to offer a black power salute in response especially for a record as gentle as this. Truly, it must be said that the music on offer here is just, achingly, lovely. First track Death to Fascism, Freedom to the People or Sloboda Narodu for the Plebs. Perhaps a bit of an overreach to compare modern Sweden to Croatia under the Nazis? I am reading the lyrics, it appears to besmirch the ideal of the Swedes as gracious hosts to the unwashed masses. Again, it's just gorgeous though, as they rock the world with their words they delicately caress our souls. Beauty can be subversive - bourgeois! It is not quite Delacroix. Second track is Swedish Guns. Apparently the right wing fascists are mowing down Swedes and their newly arrived guests in the streets. I wonder if they know the definition of fascist? Governments in Europe are mainly center right leaning left and center left leaning further left, it why you have a populist reaction such as the apparent rise of Marine Le Pen in France not truly a fascist really more a national socialist but she arrives because there isn't any real difference Sarkozy and Hollande, technocrats that drive to the same destination in different gears. This track, again, is stunning, all softly focused dream pop and the voice an ephemeral contrail over top of the shimmer. Third track, We Got Game, the 'occupy Frihamnen' anthem. It's odd that even as the most powerful religion of the last 100 years has been proven to be collectivism they seem to be wary of it all just crumbling away as if the edifice lacks a foundation of popular support. The Swedish consensus is a bit more healthy than the US, they believe in government control and they regularly offer it an electoral mandate for every aspect of life but at least they are willing to pay for it. This song seems to be a cry for more direct and possibly violent action because the current government is going to imprison all of his friends seemingly because they are deft with a twitter post and hold the fate of the State precarious in the shadow of their witty and voluminous Facebook ripostes. But the song is a bit of a wet noodle. Will anyone be steadied at the barricades by someone with a Bluetooth speaker and a Radio Dept song? The lyrics are impressionistic, very 21st century that, they don't represent any studied opinion just an emotional fulmination. Next track is a bit empty, a brief instrumental, perhaps to spare us from the intensity of the previous four tracks. Sarcasm tag. Next track is occupied. Normally I don't care about the lyrics on records because in most cases they are the weakest aspect of the records I listen to. The exceptions stand out because the rule is mundanity. It is much more difficult to write lyrics. Music can be as vague as this and still sound romantic and breathtaking even as we wonder if its rudimentary nature pegs us as simpletons. The words here are a bit of a jumble, hope of a common cause, a common enemy and then betrayal? He was not a fan of Reinfeldt, I am a bit not up to date on my Swedish PM's until the current occupant, a trade unionist so perhaps this track is disillusionment, him being expressed in miniature. Will there be disappointment anthems for Obama? We wonder if true reflection will be possible with the mythical nature of his regime as remembrances exist now. Again another lovely tune. There isn't a great deal of variety on these tracks. I recall when the first Radio Dept record was released on Shelflife and there was a bit more diversity, some JAMC aping, some Ride devotion, a touch of 2 bit indiepop. But now it's all beige, it's new age for aging indie kids. Here's a pop track, the Kelley Polar sort, bloodless. It's charming even with the pet allusion to Cuba. What is the European fascination with Cuba? A nation strangled for the principled stand of opposing American imperialism. But the Cuba policy was a moral stand, it contradicts all of what he is standing for here with his talk of betrayal and failing founding principles. He wishes the boogeyman did not exist. Next track, an anthem for shut-ins Can't Be Guilty. It could be an assailment of those who would sleep through the peril of this very moment. It's a bit like a Prefab Sprout track, dream a little dram of when love breaks down in my heart. These narcoleptics are missing the rallies, they are not making placards with the Mercedes symbol, they are bespoiling the air with the public consciousness with their inanity. It's another lovely pop tune. This seems to be my most poignant commentary on the record, I think it purty. Committed to the Cause, a bit of Stone Roses swagger here and more of the enervated commentary on the state of the current opposition. This I can get with, but when your state of mind mostly matches the publically consumed culture differing only in degree in your delusion over the possibility of utopia, when every bit of popular culture at least adheres to a sanitized version of your reality it is difficult to muster a fiery passion. Were fascists truly a threat he'd probably be able to reach down for a but more vitriol but as most of his worries are part of a fictitious existential crisis it's a bit vanilla and ephemeral. NPR will hail it as visionary and furious but cute seems the most appropriate adjective here. They probably consumed a great number of drugs while creating this record as it now conjures a bit of the Happy Mondays here but instead of sedatives they needed a little more vigor, a little more tiger penis and less of the hippie lettuce. New age instrumental for the ninth track, two instrumentals on a political record leaves my revolutionary heart longing. Unfocused drift off, interstellar musing samples, an Sk-1 preset drum beat and some light panting. I would have left that one off. Last track, Teach Me To Forget. A more personal lament? A plea for his partner to enjoin on him the power to live without regret. It's a bit direct and pedestrian, it's The Drugs Don't Work for a new generation. It's still gorgeous, minimal, sparse and the percussion mimics my heartbeat. I am a sucker for heartbeat percussion, we have established this long ago, is it a physical manifestation of my partisanship. I respond to the heart, to the sentiment here even if I would find the members of the band's politics eternally silly. They move me still.

