New Sound of Arrows single Into the Clouds is marvelous! Technicolor masterpiece.

Gosh, Bachelorette, she's great, like a Cannonball Jane wandering about in the Radiophonic Workshop.

I've been listening to the newest Cats on Fire more recently. Funny, I hadn't before noticed, but they've become the Bats! Morrissey fronting the Bats, who could help but be smitten? Oh and I've recovered rather quickly from my pseudo-heartache, this is what happens when life as it exists in your head is editable and prone to rewrites, I feel something close to invincible these days.

Bark Cat Bark Cittadinanza. Music is a struggle to establish air superiority. It is a mere struggle against the tides of physics, your forceful strum or fearsome plonking of keys or tense thwapping of the drums is an eternal bond of resistance to the atmosphere that stands fiercely guarding the little bones that evolved to protect the former reptile jaws on sides of heads. First song here, introduction, instrumental, has the air claimed its first victim? No. It's stupendous even though it is gypsy music, like the way they used to make it back when Beirut used to make music, oh wait...A Beirut/Devotchka hybrid? Possibly. We love the Roma! And French, yes another French band! Drole. But I was thinning the waves of humanity and thinking of ghosts and their relation to the air and their comparison to songs and the likes of say Auburn Lull who coax the waves into long sinuous threads that become visible because they are crystallized by a suspended current of emaciated ambition with the notes dressed in pressurized diving suits working diligently with tiny hammers and shovels and analog steam driven turing machines. And then in contrast there is the Pantera struggle, loincloths are key, as is the will to overpower the age of the air. It rarely succeeds, normally the air haughtily places an insurmountable obstacle in place of tunefulness and heads are smashed and bottles emptied and souls desiccated. There are the ginger folk pluckers who try to dance in an out of the waves, trying to kep their toes free, sucking the juice from juniper berries as the gentle eddies circulatd by their effeminate wails threatens to consume them at any moment, dressed in fabulous little shorts and striped socks. But gypsy music? it's indifferent seeming. It has discovered a hole in the sky, a place to hide, an anachronistic cuby hole in a modern world. This should be soundtracking a Jeunet movie that no one will ever admit to loving but will secretly harbour an undying devotion to. Third song. The second was called Benque Viefjo. Beirut played on it, I am imagining that it was his trumpet I heard. Some more exotic flavouring on this song. Some sort of antiqued manipulator of the wind played delicately and rather marvelously. This is a beautiful record. You might wonder what a Beirut album without the singer would sound like and whether it would be worth the investment. It is and it sounds spectacular. Ghosts are dancing acros the neurons. The juniper juice disassociates the linings of the nerve casings and so thoughts dance free and jump to ceilings of the skull muckraking before their fall back from grace spiraling into a pleasant journey towards the abyss. Music, air. the new Epic45 is beautiful. When will Antony Harding's new project come to fruition? But this is Bark Cat Bark, tattoo it on your heart. Viravira Fever, some sort of thumping organic percussion, the tenderizing of yak meat in Ulan Bator? Possibly. A racing fiddle, humbleness abounds. It's meant for a dance about a roaring fire with desperate types reveling in a coming betrayal of modern sensibilities and a retreat in pre-modern bacchanalia! Oh dear. It's not nearly as exciting as I make it seem, but it's still plainly lovely. Next song. Now we've moved into Coen territory. Berovo Berovo Brava. What do the titles mean? They're instrumentals, what does it matter? The music seems a flurry. It is difficult to anticipate a climax in purely instrumental music. Is this a set-up for the melancholia to level the audience up next? Unknown. I listen to electronic music but aside from perhaps 2 or 3 tracks I can name only a few. Lyrics dominate. It's sad because there is as much spirit and slice of life ruled by temperament, as Zola might say, as anything with banal scribblings over top. Listen to God Help the Girl, wonder how it may have been improved by having been wordless instead. We can dream. This isn't the devastating avalanche of macabre ambience we expected but a shuffling jazzy roll, smart, effortless, delightful, physical. When