Listened to new Neil Halstead single about tennis, on my Saturday night, not very good. I am listening to Celia's Dream now, to counteract.

Update: Slowdive is the greatest band in the history of the world ever. For this Neil Halstead is forgiven for all past, present and future transgressions.

The Bats Free All the Monsters. " We have so little time to say the things we mean." Is it gauche, it is, unimpeachably, to quote Gus Van Sant movies as the heart of wisdom. But I will admit that I do like that contention. I do spend an inordinate number of words on this website not conveying much of what is inside of my heart. It is always what is in my head that spills out in among the pixels. Head or heart? Which is the more compelling? From the opening riff the Bats hit me in the heart. It is the tenderest Bats record ever. His voice, restrained, moved back farther into the mix, the sentiments gauzy and washed over and sweet. He's older, they're older, we're older. We are beyond the apogee of civilization. We need nostalgic reminiscences such as this to remind us of how beautiful life once was. When I was a child in the 1970s and we last had our existential crises I was too young to understand the decay and despair. I would watch Jimmy Carter parade incompetence in press conferences about changing the direction of the part in his hair and when I would walk home on my birthday I was super charged and energized and filled with joy and the world was dying. Now children are not allowed to walk home from school. They may not be allowed to listen to the Bats. And the world is dead. Why tempt them with hope and loveliness and joy. This world is going to slip into the abyss of John Mayer and 'Through the Wormhole' and Stephanie Meyer. The Bats will move on to another world, a better world...there must be. Second track, the track when we realize that Robert Scott has suddenly realized that Kaye Woodward has a voice and it is terrifically lovely. Was it as a result of a loyalty to Jane Sinnott that he seemed to have not noticed this previously? There's the incalculable bats jangle(is there an algorithm for the effortlessness that they convey with guitars). Do their riffs repeat? They are complex enough to disguise repetition. His voice, again, muted, hers tres super! And then a Kaye lead, ah bliss. The Bats writes songs about everything. They write songs about date rape, strangely cheerful ones about date rape actually, and political songs and songs about love and everything else important. Perhaps now that the end times are arrived the important things in life that have not yet bean sullied by bureaucratic intervention will come to the fore once more as a celebration of the traces of humanity that have not been crushed by the heavy hand of government. I was working on a municipal bid for our company this week and it is a minor contract, certainly in the face of our 4 trillion leviathan and yet the process of removing beetle kill trees in Summit County requires the oversight of nine different government agencies. At a minimum there are nine bureaucrats that we must be answerable to in order to use a chainsaw to remove dead trees. Madness. The current track is Free All the Monsters. They have been chained to desks by stifling federal mandates. Gamera not allowed access to restricted flight paths, Godzilla for not making his flame meshed breath safe for children's pajamas, Godzuki in violation of youthful curfews. It is all very depressing. It was such a rapid slide. It all began with bicycle helmets. I ride my bicycle to work, most days, when I am not lazy, but the scorn that is heaped upon me when I pull into the parking lot without wearing a bicycle helmet is immense. When did it become everyone slse's concern over the risks I choose to subject myself to? Robert Scott has children. I am sure, because his heart is pure and his soul unblackened by cynicism as mine has been, he makes his children wear bicycle helmets even though when he was a child he never wore a bicycle helmet. And he learned the limits of mortality. He didn't mature in a risk free society where you can choose all of the easy paths and feel entitled to a reward at the end. I work with a great number of first generation immigrants. They come from cultures of self-reliance and where the government was more likely to murder you than to suffocate by needless regulation and they have a spirit and vigor that has been nearly extinguished from the native population. But their children, their children are comparatively benign. Our overlords have nothing to fear from the children. They will Occupy Wall Street and demand more government oversight, more bureaucratic indifference, more state sanctioned mediocrity and inertia. Because it is safe. This is why indiepop music has stagnated over the past 15 years. Wealth, as ephemeral as it appears now, has blunted the rebellious instincts of pop music. There is only a retreat to isolation and narcissism