Amor De Dias Street of the Love of Days. Pipas and the Clientele. Pipas have departed the scene, much too soon(are they truly over?) and the Clientele made just one record too many. Have there been any successful experiments in democracy in bands that were at one time autocratic? Unlikely. I discussed in one of the entries that I had written yesterday my indiscreet envy over those who can create effortlessly beautiful things almost at beckon. It is not for them to labor over some elaborate rodomontade, to efface some graceless mythology to leave for posterity or the judgement of those that come. No. These are real constructions to span the years beyond their passing and the future. While hopeless sorts such as we are left to peculate the legacy of others by trying to somehow enhance our own meagerness by absconding with slivers of reflected glory those who can create beauty either through art or literature or architecture or invention are left as examples of the more glorious spirit of humanity. They reign as arbiters of that human greatness that is not inherent but somehow comes to the fore through dedication and passion and inspiration. I assume that the songs that sound like the Clientele, such as this one that is playing now, Touchstone, were written by Alasdair and the others that sound less like the Clientele but not quite like Pipas are by Lupe. The first track, an introduction, ephemeral, birdsong, nature flows, and then to this song, delicate and less sonorous than the Clientele were apt to be. Delightful. Third track. A Lupe number. Are they easily identifiable by singer? Perhaps. Lupe has vision beyond England or Scotland. She sees across the horizon to warmer climes, she is able to tap into a deeper vein of human temperament than melancholy and literary allusion. But Alasdair too, he sounds relaxed, especially in comparison to how he has sounded in the past. The Clientele were always folk, but they had a theoretically classical rock sound, and they seemed comfortable in their pretentions, enough to be concerned with possession of requisite jazz chords for recognition by musos less dazzled by the tambourines in Saturday and more by the solos on the far too complicated last Clientele record. I didn't write about the last Clientele record. It sounded exhausted. It sounded busy. It sounded whatever the opposite of lush was. I didn't enjoy it. The last Pipas record was very long ago. I enjoyed it. But their existence seemed always so slight, on a dash, records birthed on the roadway on the way to a farmer's market, on board a train, next to a bus stop on a morning after a brilliant night of rainfall. The songs here are very short. Lupe's influence? This one, a near instrumental, languid, sparse, lovely. Of course I lament my inability to create beautiful things and excise the fact that it is through my own lack of effort. I write these entries on a whim. I could sit and edit and rewrite and truly express what I want to express in some classically romantic form but I don't have that sort of earnest dedication. I am preternaturally talented in most things. I am lacking only in discipline. Another Clientele-ish number. Alasdair has not travelled as far from his roots as has Lupe. Perhaps, it is only that his is the more distinctive style. Style is important. I have given thought to my own possible set of mythologies in which to enshroud myself and the idea of creating a persona along say the lines of Edouard de Max and make every occasion of my conscious life memorable, to exhale a veneer of literary pretense atop my normally staid being. I could dress the part of a dashing cavalier of letters, speak in an affected manner, make references to Jacque Vache and purchase the praise from my very own Henri Rochefort to construct my being so that I would leave a lasting imprint on this world and the next. And then, in moments when like Boulanger I am forced to exist outside of this mythology when I turn morbidly mediocre I would rely on my improbably handsomeness to carry the day. The last Lupe song, a bit like an organic version of Pipas. Pipas are/were well versed in technology. I would imagine Alasdair being somewhat allergic to the idea of a sampler on his records. I could be incorrect. It is difficult to write about people who are much more intelligent than I am, clearly this is true of both of the protagonists here, and so I stick to my own visceral reactions and attempt not to dissect the mechanical structure of this album or make improper speculations. It is all very tender and sylph-like. Now a number in Spanish. An english title. It swings. Are there books to describe the etymology of specific cultures in Europe and how they became derivations of one another and the influence of alien forces such as the Moors and the Huns and Mongols, etc...It is fascinating that a relatively young civilization such as Europe, in comparison to the great precursors Egypt, Sumeria, India, China, blah blah blah has developed such a cultural richness and precise definition of ethnicity. Of course it is mostly falling away now, old buldings and bureaucracy cannot save your world, and with the cultural hegemony of the anglo-american model. There are portable redoubts but Maria Minerva doesn't have to be from Estonia, she could be from Philadelphia, the Field mice are very important in the Phillipines, Slowdive is dominant in Peru. It is a sad thing. What will come when all cultures merge into one super organism? Will it then break apart like