The Moles Tonight's Music. I returned with an already half-written entry on Hilang Child from over a year ago and was able to complete it relatively painlessly. I feel a bit refreshed. Richard Davies is still alive. Who knew? He's been hanging out with Guided By Voices and we wonder if that is progress. I remember Telegraph on its arrival and after a lifetime in my early 20s proselytizing it turned out all wonky. I blamed it on the kids, the wife(real or mythical), the pressures of being a provider. I feel these same things most days. It doesn't affect the writing here which is uniformly poor no matter the condition of our back account. But imagine you are Chris Martin, you have been transformed, from errant introvert with a fortuitous arrangement of chords and sad puppy dog eyes peering deep through the ocean suck now into a corporation. Imagine the dozens or hundreds directly dependent on your writing a "hit". Orthodontia depends on your pen. It's pressure that may not be conducive to creating artifacts of quality. Richard has ties to the golden age. This is the period in my mind when musicians mostly did not come from upper middle class worlds that I did not inhabit. Rodney Allen was the ideal. Could Rodney Allen exist now. Oh, first track was a bit dull. Second isn't much better. It's sparse. There were rumors that it was a potential sequel to Instinct. We love Instinct. It isn't. It's Pollard-esque, ideas or riffs masquerading as songs without clever song titles. His children, real or imagined, must be fully grown now. Doubtless they are of the new breed. Surely they are accomplished and fevered but singularly unimpressive. I essentially lost my job recently, before atrophy truly struck my soul but the last bit involved the invasion of millennials into my work life. These are children with valuable skills such as slack lining, veganism, hairlessness and an impressive travel dossier. But when they speak they are dreadfully uninteresting. It has spilled over into music. Rose Elinor Dougall is cast as a genuine pop star with her new album and it's mercilessly long and insipid. Beyoncé has figured out how to monetize google news/TMZ as song and Richard Davies is scraping his guitar against a window pane and boring me senseless. Is he a born again millennial? I am the cranky old man now. I haven't any desire to remain the vigilant teen into my 40s. I don't miss Tangents. I do miss Silencer. And I do miss the Moles. This is not the Moles. I haven't heard Cosmos which is the band that he created with Robert Pollard. He used to play with Flaming Lips. They have a new record out and I am certain I never want to hear it ever. I had a desperate sense of anticipation when I became aware of this record though. Nailing Jesus to the Cross made my pious friend Andrew cry once. Instinct was 20 some minutes of madness made marvelous, there was Cardinal, the first solo record and then there was Telegraph. I also mention having an eccentricity prolapse removed in a lament of some length, well the eccentricity is back and Bob Pollard's students probably love it. Of course those kids have all likely matriculated at Ball State by now as well, probably grad students on the gender studies faculty. Oh dear we have made it to but Song 5, Needle and Thread. His voice sounds smoother, he's lost that antipodean smoker's drawl, it's all a bit Eric Matthews vocally. Is he able to play guitar? I have been listening to Rodney Allen a great deal lately. Tangents once promised a lovely bit of romance about Rodney once and disappointedly offered only a few sentences when I craved volumes. I have idealized Rodney. Are there political bands and singer/songwriters today? Slings and Arrows, still we long for music. Politics today means emotion, witness the upcoming rich white girl march following inauguration. It has ben alleged that it was white racists that did in the US with the election of Trump. But has there ben a more monochromatic coalition than the 'feel the bern' gang? Wealthy college students with an impressive array of mandarin lessons as pre-teens and negative STD tests as co-eds living dreamily in an extension of their university endowed utopias. Nothing has meaning, nothing has value except love. I imagine many of the placards on Satuday will have L-O-V-E writ bold while they castigate the rest of the citizens at large as racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes, transphobes, islamophobes, anti-immigrant fascists. L-O-V-E. And then they will post n Facebook and feel as if the world has tilted on its axis. Nothing can stop us, at least not until we must pause and attend the next demonstration. Richard Davies will likely be in attendance, nearby to Robert Pollard, certainly. Red Carpet. It's a tough sled, this. He's recycling the same riff from track to track, it's all meant to mimic the early days in the garage seemingly. Poorly recorded lends it none of the authenticity he aspires towards. The Moles were the band that synthesized all of your favorite Flying Nun bands, there was the Bats in Curdle., there was the Chills in Accidental Saint, Snapper in Wires, the Clean in Surf's Up, and yet they were Australian and they were not dreadful, miracles are real. Relief comes, three tracks in a row that do not break the 2 minute mark. It isn't horrible, it isn't wonderful, it is merely disappointing. Let us discuss this track in earnest then. K.B.O.. I will need to google the title to understand the significance of the title. It does sound like Instinct. Perhaps because it was not recorded onto 35mm film it has lost its appeal? According to Wikipedia K.B.O. could refer