worth commenting on. But this album? It's gorgeous. But they are not children. The Bats are old. The Bats are older, much older, than I am. They can be reflective and ruminative and it sounds romantic and wistful rather than inhibited. In the Subway not, a bit of kraut rock-ish motorikness. A groove. Paul Kean is married to Kaye Woodward. They also have children. I am not sure if Malcom, the drummer, has children. He was once in the Bilders. With Bill Direen. Is he a fan of cabaret? His drumming is not flashy. What would happen if he came in with a load of Can records and a Jaki Liebezeit haircut and an assortment of cowbells with mention to his band mates that he had a song. Where would the Bats be then? In the Subway is also great, it isn't gentle and demure, well it is, they are desperately unable to shed their genteel natures, but it is insistent and basic and charming and my gosh I love the Bats. I am so glad that they have returned to us. They were banished for a short period. The Bats released two dreary, uninspired records. This record sounds more polished, as if it has been more expensively produced than the last few records. Next track, more double tracked vocals, there is a very strong Daddy's Highway feel to many of these songs, a Law of Things confidence. It's marvelous. My heart is sometimes shrouded by an inexpressive camouflage called my countenance. My heart sometimes has a muffled heartbeat. I only wish for the beats to be obvious to everyone I meet. How brilliant for a lovely stranger to meet you and to be charmed and beguiled because the pounding of your heart is obvious to them and to everyone in the room, I am so desperately happy to see you that my heart can not be contained within the realm of this dust and flesh. Devotchka songs express that feeling. The Bats are more the subtle tingling sensation that travels up and down your spine in an unconscious realization that although the world faces Armageddon that a smile could disarm nations filled with belligerents intent on your destruction or the crushing thoughts of inadequacy that assume primacy in more private moments. Space Dust now, beautiful, it's got pace, it has jangle, his voice distant and sparkling. Her voice just beneath. Are the Bats a democracy now? Has Robert Scott acceded to popular convention and allowed his band mates a say on the musical direction of the band? Hard to say. This is a Bats record, he is the Bats, but after 30 years, they are the Bats. And they are Minisnap. It doesn't sound like Minisnap record. Minisanp is more bouncy, effervescent, fey, insubstantial, this is all of those things but in a stable mixture that comes out uniquely their own. Big echoey vocals at the moment, thick guitar lead, his charming rhythm track. Wonderful. On the Bank. I had two musical childhoods. The first I spent in England. My friends were Morrissey and Ian Mccullough and Paul Heaton and other minor figures of great importance. I have Paul Heaton's heart in a jar in the side drawer of my desk. I would, if it was available for purchase on ebay. The second I spent in New Zealand. With Martin Phillipps and Robert Scott and the Kilgours and Graeme Downes and they, neither, had greater influence, they wove a tapestry of insecurity and obscurity. I am able to hide in fantasies of exotic Aotearoa and Cemetery Gates and be made to only briefly escape for gulps of air at the surface after a vigorous swim through the viscous fluid of my own indulgences. I met someone this week and admitted my love of cemeteries, of the dead, and their life's journey and my need to fill in the gaps and spaces in between the epitaph and the earth. I admitted that my first date was at a cemetery near my home. I did not feel self conscious or strange. I realize now I am destined to be eternally hopeful, with pop songs to accompany my loneliness and my faux narcissism. I write laments over this age of narcissism but is it not true that shyness and introspection is the most damnable version of this social malady. It is. I deem the world as it exists unworthy of my interest. I deem the world as it presented itself to Ikhnaton to have been preferable to our own even though it is unchanged, essentially the same, perpetually uninteresting and populated entirely with people more concerned with the quenching of appetites than reflection. This is why the Bats are one of the most important bands in the history of the world. When the four of them come together it's for the expression of joy. It's a timeless act of human kindness and they should have monuments erected to them in appreciation. Last track, the acoustic ballad. Charming and effortless. Magic, just as the song says. Graeme Downes has morphed into Ward Churchill, Martin Phillipps hasn't written anything I would admit to owning for 18 years, the Kilgours want to be 18 forever but Robert Scott has been Robert Scott since forever and it could be this world's great under appreciated charm.

