Maria Minerva Talinn at Dawn. How to be Estonian? I don't know. More homemade seeming electronic made in a bedroom made for eleven dollars but super cool electronic pop. See Bachelorette. I expect she'll land in a Hyundai commercial soon. I will be thrilled. Better her than Belle and Sebastian. I was watching Belle and Sebastian youtubes today and realized instantly, months have passed, that the new record is dreadful. But I also remembered a bit of advice from Stuart Murdoch when they were playing some festival and he was critiquing the other bands based on their dress and he came to the sensible conclusion that the more fashionable that a band's dress appeared the less likely it was that they had anything interesting to say in their music. He cited as examples in the pro-arctic monkeys who look terrible but seemed interesting and in the con- kaiser chiefs who represented the opposite end of the spectrum. Second track is on. I don't know how Maria Minerva dresses. She could be extremely fashion conscious, on the cutting edge, hanging out the same anti-semitic clubs as John Galliano but her music doesn't suffer terribly from the company. The vocals are almost vacant, barely there, the music is primitive and rudimentary but it's lovely all the same. California Scheming. Does it mean anything at all? I may have had a great deal of contact with former Estonians in my youth as Livonia, Mi was settled by Estonians. Allegedly. Colorado doesn't have such enclaves. In the Detroit area there is Hamtramck(where you can buy great Paczkis, the real ones, the ones that weigh 11 pounds each), there is Dearborn where you can get some great hummus, there is Sterling Heights(my hood) where nothing happens and then there is Livonia. Livonia of course is Wrn Defever's hometown. It is an interesting place, there are neighbourhoods where every house looks identical, the same red builder's grade brick, single story ranches, where there must be a small that differentiates each home for the owner because I can't make them out on my own with my eyes. Second track, a bit like the first, drum program preset, disembodied voices, it's for hipsters. We love it. We aren't hipsters. Ask our Thursday friend. Has Maria been to Livonia? Possibly the original Livonia. In Estonia. Or is it Latvia? I forget. It is probably filled with Stalin's footprints still puddled with the blood of the innocents. Kwame Nkumrah has probably been to Livonia. In Estonia. This song could be a travelogue of her travels in Livonia. I'd rather that His Name is Alive's Livonia evinced the real Livonia. Third track, floaty sampled voice, her voice more substantial, a bit Demarnia Lloyd. I posted a Cloudboy video recently. I am still in love with Demarnia Lloyd. It is all down to the name right? This is my girlfriend "Demarnia". Very cool. She wouldn't need to say a word. There isn't a whole lot happening on these songs. Bachelorette has clear ambition but I am wondering if my earlier suspicions about Maria are correct, of if she is a Nightingale the same as Walter Reuther, "she closes her eyes when she sings, and listens to nobody but herself". It's ok, I rather like it. Soon the days will begin to shorten. Where we live is on the eastern edge of the time zone. It is daylight here by 5am. This is not natural. In Livonian, in Winter, it isn't daylight until after 8am. Next track, Tallinn at Dawn, the title track. Sounds a lot like the last few tracks. She's not incredibly eclectic in her musical stylings. Should we admonish her for this? yes, but sometimes it is about the sound. We don't mind that the Acid House Kings sound the same on every record because they've hit on a sound and the fact that they sing in an affectless, emotion free register is of little concern. I will stop using the We. It is annoying, we find. This is an instrumental, she must have spent minutes on it. Next track, a bit more urgent, spacey synths, disembodied stereoscopic voice, tinny drum machine. Is tinny drum machine an option on Garage Band? Was this recorded on Garage Band. There are rumors that there will be another record this year. Will it be more developed? These are the black and white negatives, the tubes of cookie dough, the germinates. I could make this record. I will spend a few minutes tonight making this record. You will then review it and tell me how amazing and awesome I am. But I am not from Estonia. I could claim that I am from Livonia. I could bring Paczkis! Have you had a real Paczki? Not the fake jelly donuts at the grocery store. They will shorten your life by 11 minutes and 13 seconds, on each bite. Another track, a lot like the 5 or 6 previous. I will send her a book on how to write music, written by Martin Carr, it will be in the shape of a cd and instead of reading it she will play it in her discman in her trabant. Diversity is our strength. Isn't that the empty platitude that rules above the rest of the empty platitudes? I don't understand the whole concept of ethnic states. Are Estonians naturally drawn to defending other Estonians and is this only because people tend to be discriminated against because of their ethnicities and at this lies the root of coalescence? It isn't our similarities but our shared misery. Perhaps. Stalin ate Estonians with tacos. New Life. If she had someone who knew how to write music she might be super cool. She's got the ethereal chick goodness happening. She could write the lyrics in Estonian, emanate a true international ardor, write lyrics romancing the flat tax, poo poo'ing Olav Reju! I would be enchanted. I do rather like this. It's empty, vacuous, undemanding, but pleasant and dreamy. If it was from Lakewood, Colorado I might have a different opinion. But it is from Estonia. Jack Keoruac lived in Lakewood for a short period. I've driven by his home. It doesn't draw a lot of attention. I don't think. I haven't been on weekends. George Gamow's grave does not draw much attention either. People in Colorado are too concerned with their next rep of squat thrusts and mountain climbing to be concerned with the history that surrounds them. Even the dinosaur tracks seem lonely. Woe be to the Igaunadon! Stairs to Nowhere. Hmmm...if she made a real disco album it might be cool. All of this speculation on how great she'd be if she wasn't not great. Maria isn't as interesting a name as Demarnia but you could introduce her as my girlfriend Maria Minerva, always the pair, she could wear a name plate across her forehead. Oh, the last song is more interesting, multiple voices, cacophony, messiness, charming. She could come to Denver and the cultural monotony would force her to live inside her head the same as I do and create colours and space in her music. right now, it's greys and greis and grays.