I listen to Beirut it's a cerebral sensation, who convulses involuntarily to Sunday Smile? You dance tenderly with flugelhorns but always your ears are perched high atop your head searching out the nuance and tender phrase. This is messier, warmer, well made but human. It's closer to the spirit of the heartland. It is a simple matter of geography. In America you may find a roving band of gypsies in the airport welcoming lounge in teal coloured robes and bad braids and sensible footwear with tambourines, finger clackers and a bouzouki. But in Europe those same sorts are about always, looking to lift your wallet, sell you their daughter, etc...wow I've just made a turn towards the racist. Sorry. But the Roma culture is vibrant as it exists not as some sort of pastiche. Next track, The Panther in Zavanthem. Just beautiful, that's all. I watched a hasidic Jew that does not live in this complex walk past the trash bin and surreptitiously deposit a large bag of trash. His beard shavings? Unknown. But when St Peter turns him away at the pearly gates he'll be searching his heart for the reason and come to discover it was his trash trespassing that kept him from paradise. St Peter's got a new boss--Gaia. That song was marvelous. Now the piano. Apparently Beirut is his hero. This is one French person. He's done a fine job living up to his ideals. And the songs are mainly so very short, this a sort of intermission after the whirling goodness of the last track. So quiet, impressive in its quiet. Next track, nature song. He's not as fond of the ukulele as Beirut is. There will soon be another entry here, soon could mean anything, on Sophie Madeleine and I mention it only because she's also fond of the ukulele. It's an expressive choice. Another quiet number now, a bit July Skies really, I must have subconsciously recalled the similarity when I was mentioning Antony hArding earlier. In this record is a similar aesthetic, a dreamed over nostalgia for the past, the misery of boredom bleached out in favor of studied indifference to modernity and the triumph of the betterment of the individual. It seems a marvelous picture to paint of the sole musician along in is bedroom crafting these wonderful wonderful melodies and being almost surprised at his own character coming through in such a shining example. Long song now, the centerpiece? 9 minutes. will I have the stamina to make it all the way through? Unlikely. I could discuss whether I will make it through nine minutes for nearly nine minutes and then for the last precious seconds lament over how I merely discussed my stamina for nearly nine minutes. the record has turned sedate. From galloping cradles of violins and their kin to pensive piano pieces and dissonance pressed flat into the foreground. This is tender and haunting, a slow build towards a precipice overlooking the utopia of full hearted romance. It really is very reminiscent of those things that normally appear on Make Mine Music, it could have been. but then there is a sense of ambition in the nots, the little men dressed in surgeon scrubs burrowing beneath the skin, tracing the circulatory system, raising the internal temperature to a tepid boil, tingling all about. Nothing is happening. This is not the centerpiece, it is the contemplative core of the record, he's worn out, the lullaby for exercised minds. Lovely. I've said lovely too many times but I honestly love this record. The title is Draugur, norwegian for "ghost". It is an appropriate title. I cheated, I used wiktionary so really it could be Danish for danish for all I know. But it's fissiparous and fragile and filled with transparent sentiments layered one over the other like a flower pressed between velum pages of a scrap book. Beautiful. Last track now. Shorter. Perhaps the longer track should have ended things on the reflective somber plank. But now with backwards horns and Wee Willy Hymn-ness we sense a collective habitation with people like Alastair Galbraith. Beaks and claws, barks and dogs. Last one, piano is prominent again, very The Young and the Restless, very memorex commercial from the 70s, classically inspired, a draught from his composition class from back in Lille? It's responsive to the listener, now a waltz-like jaunt has enlivened the heart a dance about the room filled with chandeliers made in Macau and candelabras from Papua New Guinea and cleavers pointed at stone hearts. Everyone I know is getting married. A wedding needs a waltz, this could do. The sad waltz to lament the end of being alone, it is something to be feared, more than you know.

