Stereolab - French Disko, live at The Word

Adventures in Stereo - Close To You (1997)

West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band-Suppose They Give A War (And No One...

Lexaunculpt- Le Elancholia

Trash - On and On with Lou Reed

Rocketship - Kisses Are Always Promises

The Brother Kite - Never in Years

cloudboy "red rubicon" (original video)

Oh dear, new Ride song is dreadful. An axiom might hold that you can not spend that long in the orbit of a Gallagher and not be contaminated by mediocrity. Did they believe that the world longed for Tarantula part II?

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

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

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

I feel as if I should arise from hibernation, oh but I am terribly ill.

Sally Seltmann Hey Daydreamer. There were the Moles, Even As We Speak and the Lucksmiths. That was the extent of it, the roster of Australian music that wasn't wretched. Truly. Oh but you laugh in my face what about the Go Betweens? I laugh back in your face with cheese whiz on my breath. The Go Betweens rank with Felt and East Village as the most over lauded, under heard bands and yet somehow, incredulously, over-appreciated bands ever. I realize this is an unpopular opinion. But such is the beauty of life, the right for me to think that 16 Lovers Lane is mostly pish and for you to think I am insane. Sally Seltmann is Australian and she's brilliant. By the way. This is the artsy fourth album. There is also Allo Darlin and when they were mostly just Australian, you know back when they were mostly a solo thing, they were amazing and while they are still pretty great they have started writing songs about the Go Betweens and when pressed to pick a favorite Go Between, though the most sensible choice of Lindy was not offered, head AD "Elizabeth" defers. First track is artfully arranged title track, bassoons?, trills, her multi-tracked voice, some sorts of woodwinds, samples and it is all mixed into a delicate thrill ride, a high speed chase in a radio flyer. It is packed with nostalgia, sepia tinged sentiments, dreams teased into existence and charm. Is it all charm? But what of Summershine records you say? Ok, the Rainyard were almost there but have you head the Earthmen? But then Sally is a far way removed from indie. She's a bit of a big deal in Australia I suppose. She's in a band with two others more popular than her but she's the genius right? Second track Billy more of the haunted daydream feeling. Her husband is producer. He's in the Avalanches. Yes, the Avalanches are horrible. Paleness with a muscle shirt, beating your heart senseless until you feel worthless and alone. But everyone else loves the Avalanches. I know. Sally in untarnished by association. His name is Darren. There are a fair number of Australians named Darren I feel. This track is titled Billy and there are bells and softly patted drums and a distance that didn't exist on the last record. On her last record Sally was possibly the most honest purveyor of confessional pop music I had ever heard. It was a record cleanses of pathos, bathos, bathetic it was not, pathological only in the sense of its soul laid bare feel. It was a comment on her life as she was living it. It was made poetic almost by accident. This is decidedly more pristine. These are characters that exist only on the periphery, at least through the first three tracks. Do I miss Sally as narrator? I do. But this is wonderful, all the same. It is a gorgeously produced record. Now to the psychdelia. Is she a fan of Richard Davies? It has his common track of a repeating motif on the piano as background and more dexterous maneuvers saved for voices and strings and charisma. Needle in the Hay. Were I a real record reviewer I would be listening to the lyrics and offering interpretations to you at no extra charge, I'd delve deep into the mind of Sally and discover the source of the delay for the next Avalanches record hidden somewhere in between the lines that obviously refer to strife in the Seltmann marriage. But I am not a real record reviewer. I remind of this in order to excuse my incoherence. Next track, Dear Mr Heartless, her voice recorded in a separate frame of mind than the music. The words forlorn the delivery optimistic, the music a giddy jaunt. Confidence has turned her heart to the greater world at large. This could be about an important person in her life or it could be a rebuke to a fake record reviewer such as myself. Would I be offended at being classified as a "guilty sunset"? Hardly. Martial drumbeat, muted horns, the general buzz of being self assured in a recording study and now harpsichord and bass notes played slow. We are soon to execute a move we have considered not too closely and so we will feel a sense of true dislocation soon as we wither live in the basement of occupied territory or we move into a an apartment we hope doesn't contaminate the spirit of life to such an extent that we voluntarily leap from third floor windows into the beds of el caminos carrying pigeon feathers and foam rubber baby prosthetics. Our soon is not chubby. Is this wrong? I am a bit astry with my thoughts because the tone of I Will Not Wear Your Wedding Ring is a bit comically sinister. Is it meant to be sinister? It's like Heavenly opening for Huggy Bear, we are all feminists but hygiene is not a universal right as recognized by the international. There's drama, it makes me smile or it makes me giggle and I suppose that wasn't the point. Lovely mind. Right Back Where I started From. Here could be the continuation point from the emotions that held point on the last record, harps, and electric whistles and her shyness on display. Now the piano rises up and her voice abundantly proud and wordless. It is building to some sort of crescendo. Are crescendos cheap ploys then? It was a lovely thing, this track, and now it's reached a higher level of emptiness, it is louder sure but when the drop comes the intensity returns. Is it the perception of the lack of distance between Sally and her listener that beguiles? She is not a star and do we love her more for her commonness? Catch of the Day, shouty bits about fish and self determination. The last record did have a scent of self help manual about it but not in any overbearing sense. When Sally sang about flowering apart from her loved ones it seemed more an acquiescence to life as a pop singer in the Antipodes. Synthesizers join the fray and a return to the harmonic chanting, all she needs is a didgeridoo and a Peter Garrett cameo. Not my favorite but not horrible. Not East Village horrible. YOu know Paul Kelly has redeemed himself quite nicely in Birdie. And he is a handsome man. I am in desperate need of a haircut but I am feeling a bit melancholic and I am enjoying it for a moment. I am happy always these days, I am with my soul mate, the person that I can be most myself with and the person I believe is most true to themselves with me and we have an amazing son that I am singing both sides of Louder Than Bombs too but there were those moments growing up when you felt pleasantly melancholic, alone, always, and without prospects and there with you, to guide you along, were your friends, on cassette. Sally must have had many of the same friends and she sounds eminently happy but perhaps she should spend a few more moments with old friends and reflect on the sunny side of being alone. But then Holly Drive arrives with its galloping rhythm and my heart turns yellow again, the life force of love and happiness carrying me through another day of feeling inadequate and sure that some day I will be discovered as a fraud. I have a wonderful family, a wonderful lie and Sally has written a song about it with steel guitar and cherry blossom scent spread across the grooves. Perhaps it was the perception of men from Australia as being comically male that has infected our enjoyment of pop songs that originate from there. Is Australia the Canada of the Southern Hemisphere while New Zealand is the Scotland? Possibly. But New Zealanders reminded me much more of Canadians than Australians did. Australians have a higher sense of self regard than the new globally dominant super power in soccer, the USA. So when Peter Garrett comes off all wet and socially aware it is a bit ridiculous. Last track. Beautiful. Confessional. A love song for her lover. Her lover could be an Avalanche, a Gray Whale, or this song itself. There is hope in the goodness and charm of people whose soul radiates joy such as this.

