Lanterns on the Lake Until the Colours Run. Second albums are key. The first Lanterns on the Lake was gorgeous sure but is the next version the same as the first with a few more monstrous licks they learned from playing the same 11 songs over and over, night in and night out in Nijmegen and the next in Heidelberg? Everyone has a "good" idea. The first Lanterns on the Lake album was an antique, or it was antiqued, it felt out of place, discovered, underexposed. They had ideals. Second record begins now with muscles rippling, tee shirts tight to the chest, band logos written in pen on spiral notebooks. Or on a nook. Does an antique have inherent value while new and modern lags? No. I have taken some time to warm to this album. I have needed sunday mornings curled in an uncomfortable chair with a special afghan and nutella and toes dipping into the cool morning air to learn to appreciate muscles. In music, muscles usually have negative connotation. In this city, this is true. We prefer the dainty, the delicate, snow filled globes and nostalgia rather than SUV's filled with the others. First track is a fitter Devics, it is very loud, except for her, the singer, music is still tender in her heart. Second track, a bit more nuanced, a bit more artistic, a bit more lovely. Now the chair where I came to my new conclusion has been moved to the basement and on the table next to it sits the Morrissey biography. My wife asked my mother to purchase it for me. I was delighted. It wasn't a set of golf clubs. I devoured. I read closely in haste. I was not inured. And today, I am heart broken. Devastated. Morrissey is small and petty, bitter, he is not worldly, not at all, in spite of the world having him in its embrace. It starts off vague and uninformative, he barely attempts to make pretty his mundane existence through a less than revealing concatenation of dour British television plots more poetic, he paints lovely portraits in inartistic prose of his favorite relatives and the image of his father the brawler is fascinating and when he speaks of his love for music I fall in love the same as he had, all over again. But his account of how the Smiths formed is almost vacuous. I was in a band, then I was not, oh and then I met Johnny Marr. Essentially. The Smiths were a love story but in his mitts its a discarded footnote. And the ponderous dissection of the Joyce affair, ugh. Is it about money? Was it only about how little Geoff Travis cared about the Smiths having a number one record? But Morrissey as Morrissey made the mundane poetic the way that Belle and Sebastian can not. Stuart Murdoch needs the fanciful and unreal. Perhaps because he did not have a Johnny Marr to fulfill his need for inspiration outside of the realm of imagination. Did Lanterns on the lake make this record hoping to make a mint? Perhaps not. I shall not taint them by association. But they trade in anonymity, assiduously cultivating it in their characterless montages. We, I, long for the intimate associations with our pop stars I think. We do. We want Paddy Mcaloon and, sadly, Morrissey. Or we want Stars, we long for their cleverness as homage in itself to Prefab Sprout and stories written by Torguil about Paddy. Love letters across an ocean. This, LOTL, is an open ended missive to the ocean of sound that is filled in with broad strokes. The delicate touches here are wonderful, but they are enveloped and smeared. These sexual coos, turned virginal do thrill, until the ocean swallows them, the sea swells rise and it is an impressive production but the moment of inspiration, the distillation of loneliness that propels their vision is lost and instead of the universal ache we achieve sympathy with their collective idleness, But it is individuals that make pop music most thrilling. A Bob Wratten line repeated ad infinitum turns catholic and we sing it in our inner voice and it is more beautiful than it has ever existed in the real world. This is the real world, with sparklers and twirling skirts and beautifl children with biblical names. I love it, don't mind my rambling. But when Morrissey existed in his pop songs only he was miraculous, he turned his mundane world into a shimmering escapade across the heads and crooked backs of those we knew didn't understand. We ate our burgers and wore our leather shoes, he would guess that this meant we did not get it, but he's wrong. Morrissey is dreadful. The Smiths as the Smiths exist only now. We can not isolate strains of genius from the whole, not any longer. Lanterns on the Lake exist only as a whole, the collective. They, allegedly, nearly split before making this album. It does not channel ferocity or anger, it's a gentleman's maelstrom on these first three tracks, and then the effects of the ubiquitous aether seeping into the grooves and pops and crackles are mostly implied but fervently. Would this music work with a personality? If the words were filled with meaning and desperate specifics and written with an agenda would it move the masses. I shared the Smiths agenda, I know I did, and I know that you did as well. I am uncertain about the agenda of Lanterns on the Lake. Green and Gold now. Pianos, Pianos. Her-whispering. I don't know any of the names. The names seem unimportant. This is gorgeous, it is the background soundtrack that plays when all of the best moments of your life occur to someone else. You live vicariously through the best moments of life because you can't remove yourself from the hope and comfort of conformity. This track is stunning, truly and this album is amazing and I love it but there is a higher ideal. I get it from the 1 minute trailer for the new Pains of Being Pure at Heart record, possibly only because I have angst and envy over his duffle coat and I am easily manipulated by the overexposed film of Kip Berman looking like a Dead Poets Society extra but it makes hairs flutter. His favorite romantic is surely Keats because even through Pains of Being Pure at Heart are affluent and have the disease of affluenza that has dampened the spirit of indiepop until it has reached near to its current state near demise and the idea of him writing a record where he really means it seems almost inspiring they still identify only with the purity of the struggle they are unfamiliar with. A small victory will win out and cheer us and yet...Green and Gold has finished and the soul is stimulated only esoterically, they haven't imprinted the feeling on my life's work. That sounds overly dramatic. My soul has impressions only of real life these days, reflections of unimaginable happiness and joy that lie less than a month away, of having a partner that fulfills all of my heart's desires and for whom I perform constantly so that she knows I am here. I am not inside of my own head. I am. But I am here in the world as well and willing and loud and unlike this song I am not the filler of her life. The drummer seems more important on this record than on the first record. Drummers having mothers, blah blah blah, it has all been said before. And the guitars are blurred into an unappealing tone of beige. Purity is normally white. The tumult that birthed this record has left a watermark. The sound comes first. Next track. Picture Show and there is the piano, the undistilled cacophony and her, whispering, they move her voice to a level just barely beyond discernible. Even when with sole piano accompaniment it's a bit too loud, the quiet made compensable by the masses. When they play the Broomfield Events center here this track will move the masses. Te entire state of Colorado will rise up and declare thir libertarian impulses freely and we will, with pitchforks, charge the hill and we will not be ashamed of gay marriage and weed for every one. And Lanterns on the Lake will sit on stage staring at their shoes. The heirs to Halstead have been exposed. Slowdive shall return. Piano and vinyl crackles. I mistook it for antiues and value once before now I understand it is manipulation of the loveliest sort. An experiment in the familiar until this track, ah, this track! Another Tale from Another English Town. Lying in bed one Sunday morning, while ti was much too cold to venture forth to my uncomfortable green recliner, I played this for my wife and it was astounding. The frisson between the notes and the air of a Colorado morning was remarkable, and we had hope, real hope. It remains. It isn't distinguishable from the rest of the record. But perhaps I long for their Englishness to be more prominent? We have given our son and anglophilic appendage, eh will love England as much as I love the England that existed in the Vistors Gold Mining in the Would Be Goods Marvellous Boy, here and of course in That Joke... and all of the other most important songs in the world ever that have existed forever in my heart where time is not fungible. The drama here is different, I was wrong, her voice commands instead of retreating and the force when combined is dazzling and the final few strums close the book on a beautiful chapter. The climax before a milder denoument. LAst track now, guitars and drums(how novel) and more of the beige we would have ben overjoyed with its exclusion. Her voice is pressed between pages but the pages are glossy and too thin and so it is all bleeding together and I can't quite make out the words and so my heart...the spectator...sigh. And the drums go on.