Pangea and Gondwanaland and then reflower in distinctive colours and flavours all over the planet? One can hope. Harvest Time is absolutely lovely, lithe and delicate, as if he's been listening to Tim Buckley recently, or Graham Nash. Beautiful. It is all very beautiful, and thus my intense misery. Misery comes when you are envious of the gifts of others. We should revel in their heart filled creations, I know, Dream(Dead Hands), gorgeous. Lupe's voice is less distinctive, a whisper more than a voice, matched with Alasdair's here it is perfection. The guitars so gently plucked, the notes falling sweetly from the forest canopy, gently rustling the dew from leaf tips. She lives now in England. I believe. Here then could be her reflection of London, the emerald landscape, the rain showers that featured so prominently in nearly every Clientele song, propriety. If only the world that exists in pop songs existed in the hearts of those without. But in the age of narcissism it is rare to find that jeweled heart that isn't bound by rigid adherence to dogma and self-belief. I am not well defined. I am nearly middle aged. I suppose. But I am willing to become something considered an improvement over the person that I was yesterday. I want to discover someone who has discovered more than I have and hasn't, as a result, shut out all of the remnants of things thought left behind in the dust. This is very accomplished, clearly, but it doesn't sound as self-important as a Clientele record, there is a effervescent charm that seemed rather more studied on God Save the Clientele. The last three tracks have arrived, Stone, we may have hoped for an Alastair Galbraith cover but no fear for it is a gorgeous Lupe original. It is reminiscent of a story from my own life. One afternoon in the mountains was spent contemplating the endless sky and uplift and we discovered a note written in a man's script where a promise was made to the void, a promise to improve this world, to improve the lot of everyone he loved within it. Endearing. This seems a ethereal pean to the loveliness of nature instead. Her cooing whisper, her gentle strum. How many times have I used gentle. It is the overarching theme. Play this record in a less than stout breeze and it would all collapse but in a sturdy set of headphones and while safely esconced in a dark room in the middle of a late spring evening it survives and reaches magnificent heights. The last Alasdair song. Perhaps he has moved further from his center of comfort than I had imagined. These are really warm pop songs. This is the title track. The colours of the sky, the temperature, the taste of the countryside seems to infect every aspect of the record. It is the country ideal, the pastoral idyll, the England of July Skies. Lost, remembered, forgotten, relived. The last track a reprise. So many days to treasure.

Gold-Bears Are You Falling In Love?. I am not. Are you? But this is not portentous and self-indulgent and droll. Scroll down for that. This the Boyracer record you have waited all of your life for. Better even than To Get A Grip You Better Loosen Your Grip or whatever that one was called. That was pretty ok, yes, but this is better. Stewart from Boyracer played on their first single. But the more important historical information is that Gold-Bears guy was once in Plastic Mastery and I loved Plastic Mastery. So this entire entry may mean nothing at all to you because you hated Plastic Mastery. Well then, you are mistaken, which only means that while I could still be wrong there is no denying that Plastic Mastery were thrilling. PM were emo, sure, but they had this filled near to the point of bursting emotional detonator if emotions had detonators thing about them that i really enjoyed. Maybe you are a Captured Tracks kind of person? That's alright. They are reissuing Nick Nicely I hear. He's brilliant. He'll then feel rather uncomfortable on the label that celebrates all things mediocre. First song is over, it was about falling in love in a record store. Right? Very early 2000s. Who goes to record stores any more? I was nearby Wax Trax on this past Thursday and normally would have felt an uncontrollable force dragging me as if by gravitation towards their racks but not this Thursday. I had wonderful french food and met a wonderful person across the table from wonderful french food. And then I went home and listened to Giorgio Tuma. But this entry is not about Giorgio Tuma, he lives further down the page in the nicer zip code. Second track is over, faster and buzzier than the first one, and now the third one is faster and buzzier then the second one. Part of the thrill is how they sequence the record so that each song segues into the next without a gap, especially when the energy level, already high, jumps to the next state on the next track or when the speakers go from room shattering to tender and meekly describing a tender and meek melody. This one might be an intermezzo, though not labelled as such, not much happens but then it moves into a more interesting quieter thing that is very very very Boyracer. Have I mentioned Boyracer? Boyracer were mostly terrible, we love them, yes, but they were mostly terirble. When you release 75 songs a year for a few years you need to write songs very quickly. Does Giorgio Tuma write songs quickly? Unlikely. Boyracer were great though. I know, I just said they were terrible, but terrible isn't always bad. Gold-Bears are really great though and I don't need to attempt to