Scarlet's Well Gatekeeper. Delirium. Do the forest creatures all about the outskirts of Mousseron gather and exchange correspondence hping they will soon feature in a Scarlet's Well song? Trees in sunglasses and mice in flairs and tiny little salamanders reading salamander poetry while wearing the afternoon sun casually, for a few fitful moments. First song, The Story of my Life. Are we still in Mousseron after all? This sonds rather conventional. What of steam fairs and underground passages and psychedelic plumes. The forest dwellers may have formed their own Move On.org councils in our latest adventure and their aim is pressed for change fom the oppressive regime of Bid. Did they vote for Joebama? Have you seen this video? It is comedy gold!. Imagine instead of wealthy upper class New Yorkers in shabby outifts it is the rodents and marsupials and genetic miscreants of the Mousseron outgrowth having this meeting discussing how a reptile might use a digital camera to change the world. These video stars could be ancillary characters in a series of comic book adventures where the creatures of the forest write erudite letters to each other, each correspondence given a panel in a thrill a millenium series of adventures. Mousseron mushrooms are fairy ring mushrooms. There are all sorts of theories about fairy rings and their being places where fairies have danced in the forest to the music of the spheres or to places where lightning has struck and caused the ground to give forth these hallucinogenic mushrooms. Bid must be a fan. Third song, Bid sings, since album four they have been a "band". Dickon Edwards is included. He wrote the lyrics to a song on the last record, I rather liked it, it is loads better than the intolerable business he releases as Fosca. Sorry. But there was Orlando, they were marvelous, not really due to the Dickon pen for lyrics but down to the other's star making qualities. There is a lost Orlando record, apparently. We wonder-will it ever see the light of day? Is it not filled with pathos and narcissism and is this why it is sheltered from an adoring public? It would be seemingly silly, as if this weblog could flourish without my own blend of self-centered satisfaction creeping into every entry. The year end lists are being released to the outside world, will this record make a splash on any of the lists? Unlikely. Alice seems to sing more on this record, good deal, she has a marvelous voice, an angel, innocently entwined among a web of dastards. Or so the comic books would be inscribed. Scarlet's Well records are not varied, much like Lucksmiths records are not varied, but they occupy their own little resident genre in the indiepop universe; one filled with accordions, bouzukis, theatricality, creepy overly hairy svengali types, virgins in corsets and their matrons in waiting or so I imagine. Next song is filled with carnival organ and fiddle and Bidness. it could be a redneck jamboree jam from any random state fair from 1983. But it is not. it's refined, it's joyful, it is a tender respite. Peter Momtchiloff plays in Scarlet's Well. And Would Be Goods. Has he abandoned the Sportique? Was he ever in Sportique, perhaps I am remembering incorrectly. He's smart, he looks old, he adds a sheen of pseudo wisdom to the public image when Scarlet's Well is out playing live. Bid evolved from princes in India, he must be lamenting the past week's events in Mumbai and wondering about the rift among the inhabitants of the subcontinent. Or not. Songs of puppies playing at the moment, and fatefully an explosion closes things, how very insensitive. Next song, a piano ballad, acoustic guitar, the Captain character on parade even as Alice sings her little heart out. Why did Bid chose Alice among all of the fateful young ladies that have travelled among the Scarlet's Well coterie of cohorts of known or unknown pleasures? She must have entranced the Captain by means real or surreal. We are all searching for our Alice, Alice to carry our heart's contents as earnestly as we would but lifting a small burden with every sigh and leaf shed from aged trunks. She's young, nubile, fruitful, Bid is wisdom, plucked from the temples of Peter Momtchiloff. Does Peter Momtchiloff hold an especially important position in government? All of Heavenly are meant to hold PHD's. Are they not? I enjoy this record more than the last Scarlet's Well record, it is smaller, less of a band, more of a traveling minstrel show variation. Steam fair souvenirs in view. Next one is more of the same, jug band feel, we're visiting scarborough fair. Bid singing. Imagery is abundant in the lines he's caressing the air with, such splendid poetry. I've mentioned before how delightful the air is on the Scarlet's Well website, they recommend to the world all of the dreamy romantic novels that exist in secret and recommend tea and dress in anachronistic fashions and seem proud for their anonymity. Fairy wings would not be inappropriate and would seem necessary and not at all a sign of weakness. By comparison a pair of fairy wings and the Sinister list would lead only to dissension and tears. Arms of sex are not meant for accordions and shawms. Are story arcs on Scarlet's Well records difficult to pin down. The Monkey's Hand is very Prancing Pony. Does he feel kinship with Tolkienn or Carroll or Lewis. There is "Alice". She's singing again, once more dreamily into the breach. Is Alice her actual name is it a useful literary device to have an "Alice" in the band. And a Dickon? Which children's novel has Dickon as main character? I don't know, he's fictional all the same, we know this by his white linen, I doubt he wears linen but he should, suits and peroxidized head. Next song, a bit of droopy psychedelia, a Fantastic Evelasting Gobstopper outtake? What ever happened to the Fantastic Everlasting Gobstopper girls anyhow? There was to be a Fantastic Everlasting Gobstopper album once upon a time, was there not? I believe there was. There was two sentences of filler. This song is not fantastic, the first to be less than marvelous on the album, really. It's a bit of a journey towards the avant garde desert with piano motifs and the armful of psychedelic merriments. This could be the key to the entire enterprise, where all of the key points to the epic tales are revealed to careful listeners. I am no such being, I listen inattentively while watching That Hamilton Woman which Robert Osbourne has just informed us was Winston Churchill's most favorite movie ever. Vivian Leigh seems such a tragic figure, destined for a future life in eternity as a Mousseronian footnote someday. Alice again on the second to last number. It is a pattern, Alice and then Bid and then Alice and then Bid and well...loads of slithering consonants here must be a means to allude to the darkest recesses of the ship of dream merchants. A quick end. Earnest last Bid number for the last song, his voice and some sort of tender accompaniment, lovely, romantic, a plea for Alice to drift away towards the icebergs of Pylinthia with him. It's a bit Stephin Merrit really. A bit of hopefulness on the end. Beautiful.