Hmmm...very many views of the Princeton entry. Perhaps editing is key? Or does everyone dearly love Princeton?

Mehdi Zannad Fugue. I have a tenuous link with France and so now I shall grant my official blessing to the dazzling goodness here. My own mother is fully French-Canadian. Street! And yet apart from Marcel Beliveau the French hold the Quebecois in dramatically low esteem, erm... Or so I assume. I have not done any research. The anti-anglo forces marching in the streets of Paris as profession probably admire their implacable threat of secession as thumb in the eye of all things Anglo and Amerikkkan but the French spoken in Quebec as a bulwark against yankee imperialism only soothes when used by the likes of Felix Leclerc. And so my credibility, as always, is in doubt. Mehdi Zannad used to be Fugu and now he has released this album entitled Fugue, or not just now, not really. It was released in 2011. Do you understand? Oh so long ago. 6 years after his previous album, more than a decade after the romantic and baroque debut. He's a genius(Roger Kimball would blast my carelessness), truly, and this is his heart in full bloom as much as the last record and the record before and the entire pantheon of music that was and ever will be ruthlessly ignored but is secretly, truly, the greatest thing ever and which will cause you great heartache when you discover it on your deathbed 47 years from now and realize those moments you spent with Bros are gone forever. It's sunny, optimistic and seemingly effortless. I have come back from reading a dreadful review in a magazine run by people from whom I once purchased many records, in the past, and, yes, I agree with everything he wrote apart from the sentiment and the ridiculous complaint about the brevity but say it with style or pose, at the least. The record is short. It is standard measure 70s pop. The Raspberries, Todd Rundgren, Ozark Mountain Devils and more modern practitioners such as AC Newman. Similarities abound, but this is clearly out of their league, all of them. It is in french and the language "like a piano without pedals" remains impenetrable to me although I did take 3 years in high school and my genetic predilection towards francophilia should have been an aid more than it is now but it is not. Third track, Le Tableau. Acoustic guitars, his honey sweet voice, endlessly effeminate and warm. Possibly this is a lament, as it is a fair bit more dour than the two opening tracks, this was the pattern off the ebb and flow on the last album as well. But that record was in English. The glory of English as a application in pop music is that English words float in the ether of unintended associations. French as the language of diplomacy is made of concrete. Second track was L'aeroport. It contained lyrics written by a french director I have never heard of. He has written all of the lyrics. I watched Romantics Anonymous on the Netflix a few days ago. I don't know who directed it. Possibly Mehdi's best buddy was in the chair. It was charming and lovely because while it was very French it was also very not French. In each morning commute I have been listening to "Thinking Allowed" from the BBC and recently they had a panel discussion on Michel Foucault and I found it fascinating and they also Erving Goffman and Walter Benjamin as well and while all of these people are mad strangely I found myself most sympathetic to the line of thinking of Michel Foucault. Unexpected. Mad men all of them but intellectuals in France have been the root cause of a great deal of evil in this and the previous centuries and so I find myself betrayed by my own sympathetic heart. He's dead, he died, he would have loved this record. Possibly. He was very french and in his classicism and devotion to more anglocentric pop music Mehdi is perhaps less than French. It is Phoenix, very French tres' annoying, that is shifting units and annoying sensible folks the world over while Mehdi probably sails an anonymous skiff out into the future. Now Oh Sarah, gorgeous folk pop. If you google Sarah without an h on the internet you receive a great amount of conversation about the seriousness of the slight you can impose on someone whose name is Sarah and whose name ends in an h if you decide, cavalierly, to abscond with superfluous consonants. My favorite superfluous consonant is Thom. Mostly because I find Thom Yorke mainly ridiculous. Anyhow, this Sarah is anonymous but marvelous still. Another short song, another wonderful song. This begins with a tender plaintive, acoustic dream and then moves into a celebratory hymn to anything you wish because it is in French if you recall and our ignorance a bridge to anywhere. I was watching a show on Public Television where they were attempting to teach Japanese through people discussing how to hail a rickshaw. It was disappointingly ineffective, I am still not fluent. A short instrumental now, a piano gently struck and a french horn and a soft chord here and there with wordlessness arriving about halfway through. Just magical. Why is he toiling in this rarified obscurity? Is he shunned among the natives for his embrace of English on previous records? But this is in French. Remember. Johnny Hallyday is surely nearing the denouement of his career, surely there is room for Johnny, Jordy, Felix Leclerc and Mehdi Zannad at the top of the charts? There is a new film about the chef at the Elysee palace during Francois Mitterand's imperium. Communists like to eat nostalgic food is the crux from what I can gather from the interwebs. Why then will not Francois Hollande invite Mehdi to the palace to tickle the piano and like an oneironaut carry the entire cabinet back to their life of privilege, the ecole superieure, the tough struggles of their life as union agitator, freshman MP, then reflexive totalitarianism as cabinet minister. Francois could invite Segolene, dance a rhumba and drift back to times when he seemed promising. we all were promising once upon a time. My promising era ended 11 days after my own birth. I was not born in France. I could have been. Au Revoir is genius. Comment Faire now. He's singing someone else's words, recall, but he's effecting a marvelous spirit in the music. It's joyous, boyish, cheerful, sunshine. The fall snuck up on us rather sinisterly announcing itself yesterday with the first snow flight of the season. Nothing overly traumatic, a few flakes, the sight of your breath at the end of your own nose and the cheer that comes when night turns now dominant over the day and we will soon live sharper, closer lives than in summer when the black world extends only a few meters beyond your arm's grasp. Where demons and monsters linger in permanent shadows where men scurry and fail in tests of courage that withers and dies without the nourishment of sunlight. So this record is important. It is the earth and moon and sun all distilled into wonderful pop songs, impelled into the greater existence by a heart's most pure sentiments. It covers the darkness like sediment, brightening the abyss one layer at a time. L'Allemagne on now, a bit of a dirge finale but repetitive and hypnotic to an acoustic trill and dream. Dreams always. Last track, Paresse. Harpsichordish piano chords, buoyant and clear, an opening act before the drums arrive and the meat of the drama arrive. Laziness. Is this a plea to his own sensibility? He has released but 3 records in 10 years. Each has been terrific, mind, but I am certain there are dozens of songs we need to hear and we will never because of paresse or ignominy or quantitative easing, but there are now 3 records where before there were only 2, in fact this was true only a week ago and so cheer and love and smile and listen.