juxtapose a positive connotation on that. Hard to make out the words. It is not poetry but his performance often makes the words more earnest and poignant. I could suppose that the appeal I find in Plastic Mastery/Gold-Bears man is his earnestness. When I was eating French food I meant to discuss earnestness, but I did not. This could have been my downfall. But earnestness is not holding sway when defining the zeitgeist. Artifice, irony, these are the things that matter. Back to pace now, spindly guitar lines above the buzz, the drums recorded in the garage of the neighbor down the street recorded by two cans tied together with kite string. I can imagine them getting into a suburban garage and banging out this record in a weekend. It doesn't sound ramshackle or shambolic or amateurish but it is exciting and possesses a vitality of youthfulness. How old is Plastic Master/Gold-Bears guy? I don't know. He looks angsty. Next track, the ubiquitous buzz in the background, the angellic guitar on top, his voice distorted by technology and desperation. Marvelous. It is a fast record, it is very short. It is for driving. When you are driving to Chicago across Iowa through the dead of night and the person sitting next to you wants to listen to the Legendary Pink Dots and you resist and you decide on a compromise well this is your record to build that compromise from. It's guaranteed to appeal to everyone. Well, no. But it is great, I say so, you are wrong if you disagree. Edward Kaspell, is that how it is done???, would not be a fan. When he is driving through Iowa he may feel more in mind of Wagner or Shania Twain. I have never driven across Iowa with a pop star. Kansas yes. Another moment now when they ramp up the energy. It's about infectious energy and the music causing me to type much faster then I normally would. The Giorgio Tuma record slowed all of my senses,yet made them sharper and more keenly focused to detect the precise appurtenances of live in a snow globe but with this record the world is a rush and a blur and you only catch the vague outlines of excitement and beauty but the essence drills deep through your cranium. Sometimes you need that. Giorgio Tuma may have made the most beautiful record ever, at least for this week, but you can't always listen to Giorgio Tuma. Sometimes you need indiepop made well to remind you that you are only in your 30s, the world hasn't forgotten you that you have just forgotten the world and you still have time to realize your dream of sitting next to Robert Osbourne announcing Jean Seberg in Joan of Arc. I could hardly do worse than Alec Baldwin what with his Wikipedia quoting praise of Black Panther-ship in front of Robert before The Mouse That Roared. Robert must have been so absolutely embarrassed. But then I learned everything I need to know about Jean Seberg from Marine Research song. I wrote that in a letter, earlier this week, but I mentioned that it was a Heavenly song and have been unable to live with that mistake all week. This track is mainly chiming guitar and violin and buzziness. No drums. This isn't a great deal removed from Plastic Mastery. It could have been a Plastic Mastery record but then is a Plastic Mastery record without Larry Bonk even the remotest of possibilities. There again with the swell into the excitement of youth. How do some people embody this zest and others can't. I've never displayed it. Not in public, not off of the page. Was Jean Seberg about anything but the haircut? Haircuts are important. I have never settled on a haircut actually. It is a normal process of growing old you pick a style and maintain it and people walk up to you and feel comforted by your consistent coiffure but mine goes from unkempt state to unkempt state without any real sense of attachment. My brother once sported Morrissey hair. He made a fair go of it. He wore it to Cathy Dennis concerts and to the Kill Uncle tour. The Kill Uncle tour was the saddest day of my life until then. I've had a few more desperate since but was it Asian Rut or Phranc or was it Meadowbrook Theater? Morrissey in the sunshine, next to the mall, hmm...a mid tempo Gold-Bears number now. More people will feel the words more deeply than I do. I bet they are angst-ridden and passionate, he could not possibly be otherwise, and will carry some people through trauma and loneliness of spirit the same as Morrissey did for me. Where is the Morrissey for kids of today? Feel sad for the kids of today. They don't eat meat and they can't spell and they can't bear the thought of being alone. X-mas Song is just wrapping up. It is almost X-mas for me. I don't like X-mas anymore. I don't believe in X-mas anymore. Last track, starts off with thundering bass drum, gentle plucks on a guitar, his voice recorded down a phone line. This is the final wrap up, the long note in your yearbook at the end of the semester...it starts off slow and he incorporates his favorite phrase near the beginning alongside the shoegazey guitars 'yeah tonight'. Is it his trademark? Who are the other Gold-Bears? Unknown. They could be bearish on Gold, is that wise, gold closed at 1537 this week, but there is the possible liability for sickening all of their miners apparently. I worked for a gold mining company. It was the ideal job for a loner but even I could not bear it. Am I truly a loner? Probably by default more than definition. Big finish, he's come in from the other room with his squealing guitar and the drums rocking and it's awesome and awesomer.