Listening to new Panda Bear on NPR's site. It starts off very nice. Very reminiscent of the last record.

Update: Second track is buzzier with the same angelic vocals as on the first track. This is more Sonic Boom-ish? How much did he shape the record?

Update: New mix of Slow Motion is not so new. Hmmm...the repetitiveness is not as hypnotic as on the first album. I guess having Sonic Boom mix a repetitive record is the right choice. See Playing with Fire.

Update:Surfer's Hymn is seemingly pretty great!

Update: So far it is love. Off to sleep.

The Thoughts I Won't Keep You Here. A very sad record. A bit like Beirut, this is. His voice and delivery reminds very much of Tears Like X-Ray Eyes. It's folky, it's tender, gentle and desperately romantic. It's Sunday evening and on some occasions a Sunday evening could resemble any of those modifiers. On some Sundays in some hearts there is melancholia and dreamings and muted heartbeats weighed down by dread of the week that has past and the week to come. I really really like this album. I've just decided this and it is only playing for the second time. I am not certain when I acquired this record. This afternoon was the first time I played it. The first ever. After someone had departed. After I decided not to attend a house warming party because it was cold and snowy and I really wanted to get an appropriate fertilizer down on my grass. I gave my visiting friend a copy of Mr Tompkins in Paperback, she will despise this book, but that is alright. People should give other people books as gifts more often. I love to give books to people and see them unopened on the shelf, there is magic inside and one day when they are compelled by forces outside of our control, without our cognition, they will crack the seal and be taken in and forever changed and improved. Or not. George Gamow is a favorite. He would enjoy the thoughts. I imagine he would take his wife to see a thoughts concert even in his advanced age and slowly they'd dance, arms entwined, hands clasped and swoons in full effect. I went to his grave again today. I am obsessed. I was thinking of the Thoughts. A Pun. An untruth actually, I was thinking of lunch. I had a tuna melt. Second track, opens with an a capella moment of weakness, very nice, his voice isn't musical, it's emotional. Is that better? Only you can answer that question. There were days when i would sit at home in my childhood bedroom and listen to music such as this in the dark at 3AM and feel safest, safer than I have ever felt in the world. Not because of some lament over lost love but of a requiem for a lost life. A participant forever. And then there was a moment. some years ago. And then there were more. A girl with a familiar name, a name that carried weight in other's hearts but which was meaningless when we were together. And then there was a stranger. The end. My parents feared for my life. Was it the silence, was it the wave function of my momentum, was it the psychic connection forged at birth. Unknown. Third track. Another beautiful and very sad track. All of the tracks and beautiful and quite sad. There are three of them. I don't know a single thing about any of them but if one of them happened to be from Boulder, Colorado I would not need to pretend to be unsurprised. It wasn't windy this afternoon but I was not on my bicycle. I was concerned about my grass. Earlier I had my toes in the snow, frozen in place, praying for capillary action. I keep mentioning this, all week, to strangers who did not ruin my life, to strangers who will likely never grace my presence with their kindness, it must be tiresome. It may sound like a pose. It may sound like compulsion. Third song has finished, it was lovely. Another one has begun, nice. They have the presence to convince the listener that they mean it. Perhaps they do. I wrote a vague entry on the suicide of someone I used to love. Someone I thought I might marry. Someone who told me they were going to marry someone else because I never asked her. Someone who emailed me after a year to tell me of the birth of her daughter and someone whose mother called me on Friday before Christmas to tell me her daughter was dead. And then someone whose mother sent me a diary where I filled most of the pages, where a life not led was illustrated and annotated and documented with such care and precision that the grief I did not feel for her passing because of shock was felt for her passing from longing. I am a terrible person. I am a really terrible person. it is why I keep myself apart. I make people care for me and then I disappear. Fifth song is about disappearing, it's beautiful too. First my edges fade, they become indistinct and then I fade from your thoughts and when a hand is reached out I have mine plugging my ears and whisperings of inadequacy fill my mouth. But this record. Now an acoustic guitar and twinkles, very very softly now, it is very reminiscent of the first Tears in X-Ray Eyes record but it's nicer than that. Why isn't this where Mumford and Sons are now? This track might actually concern turf, Winterkill but there is mention of beasts and him being the winterkill. A metaphor? Pink Snow Mold and Kikuyu? Next track, a bit more rocking, for them, a bit more like a normal folk rock band. His voice is pitched higher and more urgent. Where before it was whispers and sighs now it is plaintive please and poetic determination. I've been to George Gamow's grave now 7 times. I've only read three of his books. Well four. I've only given one of them as a gift. On the airplane ride home I advised my departing friend to check the rivets and welds before she jumped across the jetway. I am flying southwest soon. I hope I have some of the same excitement on my flight. Next track, back to the sweetness, very pretty sweetness on display. I imagine him writing a song for all of his girlfriends, the evening after his first date, when the passion is at its zenith and it is emotion without reason filling in the gaps and causing the edifice to fall to pieces. This one would be for the one who wears long sleeves to the beach, in the middle of July. And he would understand and he would compare her to Syliva Plath, its a cliche, he knows, but she would find his insights dramatic and heart rendered and pledge her undying commitment to love. Or something like that. I can't write songs. I could write lyrics. I would probably compare long sleeves wearers to Flannery O'Connor instead and end up spent and alone watching a Katherine Heigl movie on cable television wondering over this hell on earth. The Thoughts would not be soundtracking that scene, probably Mumford and Sons. Next track, starts off with some raucous macabre doings and then falls back to a gentle appreciation. His voice is trembly and slight. It's headphone music for certain. Today I received a message as a test. I failed the test. On purpose. I am going to become the person I am when I write about myself. I am going to be witty, charming and affable. I am going to go out into the moonshine and call out to the world all of my heart's longings and desires and hope that an answer returns from deep in the ether where there are all of the answers to imponderables written in runic figures on tablets made of comets and ghosts. It will be a religious experience. I could sell tickets. I could send a book to the fates as a gift in return, perhaps The Doctor is Sick. Title track now. I played ice hockey on Saturday night, two weekends in a row I have played ice hockey. Last night before I played I had a furious row with my legs. Since I've been riding my bicycle my legs feel like rubber and of bare practical use when I am not on a bicycle. When I ride I am compelled to ride as fast as I can. I can't ride very fast. not yet, old ladies on their huffy cruisers blow past me on occasion, but i stepped on the ice and felt as if I had angel wings attached to my ice skates and the stream that forms quickly beneath each blade must have been slackened with glycerin or stuff from the ether itself. The same sort of material which allows heavenly seeming records such as this to be made. It's earnest now. I'm earnest now. I don't tell anyone that I am earnest because it is gauche. If I were to join the thoughts it would not be to be part of the musical ensemble but to brood in the background and to understand the maudlin nature of existence in sympathy with each note on display. Just two tracks left now. This one has a strong announcing movement, I rather like it. he has a poetic seeming voice the same as Beirut and so the words that bellow forth have a more poetic sheen than say what comes from the mouth of the Arcade Fire. Blood and Bones, it's a bit Irish, are they Irish? The Irish are typically sincere. While I've been reading a great deal of the English Civil War recently the Irish have not been made out well. Savages. Cromwell took it to them rather ruthlessly after he took care of Charles I. But I don't think the Thoughts are Irish. It is a silly name for a band. Last track. A bit Harvest Ministers violin, speaking of the Irish and sincerity and goodness. People often mistake me for being Irish. My name looks irish but it is Scottish. I tell everyone I am Canadian. I used to be. It is surprisingly intriguing to certain types who wish to think better of me than they should. If I could dream dreams with the songs of the Thoughts playing softly in the background commingled with laughter and joy and tears of delight then i could learn to love.