Moto Boy Keep Your Darkness Secret.  Do you google Moto Boy?  Do google him.  You will discover that he looks every inch the pop star.  He is chiseled softly from talc with floppy fringe featured, the cheekbones, the 'I look as if I just stepped out of a Mael party' look.  What is not to love?  Royston, Purina, Ablixa, Apropos, Nausea,  Moto Boy is Oskar genius.  Why then...whatever.  This is the third record.  The Berlin record.  Does it sound German only because I am aware that it was recorded in Berlin or because Berlin has a distinctive effect on pop stars that record there.  Achtung Baby and the Berlin trilogy?  I don't know.  Did the Strokes embody the sound of New York or did their sound embody the implied sound of New York?  Who can be certain.  Lou Reed's Berlin should sound like Michael Bloomberg then.  Are there blind taste tests in the mall where you sit peacefully with a Rand McNally and for you are played varieties of unknown music and you are endeavored to select the origin city?  I would imagine not.  And if Berlin is so influential upon the sound of pop music why then is nearly all of the domain set of German pop music, including that fortuitously recorded in Berlin, uniformly dread inducing?  First track Midnight Rain, it's a bit more smoldering than he has been in the past, fuller, fleshed out and it is gorgeous.  I don't suppose it is German now. I have a niece now in Berlin, born in Berlin this week.  Oh Berlin, you will have absconded with my American niece.   My wife's lineage is Swedish and I am in line for the 53rd earldom of the Scottish/French Canadian dominion and so we are rooting for the Scottish to come out in our own son, with heavy sighs we dream that the New Zealand of the northern hemisphere influences him the same as Berlin has affected this record.  When listening to this album for the first time I was waiting in line at a restaurant and in front of me were some clean, fit, drab young teenagers,  They all had the same fashion sense, they each wore a ball cap and I had this crushing sense of fear that my son would soon join their pack.  He would become anonymous, the middle member of the middle sized, middle ranked group on the popularity scale at middle brow American High School.  It can be comforting to be anonymous in a pack.  But I also stood just outside the group.  Even as I reveled in my ordinary stature.  I imagine Moto Boy was spit on by the anonymous members of the middling utopia.  I've railed against the worship of mediocrity in our world today.  From the President to Quentin Tarantino to cronuts to Sydney Crosby it is an epidemic.  the fear of standing apart.  Second track Keep Your Darkness Secret and variety is not important in Berlin apparently.  Each of the songs here follow a similar pattern save for the jaunty one near the end.  Cheekbones sucked in, muscles unflexed and his tender croon on full display as a sometimes plodding rhythm drives the songs into an ethereal world of loves lost, fought over and knives drawn and bloodied.  I imagine him as a dramatic sort, every drag on a cigarette a Vonnegut novelette.  It is him. He is the star of the record, not his playing which is sublime or the production which is the same, but the melancholy that he has absorbed through his skin and slowly excises over the breathy exhalations here. Next track, Someday a bit like the last one but the quality control is so exceedingly excellent it seems a brilliant compendium instead of redundancy.  I am in search of a new home these days.  It is some few weeks since I had started this entry, my son is long and lean now.    I am having pangs of the usual longing for relevance in his life, the need to finish the novel I finished a few years ago and have decided needs to be rewritten.  I could reimagine it, Moto Boy as lead character, in a nursing home crooning his heartbreak to the closed head injury patients on ward while the LPN's swoon and secretly wish they did not know that he was in love with Morris the man who lost his mind on an operating table, 2 lbs into a paint pail and a quarter million dollars per year in therapy to achieve the look of tall fescue in his eyes that are less a window into a soul than a desperate plea for absolution.  This is Love.  My wife's favorite.  Se has taken to singing this to our child.  I am more partial to the Smiths because those words inhabit the nearest reaches of my own mental universe.  