Giorgio Tuma In the Morning We'll Meet. I've been writing letters for the last few weeks. The modern equivalent. I've also read a biography of Heloise & Abelard and perhaps it is the atmosphere of their mythical atmosphere and the eternal beacon it casts forth on a whole swathe of human history but I am feeling bound. The power of words, the surprise, the unexplored avenues that flower in possibility. A fraud. Giorgio Tuma have been the soundtrack to a marvelous week. It's a week where the strongest emotion is positive, where I feel this glow through fingertips and ends of follicles. As if I've swallowed the moon and it can't compare to the luminescence of my being at this moment. It is all still a fiction at the moment, pages written and scoured for clues and mysteries alighted and some still not yet understood and always will they remain. But there is possibility and to have a set of musics to ease my transition back into my actual life and away from dreamings is splendid. A Ghost On Our Way, soft, delicate, the entire record is molded in the same fashion. But with substance and joy and heartache. All of these are imaginary beings on a planet populated by others. In this world, in our world, I feel nothing at all. I make brief forays into the world of emotion and am rebuffed first casually and then with diatomaceous showers, with cobras spitting venom, with tiny animals that live under floorboards coming out in the evening and unscrewing the drain plug at the bottom of my heel and allowing the essence of life ot fall to the floor to be absorbed by moth wings and lint. This is the extent of happiness in this world. Imaginary Soundtrack for Yuri Norstein, this is the theory of summertime in California made whole in pop song, it is an empirical study in beauty, in human voice, in loveliness. It is short. It is already over. The next song, just as magnificent, twinkles coaxed from pianos and melodicas and their voices and the words, heavenly. And over, again. This world is ephemeral. Especially moments of happiness and the emotions coupled to that human state. I will walk through the botanic gardens alone today, always alone, and I will think of things I want to write in the future. Happiness. I would love to write happiness. There was a previous entry. it was happiness. Now, loneliness. Eternal. Soporific. Now the first single, gentle folk made by gentle folk, summer folk made by people from a golden land of sea and sunshine and olive vines and vineyards and magenta and cyan. The sky melts in appreciation. I melt but I am amorphous, I don't embody anything at all just a passionate thrall to dead beings from higher plains and a few notes stored on resistors and silicon chips. It is a great circle, the sun, the sand, the semi-conductor. All fused from heat, 'but instead of a soul, a cigarette lighter that doesn't work'. And more twinkles for this intermission. Life as an intermission, filled with twinkles and starlight but ll of these things exist on the periphery and when you try to consume the moon, or betelgeuse or even the spark that emanates gracefully from the living it is extinguished by this shroud of antipathy. My life as a pop song, empty and sentimental and without meaning. Innocenza Centra, the multi-tracked vocals and strings and all of the songs are harmonically similar and structured along a template as if there was a greater design, a master plan to tap into this energy of possibility. But the keys to the kingdom are invisible if you lack the gene of human emotion, of human interest, of being dear and kind. They could be jangling a few inches in front of my nose but I have no ears to hear them, no eyes to adore them, no hands to unlock them. Just a poetic existence of the lonely. Cocteau says that everyone carries their own death within them. That is all there is. These beautiful moments in song are merely the prelude, the flashes of images that accumulate to populate your final moments that for some result in rapture and in others just a timid sigh farewell to the void. An Enchanting Blue. Parts of this were made as a nomad. I am a nomad of spirit, I read books and listen to music from all over the earth, and watch Wolfgang Ketterle on my computer and escape for moments at a time and yet I don't have a desire to move into a lifestyle of transience and ephemerality that covers all things above happiness. The Colorado landscape is verdant and boastful at the moment, a torrent of rain in the last few weeks has spoiled the