Maria Minerva is very great.

I've started riding my bicycle to work, 20 miles one way, and I am able to function as a human being afterwards. Amazing. It might be my nice new bicycle. The sales clincher was when the sales person said "it's ugly, no one will want to steal it".

Been listening to Inspiral Carpets Life over and over. I feel the invincibility of youth.

Update: New track on the Sound of Arrows myspace. Not as great as the last one, but still pretty, it's disneyesque but not as disneyesque as the last one.

Stretch Armstrong- the movie. Is this as bad as it has ever been? Frankie and the Heartstrings entry soon, perhaps posted from Texas.

Erm...new Sin Fang is not so good.

The Mummers are lovely. Are they for your mum and dad?

Update: Mink Hollow Road. Does this sound more impressive than it is? It's girlish and seemingly sophisticated, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Thom Yorke, etc...her voice is charmingly coy. It's Leslie Caron before she met Warren Beatty. It's Clara Immerwahr before Fritz started waering the Kaiser's uniform and working on his diabolical Chlorine while keeping the revolver in plain sight. It's rated G. It's romantic. It's the Divine Comedy circa A Short Album About Love Loads of orchestral flourishes, a small voice, big sentiments and weepy climaxes. Second track. I was eating some chicken. Her voice has a tinge of "Hi, I'm Bjork from the Sugarcubes", only a slight, not really, but in the climaxes perhaps she bites the same bits from Diamanda Galas. Records like these require directors and arrangers and people to drive the extended van shuttle ot record. That must be expensive. Was this expensive? It doesn't sound overly so. It isn't ambitious, there are just loads of people playing loads of instruments by the dexterity required seems workmanlike. I've spent the weekend elbow deep into the earth, toiling in the hypoxic and lifeless soils of the Colorado plateau. But then even though I live in Colorado I don't live on the Colorado Plateau. This track has a bit of Blur The Universal with a vocoder robot on vocals. I like it. It's got the feeling of a song that opens a serious television show about miserable people in their 30s and their parents who used to watch miserable shows about miserable people in their 30s in the 80s. Mel Harris guests. This is a bit sunny. it is sunny outside. it is always sunny. Even the industrial waste lands of the motor city are verdant compared to Colorado these days, smoke filled vistas, desiccated plants, peoples and buildings. An unslakable thirst has swept across the landscape and it feels as if the earth that i had my elbows into is shrinking, becoming eternally frozen in a dreary stasis. Third track, Driving Home, there are but six tracks in total. Rimbaud could describe and compare the industrial wastelands of the middle west and the sterile earth of the Rocky Mountains. Made for mountains not for verdancy. I planted a lovely clump style Prairie Fire Crabapple into the planet yesterday and it was more with hope and faith than with science. The tillage is beige, it's clay, it doesn't breath or lend itself easily to romanticization. If Zola were alive and forced to make a flowery descriptive introduction to live in Westminster, Colorado where the workers toil in inexactly planned technological parks and alongside windswept roadsides he'd consider giving up the gift. There are paintable landscapes on the eastern plains, A long riparian Cottonwood making a fierce stand against the will of nature, the tumbleweed's journey across unnatural boundaries, an emaciated coyote with your neighbour's kitten between its jaws. Fourth song, Cherry Heart. If people still knew how to make movies this could be the soundtrack of a sophisticated style musical set n the glamourous 1970s, perhaps in Gainesville, Florida, along the beach, a single story welling, a young girl at her piano writing songs for a Broadway hit musical and by the time her dream comes true the characters are dressed as lemurs and in spacesuits and on board unicycles in an irradiated Hiroshima. The music is tender and sweet but it hides a darker interior. It does have a touch of the same flowery hope as It's Oh So Quiet! but then that's not Bjork really, is it. If people still remembered how to make movies they'd make more movies like An Angel at my Table. It is so brilliantly uncomfortable to watch. when I was mired in my New Zealand obsession I was drawn to all things NEw Zealand including Janet Frame, well Janet Frame came after the movie and after Sweetie and to Weetabix and eventually to New Zealand itself. All because of a cassette of Kaleidoscope World but the only reason movies are uncomfortable to watch these days is because they are dreadful and uninspired and awful. Really. More of the vocoder succeeded by the most heartfelt seeming vocal immediately after. I do really enjoy this album. It is Sunday, late afternoon, as a child I would be just returning home from Church and the world seemed infinite and hopeful and now it is merely sunny and dormant. There needs to be an awakening, the sun must stop rising in the east, the canopy of stars needs ot be extinguished, something must come about to shake the state of torpor that has anesthetized humanity. Should we send an army to Libya, unite the Greeks and Phoenicians finally? rebuild the ports at Carthage? Tear down the Pyramids and install the terra cotta army in Westminster. yes, yes, yes, let's do all of this and more. Later. After I've planted my new boxwood hedge, after I've eliminated the bindweed that has usurped the bluegrass in the battle for turf prominence and after I've finished listening to the Mummers because they make everything seem lovely and charming and a bit inconsequential.