to the following-- Kapamilya Box Office, Kuiper Belt Object, Korean Baseball Organization, "keep buggering on", "Keep the bastards out", kabalo airport of KBO! a Serbian punk rock band. I choose Kuiper Belt Object. A lament over Pluto's demotion I suppose I could ascertain the meaning through an examination of the lyrics but this record is indefensibly overlong! What is the point, exactly, of dumping all of this at once? I know Guided by Voices records typically have more than 20 songs. Has Pollard started a new religion? Some song about hobos now, so awful, an asthmatic wheeze on a harmonica and a sputtering collection of mumbles and now a sample of dissonant player piano, ugh. Uh oh, next track begins a bit interesting, oh...it's just a tease and our pique lasted only a few moments. Are you Free Tomorrow?. Just 73 more tracks to go. It's a synth bit that that teased as interesting, just a depression of a single key outshines the rest of the song which contains poor piano playing and someone with some poor homemade percussion. I read a piece on this album which seemed almost breathless with excitement over the return of the Moles! And I was sucked in, fake news has claimed another victim! There was a Cardinal album recently, umm semi-recently? I have not heard it. On evidence of this I haven't any desire to in the future either. Next track, Dreamland. Like a Bart and Friends outtake that didn't make it onto a Bart and Friends album and they essentially released everything didn't they? Maybe it is like when people try to claim the latest Bruce Springsteen album is his greatest ever just because his politics are so right on that they feel like they have to prop up a fellow traveler. David Bowie's last record was dreadful, same as everything he had done in the past 30 years, but he died so piety is understandably as a critic. Bruce Springsten voted for Hillary Clinton. It is interesting how that act has ben transformed into a moral touchstone, somehow voting for perhaps the most corrupt candidate since Harding is taking a spot on the moral pantheon next to Mother Theresa and St Denis. This track isn't horrible, hyperbolic praise be damned, it is called Beauty Queen of Watts. It' just an average indie rock song, very 1994, could be a spent out-take from 1994. High praise, I am out of control. Next track intrigues because it is called Chills and we wonder if it will be about Martin Phillipps? Tall Dwarfs wrote Self Deluded Dream Boy in a Mess about Martin Phillipps. That was a marvelous song. Let's talk about Tall Dwarfs instead of the Moles? Is 3EPs the best Tall Dwarfs record? Of course it is. I may have not been interested enough in Chris Knox's health situation considering I once sat with him at a park and listened to him telling me how dreadful Pontiac, Mi was. He was correct on all accounts certainly but there are two things you should be slow to criticize "a man's choice of work and his erm...closest urban center of poverty and decay". This isn't about Martin Phillipps. Surely the engineer fell asleep while recording this? It's a drone of no pleasing consequence at all, it isn't hypnotic, the lyrics are uninspired and it is too long. Richard Richard Richard. There are 249 tracks on this release, I am not sure he could have culled it down and made even an interesting EP. I am too cruel. I apologize. I am just letting loose my spiritual animal in response to listening, this is the first listen, I can hear one of you telling me you need to listen to it at least 17 times in order to get it. It is that time of year for that type of advice as best of lists are released. It is fascinating how there is such consensus in indie rawk circles, they all pick the same rap records to offer their bona fides to, the same pop girly records(this year Solange), the same old indie rawk guys records, etc...I will admit to buying a few records that may be written about here based on their position on best of lists, but I was more interested in the records in the 90s and 70s, not the ones in the top 10 because we know that the ones in the back end of the lists are the ones the contributors truly love and are desperate to include because of that love but are cowed into undervaluing their appeal because consensus demands it be so. Oh dear it has turned a bit Dead C. The advice for Dead c of course was you had to listen to it 403 times in order to get it. But why would you want to get a Dead C record that isn't Bad Politics? Robby Yeats, what a waste. But back to the best of lists, I read them, I don't recognize 95% of what is on them but I know, with all my heart's commitment, that the records voted best are the ones people think are important and that they think others think are important. And so...every dreary Radiohead record ever released will always make the top 10 because Thom Yorke's politics are even more spot on than Bruce Springsteen's. Only 7 songs left! We have made it to You're In My Band. More droning, more poor production, more poor performance. Guh. Is being a republican the most rebellious act in current state of American. When all of the culture apart from talk radio is in the collectivist camp is it not more anti-hero to rebel against the status quo? It might be. I can predict Richard's politics to be just slightly to the right of Thom. Richard began his adulthood as a barrister I believe. He once lived in the USA, are there ambulance chaser bench back signs with his mug on them? That would make for a fascinating record, a tribute album to the helpless saps he took advantage of to record self-indulgent indie rawk for the glory of no one in particular. He was