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

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

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

I spent 1 hour writing a book today. I am rewriting a book I spent months writing back when I was alone all of the time. I am excited for the future. We can build our own future to live in. We can shut out the world of mediocrity and strive towards a lazy perfection as someone from the Orchids might say.

Alessi's Ark The Still Life. Our favorite child prodigy named for an italian blender has returned. She returned some time ago. I am not dutiful in my postings on here. She is now 23. part of the uncomfortable phase for readers when I was discovering brilliantly talented teenagers from around the world, quite accidentally possibly, making a turn as Stuart Murdoch possibly, creeps with poor grammar skills. Soap and Skin now has a baby. Alessi has a new record on Bella Union. Bella Union also released her second album which I did not love nearly as much as the first. This one is much better than the second. First track has a skeletal metronomic feel. Skat style whispers and her odd phrasing still intact, it's indelibly charming. I have this strange hope for her. She'll follow the creative muse and not turn into a music industry cliche, turn more towards Kate Bush(though her talent is not nearly so impressive) and not towards dating John Mayer. The songs are short, the first Tin Smithing is already over. Second track, classic italian blender stylings on the guitar and a shuffling trotting backbeat, wavering on the introduction to the chorus, delightful. How does she determine which notes to bend so flavorfully? Is it this that makes my ecstatic praise seem despicable and uncouth? Some clever tricks on the production on track two. On her second album the songs were all very short and lacked the drama that her teenaged flowering had had, it seemd she had already entered a barren middle section of her career even though the record was marginally attractive. Here she's been turned a bit more idealistic in her musical pursuits. Gone are the Lesley Gore covers and in are some goth window dressing that surround her basic folk leanings in more atmospheric accessories. In track three, The Rain there is hung about the basic structure an overbearing sense of drear. Next track an intermission, a moment of reflection, "I'm told there's good things I've done, when you're me, you remember none". A bit harsh on herself there. She seems as if she was reared among the characters of through the looking glass, in tall dewy meadows flush with sunshine dappled through leaves. And so her karmic introspection seems implausible though insistently lovely. Next track, Big Dipper, more of the cosmic cowboy sound effects with a bit of Spoon and Rafter feel brought into the tracks. She's not nearly so reverent as Neil Halstead though and so there are patches and quilts instead of a tapestry freighted with the history of country rock. Has she heard a Levon Helm drum solo? Probably. I imagine there are loads of people at Bella Union telling her to listen to Big Star records and Graham parsons, eager to abuse another child into an appreciation of the classics. I hate the 1960s, everything about them, mostly, except for the Beach Boys and West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and the Kinks and Paul Simon. That's it. Next track, a bot of foreboding in the introduction. Is she a convincing goth? Not usually. She's adopting the role of mother in this track. Has she a child? Has one of Bright Eyes planted his flag? Unknown, it is irrelevant to the matter at hand, is she writing from experience now or are this poems and flights of fancy when next she plays live will she play barefoot on top of pianos constructed from coffins that once carried the bones of martyrs from the children's crusade? This one is a bit silly. There isn't much here and the producer is trying to imbue the proceedings with a sinister element that doesn't flow naturally from this warm hearted soul singer. Neil Gaiman-esque doors creaking, large animated eyes peering back from in between the notes, it's all a consistent tempo from start to finish and it doesn't have the whimsical flourishes that we loved on the first record but she's an artist now. A business person intent on making it in the wide world of music piracy and indifferent teens torn between descendants of Clare Grogan and hair products in boat shoes. WHen I was a child I was into Fastway and Vendenberg and Queensryche and Iron Maiden until I discovered the Smiths, until John Hughes led me down that garden path. How easy to discover this english treasure in this age of the instantaneous but are there children begging their parents for a child because Alessi has one in Afraid of Everyone. Introversts seem to be in style these days, the zeitgeist in a whisper. I am introverted. I am not shy. I am unskilled in casual conversation. i was watching a skype interview on the Wall Street Journal website and a kid who probably could buy me ten times over but still has the same haircut I had in 8th grade discussed Dale Carnegie and how he told a story about a bicycle he found in the middle of a lake to the boredom of his important guests and I thought only that he needed new friends. It could be a Flann O'Brien story come to life, the bicycle detective arriving a few minutes later to arrest you for a dash too furious of sarcasm and wit. We can't be witty, we must discuss the weather and then ask about Victorian Crime drama screen plays written for the most important person in Denver, the person that lives up stairs. I love the current track, Sans Balance, she seemed fully formed with a voice on her first record but this also sounds organically grown within the folds an crevices of her neocortex, is she multifaceted and clever as well as charming. it could be. Another great track has just begun. Simon Raymonde needs to book her on Axe Cop stat. She could play Alice after the miscarriage, a smudged innocence smeared across the camera eye, we would all feel so vulnerable and despairing for the youth of the world that seems irrevocably lost. The world seems so very old. Even the brightest hope in the galaxy, our fearless president, is nearly extinguished, hubris having been mistaken for competence and the grinding work of mediocrity that propels all of the universe in view has turned our mental existence to soup. It is in need of more italian blenders, fascist or not, and fewer messiahs. My parents assigned me an unremarkable name, I have lived up to it. Money, a short philosophical treatise in a tin pan style and church bells meet the vaudeville back beat. She was born a drummer you know. A Lucksmithian chorus comes into view, we're all holding up our beers and swaying back and forth reminiscing over when times were so much more magical when Martin Starr had all of the answers. Last track now. More of the mid tempo prettiness, organ on a small plank in the misty landscape behind her fluttering heart songs. She's probably a sweet young woman, ready for the world's mundanity and indifference to beauty to leave her lovely songs to die a pitiable death alone and afraid. If this world was better I'd grow one foot taller. But I am already taller than average, so there is so very little hope and italian blenders will remain on dusty shelves in the archives of dreamers. Update: Oh, apparently Afraid of Everyone is a cover from the band the National. I am unfamiliar with the National and I hope their baby was born happy and that they believe in protecting the public health and endeavor get their child immunized on schedule.