Diving With Andy Sugar. I had forgotten that I had *ahem* acquired this record. When did I acquire it then? I don't remember. The death of music as a fetish article. I am moving into a house soon. A nice person I work with has offered to help me to move. I wonder if she has heard on the street that I don't have anything. Is word going around on the street that I travel lean? This first song is just terrific. I have had a succession of purges of my Itunes library and this survived, it may have been camouflaged as it resides in the same neighbourhood as the Divine Comedy and Dolly Mixture. Stalwarts. It's a bit like a french pop band. Are they french? It is slickly produced, right now there's a cornucopia of dissonances and disaffected voices and now a slow burn trumpet outro. Pretty awesome actually. I went to see Deadgirl the other night. It's excellent. Decidedly twisted and unhinged but wholly entertaining. Interesting that the dream figure of the male lead or at least the real life analog that the big screen character was based on was sitting but two rows in front of us. It was a loud row. Two obnoxious girls and bald men and a muse. I sat next to a muse. A muse for the gentle heart. The fragile thinly filmed thought bubbles swim through the air around her filled with clever thoughts and doubts and anger that never breaks the surface. It's a difficult world. The person that has offered to help me move is engaged. Not to me. I had had thoughts of engagement but that's all it is with me, thoughts of engagement, thoughts of disengagement, thoughts of estrangement, thoughts of derangement. or thoughts that lead to derangement. Second song is also fantastic, her voice wan, the music charming and rote, canned strings, sophistication, polish, now a bit of Gallic sonic gallantry. Her voice is the female equivalent of crooning. What is the female equivalent of crooning. I don't much like the female equivalent of crooning as a speaking device but it works in song. The muse next to me, she didn't belong to my muse seeking inner slacker but to a greater world that requires the presence of those who step softly on pavements and leaves and around the oil swirls in thrift store parking lots. I gave her a copy of The Roaches Have No King. It's a quick read. I am reading a book on John Snow and the great Cholera outbreak of 1849. It's a quick read. I'd love to write a book about Cholera in 2009. Ether is not a efficacious remedy. Are Peter Snow and Dan Snow descended from John Snow? I really like this song that's playing now. Coulour Blind. A female Fugu? They are French, I've confirmed this, but three French people making big, polished pop. It's so lovely. Peter Snow has the voice of someone whose beaten up people who wring their hearts out in the rain waiting for their muse to come to the window, a soft silhouette, sustenance for the soul, a "gentle" infusion into the near night air, waft down three floors to the streetscape filled with the lonely and forlornly decadent. I read my book on Cholera in a Subway. I have decided to stop going to chain restaurants, well except for Subway. It's relatively inexpensive, I like the tuna sandwich. I could make my own tuna. I will make my own tuna again. In my new kitchen, with hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances and airplanes leaving contrails in the shapes of engorged boa constrictors and seal intestines. My muse lives in jars of maraschino cherries in the loneliest aisles of the super market. My favorite supermarket is a large chain super market, altered slightly to appeal to their upscale clientele, the Organic aisles are loneliest of all, the Indian frozen food section lies in the suburbs of this alienated nation within a nation. Next song, jazz, ugh, not fondly reminiscing about my time in Paris at jazz clubs and screenings of Scream 3 with young american high school girls to be impressed with my trivial pursuit abilities. This is not so horrible actually. Your greater muse, the spirit of Denver, the gossamer light of the spent breath shuddering able hearts the night has disowned, left alone to its demise on the curbside, alongside 32 gallon rubbish bins. Uplift. Now to The Greatest Stories. There are many people getting married where I work. Some in the shadows and others in the sunlight. Some will play Diving With Andy. I lied, none will play Diving With Andy. I love Diving With Andy, I would not play them at my hypothetical wedding that is destined to occur sometime to someone better than I am, my wedding has taken leave of me, disgusted by my timid flailings against the buffeting winds of mediocrity. But mediocre people that I work with are already married. I subscribe to the idea that I am the victim of my own cowardice. if only I had a muse to overcome my cowardice. Cowardice has been prompted by the lyrics of this song. It is difficult to sleep when your stomach churns over the physical deprivations of imaginary romance. The perils of having a ken imagination and the curse of remembering every word she ever said. Next song, piano, Anna May, very pretty. Very Very pretty. When I have a home I could buy a stereo and listen to this at volume, in my basement. there is a workshop in the basement. I will use it to build an enclosure for the gas line that snakes across the basement ceiling. The only thing that unsettled me. What if I raise my hands in triumph when I hear a new Napoleon record and blow myself into smithereens because I struck the gas line and the fierceness of my blows cause spontaneous combustion. Cutaneous combustion. My face had skin cancer. He's had it since I was a young man. I recall taking him to one of his myriad surgeries. he was in a anesthetic coma and he longed for a McDonald's Big Mac. I drove him to McDonalds, in his Cutlass Cierra. The gutless. It was candy apple red. Now he's without his left eye, I walk around when I can with my left eye closed in sympathy, I wish I had sympathy with his spirit. I live in fear of a young woman at the corner desk and he's bravely charging into the world with Cancer dripping from his left temple. I drive a black vehicle, better to disguise the shadow over my head. How unpoetically vulgar. My apologies. I could get a girlfriend, easy. Tell me, are there dilapidated Mental Hospitals nearby to my new home? I don't know. Rabid dogs and undead naked women under visqueen, probably 4 mils. Industrial material. Love at first deprivation. The hooligans in Deadgirl were portrayed brilliantly as equal parts vile fornicators and lonely outcasts. This song was a tad saggy and plodding and now it has turned lithe and agile. Marvelous. The strings are very french, it is all very French. Well except for the singing, it is very English as in English. A relief, at least I have my anglo-american cultural chauvinism to fall back on. But all kidding aside this the flower of youth. The sort that is trampled on by large booted people who can't feel the souls that cling to the underside of their feet the ethereal sprites that exist all around them unless they are stepping over them to ruin the world on purpose. There are those who would chose to abandon hopefulness for despair, it saddens me, a tender shoot taken to a tannery and molded out of shape nto another grizzled panel on the unfeeling superficial skin of the world. I will warn someone before they read this, the obscene incoherency. It's typing by sense, eyes in the dark, exultations into the vacuum. I can't speak. I don't speak enough, I am losing my ability to speak. I could sing. Meet people I love and sing them love songs from french trios unaccompanied. But then I remember that I am afraid. Next song, some fabulous electric piano. Rather awesome! Rather! Big strings, her voice is key. it sounds the same on every track, but we don't mind. Last one, another piano ballad. This is a marvelous marvelous rcord. Is it from this year? There aren't many released this year that are better. Are they unheralded because of the protectionist clauses embedded in national stimulus programs? A retaliation against the refusal to buy asphalt from asphalt conglomerates in Sudbury. I spent a summer in Sudbury. Underground. Buried alive. Escaped all but dead, born to receive the word from Diving with Andy, 'no matter what i do, no matter what i say...i'll always be 20 for you'.

