Right all bets are off. The Peruvian Shoegaze album of the year is here. I imagine you probably weren't looking for one. But here it is anyway. Sueno Purpura break loose on their sound pedals and crank it up to 11, (one higher) on Souvenir.
The whole recurring wave of Shoegazing is a slightly strange one for me. The original scene broke in my last year at University in 1990 and was largely mocked in the music press on the UK at the time but its waves reverberate everywhere 35 years onwards and now kids in Lima sit at home and listen in awe to Ride, Chapterhouse and Revolver records.
There's something faintly Prog about Souvenir.. No wonder. There was something faintly Prog about Shoegaze. This is a record that is worth devouring at single sittings. A veritable feast.
There's nothing quite as powerful as a record that gets better to your ears with the passing years. More insidious and labyrinthine. Such is the case with the Trip Hop records for me. Portishead, Tricky. And at the pulsing core of the mindset and gestalt Massive Attack.
The mid Nineties struck me at the time as a very paranoid, claustrophobic period. Maybe it's just something you go through when you turn thirty, I wasn't particularly happy but I felt it was in the air too. You can hear it in these bands, in Pulp, and Blur and Radiohead and The Verve now.
Bands that seem to take the pulse of their times are rare. Bands that transcend them rare indeed. A sublime record to listen to as the sun goes down. An hour of remarkable power. .
Katsy Pline. They're crazy. Do you see what they're doing there. They're walking after midnight on latest album Incandecsent Fire. Frankly, you'd be crazy yourself if you didn't fall to pieces. Immediately. A church, a court room. Then goodbye.
OK that's enough Patsy. Back to Katsy. This is a wan, sophisticated songwriter from Berkely, California. wonderfully sculpted unpredictable album with wisdom for the past and hunger for the future.An album that I'm embracing with open arms as the clock ticks from three to four. Wondrous record.
Goodbye Wudaokou's Anything Of Us serenades me towards my Wednesday's online encounters. It's rain flecked and smiling through the day. There's an appreciation of light and shade and the sunny side of life, The sound of guitars and the vision of Indie fringes and frocks.
I've got nothing to do today. But err, smile. And listen to Tin Drum by Japan it seems.. It 's just gone half past nine and I'm already on my third spin and it's not wearing on me yet. Like a great film or book 'I never knew there was so much in it.' ' Now we're too late.... for heaven'
They're a tight unit, Japan just as tightly oiled as Thin Lizzy or any hard rock combo you might care to mention. Even though they might appear slightly delicate behind the finely applied make up and coiffured fringes . These boys walked the mean streets of Catford . Then got into Roxy and Bowie, joined the Long March and honed their chopstick skills. They're no cissies..
When Tin Drum came out and I bought it, I was in the fifth year at Secondary School. I went in late quite a bit quite a bit that year . The truant officers were past caring. I used to walk up Richmond Hill in the mornings and watch the squirrels frolicking opposite The Rodean Pub above Petersham Meadows . The grassy dreamlands of Richmond Park.
Then I'd descend towards Grey Court and my O Levels. I was the son of pioneers. Pushing through these burning towns. Life ahead of me. The wind in my sails. OK. Time for another record. Onward to my half eleven.
I was in a foul, dark mood fifty minutes ago. It's a bleak day. . I put Heaven Up Here on and heated up a pizza. The mood was swept away in seconds and I was 16 again. I could write a chapter of a book you don't need to read about this record and what it means to me and has meant; brooding intensity romance, passion and err guts and passion. Never set it down.
I love Mull Historical Society. They, or rather Colin Macintyre and the musicians he gathered around him were a breath of fresh air when they first appeared at the turn of the millenium and started churning out wonderful records on Rough Trade. My brother in law had a hand in the design of their terrific records covers. Loss is a good a place to start as any in an appreciation of Macintyre's madcap but treasurable vision.
'the thing that makes the best first albums truly wonderful is that feeling that every great lyric, every great thought that's ever slipped through the composer's field of thought in his life are represented there on that first record. The debyt album is a filter and a mission statement of the writer's accumulated brilliance- so far. Imagine then, if you will, that your inspiration and observations have been gleaned from a remote-ish isle of the Western Highlands if Scotland
I read an article in The Guardian a few days back that actually put forward the proposition that Rock & Roll was dead . I don't really think it ever could be. There will always be a thirst a need and a market for a certain kind of artistic expression and release. Here's the latest example I've found.....