Nore Jane Struthers Carnival. I have been reading reviews of the new Love Language album. It is beloved, mostly. Strange. Stranger still that I agree with the Popmatters review which says nothing at all in that usual real record reviewer manner(apparently this voiceless writer has won a Canadian writing prize and I bet his parents are proud) but also realizes the record is a bit of a disappointment. This is the difficulty with expectations. I have set the bar low. I consistently travel beneath. I don't know anything at all about Nora Jane Struthers. I didn't have any expectations when I plugged in the high fidelity pink earbuds I was overjoyed with my undiminished lack of expectations. There are loads of banjos, violins played like fiddles and she's a real peach I'm certain. While Caitlin Rose is searching for some sort of authenticity at the end of a cigarette it feels that this record is more of a document of an idyll. The carnival, mama's boys and a jolly violin underpinning the well mannered stylings. It is rather excellent all in all and were I a member of the Popmatters staff I would now quote four lines of lyrics and discuss their penetrating insight into the human condition but I have terrible ears for sentiment. I love the wordless bits going about just now and I am convinced that only the most confident writers will substitute a whoa oh oh for their bathroom scribbled poetry. Second track The Carnival, brilliant. Cough medicine hidden deep beneath the sink to keep that breathy elegance on the first verse and then the rush of a chorus before the banjo walks us down the promenade. These all seem to be second records, these country albums that I have only just discovered my desire for. Nora is a proper looking young lady, lips painted on, hair do done just so, a fashion blog on her website even, all of which betrays her poshness. Possibly a podcast on events in the middle east in the near future? She's an english major and sounds it, from New York University so I suppose that makes her more folk than country doesn't it. Listen With Your Heart is playing just now, and her voice is wonderful and what I am discovering when making my shallow foray into country music is that the cliche is not dead in country music. While innuendo may be king on the pop chart in Nashville a good cliche can speak to the multitudes quicker than a tweet comparing Zooey Deschanel's eyebrows to a Luna Moth caterpillar. Am I saying that country fans are simple? They are. I am. Love songs don't need to be clever. Sure we love David Scott and his unending string of metaphors for that which defines most of us but there are moments when you want to sing at the top of your lungs(cliche) the most obvious proclamations of love love love. "Twirl me around Johnny", is she ironic? Do people in New York resent that question? But as the capital of heathenism in our god fearing country they must expect such scrutiny. Does anyone in New york accept the modifier "earnest" as anything other than an epithet? But then Nora moved to Nashville. She may have felt her sincerity out of place in the artifice of a hipster scene of "folk" singers in New York. This is all speculation. Speculation is my currency, I spend it immodestly. I used to spend all of my moments when writing about a record attempting to catch the rhythm of a record while I wrote and now in my old age I have turned to making obscure unfounded accusations and littering my posts with topical posts that relay my superficiality to full effect. When not listening to Nora I have been listening to podcasts on my commute. I am dreaming of the day soon, in 2016, when the light rail station opens near to us, just 1/2 mile from our front door, and I can listen to the Divine Comedy's Commuter Love properly for the first time with a french novel and a decent side part and fond memories of the days when I would listen to Nora Jane when I was not listening to podcasts. I have just recently finished the History of Mathematics series from the BBC and am desperate to pick up my Diff Eq's text and work my way back into the favor of the gods of Primes and Chaos and multiple infinities. How to distinguish between madness and pure mathematics? Unknown. Perhaps because i lack discipline and I don't actually resemble a mathematician I could just write a screenplay about Nicolas Bourbaki. Hugh Jackman as Andre Weil in passionate embrace with a dangerous bend and Nora Jane in the corner in a small cameo a new dress, featured on her blog in a movie tie in, and her song Let Me Fall playing over the final credits. But she's an English major so we would be Brighton instead of Paris and we would run around tennis courts with inaccurate Austen quotes written on our foreheads and we would smile because we're oh so much more clever than anyone who would bring up Lie theory in decent company. Party Line introduces a male voice in the background, a song about antiquated technology. My Uncle Ivan had a party line, you had to identify your phone calls based on the ring and anyone on the line could pick up and listen to the conversation. But when I was 14 I only remember the nudity on canadian television soundtracked, oddly, by the Cocteau Twins Lorelei. The party line was also in Canada. Chatham, Ontario. I feel prim and saddled by the reluctance to get too saucy with the cheerful demur stylings in my ears. It isn't challenging. It is soulful. Isn't it? I was lamenting Caitlin Rose not having lived it before singing about it just the other month but now I feel a strange kinship with Nora Jane Struthers. She's an approximation, a facsimile and I find it marvelous because of my general ignorance of this sort of banjo led folk music. I am also one more for the uptight bookish crowd than the head wrapped around a veil of tears cried through a filter of second hand smoke and stale beer. Two Women is the epic centerpiece? It could be. It is an ode to sorrow, the fabric of loneliness stretched over a spare frame. William Lee is begging for a reference(thank you podcast). But as I am walking across the room attempting to keep my laptop from becoming unplugged there just smoker's voices coming from the television and my rush to the restroom is made uneasy. Aging has never been her friend indeed. This track is a bit of a drag, I suppose it is meant to reveal the depth of a fashion blogger turned folk chanteuse but it just sounds a bit drab. The party line wouldn't be listening in on this one and the last bit of horses drinking champagne might have had those lonely enough to have held on to scratch their heads. Count my