Certain types will demolish Frankie and the Heartstrings but I love them. They will tear them into little pieces but I will politely sweep them up and put them into my pocket.

Update: Frankie and the Heartstrings Hunger. The title makes me think of Eric Carmen but that is too obvious. The first moments are gentle plucks on a guitar and a distant howl and some background ambience and then whoosh a hoedown, indiepop style. It's straight out of 1985. It's upset because it wasn't included on Sounds of Leamington Spa Volume 8. Short spiky riffs makes listeners wonder if they know enough notes to construct longer ones? Unlikely. Dreamy. Liam Gallagher has attacked Thom Yorke and truly Thom Yorke deserves a scabrous upbraiding but unfortunately Liam Gallagher lacks the wit to deliver it. Sad. I was listening to French Films earlier, before this album, and are the Drums preparing litigation in response? But I am unfashionable and I really enjoy the Drums and I really enjoy French Films. I know, I should be listening to Captured Tracks instead. Perhaps you should be preparing litigation. I am allowed to travel for my job sometimes. On occasion I am allowed to travel to interesting locales, last year to Boston, one year to Nashville, another to Indianapolis which isn't all that interesting but much more interesting than Lubbock. I am heading to Lubbock this Tuesday. I've been to Lubbock once before. Frankie and the Heartstrings might do well in Lubbock actually. They mention Scott Walker, in rethuglican heaven or Texas they'd eat that up. Of course they are mentioning Scott Walker the overrated singer/songwriter but we could instead insist that they mean the other Scott Walker actually. I had had the volume at half-rate, this record is much more exciting at full volume. Second track has some post punk 1983-isms about it, some Josef K, some Fire Engines, but it's smooth and refined and I really enjoy it. I am one equipped with very low standards mind. Those that were there will scoff. Whatever. Stuttered chorus now, or is it the bridge??? Sharp guitars and probably immaculate hairstyles and now a guitar solo in an unaccomplished style, tremendous. Now the Franz Ferdinand aping of Franz Ferdinand's aping of Gang of Four's percussion. This one has some ambition in the arrangement. I spent the afternoon in Idaho Springs. My workmate says his family uses Idaho Springs as a sort of base camp before they later embark to Vail. They need to acclimate themselves to the altitude and to the smugness of all of us healthy Coloradans. Apparently we are the fittest state in the nation. Everyone here is busy running triathlons and scaling 14'ers and being vegan. But, I've mentioned this before, Coloradans are insufferably rude when it comes to basic interactions with fellow human beings. It wasn't like this in Texas. In Texas I met 1 and 1/2" steaks and windmills right in the center of town and a thrill ride final descent into the airport but always with a smile. Women in Texas all have manicured fingernails. Better to pull the rethuglican lever on a diebold I suppose. Lubbock is very very windy, there was a squally when i arrived and the sands of time piled up along the horizon threatening to erase all of the scars of the earth. I was safely ensconced in my hotel room. I am on a national advisory council for a very unimportant cause. Feel proud for me, I know my mother never imagined I would attain such status. Third track, a bit more raucous bootboy-ish, the vocals are Northern Soul-ish, it is all a bit Northern Soul-ish, maybe that is a better descriptor than Post-Punk. But then do I really understand Post-Punk? I was listening to Crocodiles on the bicycle ride home yesterday and Ocean Rain as well since it takes me rather a long time to make it home on my new bicycle and I had a minor thought, a revelation, that perhaps Crocodiles is the greatest post-punk record ever? I know, silly. I am enjoying this song, I like the gang-ish backing vocals. I've now seen photos of the band and they do have glamourous hairstyles and I approve wholly. Not enough bands have nice hair these days. Next track, more raucous non-raucousness, they are essentially a twee bunch of boys with a singer who does a convincing bit of not being posh. I am clapping along out of time. It is very physical music, it makes me move. There are only a very few number of moments remaining for me to enjoy music. I've been very concerned about the radiation from the Fukushima reactor, it has recently been detected in Colorado, and I have ben keeping abreast of the news and discovered that my house emits almost as much radiation as has escaped the plant. I live in a brick house. Bricks are little Fukushima power plants embedded into my walls and when I sleep my head is only inches away from certain meltdown. This evening I will move my bed into the center of the room. I apologize for making light, erm...glow. But I went to a political meeting this week, after avoiding bananas. I went to Jared Polis' community meeting. He is my congressman. Funny that, he seems entirely rational and reasonable, but oh dear his constituents are cracked! The first person to stand up demanded he shut all nuclear plants in US now. Then later came up the tragic story of Bradley Manning's torture(no one was quite specific on the method but my imagination was let loose with thoughts of his being denied access to Tru tv, lean pockets and copies of Mother Jones) and then finally to the request of the immediate impeachment of President Obama by the "i am not an anti-semite but Israel is poisoning Palestinian bananas" contributor. Ha. It was marvelous. Next time I may open my mouth. On the ride home I was rehearsing all of the speeches I meant to make but there were a lot of "older" women with long grey hair. Not a good look. Frankie and the Heartstrings are probably not for the long grey hairs but I bet they read Mother Jones. I can see the boys on a dock somewhere next to a container ship filled with plasma televisions complaining about the lack of action on climate change and how if we increase the taxes on carbon it will inevitably result in utopia. But I forgive them their sins. The fifth song was a bit of a power ballad, very nice. It does sound like Orange Juice. I am not the world's greatest Orange Juice fan. I may be committing apostasy. Under sharia Orange Juice will be banned. Sixth track, a swaggering number, terrific. My common lament is the lack of performance in music these days. The sell-out, the death or glory, the sweaty rapture. I don't think Frankie perspires a great deal while he's performing but at least he's adopted a simulacrum of someone who believes he's the greatest singer in the world during the three minutes of his perfect little pop song universe. More speculation--I would presume that these boys don't have day jobs, they are convinced of their worthiness, walking around the neighbourhood and in the pub telling everyone how they are gonna make it, not like their older brother's band. It doesn't sound tiresome, it sounds romantic. Edwyn Collins does produce the record. So I suppose he could email me later to discuss whether it does sound like Orange Juice. It is not as girly as Orange Juice, a negative, but only slight. Next track. That Postcard. An earnest tribute? Possibly. Earnest is a gruesome epithet. Are you sincere? Madness! If you are sincere you are to be mocked and disdained, better to not feel anything at all, at least not anything deeper than the subcutaneous level. Are these guys earnest? Unknown. They are not the Frank and Walters. Next track, slinkier. Not quite funky but I could see the insincere kids dancing to this. They could be scribbling in their notebooks all of their ironic enjoyments of this song. And then they go to university the following Monday morning and write essays on Joss Whedon. have you been reading Popmatters lately? They are posting 60 essays on the oeuvre of Joss Whedon and while it is of dubious academic value in spite of the numerous citations to other academic expositions of Whedon sometimes, occasionally a real human emotion slips into the prose and despite skepticism about their contentions about the importance of Anne in season 3 of Buffy there is an appreciation that people watched Buffy because it was funny, clever and human. But anyhow. Maybe after reading all of those essays the average Popmatters reader will then pick up a copy of the Economist's most recent Christmas issue about the pointlessness of acquiring a PHD. Second to last track Want You Back, a minor horn at the end, some impassioned outcries, nice. Last track now. This is very polite. I wonder if Coloradans were in fact forced to listen to Frankie and the Heartstrings I might not then enjoy living here more. Now it has turned to a gallop! Oh just a sprint. Impeach Obama! Save Bradley Manning! Stop Sending Aid to Cuba. These are words to live by.