flora and it is exhibiting without inhibition and it is beautiful and romantic and who knew that the west could be such things. Must I learn the same ferocity, take these small moments of joy and consume them quickly and yet somehow store their sparest portions for my long journey into solitude. Armed only with Giorgio Tuma songs and dreams of how things should have been if I had a lion's heart. Now the period of languid romanticism, the longer songs, the still relaxed light of the world sheltered in warm spaces created all over the world. I can imagine that the Giorgio Tuma travelled with a warmth and glow that they unpacked in each location where they made this record, they opened the window and in deference to the second law their glow traveled forth under the window pane and infected everyone in near proximity. They grew extra appendages on their shoulders and hair on their teeth and an extra set of hearts to give away. These hearts grew on the outside of their chest, away from the jailer. There was an evening when i was happy this week. I thought that it was a shared bliss. I was wrong. Sails unfurled, the doledrums shall return, Giorgio Tuma is all there is. The epic centerpiece. There is less of the tropicalia that was on the last record, it is delicate and cold to the touch but it radiates in a different spectrum from that which glistens skin and toasts sourdough bread. It's a wavelength that is elusive to most detectors, to the depths of sudbury there are occasional flashes and the readings on alien machines are indecipherable but the sterile rooms in mines are already warmer than the imprisoned. I should live in a mine, deep within the earth, with tentacles reaching to the surface to detect the anxious footfalls of those rushing towards life and into the graves of those who have already lived. This is the most beautiful record I have heard in a long time. It is perfect. Is it made more perfect by the indifference of the world? it doesn't burst forth with pyrotechnics and charm filled soliloquies it fills all of the spaces that can be filled, it turns water into ice by stores that lost heat in a note that lingers forever in the light. 7 minutes, already over. Now to the denouement. The unraveling. The credits. A piano without words, it is more stark and less distressed, it is new, uncelebratory. Horns, a female voice, a torch song, glissandi, tenderness, sunset in an urban landscape, a scene framed by someone renowned for their body of work expressed in a marathon on the Lifetime movie network. Here is the jazz. We don't like the jazz. We like this. It could be Norah Jones. It could be Anita Baker. It's warm and forgiving, it's the calculus of your emotional inventory and anatomy in the final stanza tiny heart, let his wishes win the love, and disguised in his old ways, drowned in quicksand. It's brutal. But what of those who are sure of who they are in regards to themselves but have no idea of their existence or being in relation with others. How to define yourself among the remainder of the species when you have so little emotional contact. I was so cheerful this week. I spent time in front of school children and smiled broadly when discussing Buckeye trees and the exasperated hypoxic soils of Colorado. I may have been planted in those soils 12 years ago and it has caused all of my limbs to wither and atrophy and so alt that is left is this aqueous jar of obscurity and things that are unspoilt but without flavour. These two are short bursts of romance and gorgeousness. What power to create these monuments to the greatness of the living, the beauty of the struggle for survival, a compulsion to express the human instinct for loveliness and beauty. I don't possess a jot of it. Everything on the surface is without depth. I reside on the surface. Occasionally there are burblings and bubbles form and I take shelter in these bubbles and burblings but gravity always defeats surface tension eventually and we return to the desert. Last song. his voice, tender and gloriously beautiful and a piano and space, and emptiness, I migrate towards the emptiness and dissolve. Heloise & Abelard, Voltaire and Emilie Du Chatelet, Sarte and De Beauvoir, Lloyd Dobler and Diane Court, it doesn't mean love. The most beautiful thing, this is.

New Giorgio Tuma album is sooooo beautiful!

i <3 sally seltmann.

The Sleeps in Oysters album is out. Hmmm...I may have to shake the cobwebs off of this Itunes gift card. I feel so 20th century, buying music, bah!