Is one meant to dance to this?

Betty & The Werewolves – David Cassidy
Cola Jet Set – Suena El Telefono
Morrisey – I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris
BMX Bandits – Disco Girl
Rachel Goswell – Coastline (Ulrich Schnauss Instrumental Mix)
Radio Dept – Freddie & The Trojan Horse
The Metric Mile – Codebreaking
God Help The Girl – Funny Little Frog
The Wild Swans =- English Electric Lightning
East Village – Here It Comes
Remember Fun – Train Journeys
The Besties – The Bone Valley Deposit
Rose Elinor Dougall – Start/Stop/Synchro
Harper Lee – Train Not Stopping
Town Bike – Dougie
The Lucksmiths – T-Shirt Weather
The Lovely Eggs – Have You Ever Heard A Digital Accordian?
The Mary Onettes – Dare
La Caza Azul – Deberia Plantearme Cambiar
The School – All I Wanna Do
Mo Tucker – To Know Him Is To Love Him
The Parachute Men – If I Could Wear Your Jacket
Bye! – No Baby Don’t
Northern Portarit – A Quiet Night In Copenhagen
BMX Bandits – I Wanna Fall In Love
Prolapse – Autocade
Hong Kong In The 60’s – Footseps
That Petrol Emotion – Big Decision
Kicker – Since You Left
Kitchens Of Distinction – The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule
Dinosaur Jr – Pieces
Talulah Gosh – Beatnik Boy
Pink Military Stand Alone – Did You See Her?
Yeah Yeah Noh – Bias Binding
The Manhattan Love Suicides – Don’t Leave Me Dying
Nirvana – Love Buzz
The Ramones – Sheena Is A Punk Rocker
Liechtenstein – Postcard
BMX Bandits – e102
DJ Liebowitz – Holiday In Cambodia
The Manhattan Love Suicides – Kessler Syndrome
Cats On Fire – Tears In Your Cup
The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut – Hey Dr Beeching
The Damned – New Rose
Speedmarket Avenue – Way Better Now
The Groove Farm – I Couldn’t Get To Sleep Last Night
The Clouds – Get Out Of My Dream
Nico – I’m Not Saying
Help Stamp Out Loneliness – Pacific Trash Vortex
Primal Scream – Velocity Girl
The Manhattan Love Suicides – Heat & Panic
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Young Adult Friction
Teenage Fanclub – Starsign
Joy Division – Disorder
Magazine – I Love You, You Big Dummy
Crystal Stilts – Love Is A Wave
The Kinks – I Need You
The Kingsmen – Louie Louie
Razorcuts – Big Pink Cake
The Sparkles – No Friend Of Mine
Jackie Wilson – (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher
Felt – Penelope Tree
The June Brides – In The Rain
Wire – Mannequin
Joy Division – She’s Lost Control
Echo & The Bunnymen – The Cutter
The Manhattan Love Suicides – Kick It Back
Josef K – Sorry For Laughing
The Fall – Victoria
Butcher Boy – Profit In Your Poetry
God Help The Girl – Perfection As A Hipster
The Concretes – Seems Fine
The Vaselines – Son Of A Gun
McCarthy – The Well Of Loneliness
Belle and Sebastian – The Boy With The Arab Strap
The Magnetic Fields – Too Drunk To Dream
Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out Of This Country
Hefner – Painting And Kissing
Pixies – Debaser
Gang of Four – I Love A Man In A Uniform
New Order – Blue Monday
The Wave Pictures – Leave The Scene Behind
Pocketbooks – Fleeting Moments
The Smiths – William, It Was Really Nothing
Jens Lekman – You Are The Light (By Which I Travel Into This And That)
Cats On Fire – Draw In The Reins
Helen Love – Beat Him Up
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – This Love Is Fucking Right!
Orange Juice – Rip It Up
Belle and Sebastian – Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying

The last one would have my toes tapping most especially! The night is called Scared to Dance I had assumed it was ironic but apparently not. I don't think I understand English club nights. Would it not be best to have everyone issued a pair of headphones and have accessible jacks at their tables and they could listen and admire the DJ's awesome taste in music? Who knows. I never leave my house.