Creative Writing's Baby Did This takes the point at which Teenage Fanclub, Big Star and R.E.M. , picked up from where The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield came from way back when. They hail from Western Massachusetts and join the dots between Miracle Legion and The Paisley Underground.. I like where they come from and where they're going,.
This is a record with hills and dales . It covers a lot if ground and is probably the American Underground Classic that I've been waiting for all year and discovered Mid October without really expecting it. .
Teethe from Texas. The Magic of the Sale. Certainly magic of a strange alchemy. Sounding a little like outtakes from Big Star's legendary third album. Let's face it . Never a bad idea. Another recommendation from Starbuck A.K.A. Darren Jones.
Minor key slowcore royalty. Another shoe in for the It Starts With a Birthstone Top 100. Softly strummed chords and aching vocals. Lovely stuff all round. One that invites you to the land of nod. Good work Darren. My work is done for the day. I'm off for a kip on the sofa.
I've wasted the day. I slept at noon and am now heating up my tea. In a late and slightly desperate bid at domesticity I've put on Honky Cat. Delighted to find a Carpenters Greatest Hits I'd been searching for in the sleeve I pop that to one side, then sit at the chair in front of on my desk.
Elton John is the kind of thing you expert you'll grow into, but it's never entirely happened to me. I can appreciate the craft but they feel slightly like an ex's slippers. They make me think of the suburbs.I was never ready for the suburbs. I'm still not..
And then Rocket Man comes on and I'm stopped in my tracks by its purity and clarity. I think of a woman I know who said she loved it a few weeks ago when we were together , Her face appears in my head. I send her a text and a photo of the sleeve. Music at its best forms a connection between people. A bond. An understanding.
Sun comes up. It's Tuesday Morning. No, not Cownoy Junkies. Pop Pickers ! Already done them. It's Dining Dead today. Lots if bands that choose Dead for their name. Interesting choice. Interesting road. Fork in the road. 'I'm alive' Are you Eddie. Giid on you. Well we're dead. Dining Dead ! Whatever that means. Are they Grateful?
They're good anyhow. A Seattle band. Four girls and a guy. A sparky Indie sound. Glittering in the sunlight. Shifting up a gear. Turning into the highway and shifting lanes. New album Is This a House? considers any number of imponderables and comes up trumps. Reminds me of Patti, Kim and Courtney. That's more than enough. Tuesday is sorted. Time for my bath !
The passages of time. Departure. Arrival. My sister and I used to go and visit grandparents in Dorchester,We would watch the birds in their garden in the morning togetheras we prepared breakfast and for the day. My sister and I weren't particularly aware of this process I imagine. We had little concept of the passing of time or our place in the universe.
Now my parents are doing the same in their house in Canterbury. I'm watching wheeling seagulls from my own urban window on the world in Newcastle, As I prepare for Monday. I'm enjoying Talulah's Tape a piece of gentling jangling Indie confectionary fromGood Flying Birds ,
Midwest skittering of the most good natured kind from somewhere in the Mid West though I sense its heart lies in Glasgow.. Byrds of a different feather in their record collections though I also detect The Ramones and the ghosts of the Eighties American underground. I can dig it..... Fellong groovy.
Released in 1974, Lest we forget. It sounded like the future then I imagine and it certainly still sounds like it now. And makes you wonder quite why anyone would ever want to listen to Roll With It ever again when they could be on the moon or floating in space instead with something like this...
The man who invented analytical geometry. and introduced scepticism as an essential part of the scientific approach apparently. Also a song on the new Sprints album.
Life is a bowl of cherries. Or alternatively a coconut shy. When You've got a fully functioning record player and a huge, and forgive my boast,a reasonably eclectic record collection. Time for The Four Lads. Bryl cream and matching ties and dinner jackets .Canadian male quartet harmonising at its finest. I imagine ! I'm not an authority. Two quid from Oxfam
Off we go. Friday morning. Modern Nature's The Heat Warps. Velvet Undergroind licks and rythms. Less jazzy than previous outings. Enormously compulsive. I think I'll get myself a large cup of tea and listen some more.
Nine one word titles. A methodical approach to song writing thats served Stereolab and Pixies well. Changes of pace and mood. Refracted light. There's something rather lovely about this record. I need to get dressed. I will listen to the reset later today.
My first lesson is done. As is my paperwork for it. I'm listening further to it. I've written to my Polish friend. Happy wife, happy life.