Exciting news--Sound of Arrows album is out on November 7th! Woo hoo! One day after my mother's birthday. Cast these pestilential spirits from my being.

Billy Bragg singing protest songs seems so quaint. Still clinging to Clause IV?

Gothy goodness.

A Winged Victory For the Sullen S/T. There is...err there was a five ton asteroid hurtling towards the Earth. Perhaps it has already finished hurtling. Update: It has. This may well be the very last record I hear before I am obliterated by space rocks. Update: It isn't. I would not have minded. This album is a dream. Song titles are unimportant. The first song title is languid and lovely. It is Dustin O'Halloran and some other guy. The "some other guy" seems to be appropriating all of the attention in online mentions of this album. I haven't any idea who he is. He's in a Kranky band which makes me think he makes dreary, overly long music when he isn't making A Winged Victory for the Sullen records. Remember the second Jessamine album? That was brilliant. It had complicated packaging. First track is drones and keys. I am assuming the other guy handles the drones and Dustin the piano? The piano is rudimentary. The drones are exquisite. Is the piano rudimentary really? I can not be certain. I am on this kick that every thing these days is mediocrity defined and so I have perhaps unintentionally disparaged Dustin's own virtuosity. Mediocrity on parade is what is causing the general malaise in our universe I believe. From politicians to artists to just the drivers of every day life, your parents, your bus driver, your ice cream vendor. Does anyone really appear to be trying for perfection? Most people achieve very little, even in measure of their tiny ambitions. Track two, again song title is unimportant but it is Requiem for the Static King Part 1. Strings and drones begin, heavenly. It sounds as if it was recorded in the corner of a very large room bereft of everything but the small group of musicians. I always lament my inability to judge the inherent worth of a piece of classical music based solely on an objective criteria of ability and quality of composition. But then is classical really so different from any other from of music and is it not all subjective interpretation. Possibly. I listen to the rocket scientists that are now occupying Denver and their world is one filled only with subjective pronouncements. They are unaware of any inviolable physical law which may govern the universe as a whole but fully cognizant of the miasma of emotional treatises disguised as academic arguments. A living wage? Oh, track three has begin, this is Part 2. But anyway. An emotional treatise composed entirely of music is difficult to describe for someone so inarticulate as myself. I could scan through obscure texts and lift ornate, flowery passages colored purple and impress people that same as Stereolab can do with their pillaging of record collections superior to yours. Bu my life as a student was not soundtracks by the sruminations of genius. I was ruled by Morrissey and Ian Brown and Slowdive. I was only able to attend classes part-time but I went every semester and I graduated without any student debt even wiping out a year of graduate school debt thanks to being part of a team that developed a fairly lucrative algorithm for Raytheon. But anyway. We must end Capitalism, mustn't we, we shall end the most amazing two centuries of progress for the human race, shan't we. We can listen to these beautiful records on our Ipods for the next 1000 years because when the government runs everything innovation is halted. Look at the most highly regulated industries in America, rail(innovation does not exist), air travel(innovation does not exist), finance(innovation is forced into dark recesses where risk is unnecessarily raised because the prospect of return in an over regulated market is minimal), etc, etc, etc... Is Morrissey occupying London or some town in Italy? Probably hoping for a government mandate against vivisection and the introduction of a vegetarian commando force to thin the population of carnivores. What has this to do with music? Nothing at all. But this is an astonishingly pretty album. Song five, the pre-release teaser. I know it was so overplayed here on commercial radio that it feels like an old friend now. Not actually. I have been dating