Update: And now, having received enlightening emails, I can share in the knowledge that this is more the soundtrack to a night out with like minded souls. Ah. Still don't understand why you would play the same band twice. Requests? And why would you play Felt at all? Self-flagellates in attendance?

Glum discovery, it appears that Possession has already been made into a Gwynneth Paltrow movie. How sad. I'm almost at the end, I fear my good feelings may now be forever spoilt. An entry on the Ballet coming tomorrow. I quite like them.

The Ballet Mattachine. Being from New York must be an impediment for bands. Being as being from New York likely would make you think you are more interesting, more central, more profound than you actually are. But are there any bands that are truly from New York? I think this band lives in New York, but are they from New York? This is very nice, a Magneitc Fields meets the Baskervilles kind of vibe happening. Two archetypal would be from New York City if they could have designed it bands. His voice is a bit Ladybug Transistor. A New York band might think their interests set them apart from the world at large. If I was in a band and not from New York, instead I hailed from Aames, Iowa I might try harder to be worldly, learned, catholic. These guys are gay. I am not sure if it matters. But it seems requisite to mention it in mentions of the band and thus to compare them to other gay bands like the Hidden Cameras and the Magnetic Fields. Guilty. What if Skip Gates had been gay? I really like this first song. I've only skimmed this album once. I am not sure if it is good or merely great. Second song, more strings, toy sounding strings, bohemian strings, strings from the back of a Forced Exposure catalog. His voice, nasal and pinched, his scope shrunken and the words about life in a snowglobe. I really enjoy this song as well. This would have qualified as indiepop in the 1990s. Now it is far too macho. It is too adult. It has personality. DQ. Another band who risk dating themselves rather quickly by mentioning instant messaging. Instant messaging has had a remarkable shelflife for the era though, they might be safe. Before this week's end a non-New York band come to our fair city on the edge of the Rockies. Trash Can Sinatras. Yay! I've seen them once before. Long ago. In Detroit. It was frightfully cold, I remember listening to Francis conduct an interview with a subsuming cold with the local alternateen station as I was driving to the show. It was at St Andrews, the boys must have felt at home. It was a marvelous show. I even remember Thirsty Forest Animals as the opening act, some proto-quavering emo shoegaze band from Detroit. Do they still exist? Could they be opening this Thursday? Not probably. We'll get someone horrible like Mr Pac-Man. Its alright I'll wear ear plugs and dream of the Summer air pressing down on the clouds outside. This song is very Magnetic Fields. Back before the Magnetic Fields starting releasing really uninteresting albums. No mention of the Magnetic Fields in 500 Days of Summer. I did see it. I enjoyed it. You may revoke my credentials for being credible. But really there are two sorts of people in this world, those who think There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is the saddest, most romantic song in the world ever and those who don't. Well, there has been speculation in the relevant literature that there is in fact a third variant on the species the I Love Music sort that hates everything that they might believe would not be approved by the greater consciousness of Asperger nation. But they are sad and pitiable and I don't want to think about them. They've got their 3 x 5 cards in their back pocket with their ready to be updated at a second's notice list of the top 10 albums, singles and reissues of the year. They use abbreviations like Dero and "the Dean" and can quote Simon Reynolds vital statistics at you as it is him they picture while they spend quality time alone in a bathroom stall with a copy of Smash Hits circa 1983. I am too cruel. I was once a music "critic". I wrote for an esteemd publication-"Tweekitten". I washed out, I couldn't handle the pace; I went crazy with the women, the drugs, the rock and roll lifestyle. Now I am here. Fifth song already, the last two were great, by the way. This is very Charm of the Highway Strip, surely the Magnetic Fields are their favorite band and they must know that they are a complete ripoff of the Magnetic Fields. Vitesse knew this as well. Did they not? Is it an homage? I wasn't aware that Leon Trotsky had signed the surrealist manifesto. It is part of the reason the Christopher Hitchens apparently has thoughts of Lev while spending quality time in a bathroom with a copy of the battleplan for Operation iraqi Freedom. But sad old men like me have a dark dream that corresponds more or less exactly to the scene in the elevator in 500 Days of Summer, perhaps the song is different, some may chose Joy Division or the Teardrop Explodes, I might have plumped for the Chills Satin Doll but only to seem more obscure. Are there really Karaoke machines with the Pixies on them? I've never done Karaoke. I wouldn't know. Sixth song, hand claps and drum machines. Does The Ballet have a facebook entry? Do these things seem like a requirement for the bands of today? Part of the CV to make them more appealing to tastemakers like Skatterbrain and Shelflife? I hope not. I would hope they would be excited ot do their bit to enhance the fabric of the false universes