I can sing most Smiths songs on recall and I wonder the effect of my singing, out of key, Asleep to my agitated 10 week old will be.  Will he take a turn as Christabell LaMotte or perhaps take a turn more sociopathic.  So often fears have swords drawn to combat the brilliance of dreams.  Smeared guitar near the end, as an outro of excess to cover up the doubt that is elegantly expressed within the lyrics.  I am writing in between sighs, in one ear attempting to decipher the meaning of life as conveyed by a Moto Boy pop song and in the other attempting to unravel the cipher of my son's panoply of cries, grunts and coos.  Fifth track has begin, the trip-hop inspired beat has fallen away in favor of  gentler motif of synthesized tones and piano tinkles.  There is a cross pollination of aspirations at work, the goal of embracing music by connecting with a universe spanning, harmony of the spheres influenced collective consciousness my mind entangled with the notes as they drift across the expanse and more locally the desire to not miss my son's first left eyebrow raise.  This is the perfect soundtrack for all of it.  Heaven In a Heartbeat Come  More softly chiming notes from a piano, the drift of the city ambience pressed into the grooves, his voice, expressive and revealing.  If it is not Berlin it feels then like alienation, a strange land where you pour your heart into the night and the echoes are untranslatable,    Europe is not so homogenous as the social engineers would protest. Sweden is probably more like Berlin than Sweden is similar to London but the words are in English and the heart is a Scandinavian blend of wan and desperation.  Now to the post rock dance single.  Minimal architecture, very late 1970s/early 1980s dreamscape with a Casio preset rhythm, a ringing guitar riff, and a When in Rome sense of drama.  It all seems so very serious.  He played guitar in the Cardigans before finishing this album and their sense of alarm at people considering them bubblegum fluff may have over spilled into the water cooler and fostered a sense of paranoia, or Moto Boy is generally forlorn.  Stereotypes.  "We were too young to love..." and in a just world this would be the soundtrack to the last skate at Swedish roller rinks all over the kingdom.  It's insistent catchy and doesn't seem out of place even on an album of such funereal grace.    Next track back to the template established on the first few songs, slowness accompanying heartbreak and loneliness.  "Do you want me like I always wanted you?".  In the great history as it is written in several decades this will be the Berlin album but it is his Bob Wratten moment, his torment turned catholic, his emotional abyss spread forth for all to access, his misery made lovely and wonderful.  Synthesizers provide a greater amplitude for his heartache, and the swell of the music mimics the emotional tumult.  Second to last track, Nothing Shatters Like the Heart and it is a bit of a pastoral lament, the shimmering keyboards, his voice like a torch singer, female backing vocals, an optimistic performance art piece called despair.  Here is the cigarette lighters in the air, the indie sway, the squeeze your sweet thing's midriff ballad we were all hoping for.  The words, simple and pure, all artifice stripped away, direct and clear.  How does it translate into German?  I could ask my German niece when next I see her.  Epic climax, the keyboards in concert, his voice more urgent, a few baby's come to the fore, the moans o pleasure disguised as tearful moments of torment.  Buble' could cover this.  Marvelous.  Last track to a glorious record now, we are sad to see it come.  Just ten tracks.  The more familiar Moto Boy tone on the guitar, the Feed Me With a Kiss tone, the In a Room Without You tear soaked tenderness.  His voice soft, landscape changing, the emotion spare and penetrating.  He did not learn this from the Cardigans.  Cardigans bubblegum princess married someone from a dreadful band.  Said dreadful band once opened for My Bloody Valentine in Detroit and so she has reason for despair, a lifetime of listening to that, oh dear.  Or she could listen to Moto Boy, she could play this crescendo at full volume while trying to drown out the sounds coming from the home studio in their studio apartment in Williamsburg just above some indie actress having an orgasm to the new Mumford and Sons smash hit record.  Mote Boy the god king of the melancholic universe.