This is a record that appreciates colour and space. Carefully chosen lyrics. Musicians that look at each other while they are playing and work together toward common goals
I wake up and vow to do something about the records in my living room. They're a microcosm of the world. Overflowing. Without direction or purpose. Or coherence. They need to be put into boxes. Channels. Irrigated. Given infrastructure and purpose, Order. Coherence..
But first there's time to run a bath. Boil an egg. Take my pills. Listen to a Graham Parker & The Rumour record and then cup my ear to the latest from Tame Impala. Great name. Shame about the record. I have time for their earlier stuff but this immediately strikes me as wanting to have its cake and eat it. Cake is there to be eaten. More tea vicar?
So to Deadbeat. Nice sleeve. An image of paternal love. The record? It's not dead. It has beat, Syncopation. Singer songwriter on the dancefloor. Underworld grooves. But as so often with this stuff that wants to get you on and dancefloor and also listen to the words it make you wonder what exactly it's trying to say.'Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis.
I suppose I'm being unkind but it's all terribly bland and rather kitchen sink. Bar thymes with Pablo Escobar in Dracula my personal nadir moment. Car rhymes with spectacular. Time for that bath.....
' So much more attractive Inside the moral kiosk.'
First loves are very important, First kisses, the first time you lay down and woke up together. They're moments you never forget. They have a deeply etched poignancy. For me this is the important one. I bought a new record player and system a few weeks ago. It has astonishing accuracy and clarity.
I've realised suddenly since this purchase I've accepted second best for years. Most of all having this new sensational in my living room has allowed me to listen to Murmur as it should be listened to. And rediscovered it's mystery and enigma. O's like waking up forty tears younger. Bathing in asses milk.
I bought Murmur in Autumn 1983 began unwrapping it play after play, listening to it on a loop. I went to The Soviet Union on a college trip on December where I saw what other worlds were like for the first time ever. I was young and knew little but was starting to feel confident in my skin. R.E.M. I realise looking back were a part of that confidence. My secret. I knew they had something. I sensed I had something too. ,
It's a record that I'll never uncover, never own and won't even try. It has a child's wonder and extraordinary maturity . R.E,M,went onto wealth and greatness and immeasurable influence. It's no wonder. They never lost their's. I shook Peter Buck's hand a few weeks ago. Perhaps I should have kissed his feet. Those guys sensed more than many of us ever will. Yes I like this one. . .
Half Man Half Biscuit. The Fall that I understand. I'm by no means a completist but listening to their latest album All Asimov And No Fresh Air, their sixteenth in all I can see where they're coming from to a greater extent than I ever have.
The emphasis with HMHB seems to be growing old happily and well balanced. Maintaining the emphasis of what made them popilar and successful with ordinary alternative types. Keeping fairly informed and contemporary with what's being discussed in contemporary circles., Keeping it positive and light. Maintaining a certain level. Occasionally surpassing themselves and chucking forth a gem. All power to their Scouse Elbows. National Treasure is a much abused term But Nigel Tufnell is a contender.
'We are cocooned and protected by the silence. Find ourselves marooned. Not in islands but in houses.'.
Saturday's the day for fun apparently and I 'm up early to harvest it. I'm in my desk with my mug of tea. Looking out of my high Georgian double glazed windows in Clayton Street West at the equally majestic Georgian windows of the Clarendon building across the road from me. It's a grey day in Newcastle but no immediate sign of rain. .I might go to Jesmond Dene.
My bath has run. I'll boil an egg and listen to Emma Pollock's Begging The Night To Take Hold and decide what to do with my day .It's a literate, thoughtful record. Nuanced. Pretty much my favourite word. Nuanced. Like people. Like the lines on a face of a loved one..
What it compares to most readily to me are cultural comparisons rather than musical ones. A Picador novel or a Radio 4 discussion about pottery or furnishing or films. Aimed squarely at the Indie set. At those who care. The musical reference point seems to be Elvis Costello.. People who read books and watch films...
It's not an album that I.imagine will break loose and make a commercial splash though I'd say that it probably deserves to do so. It deserves Mercury Prizes, Nobel Prizes probably. It's a wonderful listen that concerns itself most immediately with affairs of the heart. The Progress of Love.
It rises and falls. Ebbs and flows. It's rather majestic actually. There are whole lives in every sing. Poetry and heartbreak and back for afternoon tea and cake. Give it a listen. .
I listen to Jefferson Airplane a lot these days. I gave Bathing at Baxters a spin this morning and I'm listening to Crown Of Creation now. They're an enveloping listening experience. I was always attracted by the name and bought a Best of compilation in my teens for the flagship singles and Surrealistic Pillow which is generally considered the studio album to have.