people recently and am beginning to wonder if I am meant to be anti-social and a shut-in after all. I don't much feel a connection with any other human beings. I have a friend at work, a married friend, who I suddenly appreciate because she seems to have shared sensibilities with mine but then I have only ever seen her at work. I am confident, dominant and dynamic at work and at home I curl up in a corner of my basement pressed against an outside wall and read very long books and fall asleep with thoughts of the contradiction of the main tenets of buddhism in my head and heart. If there is no soul then how is one reincarnated? And why must men corrupt everything pure. This music feels pure, a salient distillation of perfection, minimal, spare, intense. Why can't all human emotion be channeled as efficiently and with such a staggering level of warmth and joy. These are my subjective truths. This is my emotional outburst. Dustin O'Halloran deserves as much credit as "some other guy", every records that he makes is gorgeous and the records that other people make where they seem to be offering tribute are also gorgeous--see Lanterns on the Lake. The longest track on the album now. The centerpiece, 12 minutes long, minor keys, drones, slow motion ambience, just amazing. I would walk about my neighbourhood this evening listening to the album whilst dodging raindrops but it never does rain here and there is the incessant intrusion of train whistles that are visited upon us nearly every evening. Will occupy Wall Street shut down commerce sufficiently to stop the trains from interrupting my sleep? And when I ride my bicycle to work I have this overwrought terror of the train tumbling from the tracks on top of me and my specialized bicycle as I race underneath the railroad bridge as the train passes overhead. And there are the skunks. This song is mainly empty spaces. What skill in recording to prevent this from being meaningless nothingness. There are slight crescendoes that weave slowly into and out of the mix, there is a ebb and flow of tender emotion. It does feel like a paean to loss, a soundtrack to decline. A nostalgic view of the once believed moment of permanence when everything was fine and nobody hurt. The mythical age that has never existed, ever. The title of this one is The Symphony Pathetique and it is let down a bit by the title, it sounds as if it could be ironically applied. Irony is so overdone. Give me the dreadful earnestness of someone like Chris Martin, however uninformed, over the knowing nihilism of Stephen Malkmus who seems genuinely terrified of expressing an earnest belief in anything. We have moved into the second half of he symphony, a slow draw down of forces until it is merely drones and their echoes filling the mix. A symphony for the autumn brilliance. Even in Colorado where trees are treated so rudely by the elements there is color enough to harken the spirit and allow one to turn a blind eye to the foolishness of our generation bathed in ignorance. I am eating chocolate and considering the gentleness of this album as a balm to counteract the disappointment I feel entitled to own. Slowly the symphony is reawakening and drones are cascading, drone upon drone, half filled with the minor particles of the standard model. I lied. It did rain here. It rained last Saturday and I was meant to be at work but I stayed home because of the rain. It has not rained since. It will likely not rain again until April. But if it does rain our hearts will be prepared, our souls strengthened and Dustin O'Halloran prince of stainless song craft will be there to capture our sudden elation. It will be drawn out, it will be slowed, it will be compressed into a fine distillate from a cacophonous colloid and it will rise to the occasion and save us from the mediocrity that has been so brutally cast among us threatening the existence of our entire civilization. When A Winged Victory for the Sullen is, by government mandate, proclaimed the only music worthy of public consumption then we will all gather in dells and city squares and in tiny hovels and we will look to the heavens and feel untethered by the paucity of our physical existence and truly experience timelessness as it should be visited upon everyone at least once in their life. And we will eat chocolate and Kate Bush will be there.

