Electric Pop Group Seconds. Brighter were the very first Sarah band I ever heard. They are special. To me. I love Brighter. Electric Pop Group love Brighter. I love Electric Pop Group. Well this record. It is a corollary or something. It is a Brighter record, the same as when Pains of Being Pure at Heart make records they are Field Mice records EPG make records that are Brighter records. Is there shame in this? No. There was one Brighter album. And three Harper Lee albums sure, but this has that chiming, simple ache that warmed the heart so desperately and the world is in short supply of these things. Brighter had a purity about them; in each song a simple melody line, the basic drum machine patterns and even the drab colorless photos spoke to a life lived as lensed by some sepia tinged kinetoscope rather than a wide screen technicolour masterpiece. The White Sister vs. An American in Paris. Lillian Gish versus Leslie Caron. We love Leslie Caron but that confidence, that zest for living, we can't relate better the parched, worn lips of Lillian Gish on her "death bed". Brighter were not Leslie Caron. Sad, lonely children don't have that many teeth. Electric Pop Group have nice teeth, perhaps, but if they do then they do a convincing portrait scribbled across back molars of a desolate emotional landscape. All of these songs seemingly exist on the periphery. The notes chalked on borowed counter tops, on sheets of paper towel surreptitiously claimed and huddled with in bathrooms or balconies away from the heartbeat rhythms that drive everyone else to their instincitve behaviours and normality and terrify the meekest into expressing their aims in love songs or poetry or vivid illusions of Lillian Gish could play the lead fantasies or bliss and romance. Third song. I Know I Will. The circular guitar patterns continue. It isn't a million miles away from Math and Physics Club but as their asthmatic tnedencies take to the fore, here there is a more resonant dynamism, they are confident in their spinning little circle of friends and they are confident in their emotions and they are near the surface. And the brother psychic connection. I don't have any sort of connection to either of my brothers. My brother's factory was inundated by the Cumberland river, nearly consumed, buy some carbon offsets to help him. Math and Physics CLub are life as a Sinclair Lewis novel, this is meant to be more sincere, more automatic, more life giving. I could mention the lyrics but it is teenage troubadour english, cliche cliche cliche and it spans the very short gap of catholicity among non-native speakers. I love it. Yeah. But it is all very "teenager" in the age of 2 million "200 troubled teenagers" sharing one collective identity. A collective by nature stifles. Unable to disassociate even for a moment, broadcasting their cosmetic maladies for their friends from Bhutan to Pocatello, they merge into some sort of myopic oblivion. Are they wearing orange corduroy dresses? Unlikely. I've been listening to Sarah records records almost exclusively for the past week. I had a serious disillusionment with twee pop for some time. I may still have it. I won't be even "borrowing" the Math and Physics Club record. Probably. But I am dying to listen to my Harvest Ministers records for the third time today. Why? Has the music changed or have I changed? I have sometimes, in the past, blamed mass affluence, what can the Pocketbooks say to me? Not a whole heck of a lot. The Manhattan Suicides? Eh...yeah Heavenly were middle class, yeah probably many of the Sarah records kids were but they had a commitment to something purer even still. It was a positive reflection that came from their music. They longed for a(misguided really) utopian view based on individualism and spirit and DIY fierceness. Now everything is in terms of negative rights, live in thrall to the collective to insulate yourself from risk to assuage the inner totalitarian that is seeping out in every misguided attempt to correct the ways people live from making them feel guilty for drinking bottled water, to accepting mediocrity as heroic, to this defeatism in believing the apocalypse is just ahead of us, just around the bend. It affects music too. Will there be a political awakening in pop music? Hopefully not, but perhaps instead there will be a literary revival. This is not part of that revival. They are part of the anonymous middle class. They don't want to stand out. In concert I imagine they dress shabbily as if they were American and they play their songs proficiently and they sell homemade cd-rs and are big Blubird fans. But even without a personality of their own they charm. Because they've somehow tapped into the melancholic consciousness that so many of us are caught up in and unable to break free of. Next song. More Brighter guitar. The acoustic guitar