Arnaud Fleurent Didier La Reproduction. The rioting by students in France has seemingly lost its glamourous luster in recent weeks. Protesting over not being able ot retire on a government funded pension at 62 versus 60 does not rival a blood soaked campaign to rid your country of a murderous dictator I suppose. Poor french students must be soaked in collective existential angst. I keep using the word ennui and so there I refrained. I can imagine Arnaud at the barricades, pulling up the cobblestones, oh wait, Chirac paved over the cobblestones in the 70s. Can they pull up the asphalt and fling this in sympathy with the peasants of the past? The first song here is French Culture and it may concern pulling up the cobblestones to discover the beach but i am not sure. I took two years of French in high school. I took French mostly because my mother is French Canadian and I had this vision that I would return home from school and hand her my homework and she would hand it back to me in five minutes perfect and complete. But my mother can only speak French when she is speaking to her family members on the telephone and even then she is so out of practice it is more a crepuscular mix of French and English. Arnaud would be appalled. I don't quite understand those who defend specifics of their culture. Is he moaning about McDonalds or Baby Gap when he sings of the "praises" of French Culture? I don't know. I am at a severe handicap here because I am an ignorant American. Second track has ben playing a bit, so lovely, soft strings int he background, some chansons-esque guitars, his tender voice. His voice is hard to categorize, it's not as fey or effeminate as say the guy in Orwell but it isn't a pop voice the same as Fugu either. A good deal of the time he's speaking melodically. Such as in the beginning of song three. Part of the reason I don't understand defending your culture as if it is under assault from the barbarians outside the gate is the difference between being an American and a European. I imagine Arnaud strives to be identified as continuous in a tradition of french exceptionalism in the arts He's a student of the tradition, he's probably excluded a good deal of the world outside of his narrow worldview(this is all hopeless speculation, could be he's got a photo of William Peterson on his wall and thinks Jeff Foxworthy a god among men) and so he's concocted some sort of emotional algorithm and alters his position in it based on his level of mental health for any particular day. As an American I don't feel part of any cultural progression. I explained in the last entry why I feel American culture is in a dominant position in this past century and that is because it is not identifiably "American" because it is malleable and it is permeable to diverse ideas from all over the world and more importantly we don't have guardians to ensure the quality of what reaches the public. Government funded art is censorship. It isn't any different than the state compelling participation in a state religion. But somehow if the state funds the arts we are meant to think the money just organically flows to artists in need regardless of their political intent, their politcal connections and the whims of fashion. And as a privileged member of said tradition it has probably come to pass that Arnaud feels entitled, as entitled as anyone else, to the public largesse that he surely requires to continue his music career. He's brilliant. That's a certainty. But if the world did not have another Arnaud Fleurent Didier record we'd survive. It is strange how there are all of these anti-consumerism movements apace at the moment which are just reheated socialist manifesto nonsense "to each according to his needs" but we are meant to perpetually fund lavish benefits for "public servants". They are public employees. They work for a paycheck the same as the rest of us and probably for less than that. We recruit young, college educated types to our workplace and as soon as they have the opportunity they abandon us and our ruthless demands for efficiency and move onto the public payroll. The flight from risk. Anyhow, what song are we on? I'm listening to Frankie and the Heartstrings at the moment, if we are being honest, it's exciting, stupid and fun. The track playing now is Reproductions, and it's marvelous, a mid tempo piano led ballad and he's singing in a lilting tone and it's marvelous. I said that. Who to compare him to? When he was more prone to flourishes of baroque overstatement it was easy to compare him to Neil Hannon. The french Neil Hannon. What an insult! I imagine this is more complex than a Divine Comedy record, musically speaking. Is it as witty and charming? Unknown. Doubtful. He once recorded Dominique De Villepin's rebuttal to the US's referral of Iraq for violating UN sanctions and put it to music and released it as a single, that seems more in line with someone who takes himself rather too seriously, desperately so. But part of the charm of sophisticated pop music is knowing the creator probably thinks very little of his average listener. I imagine David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke having very little patience for their listeners, especially should they deign to express their opinion in