of Facebook. Sometimes when I am bored I will search these sites for people I work with or when given suggestion to by someone I work with will find some of their entries somewhat surprising. Some resemble JC Penney catalog photo shoots, some reveal surprisingly stunning significant others and some reveal levels of physical fitness not easily confirmed by visual inspection. I don't participate. It would be a lonely facebook entry without any friends. There is someone that has claimed the URL for my full name. I won't reveal it but my first name is Keith and I am not Sarah McLachlan's brother though I could be mistaken for it. I was Canadian after all. My name sharer is a bit of a ponce. He's got all sorts of advice for getting rich though it doesn't appear that he's all that wealthy. And then there is the poetry! It's marvelous! There is another person that shares my name that writes books on Africa and the Middle East. I don't imagine he's wealthy either. Our name could be an anchor in the financial stakes. I like the current song. It sounds less Magnetic Fields-ish. This is decidedly indiepop. Remember when bands were not ashamed to be considered indiepop. Back when there was fire and fury in an indiepop song, possibly. There isn't that possibility today. Perhaps the assault on wealth by the Joebama administration is in part a response to his disappointment at what the unprecedented generational wealth has contributed to the parlous state of indiepop music. Maybe Joebama hypes himself up for staff meetings with a 30 minute session with London Weekend and laments quietly to his 13 year old chief of staff about how the new Bats record is great but god he's sick of bands like the Pocketbooks and Smittens being so safe, dreary and middleclass. Let's raise taxes on their parents, let's shake up the world! Another nice song. This sounds Canadian. I have Candar. Are there Canadians in this band? The Manhattan Love Suicides have called it quits. How sad. Not really. They looked as if they wanted to pretend that they were dangerous but dear god, the music. I am surprised they weren't on Slumberland. Apparently Slumberland is going to release a new Bats EP soon. Woo! Hopefully it wasn't infected by that dismal Clean record that Merge is fighting tooth and nail to keep anyone from hearing because it is so crap. The Bats could play with Trash Can Sinatras, two of my comfort bands, warmth and consistency and nostalgia all wrapped in wrinkled, grey packages. Song number 9, Corduroy back with the Magnetic Fields pastiche. I Don't mind. Originality is overrated, I am unoriginal besides no one sounds like Our Brother the Native and this doesn't stop them from being horrible. Summer has finally arrived. It was the year without a Summer until now. But Summer will be short, only 30 days. Who will write the breezy sounds of summer when it has been overcast and unseasonably cool for almost the entire duration? Will Mr Pac-Man have it within them to write a Double Summer? Ha. Maybe Brian Cox will step away from his duties as populist physicist to the teen set, his poster on the walls of millions next to Joe Jonas, and move back into his role as guitarist for Shed Seven and write a brilliant paen to the summer that wasn't. It could be a lament. Is he really an eminent physicist or has he just grabbed his high profile status because he has an angular haircut and probably listens to Her Space Holiday? He looks like Johnny Greenwood. Do they hang out and discuss the foibles surrounding the LHC and what a wanker Thom Yorke is? I don't know. He's boring. I'm boring. You're boring. This record is wearing out its welcome with it's uniformity. I think they think they are more complicated than they are. Is this a political statement? I Hate the War, ha, I am dense, but it is so apathetic and automatic sounding, yeah I voted for Joebama, I'm meant to hate the war even though it hasn't really affected me at all except to have forced me to attend a demonstration every other weekend for credit in my Gender Studies class. It's a bit dreary, like the war is a war on the proper use of a half-stop and you're surrounded by a group of education majors. Two songs left. I am running out of steam. I am on vacation this week. There should be loads of entires then, but there probably won't be. I am looking for a house, I saw 4 yesterday. It is astonishing how universal bad taste is, dark paneling, purple carpeting, copper wall hangings, ugh!!! My childhood home had all of these things save the purple carpeting, ours was evergreen and we had a plastic eagle hanging over the fireplace. If I had been in a band I might have been interesting because I grew up in such mundane circumstances, the highlight being the breathless newscasts from a helicopter searching for the Liger that had been rumored to be stalking the grounds near Freedom Hill. The might Strut used to play at Freedom Hill. Whatever happened to Strut? Maybe they merged with Thirsty Forest Animals, times are tough in Detroit. This song sounds resigned, more silly talk of revolution. The imagination of would be dissidents in a free country like this is funny. The imaginary struggle, throwing verbal punches to the air, the aggrieved child driven home to his palatial estate in a 2004 Volvo is stirring. Now the last song. Chants and chants, blah blah blah. Will there be a political record of consequence now that there is going to be a reversion back to the poverty of the 1960s and 1970s I hope so. It won't be written by the Ballet. They're from New York.