Update: Sleeps in Oysters Lo!. It starts off with a sample of something. Don't know what. I am devoted to research. I don't know anything at all about music and I am allowed to use that as an excuse for laziness. This song starts off similar to the eps that preceded the album. Pops and gurgles of electronics and disassociated voices and a general otherworldiness. It's marvelous. But then about midway through it takes a turn. It is a folk album. Were we expecting this? Have they always been a folk band? There were loads of songs about insects, I remember this, am I misremembering? Asking questions is annoying. Do you really care about insects? I don't. Godzuki's first album has loads of lyrics about insects but I don't notice it all that much while I listen. There are melodicas and guitars strung from broom sticks and wash basins and still the disorienting atmosphere of cacophony and it's brilliant. They are a folk band and I don't mind really. If I listened to music while I rode my bicycle I would listen to this. it is very industrial, it could act as a lubricant for my aching muscles, the singals generated from the auditory nerve coursing through my torso into my quadriceps and being transmitted to the gears of my hybrid bicycle. It would be electric. This is a very english record. Delicate, clever, pastoral, these things are not done well by Americans. They are done well by the French. It could be a general European trait. Perhaps not among the Scandinavians. Second tracks is small twinkles and blurbs and his distorted voice, it sounds a bit emo, he sounds vulnerable and wounded and it's nice. I could be in the right frame of mind for this. I have a reminiscence of Bitmap or the Beta Band. Am I again misremembering? Bitmap were never this gifted. Bitmap were a bit dreadful really. He should never have ventured away from Salako beach. Now there is electronic turbulence and cosmic background radiation and it is lovely and it devolves to his tender naked voice and a guitar. Very Nice. I don't remember his voice at all before this record. Did he sing before? Did they record this in a coffee shop and later take the tapes hope and splay them flat with electronics and end of the world business. Song over in a soft drizzle of twinkles and hummings and gentleness. It is a folk album and I don't mind. Now to a suite. Very pretentious. If I made a record I would include suites. This starts off with rain sounds, birdsong, electronics and keyboards, without voice. Very pretty, very pastoral as in picking daisies in spacesuits. How to program such things? DO you have to hear these sounds in your head and search for them on your sampler? Or is it all happy accidents? Is there a default setting and all electronic music is merely manipulations of these basic sets of defaults? I don't know. Again with the questions, argh. I need to move on to become a man of statements rather than questions. Part II has begun, his distorted voice, joined occasionally by his female partner, twinkles and tubular bells. These are all short parts of a larger whole. Oh, I apologise, this is Part 2 and the preceding was Part 1 and before that was merely the prologue. I would like to have a prologue on my album. Has Thom Yorke had a prologue on any of his albums? He seems as if he'd be a prologue kind of guy. I am now moved outdoors to finish typing this and the weather is beautiful. In Colorado there are years when the 90 degree days can start in May and End in September and then there are years when it doesn't truly warm until July. I prefer those years. I write effusive lamentations over the heat. I don't actually mind the heat because one of the joys of living here is an accompanying heat index that is less than the actual temperature but then the monotony of sunshine and 90 gets a bit wearying actually. You might not think that it would, but it does. Part 2 was a bit dull, sounded like someone dropping nickels into an empty glass vase. Snooze. Now to Part 3, the final part, the part that makes it all seem worthwhile. I have faith. Folk singer troubadour voice exercising his workman's blues, guitar at a pace now, it almost sounds traditional. His own lamentation is concerning winter. I like the winter. I like the mornings where all of the warmth is drawn from your exposed skin, the unique crunch of crystallized snow beneath your boots, the slow cranking over of a car starter and the sound of snow falling from pines. That pure whoosh. Now if an electronic band could recreate that sound we'd be getting somewhere. part 3 wasn't all that impressive but I still enjoyed it. I don't think that was an actual suite that just finished. I will have to do more research. next track, Sunday at the Margin, organs(air organs?) pumped and electronics squiggled and his soft voice. I remember that her voice was actually lovely. Am I remembering incorrectly? This is nice. I like this album. I think it is a summer album, but a summer evening album, it is too busy for the arc of the days heating. The lilacs in my yard are fading, it wasn't as great a year for blooms as it was last year, the rain dampened the enthusiasm of the flowers this year I think. And the continuing colony collapse has caused much distress in the world of lilacs and burning bushes