next to the two note electric riff, the impassioned nasal whinge, sigh...perhaps this is me revisiting my childhood. Not the one that actually transpired by the fantasy existence that I created to soothe me in my uneventful old age. I was once so promising. Last time I was in Toronto was 1996. I went to an ice hockey game. I was back in Toronto two weekends ago and how desperately I wanted to be back in 1996. Toronto in 1996 waqs clean, safe, exciting. Toronto in 2010 reminds me of...shhh...Detroit. It has a new sinsiter edge about it. Read into that all of the racism you would like but there is a new edge to life in the big city, perhaps it makes it more exciting for the locals. But I grew up in Detroit. I recall driving down Woodward to the Latin Quarter and enjoying the freedom of living in an anarchist's paradise and not having to stop for red lights or pedestrian things of similar meaninglessness. Have you seen the show 'life after people' on History? When they profiled Detroit they didn't need to produce any fancy graphics to show the squalor and desolation as nearly half of the city is vacant. Dave Bing is considering turning much of it to farmland. Amazing. He had a pretty sweet jumper once upon a time, god knows why he wants to be a farmer. He could make Bill Laimbeer chief of police. But Toronto is not yet Detroit. It isn't empty. It suckles off the sustenance that comes from out west. But their hockey team is awful again. In 1996 it was closer to greatness. I saw Best Coast play live in Toronto. They were petty swank but their new song, not so much. The curse of losing the menace when you learn how to play your instrument and you meet people who are concerned with things such as fidelity. Ugh. Audiophiles. There were Rush tee shits and last night I watched the fabulous Rush documentary on VH-1. What a bunch of weirdos. My workmate says his grandmother looked like Geddy Lee. My Grandmother did not. In the Back of my Mind, brotherly harmonies, almost Everly-esque. Would the Everly Brothers sound like this in 2010? If they were Canadian? But EPG are Swedish right? I don't remember. The Sonnets are Swedish. They seem as if they could be pretty great and they already know how to play their instruments. This one is a bit vague. Pleasingly so. 4 tracks left. Now the upbeat number for the indiepop "dance" night. Disco preset on the drum machine. Excellent, the inhaler comes out after the first chorus. Did Sweden not qualify for the World Cup? I still have a low opinion of Sweden after their performance in the 1994 final. Word is that South Africa has a higher than normal incidence of Tuberculosis. =Could it be the curse of the vuvuzella? Possibly. It's as plausible a theory as global warming. Siberian Tigers are dying because they have lost the will to kill their prey. They could be gone within 10 years. I am sure if you purchase carbon offsets you can help them the same as my brother and his 60,000 spoiled water heaters. If we had 13 inches of rain here the Platte might rise to a babbling brook. Sometimes it is good to live in a desert but then I look at my prematurely aged hands and scream to the heavens. Jergens and humidors. Next song. Slightly slower disco preset on the drum machine. Same guitar notes, played slightly slower. Lovely. I should have gone to Toronto this weekend, free big screen tv's. I've just re-read "What is to be done", actually "What to Do" and on the airplane I had read Scientific American and they claimed that Obama was not a socialist but this administration is following Lenin's prescription to a tee. The midle class intelligentsia forming theories on how things should be instead of living in the same reality of most people and dealing with things the way they are. And some strange obsession with unknowing youth. Lenin would be proud. I wonder if he was a subscriber to Scientific American, he seems awfully conservative, probably more for casting a sabot rather than splitting the atom. But I am tired of Scientific American getting political. Just give me the science man, skip the propaganda, don't tell me that Abu Ghraib is the equivalent of Auschwitz. Don't tell me that my mediocre President isn't a Socialist. Second to last song. I should be off to bed. I have a budget reforecasting meeting tomorrow. I am meant to be sharp and aware and full of answers as to where our profits went. It could be worse we could live near the Cumberland river. The problem with being anonymous is that you become tiresome quickly. I have the same effect on people. All of my quirks and foibles are secret. To the outside world I am normal. I have normal hair. I have an invisible laugh. I have dreadful toes that I am not fond of. And so I am forgotten 12 minutes after I am introduced. Electric Pop Group have a bit of that inside of them as well. Nice last song though. Layers.