I love them more these days with each listen.. They make questioning the given seem like a good idea and their records aren't such hard work as Grateful Dead or Big Brother & The Holding Company albums
Jefferson Airplane feel very much of their time and place somehow. Conjure visions of college dorms and teenage gatherings. Demos, the shadow if Vietnam, facial hair, desperation to get laid and essay deadlines.The psychedelic experience. I've never been a big drug user but I imagine narcotics in the right company enhances the listening experience. Robert Christgau sniffs at them. Another point in their favour.
Occasionally they date. But then the sound congeals and intrigues again. They're a band that truly inhabits colour. They make me feel like watching The Holdovers again. ...
Enchantment. I like Enchantment. Magic. Spells. Mystery. Music and records which take you out of yourself. Into yourself. That remind you that theworld is a vast and infinite space. Not just yje oe you find yourself bound by.
Lael Neale is someone who loses herself in the rapture . Speaks in tongues. Skips across the meadow. Latest album Altogether Stranger picks up from 2023's spectral Star Eaters and dances cross the heavens like a Woodstock refuge.
Velvet Underground, Mazzt Star and Space Lady came to mind. She's playing on a hill near me on Friday. In Lael's words 'I might be late but I'll be there.'.. See her on the astral plane.
My week is done. My Friday afternoon stretches ahead of me like the African veldt. I've reached for ,y headphones, stretched my legs under the desk and am listening to Public Works & Utilities the latest waxing from Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan.
If you have a good furrow un the field which distinguishes you from the pack then plow it I say. Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan have worked up a headful of Indie steam in recent years churning out very similar works of records of a certain sort. Change is overrated once you've established parameters. .
Modern Industrialised Kraftwerk meets the Manchester conurbation. Dreamscapes. Visions of futurity, austerity and decay. Wallace & Gromit make their way home across sunlit moors for tea and biscuits. . .
David Sylvian has a new album our this year. It's called Vermillion Hours. Did you know that? Have you heard it. Where does it rank in his oeuvre pray . Is it as good as Brilliant Trees.
Oh who gives a crap/ Of course it's great. It's composed of two long tracks and one short one.. I spent a Vermillion Hour with it just this afternoon. He's a man who understands the treasures of the sunset.
A rather strange amalgam of sounds that took me back to the early Seventies emotionally. Helen Reddy meets Kate Bush on the heath in matching leggings.
Plenty of gear and mood changes. The pace picks up and slows down There is lots of fetching scenery. Bracing memory lane.
Life seems incredibly heightened to me right now. I imagine it does to many people. These are extremely dramatic times we are living through. You can't deny it or hide from it it seems . We're forced into perilous tides by extreme times. Unscrupulous greed, populist politics .Strange behaviour from people we work with and for. Extreme emotions. Where does that leave the rest of us who are clinging to or crawling from the wreckage.. Desperate for sight of a deserted shore Harbour. Sanctuary.
I've personally had the most incredible year. Trust me you haven't got time. I've turned 60. I've shaken the hand of perhaps my great musical hero. I've done a road trip and seen some of the most important friends of my lifetime . Gone to Denmark and reunited with three wonderful Danish women, two of whom I hadn't seen for forty years. I've got back in contact with one of the most incredible people I've ever met. in my life. Corresponded with her since on a regular basis. And spent three fantastic days with her in Dublin for her 48th birthday. Talking about our lives. Having an unforgettable time together in a wonderful city.
And all the time I've been doing incredibly motivating and interesting teaching. Minimal paperwork. Maximum teaching. Working for a friend of mine another great person, who I met 25 years ago in Katowice where I met the other woman I've mentioned. When the world still seemed young and innocent. Curiously both ABBA fans.
I'm working with German business people mostly. But also Dutch and Belgians. Caught in historical circumstance in an incredible moment in human history but getting on as best they can with ingenuity with humour and determination. And grammar and vocabulary as required. I never know what will happen in the next lesson. What they'll want to talk about There's a book in it. A blog. A podcast. A long running serial.
But I haven't got time. I've got tests to do. Turning 60 fast tracks you into a test lane which I'm grateful for but I've discovered can be rather scary . On the day after my 60th birthday I was obliged to go for scans and x rays in the RVI .I have mixed feelings about hospitals .There were people being wheeled down corridors on trolleys. Other shuffling unsteadily on crutches in dressing gowns. While I sat in a waiting room there was a woman groaning dreadfully behind a door. Was it a vision of the coming decade I asked myself.