never a good singer, but it never used to bother me, he used to know how to write an effortlessly eccentric and amiably charming pop song that had the needle pegged towards beautiful even with his unconventional musical abilities. What happened? Is it like an athlete, is it Tim Duncan trying to chase down Serge Ibaka and discovering the tread had come off of the wheels completely? Are these recent attempts at songs or have these been milling about for ages in the crevices of his mind, in between the depositions of slip and fall clients and their escape was a cosmic accident? Is there no one around him who could be honest and say yeah this might appeal to a 40-something Sentridoh fan but for the rest of the world we are hoping merely for indifference? The title track has arrived, anticipation is high, it isn't half bad on the start. Like the seque into a lone acoustic guitar, lack of voice is no hindrance to enjoyment. Oh, it is just back to the beginning bit, vapidity with an echo. I don't think that he'd even have the opportunity to turn down Donald Trump and even some lame Bruce Springsteen tribute band did out of deference to Bruce's music as if they have become sentient beings able to cast moral aspersions from on high. Oh I like this one, Artificial Heart, it could have come off the brilliant last Bats records. Reunions mostly suck, thank goodness Morrissey hasn't yet caved for a reunion, but the Bats last record is an exception and this is the rule. Epic last track, clocking in at just under 4 minutes, oh man those stabbing background riffs are not a good idea and it's a bit folky folk oh but then those riffs come and oh its not so bad now, very paisley print psychedelic. Very Sloan, very much of their kind of overpraised mediocrity. Getting old man, this makes it sound like the worst thing in the world ever.

Hilang Child The Garth Waterman. Devotional. What is it in the formings of a young man in the mean streets that brings him to a place where his music instead of being fitted with concerns over bling and facebook status and the color of his tattoo eleven days after he's gone septic and instead makes churchy music. Is he the new Hoser? No. But the celestial organs, the martial rhythm, the echoes of sincerity that bleed through in every moment. It's amazing. His name is Ed. I happened upon his first EP long ago. My wife was at her bachelorette party in the mountains, far away, we shared a psychic connection over Rahim Moore's folly. She had her spirits to drown hers in and I had Ed. This then the second EP, first track is not far removed from the first EP except for the insistent middle section that impels introspection, furiously to the end. Are there atmosphere settings on computer, are they available locally. Update - 01/11/17- we do eagerly anticipate the album, he promises something new. We fear novelty in general. So much has changed in the interim, children, career dissolution, school, large houses, tiny landscapes all in a whirl without a whiff of nostalgia fueled escapism. Perhaps this is why I have drifted from music. It was the locus when my life was adrift, no that I am moored in the living it does seem less essential. But still I might dream of a new Hilang Child record. Over a year ago I wondered how he grew awkwardly and awry from the standard of the day. He's English sure but their youth culture is as knuckleheaded as it is here. Is it simply the infusion at birth of an old soul, an adolescence bathed in the pathos of depressive singer songwriters, an understanding of beauty and loveliness that comes as armament of an old soul? The title track is just lovely, church bred organs, his untethered voice and the drama of a life lived surely not by the song's composer but from his tapping into the ether of genius that allows the breath of world weariness to be expelled from someone who surely hasn't a clue and who spends many of his idle days longing for trainers and video games. Second track, more martial beats, a bit more unfocused, something like the third track from the first EP. There is a orbit of sounds intermittent and elliptical, the piano is the anchor but the dreams add the solidity and guitars and chimes climb like contrails across a sunset. I don't know if the lyrics are profound, he is rather young, they sound so but that may be because his voice has outpaced his psychic infusion of the human condition. Third track, Rushlight, a bit of a rocker for him. He's a drummer for some other band that I attempted to become familiar with once but their releases are thin on the ground. The drumming here is pedestrian for certain, he's making a wise move to turn away from a life of a clubber with a heart. it's all a bt pedestrian sounding really, dissect this song and it is simply a load of repeating phrases but it sounds marvelous and wonderful and as if it wasn't in your life as a young man and you discovered it alter dying in your bed of triple throat cancer you would life your last exhalations filled with regret over having missed a lifetime filled with Hilang Child. It has been some time since I have written anything, pardon my hyperbole. But he really is splendid, truly. Last track now, A Noble Kin of Guy, terribly title, but the dreamy voice and piano and the reverb and the echoes of a nation's torment over a millennia of existence. It's a bit singer songwriterly versus a dramatic folk turn style of emotions washing over you. It's a bit throwaway really, it sounds lovely, it's a Gorky's like b-side that they tuck away on a teuton dance number and you discover and treasure for the simplicity and the heart and the warmth of spirit.