There and Back Again has posted the first Ego single. Do you remember being delirious with delight after hearing it? Remember then the disappointment when their album arrived a year or so later. The Lucksmiths had warned us off in Kansas. I fear for Northern Portrait suffering the same fate. The Ego album was like the sun having collapsed, gravity gone and given up, the stars took a vacation, etc...a bit like the Pas/Cal album.

Oooo! A new Murcof release. Why is this man not more widely heralded? Is he? Not in the circles that I sputter in.

jj no. 2. I haven't any idea what balearic is. This is balearic, allegedly. I could not say either way. I tell people it reminds me of Broadcast not, though reasonable it may be, because it sounds like Broadcast but rather because it exudes class. Broadcast is "classy" to my unsophisticated ears. Of course who exactly am I to tell this to? I told it to one person when we were on our way to see Away We Go. Now I tell you-my lonely readers. To continue an earlier meme Away We Go - Terrible. Actually "terrible" may be too kind. It so offends all of the senses all at once that stronger words of condemnation may be required in order to comply with the Geneva Accords. Do see it. There are loads of songs that want to be Badly Drawn Boy songs on the soundtrack, maybe some Cat Stevens worship happening as well. There is some caribbean flavour on this first track, a jumpy, reggae fake guitar strum, some strangely strangled disco strings and surely some steel drum hauntings that were deleted from the final mix. It's a tropical fizzy drink. It's delightful. The voice is poised. It is almost entirely affect-less. Normally I am for drama. Kate Bush. RockettotheSky. Frida Hyvonen. But I rather love this. I did watch Waterloo Bridge again last night and Vivien Leigh, sigh, a stunning beauty and the fierceness of her stare. The scene in Waterloo Station where she says her long presumed dead Captain Cronin depart the train platform, strolling jollily back into her life is just devastating and she doesn't even utter a word, it is the charge of terror, the flash of jubilation, vivid confusion that reflect in her eyes in full panorama that is an amazing treat to behold. Perhaps tomorrow I watch That Hamilton Woman. Apparently Vivien was meant to play Elizabeth Bennet instead of Greer Garson once upon a time. I love Greer Garson and that version of Pride and Prejudice is wonderful but I can't help wondering what she Vivien Leigh might have brought to the role instead of Greer Garson's wholesomeness. it might have darkened Austen into unrecognizability. Now the single. From Africa to Malaga a continuation of the breezy effervescence. Pops and taps and garbage cans for percussion, coke bottles and that black man from the Seven-Up commercials shaking some noisemakers and the exquisite voice reigning above this colourful swedish concoction. Next track is Ecstasy apparently this is some sort of take on a famour rap song. Lollipop by Lil Wayne. I don't know it. Am I clueless? Is it ubiquitous? I am not a rap fan. Skip Gates would think me a racist and offer me another of his 'teachable moments' if he ever heard anything so scandalous in his life. He could compare 2 Live Crew to Shakespeare by misquoting Robbie Burns for me. This is not a rap track, it's a dance track, hypnotic and spaced out, the looping sample might be from the rap song. I don't know. I would wager I enjoy this more than I would the original. Remember also that Joan Fontaine was chosen by Hitchcock ahead of Vivien Leigh for Rebecca. Why anyone would choose anyone above Vivien Leigh is a mystery. But history is filled with these sort of things. Fourth song, "you smoke like a young Belmondo". Was Vivien up for Breathless? I might have still chosen Jean Seberg even if she had been. All of this movie discussion. I am about to watch The Mouse That roared and it is obvious that Alec Bladwin has read the same wikipedia entry on Jean Seberg as I have. The music is filmic. Well this track isn't, it's a bit of a folky number with some twiddles underneath that come to the fore about midway through. All of the songs are very short. Nine songs, 26 minutes. Lovely canned string section at the moment. It's tender and reflective, mercy and romance. It could be a Neil Diamond number. How is it that the Velvet Underground are in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame and Neil Diamond is not? What a farce. It's true that a number of my favorite bands form some sort of multi-tentacled cult around the feet of Lou Reed but I do hate the man. Really. I shouldn't use hate. I get so depressed on I Love Music from the trolls who just arrive to tell everyone how much they hate something. But I despise