New Bats!



Pretty, but, aye the last couple have been pretty dud.

Still Corners Creatures of an Hour. The important question is whether Still Corners' taste in film and recorded music is as all encompassing and clever as Broadcast. My productivity has fallen off after a rather prolific summer. You are welcome. I have not been writing other things, mostly, I have been asleep. For two months. I awaken only to listen to music. This record is nostalgic. Trish Keenan, we miss you. This record is very good. It is unfair to compare, we know, but they are the ones that sound so very much like Broadcast. First track, spare plot, it's about establishing a soft focus. Do their record collections extend beyond the likes of Flowchart and Semi-Gloss? Unknown. They must be young. Can they converse convincingly on Italian film directors from the early 1960s? There are other less important questions. Second track now, more propulsive, repeating keyboard motif, shards of sound effects as guitars, spooky monosyllabic harmonising in the background. I should be at work at the moment. Christmas starts on Monday. I will go to work on Sunday. I will be alone at work on Sunday. This is our dilemma, we actively seek solitude from ipods and the general avoidance of people and then lament our isolation in blog posts. Consistency is not a virtue. Broadcast wrote the most perfect pop songs ever written but they were not a pop band. Still Corners are a pop band and they write very nice pop songs. But the voice, it is not Trish Keenan. Third track, farfisa, thundering drums, hushed vocals. Broadcast had a brilliant drummer. He was replaced by a drum machine. Did he ever imagine it a good idea to be the focus of attention. Is it even true that drummers buy records for drummers? More guitars as accessories. i don't mind actually. it's colourings and interruptions from more interesting conversations and then it is over. Track number four. Even if the Egyptians were the peak of human achievement they didn't have cool space age bachelor pad pop music. Would I have felt comfortable as an Egyptian? My lack of ambition might have predestined me for a life of slavery to be wagered over by Hyksos interlopers. This is another bit of vague sensory experience. The songs have words, they don't seem to function for any purpose apart from sound poems, a caption to the imagery, through the looking glass in invisible ink. It is raining today. This is the first significant rain since July. Thus the desiccation of my muse? Will now the words come flowing forth? Already this is the second entry of the day. Boffo crescendo just now, ten keyboards all in a row. Now to the toy town portion of our program. Her vocals as dramatised through a telephone wire, nice switch now into the age of high fidelity. I really love this album, in an inconsequential manner of romantic activity. I am stuck on the anglicised spelling infatuation of my youth spent in a northern suburb of Detroit. This is intense prettiness. They create pretty things almost effortlessly. When the last note plays it does not linger. Perhaps the Egyptians did have space age bachelor pad music and just lacked the means of carrying it forth to generations to come. This will be the torment of our own age, the age of the incompatible format. How will I listen to my 8-track tapes in 43 years? Will there be hipsters to sell me their wares while protesting capitalism along 16th? I do hope so. The only song I can distinctly remember listening to on my parents 8-track player is Jewel Akens The Birds and the Bees I have distinct memories of life on the top bunk with an assortment of wicker hampers playing wicker hamper drums along to this song. I did not grow up to eclipse the sun. Nor have Still Corners. This track is a bit of spy thriller soundtrack action, guitars, groove and her voice. Her voice, unchanging, ethereal, unaffecting and unaffected. I used to have a friend that grew up betrayed by love, unable to appreciate any female voice with even an artifice of emotional resonance. She will love this album. i love this album. You should love this album. If you are alone it will make the lonely beleaguerment more passable. Next track, the voice used as ornamental decoration, there are the lead vocals and then pleasant harmonising vocals in the distance that add a warmer touch than the aggregation of dreamy synthesized sounds constructing the impenetrable wall of sound. The production is not great. It is all loudness nearly all of the time. They did not grow up huddled around a four track recorder, this much is clear. Did Subpop inform them that the songs should not exceed 4 minutes? Only 3 breach that mark and only just barely, and even if that condemns this record in more learned ears as inconsequential they aren't interesting enough to carry a groove into a trancelike state of human circulatory system sympathy. It's pretty pop songs, her voice is sweet sounding, but we won't be listening to this when we are conducting a sit-in at Goldman Sachs tomorrow. It is interesting that the general level of human intelligence seems to be invested in an indirect relationship with the amount of education one acquires. I am a snob. My degree is in physics. Physics is a "real" subject, provable, objective. How to deal with a subjective field of study such as Lesbian Post Modernism? It is the difference between bowling and figure skating, one at the whim of human ability and the other at the whim of human opinion. Madness. Another pretty track now. I spent a good amount of time in university. I spent some time studying less utilitarian subjects, I remember a brilliant essay on the movie Shane in one class and I feel proud to have assimilated Jack Palance fully into my heart. I worked nearly full time while attending school and two jobs when I was not attending school. Now I am interviewing college graduates who have never had a job in their life and the are 24. Perhaps they were in super cool modern pop bands and decided to pack it in only just recently when they realized they will never be as brilliant and influential as Thom Yorke. This track Submarine is just over 4 minutes, it feels ever so much more enduring.