cliches. Orwell claimed that if you recognize the simile or metaphor that you have just written that you are compelled by good taste to delete it. I have no taste at all. I break most of the 6 rules in most of these inane entries. But I am not a barbarian. Truly. Country music would not count George Orwell as a fan I am sure. He was surely a jazz man, or Cole Porter? And the idea of an english major making a pop record would be close to sacrilege. I don't know anything at all about George Orwell. I haven't gotten to that podcast just yet. I have read his account of the Spanish Civil War though and of course we re-enacted Animal Farm on the playgrounds of our youth. I may soon become a father and I will let my children know that not all things are possible, that life is unfair but drams can come true if you work hard and you don't live life afraid. I have, for most of my life, lived with fear. I am determined that this will change when the day comes when I have to stand up to the scrutiny of my own progeny, when they look at their father and judge I will convince them of the quality of otherness in a life lived in a non-extraordinary manner. Nora could be exhibit A. This is a wonderful record. I am enjoying it immensely and I have found little darkness in the sentiments that are coalescing in my mind around the notes that fill my ears. the songs are probably too long. But this is the Nashville where I would dream in. Well tended landscapes, horses in the field, children with long, unruly curls and everyone dressed in white, brilliant white and Scorpio Murtlock lives in the abandoned firehouse just down the street. male voice weaves in an out near the ned of the record, unremarkably, but it is not unpleasant. Because the songs are somewhat protracted I find my head moving on, to Howland Isalnd, to Jarvis Island and shirtless photos of tiny Hawaiian men as forgotten colonists for the imperial spearhead in the south Pacific. Could I move the scene of action in my blockbuster screenplay about French mathematicians to a desert island in the Pacific with native Hawaiians playing the foil in this lord of the flies adaptation where Emmy Noether's name is used in vain while Jean Dieudonne reaches deep into the chest of a young boy and thrusts the still beating heart into the night sky to satisfy the gods of Mo'ai which have read the shape of the waves and sailed their canoes to this unchristian land and the handclaps in unison match the melody of Travelin'On and pixie dust covers the latest thriftstore book mark of Nora's.

Ruby Suns Christopher. Robin Thicke is the target. His face emblazoned on a billboard buried in the scrub oak alongside the desert highway in the heart of hirsute Ryan McPhun. The dad with the hair, the majesty of low expectations and some strange level of swagger and of course there is the inexplicably world conquering success, there is that. Ryan McPhun had a conflagrant van on the side of a Washington state highway at their near peak and well...they did provide the soundtrack for a Microsoft commercial but then it was Microsoft and it wasn't Apple. Jet had an Apple commercial and they are probably best friends with Robin Thicke these days. My assumption that this is meant to be a commercial dance pop record could be incorrect. Sex is camouflaged and so commercial success is hardly inevitable. They can't shake a desire to make the next Power, corruption and Lies. It's not particularly danceable, even for those afflicted such as I am, not particular polished and it's difficult to imagine anyone singing along to the first track Desert of Pop. Myself, I find track number one toe tappingly lovely and dance to the moon while it plays. My Thursday evening was spent browsing the last of the Busby Berkley "Gold Diggers" and it didn't live up to Stephin Merrit's imaginings, not nearly as much as Gold Diggers of 1933 does but it made me imagine the importance of movies such as it in a period of time when the entire American dream consortium doubted itself and the times were filled with villains that appeared larger than life from the newsreels and how a slice of escapism could be more important than almost anything else. Times are almost certain to be as tough very soon but there hasn't been a real resurgence of compensatory fun and ridiculousness. Has there? Pop music is increasingly dour and violent and vapid and disingenuous and worst of all it is serious. Is it because Tom Ewing proclaimed his love eternal for Britney Spears all of those years ago? When the condensation off of his metal etching of Simon Reynolds that hangs above the mantelpiece drips down into his beard filled with the stilted clinical praise of modern youth and its own brand of sterility because as they pour from his lips they get caught up in the thicket of axial forests. I want a record to make the "dance of the pudding" the love of our lives, the day of reckoning when Uncle Ben dies in a tanning bed and the market crashes and my trip to Idaho is to some remote colony of militia washouts n a bivouac hidden behind terminal moraines and speakers playing Ruby Suns Microsoft commercials to throw the agents who trained at Orbitz off the scent as only the poor are relegated to Microsoft. Now to In Real Life, guitars and samplers, drums, his cotton candy voice. All sorts of cool and whirry whirrs but hardly a trifling scent of desire. This is more sedate than the first track which was a blast. Piano! Big chorus, a Celebrate the Nun chorus. It was raining earlier this evening and the Clientele were playing on the car stereo and this was the dance music of my heart in the moment that existed. The rain, the words, the poetry to inspire the heart to leap beyond imaginings. When in this EO Wilson created reality where life is rational, mechanical, pre-ordained through social chromosomes it is a wonder that love can peal, can rescue souls, and love is alive and the genetic material of a kiss can be carried forward to the end. This is calculated. As calculated as a love poem, certainly. But Robin Thicke sounds as if he's having a great time being Robin Thicke. Perhaps Ryan McPhun has more particular needs, his falsetto on Dramatikk sounds the result of a tragic childhood accident, a trip to the wrong emergency room, multiple urethras, but this song is startlingly lovely. I will admit to finding Blurred Lines truly awesome, the feelings remind me of my puppy love for Andrew WK the first time I heard him when playing him on a college radio show late in the evening that was broadcast to 11 dorm rooms in the middle of the winter of 2001. But...this music