the fact that people hear things in Velvet Underground songs that just aren't there. Neil Diamond wrote stirring soundtracks to heartbreak, joy and love than most anyone else alive and he's stuck recording with Rick Rubin in order to appear relevant, a reinvention along the lines of Paul Mccartney seeking credibility in the shadow of Elvis Costello. Guh. Melanie Lynskey is in Away We Go, she's just as awful as everyone else is. Perhaps Sam Mendes has some strange sort of fixaion with the cast of Heavenly Creatures. Wil he cast Mrs Reaper in his next dud? Intermezzo! We're pretentiously learning opera terms. This must be what makes this balearic. Why a 26 minute record should require an intermezzo is a bit of a puzzle. Sam Mendes probably has a fish named Murray O'Lanza. Actually he probably doesn't, that would be clever and cute and he's neither. What does Kate Winslet see in him? Who knows. Next track, following the intermezzo, My Hopes and Dreams, a stalking rush of momentum builds from the initial fog and it's marvelous. Slinky canned strings and whirling atmospherics and dreamism. I had my own HEavenly Creatures fixation of course. when I was in Christchuch I asked several people for directions to the cottage where Mrs Reaper was murdered. It was still too early, it was 1996. In New Zealand in 1996 people were wearing trousers under their skirts, they were driving three on the tree transmission and Ansett served these deviously delicious croissant chicken salad sandwiches on short haul flights. This is more Broadcast-esque than the first few songs. So is the next one Masterplan. This is a beautiful record. I was going to see 500 Days of Summer tonight but I am tired and we love Zooey Deschanel but cut hr open and she's a Death Cab for Cutie fan, she reads Dave Eggers and buys expensive handbags, that's it. I promised to write an entry for my unread website. It may be unread from neglect. I could write an entry on the new Clean record. It is so comically awful. I've come to realize that when record labels are especially vigilant about preventing leaks it is because the album they are covetously keeping all to themselves is dreadful beyond recognition. The Clean are simple boys. I don't think they see themselves this way. Why else would David Kilgour claim credit for the album artwork? I would make the claim that their best work has been done outside of the band. Robert Scott is obviously a god for the Bats and the Magick Heads and for Thumbs Off too, David Kilgour's first solo record is one of the greatest things ever and Hamish was part of the Great Unwashed with David on the ride too. The Mad Scene? Eh. I still recall a review in Option where someone dismissed the entire Antipodes based on one listen to the first Mad Scene album which isn't dreadful but it's not really great either. The new Celan album is a disaster. Look at how dedicated Seeland's label was in depriving us a sneak peek into their album and now we know why--it's an abomination filled with monuments to blandness, a dullard's delight. Last song, another folkie one, it is not a Taylor Dayne cover. I looked up the lyrics to Taylor Dayne's Tell it to my Heart and the words are not the same. Whew. My brother went to see Cathy Dennis and Taylor Dayne in concert long ago Remember Cathy Dennis' digitally enhanced green eyes? It made us swoon, we were innocent and naive. Now she would have digitally enhanced mammaries and we would laugh. I was only just informed of 12:34:56-8-9. I don't recall doing anything memorable at that moment. Did you?

I've constructed a Trash Can Sinatras playlist and find that they may warm my heart more than any other band in existence. It's all down to Francis' voice, those chiming chords, the softness around the middle...sigh. The new record has some duds, sure sure, but it has Morning Star and Easy on the Eye and The Engine. It's a miracle, to quote Francis from some days ago. I almost feel guilty for not having contributed to possible future successes. I have a hard time with guilt. Recently an episode dealt with crackers.

Tonight I watch Waterloo Bridge for the 8th time. Tomorrow I write...something. If not then I shall kill this blog dead with large bullets and opium.

I am years behind the times, forgive, but Possession, of which I am nearly half of the way through, is just the loveliest thing. Are any of A.S. Byatt's other novels as sterling?

Update: Oh dear she wrote Angels and Insects, erm...well Morpho Eugenia. I've not read it but it is one of the worst movies ever made now. Is it not?

Summer Cats - terrible.

Update: New Clean Album Mister Pop - terrible.

Update: New Neil Hannon side project thing - terrible.

Update: An email - "This blog - terrible". True enough.