It was all quite unnerving and disturbing frankly. I like to credit myself with a reasonable imagination and I've lost two siblings an uncle and grandfather to cancer so you'll forgive me for having the slight willies as these tests had been triggered by weight loss which put me momentarily on the cancer pathway. I'm not making any jokes about that because frankly it's not funny,
To cut a long story short I didn't lose my mind this morning I got up bathed and started teaching. I had a couple of great lessons. Listened to Rubber Soul andThe Visitors by ABBA. ABBA always make me think of Christmas mornings. Waking up early with my younger sister incredibly excited . About Christmas stockings jammed with tangerines and yo yos. Both of us grinning and giggling together. Desperate to wake up mum and dad and show them our haul.
The Visitors is an album I'm really taken by. It's the band's last record and its shrouded in sadness as well as joy. There are some of their most haunting and evocative moments but you're aware that all is not well within the unit.
Anyway my lessons done I went to my doorstep, picked up a letter from the NHS and ripped open the envelope. I knew I was due to see my GP too this afternoon. As it turned out It was like opening an envelope with a Golden Wonka Factory Token gleaming before your eyes.
The gist. A tiny myelolipoma in the right adrenal and some small polyps/ adherent stones in the gallbladder. Forgive me. Too much information I know. But otherwise normal, Stop the cancer pathway and return to the normal pathway please.. Go see your GP.
Life works strangely on your emotions sometimes. Bloody ABBA on the turntable. I thought about my elderly parents, now 90 in their corner house in an avenue in Canterbury. I also thought of myself. The waterworks gushed suddenly like taps turned on full volume. Then I wiped my eyes and called my mum.
Idler feature Radio Anorak this month. Remember is the debut album from the indie collective, It;s a classoc British Indie Refusenik text. This is what makes us great. Not the pageantry. Not the turgid class deference and kissing bullies arses. But the dissent that rises from below. The cultural pick and mix. .
Radio Anorak are Brighton snots. They don't belong to and don't wish tp They create cut and paste tracts. Thus is distinctly DIY and all the more magical for that. If you want to attach yourself to a Punk Narrative, forget the Skids or Damned tours. Go and see a band like this .The Seventies are a long time ago.
This is only available for purchase on cassette. Radio Anorak.draw on a broad tradition, But snub their noses at the man, Scuffling through the cultural debris. 'The truth is still only known by guttersnipes'.
'Sometimes the world has a load of questions. Seems like the world knows nothing at all....'
I've checked my clocks. Calculated for Central European Time. I have an hour. An hour to listen to Speaking In Tongues and write and post about it here. Then I'm off to Amsterdam as if on a magic carpet but actually just sitting at my desk and having an online lesson. Modern magic with a Dutch Morroccan actuary banker who can get rather anxious .I'm doing what I can folks..
Talking Heads mean a lot to me as they do countless others. I first probably heard Once In A Lifetime coming out of the radio when I was fourteen and hurrying out of the family house, Off to Richmond Station to catch a bus. With lots of other preposterous and awkward secondary school children on our way to Petersham. To rush from class to class. 'Oh what fun we had but at the time it seemed so bad.' Definitely not Talking Heads. Madness of a different kind.
'Take a look at these hands'.; Talking Heads make sense to me in this statistical age. They start making sense. Where we worry about football statistics, whether this is Talking Heads best record . Whether this is their best album or whether Fear If Music is better. Ultimately what does any of this matter?
The record is my older brother's I expect stull plays unerringly on my record player. It feels like heat is rising to the high ceiling of my flat while it plays. As if the band are playing in the room. It doesn't skip a beat. It's arty. Whip smart. But you can bloody well dance to it. And should do.
'He's wearing chemical make up. She's wearing dirt perfume. Let's have a hairsplay party. In the universe room.'
There are worse things to do than spend your early Friday morning, heading towards your half seven than cupping an ear to Universe Room the latest album from Dayton, Ohio legends Guided By Voices. It's an invigorating and reassuring experience,
There's nobody like these guys. Nothing like their doughty resilience and flinty determination. The hours they've spent at the Potter's Wheel and the way they're back every few months with a new album. I'm not even going to bother to check exactly how many records they have under their belt now. hey don't bother to keep count, they keep forging on to the next, s
They do what they do. The Who meet Document era R.E.M. Wire, Mission of Burma and Husker Du. It's long since been a modus vivendi patented and piloted by Robert Pollard and whoever he collects around him as they head off to the studio. Universe Room will more than do. To infinity and beyond. Have a great Friday !