moves my heart. It is the heart that is my center of gravity, a portion of the male geography due north of Robin Thicke's ego. Next track, a Hall and Oates'ish track turned goth disco. He's not from New Zealand. He lives there now, or he lived there then, he is on Subpop and I imagine the room erupting into a flurry of funky white guys in Melvins tee-shirts doing the electric slide across the table top made of recycled condoms and ramen noodle packages, giving each other high fives because they had the balls enough to release such a daring piece of music. Or they just dreamed, collectively, that it was lovely. it is. I am inserting myself into the mind bended world of Ryan Mcphun. The world of ten dollar synthesizers and .99 apps that can recreate the way out sound from 1984. This track has a feel of a 10 mile swim through lime jello. Next track, Rush. Frightened child vocals, synthesized dyspeptic beats and swirls. Is he a one man wonder when making records now? I think they operated as a duo on record in the past. They may still do. he used to drum for the Brunettes. It seemed a heady time way back in 2005, Mars Loves Venus and venus loves mars and trees were made of pound cake and Lawrence Arabia was set free and we fell away from our navel gazing and dreamed of a New Zealand renaissance. It did not happen. Brunettes dude went emo, Lawrence was always more Gondal than Glass Town Federation and the Ruby Suns went away from limpid and turned tenebrous. Fight Softly proved difficult to love. This is less difficult. It's soothing and amorphous but I can wrap my arms around it. Hugs not drugs. Boy now. Remember when they went a bit Animal Collective? This is a remnant of that era. When Ruby Suns went Animal Collective it was a positive reinforcement for the theories of evolution, when Architecture in Helsinki followed suit it was a war crime. There are scattered heart beat syncopations and vague sentiments that seem earnest and determined in their disguised state. Does he have anything to say at all? Unlikely. This does not cause me any great consternation. if you are born with a poetic ear the likes of Alasdair from the Clientele you play slow, complicated songs with the words as highlight above a delicate underpinning. if you are Ruby Suns you scrub the air of depth, you turn to tone poems and nostalgic feelings of childhood and life within the womb when you shared the rhythm of life with a superior being. Boy is mostly awesome by the way. I am not turning deliberately vague, it is the music, blame Ryan Mcphun for my own foggy notions. When now he has turned Justin Timberlake playing karaoke versions Republic we are unserious enough about changing the world through perspiration and innuendo to find it disorienting and dreamy. he loves the Olivia Tremor Control doesn't he. He has a prescription the same as Robin Thicke, surely, but why would we compare our friend Ryan to the colossus? I am not sure. It becomes more difficult to write an entry on music you feel less invested in and it is true that while I find this warm and rewarding I won't be begging with my tender mercies for my wife to not stare out the window while I play this over the Scion's tin can and string radio speakers because it won't ever likely make it into the rotation. it is dance music for the space between my ears, the space behind my eyes, the world that was once my prison and which is now a ruminative diversion from a truly romantic life. My life is a dream at the moment. The seeds of existence have spilled in nonrandom forms and the Earth is recreated in the future that will be possessed by someone other than myself. My future is in the seed implanted in uterine walls. And when the day arrives Ryan Mcphun will be a memory. Pleasant and ethereal. He is an ethereal boy. He was once salt of the earth, flesh turned to steel and worldly and now he is trpped in a snowglobe inside a snowglobe inside a snowglobe. Last track, Heart Attack, ghosts of Julian Henry meeting his tenage girlfriend's parents and his sighs of resignation. A crescendo, dismal background vocals, charm and a falling away, will Ryan end the record with a moment of triumph or will it wither into the conformity of mediocrity? It's truly lovely. If you are just oh too cool for Robin Thicke, meaning you are not cool, you will find this thrilling and electric and a dream and when the end snatches you from your travels you will have not been burdened with dissatisfaction. High praise!

Caitlin Rose The Stand-In. For a song that isn't on this album Caitlin Rose has made a video with clown makeup applied to her face. I find her delightful in clown makeup and wonder if it wouldn't be a more desirable world if instead of wearing our same, sad, soggy mugs we all applied clown makeup early in the morning. Rodeo clown for extra points. We could make forlorn, melancholic eyes on foreheads for days when we are blue and a flower bursting from yoru cheek when your heart is ready to burst with love and joy. The new Love Language is dreadful sure, but this is marvelous. My wife asked me to download her country music and I don't know anything about country music but I discovered an online article that talked about women in country because we can't discuss anything without the proper taxonomy and Caitlin was mentioned in said article and while she's country-ish sure, the banjo in the now playing I Was Cruel is a slight indication of her sympathies. But she's indie. She's covering the Arctic Monkeys covering Alex Turner while in rodeo clown makeup. And she's marvelous, by the way. The new Camera Obscura record wants to be this record. I purchased tickets for the Camera Obscura album and then I heard the new album and they are old. I am old. Do I sound old. Would I paint a rocking chair on my face to lament my chronology induced infirmities. Would some enterprising bureaucrat eager to impress his or her superior propose an overarching federal regulation on the faces that could be painted on your face when trying to express the interior of your soul and blazing life force? Seven categories to categorize human emotion, to neatly place everyone into a box on a census form to be hugged by a bureaucrat terrified by life and the possibility of possibility. Third track now, rocking out a bit. She's got sass. I suppose if you are singing about broken hearts that makes you country too. Her version of the Arctic Monkeys version of an Alex Turner song is something country sure. The kids commenting on the youtube find her sacrilegious for having the chutzpah to interpret the arctic monkeys interpreting alex