public. I've never written about those two, here is my short summing up of their entire oeuvre-eh. I bought Camofleur once and listened a few times and nothing ever came of it, I think I decided I didn't want to keep packing it when I was moving and it died a terrible death in the bottom of a community rubbish bin. Oh dear. I could have repurposed it, gone green, as a present for someone at work celebrating their 10th anniversary on the job. "Congratulations for making it this far, here's a Gastr Del Sol record for all of your troubles. Cheers!". I really love the song that is playing now. It's surely something to do with the student protests of 1968. This was before the Chirac-ian asphalt. This was when lucky Americans were allowed to have sexual intercourse with Eva Green. Oh wait. That's covered in the next track which concerns Cinema. Does Arnaud believe that french cinema is in the vanguard? Undoubtedly. I keep impugning the man but this is a magnificent record. I am just exercising my xenophobic muscles. Not really. I am keen on French music and French Film and French Food. I am less keen on their politics or their societal covenants. I am not listening to the words. One of the joys of listening to music composed in a language I do not understand is that I can fill in my own plot based on the atmosphere of the song. Je Vais Au Cinema which I actually know the translation of "I go to the cinema" seems celebratory and cheerful and he could be singing about Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron or Emmanuelle Beart or Sylvia Kristel, who knows, he seems to be charmed by whatever. Next track, more of the brooding version of himself, it starts minimally with his speaking/singing and then a layering of choral vocals and then into a charming vignette type number where he's surely recalling some traumatic emotional event that has left him scarred for life but he's working it out in some sort of caustic catharsis in pop song. Surely. The song has ebbs and flows like a pop tide that tugs and pushes and girdles and exclaims all within a few bars. The backing vocals have returned but the "chorus" is gentle and rolling, like a spring through a idyllic french countryside. The tension has been relieved, it's a frolic through a tulip garden at the moment but slowly the steam builds to critical. End. Stunning. The bad thing is that he can probably understand English and so he will be doubly exercised by my ignorance. I apologize. Next track is My Space Oddity, another mid-tempo Piano led number. Whatever happened to Ema Derton? He released that split record with some Notre Dame/Arnaud songs and some Ema Derton songs and then nothing. Did Emilie Renaudat reveal that she voted for Sarkozy in the last election? Sacre Bleu. I can cliche. This one is wordy and dextrous, a bit Pearlfishers mid-tempo ballad. I would love to see a David Scott/Arnaud collaboration, it could be some dreadful exposition on collectivist politics. Has David worked that out of his system now? Eco Schools was an amazing track turned silly by the words. I suppose part of his boyish appeal lies at least party in the unformed political innocence. Ha, look at how condescending I am. I am part French-Canadian after all. They could write a track excoriating Scott Walker and his similarities to Adolf Hitler. It would be a laugh but possibly sumptuous and beautiful. Current track is a gorgeous piano ballad, piano leads most of these tracks, his voice is multi-tracked and impressively amplified in moments that are necessary to create pop singer drama. Now a avant garde moment of discordant fills and the piano melody underneath. It is all so lovely. I think this is better than the first solo record and on par with his Notre Dame records. Everything has fallen away but the piano and his voice, sigh. How is it that he is relegated to obscurity while disposable fluff such as Phoenix is loved and admired? But then Phoenix fit nicely in the pantheon of indiepop relics that are championed by the strangest sorts of people. Like when Pitchfork and their types went agog over 69 Love songs or Summer Hymns or The Microphones when none of those records, well Magnetic Fields are in a different category altogether but funny that every record since has been panned even the last which is amazing and wonderful, but then Summer Hymns and the Microphones are hardly seminal indiepop records and yet they have the seal of approval affixed that allows them to elude the derision offered for most indiepop music in certain quarters. Granted, the majority of indiepop music is a disaster and probably doesn't receive as much vitriol and denigration as it deserves but there are better things to establish the brand to the greater public and it is frustrating. Only slightly. Not actually. Last track, a soft acoustic ballad with delicate strings in the background now, this could have started life as an Ema Derton song. Again so many words. Must be a lot on his mind, pour my soul into the verses and let the world wash away all of my sins. Will this end up in the vault where all of the most precious bits of french culture are stored for protection from the coming holocaust? Possibly. It's wonderful. Dear nuclear armageddon progenitors, please do not bomb this record. A Recorder!