and the rosacea family in general I would presume. Maybe we need to import giant Japanese Hornets to pollinate my lilac trees and to carry off little children dressed in designer clothes. They could carry them to the same place in India where David Cameron offsets his carbon emissions with poor Indian Boys operating a treadle pump. i could claim a carbon offset for each of the trees I have planted in my yard. Could I not? I am sequestering carbon! Also since I have been riding my bicycle I now have much shallower breaths than I once had so my production of CO2 must be reduced as a result. When I go to walk about the botanic gardens I will breathe more heavily and share my lovely sweet CO2 with the trees there. Girl singer alert. She has returned. I guess her voice could not necessarily be characterized as lovely, only in the sense that Rosie from Pram is the loveliest lovely on the planet, it's odd and quirky and as I do find those attribute endearing I suppose she is lovely. Whirrs and stutterings and stammerings, it sounds like me this past Thursday night. It feels more frightening fairy tale-ish when she sings. Is the record broken into two parts? Now a standard drum machine pattern and it sounds a bit like the second Godzuki album but it isn't about insects and of course neither was the second Godzuki record. This is the band's theme song. Better than We are the Pipeetes, the album has turned rather marvelous since she has taken over the microphone. Sit down son, time for me to sonne you. Guitars, electric guitars, silly lyrics. Don't Drum for Other Girls. This is summer. This is music for washing the car to. This is music for Reggie Blaze to call the police for. Reggie Blaze is possibly dead. I wonder how many of the people from the neighborhood are now dead? Claras? Luchinskinis? Prauls? The death of my childhood. A Capella. She is much more playful, I am playful, I have exorcised my melancholic demons while writing about Giorgio Tuma this morning. I like the self-help words, and now a piano, one in each ear, her awkward voice. Her half o the record is much more marvelous than his was. Sorry dude. Now digital strings and ambition and gracefulness and magic. I am being very specific in my praise here, let me choose another amorphous amalgamating adjective that means nothing at all. A digital horn next to the digital strings, a pop cuisinart and it's amazing. Really. It is like Pram if Pram had a happy childhood rather than the one they likely spent locked underneath the sink with only a box of boric acid for sustenance. And an ironing board cover for a pillow. It has fallen into disrepair and parts of the song are bleeding out into the air and it's beautiful. I wish I knew more words for beautiful. Now a sample of a gospel recording, clever. A 2-part epic to end the record, introduced by a sailor's hymn. Hymn over. Silence. Lots of silence. Not a refrigerator hum. Just the refrigerator hum. Hmmm...now maybe a TV test pattern hum has joined the refrigerator hum. It is anticipation that they are building, sometimes building anticipation is no good thing for other people. Now a signal from extra-terrestrial intelligence, a repeating pattern, manmade, the lost tribe of israel. Call Jehu. Three minutes have passed, not so epic then. This is the first time I have listened to this song. The lamentable age of CDs and digital music. I keep typing lamenting or lamentable or lamentation, i apologize. But wen forced always to listen to music from front to back and never from the middle onwards as you would when say listening to a cassette changes the relationship to song position on an album. Is it wise always to include the grand epic as the final track? Are there classes in university to discuss these important questions? I do hope so, for the sake of the safe continuance of human civilization. Now the sailor's voices have returned from the abyss and haunt your dreams. It's all very Poltergeist. Its Jobeth Williams getting baked in her bedroom while the kids are getting it down the hall. It's great. Sorta, I have faith that it fits in to something greater in the overall scheme because the album thus far has been fantastic and this is just the bit where Skunk Baxter would have guested with a wanky guitar solo 30 years ago. Almost silence, the vacuum of space, the sound of the wipers on the port hole window giving you a clear view of Sadal Melik. Now to part 2, it's lovely, her bare voice, something plucked, slowly then more quickly, like a metronome, like a clock, very Pram. Are they Pram lovers? Lovers in love with Pram? Delightful.

Listening to Plastic Mastery in preparation for the Gold-Bears record that is allegedly out soon. Something good on Slumberland? Sacre Bleu! Plastic Mastery are, of course, underappreciated musical gods who make my pedal feel featherlight while I listen and drive at the same time. It's Plastic Mastery weather.

New Alessi's Ark seems to have lost a lot of the girlish charm of the first record. Simon Raymonde's fault?

Update: It isn't as girlish but it is still utterly charming. More later.

If translations of lyrics on youtube are to be trusted then I have greatly misjudged Arnaud. It seems he's delightfully odd!

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.