turner. Are we aware that Alex Turner is the singer of the Arctic Monkeys? We haven't see submarine. Next track, a peppy waltz, perhaps Caitlin's makeup, here on Only a Clown most appropriately, should be bangs, moony blue yes and twitter photos of puppies and former new/it girl nostalgia. She could be the protagonist in my new novel about a man who walks through restaurants in dockers and button down striped shirts proclaiming himself satisfied because his restaurant empire stretches free from teh west coast to Tuscaloosa and here to Westminster, Colorado. Of course Caitlin would need to butch up her makeup to pull off that role. There was an invasion of Starbucks pop girls a few years back with Corinne Bailey Rae and Colbie Caillat and Sara Bareilles and now it seems there is a twee renaissance of goth inspired country chanteuses. They've got their thrift store Flying Burrito Brothers records, their Patsy Cline danglers and red lipstick and dust in between their teeth. Caitlin looks a bit less well lived than Patsy did. Is it only life experience that informs country music? My grandfather loved Hank Williams, apparently, I am unsure because I never did meet him. Hank Williams was a republican. Enough said. And a morphine addict and an alcoholic becaus eof a bad hip so when he sang "In anger unkind words are said that make the teardrops start" they come conjured from life lived through a lens of unhappiness tinged with success rather than the opposite. Caitlin surely has delightful parents who support her every move including the the cover of Arctic Monkeys covering Alex Turner and her being the hugest fan of Zooey Deschanel ever(rampant speculation). But we're not concerned with authenticity, not really, we are insincere and we lack depth and when we write about music its always with a nod and a wink. I wish I had passion and zeal and could explain to you that this record will change your life forever. it could, it might, try it while under the influence of rodeo clown make-up, but I love it. I love the song playing now, Dallas, and while she was born there I am not sure the geography within is precise. I am reading her wikipedia page and her mother shares a grammy with Taylor Swift. Excellent. My mother has not written with Taylor Swift but I imagine she might really enjoy this record. My mother has turned into an enigma for me these days. I wonder if the woman I've known and known forever is her true self. I wish not to make this an analysis of my parents, although they do not know the existence of this website, but I wonder if her life wouldn't be soundtracked with these melancholic chord changes and vignettes the same as Caitlin's tragic rise from Taylor Swift's best friend's daughter to country crooner. By my life was bereft of tragedy, my parents kept their miseries out of the public eye, I could sense the uneasiness of happily ever after only a few times and usually I was too self-involved in the dramas of being a teenage introvert with declining vision to notice more than I should have. I could write an autobiographical second novel and include the legendary Zayne, Zach and Ziyad Roumaya and the washing machine incident and the sadness of the day I drove to Windsor to listen to The Second COming and the true decline began. This is Caitlin's second record, someone from Tie magazine loved her first album. Have you read Time or Newsweek lately? it is US weekly without the heft. is this a reflection of the times or just an outlier? Can we not take seriousness at all, is life eternal adolescence? Will Caitlin Rose get divorced and have her own substance abuse problems and work them out through her pop songs instead of through a lucrative series of installments in Time magazine? Hard to say. Justin Beiber is the most important person on the planet these days and even he seems past it. Will the next global superstar be an assemblage of cells inside my wife's uterus some day? Ann Powers loves Caitlin Rose. We love Caitlin Rose. Silver Sings is on now, it is a bit Zooey, a bit Camera Obscura, a bit of the girls who wear their bachelorette veils on Broadway in Nashville in front of Jimmy Buffett's. This song is marvelous, the chiming chords and her wonderful croon reflect the lyrics almost perfectly. But the words are not weighed down with expectation. A sad country song is freighted with history and I am not sure a suburban 25 year old can tap into the history no matter the shade of her lipstick. Does anyone allow anything within to marinate these days? This instant culture of posting heartache and disappointment on a twitter account or on a blog red by 19 people per day about less than obscure records by delightfully perky young ladies. Look for a Nora Jane Struthers review soon, Ann Powers also approves of her, and NPR approves of Ann. is there meant to be a superfluous e? I am not certain. Bernie Reeves was on the radio lamenting the death of humanities education in the university and he has a compelling argument, how the study of the foundation of western civilization brought students to the hallowed heights of middlebrow appreciation of more than just their narcissistic fantasies. What has it to do with Caitlin? Nothing. I imagine there are already college courses that discuss her and her mother's best friend Taylor Swift though. The sheer of immediacy has outshone our covenant with the past. Menagerie is rocking. Her voice at the top of her register, the beat pedestrian four-four and the guitar standard Nashville lick number 37. I have pet theories that don't mean anything at all to anyone but one is that a songwriter truly masters their craft when they can write a mid-tempo number that is compelling and emotional. The fast numbers can camouflage vacuity and the slow ones by their ponderous affected pretensions can often say less than intended but the mid-tempo collage filled record that doesn't bore me to death is a sign that you've really made it. Old Numbers then, a waltz with a mid-range pace and gothic ambience and a skronky New Orleans horn. It's charming and forever and when Caitlin's kids are worshipping the fetus of the future this song will outlive even their object of affection.

I was terrifically excited. I had a marvelous day filled with marvelous news and had slightly returned as a marvelous boy and I was expecting it to brighten even further when I discovered the new Love Language album but it is, unfortunately, rather dire and rather not good. Really. The last record is one of the greatest records in the history of this planet but this...is not. Insincere sad faces press delete.

Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires of the City. A few weeks ago we watched the Vampire Weekend at the Red Rocks. Most of the crowd seemed there to be wooed rather by Of Monsters and Men than by Vampire Weekend. It was delicately brisk. Of Monsters and Men played as the early evening sun spilt and while the crowd imbibed and tended to their chronic conditions with their prescriptions and then performed their stilted high altitude sway to morose sorts dressed as frumpy matrons we sat and considered love and the view and the sky that sat so near above us. It turned to darker night and Vampire Weekend arrived, we're old, thank goodness, and we cheered the clock's lethargy. I don't remember which song they played first, or third, or ninth, but it was lovely. Their small, tinny songs expanded nicely against the flatirons and infused the crowd with a bombastic sense of collective indifference. We stared out across the plains below, we spied our tiny little home, we counted the stars and danced to A-Punk and Unbelievers which is playing at the moment. Coincidentally I just heard this song on World Class Rock just yesterday, it sounded tinny and almost too tiny for ears on the radio. Are they a radio band then? Perhaps they are best measured and possibly appreciated through earbuds plugged into laptops. The words mixing in with the letters on the display. When my fingers tap in time with my square-ness stuck to office chairs in the middle of summer I can picture the synthesized crescendo intersperesed among excerpts from condensed versions of John Updike or Upton Sinclair or Helen Gurley Brown. My uncle by marriage has just written a book. He wrote it and then strangely he has allowed others to read it. Do people do such things? I wonder. In the early days of blogging, long ago, I've been at this almost 12 years I would regularly change the name of my blog if I believed I was achieving any level of notoriety on the interwebs. I am not so concerned these days. I receive quite a few hits actually, mostly for My Autumn Empire incoherency but also for the gems hidden in the back catalog. Unbelievers has ended. And now the first single Step. The words don't mean anything at all. He spouts them in public, he acts terrifically proud when speaking of them in interviews. They are a hygienic band. I appreciate that. Fact: Modest Mouse were the worst band of the 2000s. It's true, not even Johnny Marr could disagree. The words are something approaching an avant garde landscape. The visual sense is overly stimulated so that a view from the inside of minds on Step is distressingly oblique, common and static filled. We watched The Bling Ring and I expected Vampire Weekend because Sophia Coppola is down with the kids but we missed Vampire Weekend and marveled at how brilliantly she captured the vacuous narcissism of the age, the nihilistic pursuit of celebrity, a fusing with the collective consciousness of the facebook nation. It was disturbingly empty. Diane Young now, this is Vampire Weekend circa 2007. These are the staples, the Ford Crown Victoria of the model line. When we were shivering in the wake at Red Rocks we oticed Ezra Koenig playing at playing Elvis Presley and it's obvious here in between the squelches and the momentum that the king of rock'n'roll has reached down from the clouds and blessed his side part. They are still a young band but they are not as young as they once were. Profundity, take notes. But it was just a few years ago when they were snot-nosed punks, fresh faced, exciting. And now? Do they listen to the Beach Boys and The Smiths? Do bands today have that archivist sense that so many brilliant bands in the past had or are they caught up in the present, in their Flo-Rida's and their Robin Thickes. Are they part of this rush to celebrity? Vampire Weekend on Girls this week! The headline buried in the surf. If ever a show had a short shelf life it is Girls. It's brilliant, certainly, but it is so wrapped up in the superficial that I can't imagine it resonating beyond the sell by date of the gouda or hummus. But in our newly trendy neighborhood we might soon hear the strains of Don't Lie wafting over the rows of Catalpas in bloom. When we were out walking the other evening we spotted what might be classified as a hipster: species unshaven, unclean, uninteresting, unromantic walking along the road while we gasped from across the way. A true hipster neighborhood would banish us for considering Vampire Weekend at all. Better to love their Beiber ironically and their faux John Mayer guitar solos played on their grandmother's expensive guitars at hipster christenings for hipster babies born into a world of diffidence and chemical amendments. I only have one hipster friend. She was not into Vampire Weekend when I last met her. I attempted to convince her of their brilliance but I was not the first one in, her friends, the hipsters, had contaminated her and she has a mind of her own and she may have thought they were dreadful. It is a legitimate opinion in some circles. We live in a square. It is part of our own avant garde landscape. Hannah Hunt starring a kinetic gardener populating thoughts along Interstate 10. They should have taken the train, gardening can be thought on luxuriantly while riding the rails, while embracing the peak of fine living circa 1953. Rail is one of the most regulated industries in the world, thus it is frozen in time, the speakers would spill Ann Murray if they hadn't stopped working before Snowbird entranced the world. A Canadian songbird is a repeating fugue of American life. Will Ann sing a charity track for the tragedy in Quebec. For the airplane crash in San Francisco, or the Islamists in Tahrir Square? Unknown. Vampire Weekend are incoherent to be political but they dutifully avoid taking a stand. But could they possibly surprise anyone with an expression of where they stand? Everlasting Arms speaks of stands, not the bleachers, not the stands that hold umbrellas in place, not the stands of leaf spot blighted Aspens, but their position on the unimportant issues of the day that take precedence in the collective heart that rules our lives these days. A society ruled by emotion and the fear of judgement. We will judge you and you and you and Vampire Weekend. We judge them splendid. If apolitical. The sky blushes. The strings digitized and pasteurized, the childlike voice. I appreciate that he is willing to make his voice ugly in pursuit of the esoteric. The chicken dance song has begun just now. Finger Back. It's for the jazzercise class for mothers who are pregnant by donors anonymous or unknowing, wear your ballet slippers, slide across the epay floors in sophisticated studios on impoverished avenues of dense urban collectives. We need to take a yodeling class. Is that imperialistic. Worship You now, they do yodel, then it's rather lovely, it smacks a bit anthemic, soaring voice, the drummer enthusiastic and the organ pitched climactic. It's an ear worm, as a professional reviewer might say while painting vividly with words. I despise people who would deign to explain to you why this song is not nearly as good as the third track on the new Ruby Pins album with professional credentials to back up their wrongheadedness. Actually, I am desperate to hear the Ruby Pins record. Grass Widow! They're lovely, sure, I should write about them some day soon, but they are pedestrian and pretty and Ruby P promises something a bit more austere and threatening. Youth and its fleeting grasp taunts Ezra Koenig. Vampire Weekend will never be able to be affixed with the label "threatening". My mother would love them. We called my parents en route to Red Rocks to the show. We should have conferenced them in with the band. They could have hopped on a train and been here in time for the Gezi album. My father could do sit-ups and push-ups on the train and beat my face up with his six pack of stomach muscles and I'd feel embarrassed for his having a six pack in his seventies. Were I to pick a surreptitious six pack smuggler in Vampire Weekend I would select the drummer as top candidate. Drummers are meant to be fit. Their mother's must be so proud of their time in the shuttle run. Maybe a drummer on steroids would join Danzig and then compete in the strongest man competition. Playful whee-ing in the the chorus run-out, wordless and fertile. Now a piano tinkle and a spoken word moment of seriousness. This record is fantastically charming. Ya Hey is only semi-wordless. In the night air it lingers with anticipation. Now to Hudson, the spooky side of Vampire Weekend. IDM programming, some selective opining on the European crisis??? Or the Hudson's river seduction of Northern New Jersey and the ruins of lives washing out to sea, the Greeks entombed by dreams of Deutsche marks and the words are rather interesting here. Is he not so incoherent then? Are his poems deeply furrowed pathways into the memory of western civilization afloat on a sea of arithmetic and philosophy? Nicomachus and Gauss, Hypatia and Godel, Sappho and Nina, the world and its shadow, life and anti-life, his name is alive. This album speaks to the man inside the boy, the night inside the dawn, and we take note of time's progress and turn to dreaming for hope eternal as the final moments fade to black.