I've decided--the first Bows album is better than the second. I didn't always think it so. Important. I have an entry on Devotchka done but a lot of it is about my dismay over people who propose on the jumbotron at baseball games. I am not sure it is an issue that will intrigue the average reader. Can you express, metaphorically, 'flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone' next to the guy shoveling nachos?

Oh...Charlie B Backpackers has been mostly destroyed in the Christchurch earthquake. I stayed there once. The pictures are heartbreaking.

Devotchka 100 Lovers. Let us not mumble. They gathered together at the Blue Bonnet, gathered their plastic lawn furniture around in a semi-circle and decided to make a pop record that eschewed slurred speech. I am not allowed within the inner sanctum of Devotchka even though we do share the same city. Amazingly there is room enough in our quaint metropolis to contain the media clouds of the both of us without a great amount of interaction between us. This is a record for grand statements, for momentous occasions, for those sad souls who would ambush the love of their life at a ball game with a marriage proposal. I can imagine a young man playing the first track on a tinny speakered boombox back at the hot dog stand while his girlfriend's mug is larger than life on the jumbotron. He could be a hacker and hack into the stadium sound system and play Devotchka for everyone. I suppose it is the thrill of knowing absolutely, one direction or the other, how someone feels about you. But then you do not. Not really. I wonder if there are still manners enough in this world for someone to say "yes" but then quietly on the light rail ride home declare that they had only answered affirmatively because they didn't want to make a fool of someone in public. But is there that sense of decorum that exists in our world any longer? The idea of thinking of someone else before you think of yourself. It is dead. This is a miserable entry. I am feeling quite chipper. I've decided I really do like my house and if I have to, in the future, not ever leave this place again I might be amenable to said situation. I need more trees however. I can not be inspired by looking out at the Tree of Heaven(ailanthus for pedants) in the corner and notice the butchery completed by Xcel energy and feel compelled to change the world with my pen. When I ask someone to marry me I will do it in welsh, it will be to a stranger, she'll be wearing ear buds and think I am plain. But then I don't have any moments that would feel right being soundtracked by music this epic. Epic seeming? It's big. Big for a Devotchka record. Not 30 Seconds to Mars big. His voice is heroic. If I did have moments that required monuments to be constructed in order to document I might come back later with an eraser and erase all signs that I had ever disturbed the aether in any noticeable way. Not many people are aware of my existence when I leave a room. I carry everything with me, in a tiny pouch, held close, zip locked. When I play this record very loudly on my ride home I sing loudly as well. I open my zip locking pouch and scream my heart felt sentiments within. I am saving them for a time later when I can express them into the void. It befits my status as the most anonymous person in Denver, Colorado. Is this my narcissistic moment? Undoubtedly. How wonderful to live in a perpetual journey from one memorable moment to the next. I wrote a book. I told one person. Actually, I told two persons. One I have since decided to never speak with again, not for any reason at all, and the other I haven't spoken to since, not necessarily by choice but she had 4 other men to meet that week. I could have sung '4 men'. I could have melted her heart. A gay love song. But it's a big number too. My heart is small. Third track now. The pop song. I heard this on the "world class rock" station. If they had any sense they would be playing all of the tracks from this album. But there are John Mayer songs to be played and John Mayer collaborations to be played and then Eric Clapton. He shouts the verse. It's odd. It's marvelous. And now the chorus which reveals the album title among the other words and it's marvelous. There isn't a great amount of space on this record. There wasn't much on the last one. But they have muscled up. He's a film composer now. He's Jerome Kern? Bernard Herrmann? Korngold? Maybe. I read something that said that because he writes music for movies now that Devotchka's records are now cinematic. They've always been desperately visual. It's passion. When he sings he carves out a vision in the shadows, it's clear to anyone with a soul. My soul is partially erased and very small. Next track, jaunty baroque-ish opening, is it baroque? here's me trying to be erudite. I don't know anything about music. handclaps, violins, accordions and now bass and his voice, lovely. So incredibly lovely. Is this the best Devotchka record? Hmmm...they have abandoned their oddness, mostly. The odd moments pop up as singularities within these dramatic portraits of their worldly existence since they first met Greg Kinnear. How come there are two such romantic and stirring vocalists in Denver as John Grant and Nick Urata and neither really has attained the level of god among men anywhere outside of their small coterie of sycophants and handlers? Why? The world celebrates mediocrity these days. Look at our President, look at our Carmelo, look at our Johnathan Franzen. He's a much more accomplished writer than I am. But then so are you. But he's really boring and there isn't anything in his new novel that surprised me. I have recently finished Cloud Atlas as well and while there is some thrilling moments within their givens are so obvious. It