Perhaps I will reappear. I don't have an internet connection so new music is an alien thing. What is this new music you speak of? I have a post on Crayon Fields done but they're terrifically silly.

Turns out that the new Moto Boy doesn't really do it for me either. I am thinking I like the Hundreds record though. Or perhaps not. I've been listening to Helleborine all week instead. I just watched the Tube performance where they had artists on stage with them, so cheesy, but brilliant all the same. I love Shelleyan Orphan.

Irene is up in the apparent air, apparently. The main guy has a new band - here.

Crayon Fields All the Pleasures In The World. Good thing for the Crayon Fields is that the last Clientele record is terrifically awful. They shine, in comparison, in that record's tiny little shadow. Did democracy kill the Clientele? Allegedly he wrote the songs but then the rest of the band filled it out. The Clientele are dying, decomposing, necrotic. The album sounds like an application for employment by suddenly out of work band members. Dreadful. Hey a marimba would sound great here. Not really. Apparently Crayon Fields spent a great deal of money recording this album. I have inside sources, in country. This was relayed in a bitter post on a music message board. It wasn't entirely wasted. I rather enjoy this album. Well mostly. There are times when it seems as if the singer is desperately insecure and imbibes in some locker room bravado that is comically out of place but he's Australian. He's possibly named Dirk and pale yet leathery and possibly deeply embarrassed over this fact. First song is the magnificent Mirrorball, second song isn't but it's rather awesome as well. A falling away to chiming plucks on guitar strings now. Third song. I am not really keeping up. This is the title track. I would have chosen one of the first two tracks instead. What is the thoery behind selecting a title track? Does the title track come first and then the title? Why do bands name records after songs? Does this track reflect the themes of the entire enterprise? It is not much different in essence from any of the other songs on the album. Maybe this song has deep personal meaning to the Geoff. I could analyse the lyrics but there is the bit about necking in the hall. I've seen photos. If these boys are making out with chicks it's because they are famous and in a semi-competent rock band. They're ugly, mainly. Today is Max Planck's birthday, were I witty or charming or any of those things that make the general population swoon and vote for me for President or MP then I would walk up and down the boulevard with a placard proclaiming the man's greatness. "Stand next to me, let's get so close we'll make some quantum gravity if we can get as close as a Planck length". I am reading about Alex Loorz. The lad is best pals with Al Gore. Shouldn't the lad acquire the science before becoming a propagandist? Possibly. Perhaps this is all a ploy to meet Blubird! Smart boy. Recently we had a devastating consequence of the rampant global warming, the heaviest rainfall I've ever seen since I've been in Denver. This is ten whole years, which is only slightly less than a lot of the time frames that other people make imperious claims armed with. But it was lovely. Day long rains are melancholic and graceful. Colorado is strange there is this rampant filling in of a verdant tapestry after even the briefest of rains and then slowly this landscape is consumed by the relentless god Helios. Marsilio Ficino and John Wilkes Booth be warmed. And John Paul Stevens, Yamamoto codebreaker and dissenter against the plan to down Yamamoto is dying or he is retiring. It is now months later. Elena Kagan is the new John Paul Stevens and it is warm. I've taken to hoping that Best Coast is the new Amy Linton. There is an opening. I could mention the oil slick. I could mention the floatilla. I could mention State Senator Wilkerson's cup size. I won't. But on to song four. Timeless. A lone violin. A whisper. Silly lyrics to begin with. The dreamy poetic tenor of Clientele songs is not replicated here. It's basic smaltz with prettiness filled in around the smarmy sentiments. Chorus is seemingly an attempt to come off all Zombies and make it onto adult contemporary radio in Australia. My parents were just here visiting. It was the first i Had seen of them in a year. I didn't go to their home for Christmas because I was in Seattle burying a friend. I still haven't told my parents the truth of why I wasn't there. I told them I had had a vehicle accident and missed my flight. It seemed the right thing to do at the time. I don't tell anyone anything. I've buried two people who I thought I loved more than air. One of them broke my heart into a thousand pieces and then lingered over my crushed spirit for a very long time. The other was the apparition of a last kiss. One committed suicide. The other had a terrible accident. My father has just the one eye now. He has his right eye, the right one. It was a difficult scene when I first saw him. He's had this amazing duel with skin cancer and he's mostly come out on the short end. I feel awful. He isn't vain and his spirit seems buoyant and resilient but at the same time he seems melancholic in his closeness to mortality. He mentions it to strangers. Always. He's only 70, or nearly. He keeps a bible on the bed stand and reads it always. I don't know how I feel about that. My family was not a real religious unit. We attended church but religion was rarely practiced outside the walls of St Pauls church. Now it is his feebleness that is drawing him closer to a personal relationship with God and I can understand but I suppose I am too harsh in hoping for consistency. He is the one with a hole in his face. Graceless is playing now, my sentiments would be echoed in the title. My parents have aged dramatically in the past five years. I am afraid that my father hasn't the will to endure anything serious after this. Will he accept whatever comes his way in resignation or fight to the end? My mother spent hours in tears on the telephone with me this year. Next track, Take Me Where the Light Isn't Cruel. Nice. Rest of record, nice but we'll still mourn for the death of the Clientele.

Hmmm...John Grant record starts off very promising but then meh.

Update: It's rubbish. Someone get him a blog.

New Love is All is much better than the last one.

Trying to listen to the Pas/Cal album for the first time in a year. Still horrible, oh so. Sadness.

The Raised by Swans record is very pretty. A bit "The Czars" mixed with "Paper Cuts" or "Stars"?

Update: Eh?

Look at this--

"Work on the forthcoming OMD album The History Of Modern continues and a provisional release date is under consideration.

Paul Humphreys has been working on the new OMD album recently and mixing work is also on the schedule. Meanwhile, Andy McCluskey is meeting with Peter Saville this week to discuss sleeve design concepts. The band are also receiving a lot of requests for licensing offers from around the world and it looks likely that a lot of deals are going to be made over the next few months.

The record label that will be issuing the album is 100% Records, who have previously worked with Moby, Placebo and The Temper Trap.

The provisional release date for The History Of Modern is scheduled for late August/early September."

From OMD's Myspace page. Will it be Dazzle Ships-esque greatness or some other sort of crapness?

An interview with the mighty Tramway circa 1991.

The new She & Him record is exceedingly lovely.

New Moto Boy!!! I am listening now. Gorgeous. So far. I jumped the gun, I emailed my poorly abused friend, I send thoughtless fragments her way in uninteresting emails at a whim, my unabashed love for the School album but it turned out the School album isn't so good and thinking back now they really only have two songs we love. But I am on song two of the Moto Boy and well each of the first two songs is great. Also I only just learned there is a new Jean Pierre Jeunet movie out soon. Why are such things kept from me?

Mostly matinee releases terrible records but the Electric Pop Group's new record is the best Brighter record in a very long time.

Yikes, new Pipettes single Stop the Music is an abomination. When's the Sound of Arrows record out then?