This is frankly a pretty dreadful record. A record for people who thought they were robots when the were 16. There's was no end of this sub Bowie New Romantic electric pap in the early Eighties. The Fixx and their record company did exactly what they needed to do with this. Took it to America where MTV was just setting off , toured relentlessly and sold an awful lot of records.
I meanwhile bought it as a 15 year old and played it quite a bit. I think my main reaction was slight confusion. There were no end of better records I might have bought at the time. I bought this about a year ago for nostalgia's sake. I'd lost the original. I forgive my fifteen year old self. Lost Planes still works for me.. .
A comforting sound. The Telephone Numbers from the Bay area take you back to a bygone age. Latest album Scarecrow II makes you want to see Scarecrow I . Let's Active, R.E.M. The Paisley Underground scene..
Everything jingles then jangles and is slightly winsome and reflective . It's a fine record. Reflective. Winsome. It made me check out Wire Train. A pertinent reference point. I'll return to in a couple if days in my rundown for the year
David Sylvian has a new album our this year. It's called Vermillion Hours. Did you know that? Have you heard it. Where does it rank in his oeuvre pray . Is it as good as Brilliant Trees.
Oh who gives a crap/ Of course it's great. It's composed of two long tracks and one short one.. I spent a Vermillion Hour with it just this afternoon. He's a man who understands the treasures of the sunset.
As the man says:'You must leave now take what you need you think will last..' 'The carpet too us moving under you....'
It's coming to that time of year again. When we need to decide what our favourite record of the year is and if we agree with everybody else's choice . In the year of all years when it seems that we have to submit to the inevitable fact that there is no choice but to submit. To whatever. To Taylor Swift. To Oasis To Liverpool Football Cub. Ultimately to the 1% and their will to become ever richer at our and the planet's expense and seemingly to become ever unhappier and unhappier.and surely destroy the planet we all share.
Meanwhile I've turned 60. It's no big deal. I'm not unaware of my part of the scheme of things. In fact I've become more aware of my insignificance in that scheme and happier as a result of the place which I occupy within it. I'm having a great year.
I've listened to Dylan a lot this year and I've found I've listened to it in new wonder. In a new window Not everything of course. Every mountain range has hills and valleys. Plateaus and plains are rather dull. I'm not going to become a Dylan obsessive or completist. I don't like Just Like a Woman and I don't imagine I ever will.,
But much else astonishes. Stops me in my tracks. Reminds me of Ezekiel. Isiah. William Blake. Arthur Rimbaud, Mary Wollstencraft. Woody Guthrie. He's a difficult one to dismiss
Forty minutes with the new El Michels album 24 hr Sports. Oh I wouldn't say no/. They're one of the best cinematic, widescreen options available to the modern hipster or would be hipster.
So cool your boots. Recline in your hammock. What d'you mean you don't have a hammock? I imagine a sofa would suffice. 24 hr Sports make you feel that your back in that cool hostel hanging with Brazilians, Australians, South Africans, Polish people and Koreans and the world is one endless horizon.
Back in the Seventies my brother had a copy of this on cassette. It's pure American Pop culture, made for happy couples to sway to in Mid West arenas. America seemed an impossibly long way away then The subject matter is gentle satire and all seems rather quaint at this remove.
I put this on my TV as I was preparing for church just now. I'm off to church. Heroes & Villains came on as I put on my second sock. I felt am incredible surge. This is what life is all about.
A comforting sound. The Telephone Numbers from the Bay area take you back to a bygone age. Latest album Scarecrow II makes you want to see Scarecrow I . Let's Active, R.E.M. The Paisley Underground scene..
Everything jingles then jangles and is slightly winsome and reflective . It's a fine record. Reflective. Winsome. It made me check out Wire Train. A pertinent reference point. I'll return to in a couple if days in my rundown for the year
Sure the Gang of Four were Middle Class Marxist students. That's exactly what I was . You want to change the world and you're not naive. You're probably right. This record certainly sounds right. Ut's a mesh. Righteous..
Am album to fall asleep to on the sofa so that is what I'm going to do. The Life You Save by Flock Of Dimes sounds like the kind of music that's playing in the party scene near the beginning of Garden State.. It has a numb blank quality that's oddly comforting in terms of its lack of ambition.