is a given that David Mitchell is going to use a lame analogy to the holocaust when discussing clones and their demise. Or it was just obvious to me. Now to my favorite track on the album, The Man From San Sebastian. This is one that would have been weird. Back in pre-Hollywood Devotchka, back when they were odd. Now, this is merely thrilling. Oh and there was an interlude, just before this. There could be a hip new western composed while listening to this. How many hip new westerns are being filmed in the wake of the success of True Grit? Justin Bieber and Sam RIley(he's 17 don't you know) in a remake of Young Guns? Awesome. This will be on the soundtrack, but remixed, with a vocoder and a Snoop Dogg cameo in the video. There is tremolo, his gliding affecting voice, accordion, the old Devotchka standbys and it is marvelous. Really really really marvelous. I love the slight pause, the build-up, the payoff with the sinister space cowboy guitar riff just after the accordion riff and the express reason of this song being sonic pleasure. That's a pretty standard record reviewer type of thing to say. This is the one to crank in the car when you are getting off of the turnpike at Pecos driving past the Bodega and the Chinese restaurant that was once a car hop station. Then back to the uplifting folk on the next track with whistles and acoustic guitars and tambourines. A sequel to the title track? Really they should be composing music for all of the new westerns that will come soon. But then there haven't Ben any swashbuckling seafaring adventures in the wake of Far Side of the World, oh, a pun. I loved that movie. Perhaps I loved the ideas expressed within more than the movie even. The romantic notion of always trying to better oneself through achievement both personal and outward. The Captain and Ship's Doctor with their impromptu musical flutterings, the duty to country, the pursuit of knowledge, all very heroic and it would sound perfect coming from Nick Urata's mouth. his lyrics are alright, it is heart felt sentiments wrapped in a seductive package. I could write lyrics for Devotchka songs because it is hardly John Milton is it. But we don't require John Milton to have our heart carried above the uncaring masses. Devotchka normally sells out when they play here. I think. It is similar to how The Tragically Hip could somehow fill 20,000 seat arenas in Detroit but only 800 seat clubs everywhere else. Right? The Tragically Hip were never a national phenomenon. Right? In Detroit we were held hostage to CanCon on the alternateen station and because it was desperately important for Canadians to hear mediocre indie rawk made by authentically Canadian indie rawkers we were sometimes served up the Tragically Hip in overdose, Alanis Morrissette was alternative and the Gandharvas First Day of Spring was on the radio nearly every day for a decade. CanCon has done a great deal to advance the state of Canadian Culture, I am sure. But why is this in the purview of Government and do they do audits of records to insure that it is sufficiently Canadian and apart from almost always being mediocre what is so distinctively Canadian about Canadian indie rawk? Devotchka could be Canadian. I could be labouring under some strange misapprehension. They could owe all of their success to Chretien's culture minister. Who knows. But it seems that a culture that needs protection from a bureaucrat is one that is already terminal. This is the vibrancy of American culture and all of itinerate degeneracy in that it absorbs everything and creates something out of the seeming state of being spoiled for choice. But this is the wonder. The Gandharvas can release their godawful records here and we can ignore them and this is no great crime, they are horrid and deserve their fate, but then the Arcade Fire can come along and in spite of their dreary dreadfulness they too can win a grammy. Ah, but their singer is an American and they've only just been cleared to play the Fete Nationale. I am certain some talented bureaucrat with a guaranteed pension tied to the Hibernia project agonized for months over the decision to allow Arcade Fire to sing in English. Think of the children. Another Devotchka song is playing, another of the sweeping ballads with the thrilling production, the flamenco guitar, the dramatic vocals, the strings, ahh...we can become accustomed to luxury so easily. Will we ever be able to return o the days of QUeen of the Surface Streets? Probably. I sometimes think that I miss the spaces, the coldness that infected Dearly Departed the biblical passages that informed the hollowness. This one is called Ruthless. Very nice. Of course the Gandharvas are named after the protector of Soma. Does Jean Chretien know that his government is advocating the spirits of the air and essence of everything and thus endowing Hinduism with the government seal? Probably. Jean was probably a fan, he had probably first reached over on the night table for his Gandharvas cd to clobber Andre Dallaire with but after a fiery admonition from Aline decided instead to hide under the bed while his wife slammed the door and called the cops. Another spicy track, horns, insistent voices, pace, drama, lovely. It is over. Last track now. Sunshine, an instrumental that has a bit of a Primal Scream Screamadelica or Vanishing Point feel to it, a slow build-up and some strings all mixed in the mid range, tinny drums played on pots and pans and just a listless emotional tone. Should this be the last track? Uncertain. It could be an audition for the next movie project. I do like the moaning violin, there is a sophisticated ennui in the track and there are sharp implements introduced as a spruik in the mix that occasionally overcome the thickness and the desert of Wally Lamb.