enchanted sky machines

again, for the sake of accurate record keeping, a list of what i've listened to in the living room over the last several days, in the order of the stack in which i've gradually piled them.

kate bush, the dreaming (1982)
sam prekop, who's your new professor (2005)
the sundays, static and silence (1997)
kate bush, the sensual world (1989)
lamb, fear of fours (1999)
low, secret name (1999)
soundtrack from lost in translation (2004)
sebastien tellier, politics (2004)
surfin' stevens, greetings from michigan (2003)
kate bush, hounds of love (1985)
lamb, between darkness and wonder (2003)
rachel goswell, waves are universal (2004)
josh rouse, 1972 (2003)
laika, wherever i am i am what is missing (2003)
sandy denny, the north star grassman and the ravens (1971)
judee sill, s/t (1971)
steely dan, gaucho (1981)

i am working out if all, or just most of the songs on the judee sill album are about jesus.

i pass the key

sleeping in tends to leave me lethargic and grouchy for hours, not to mention sore in my neck, shoulders, and calf muscles. those could all be symptoms of stress, too, to be honest. i woke up late today, took the dog out, and then had to treat myself to a double espresso and a vietnamese submarine sandwich. it was not until after 2 pm that i felt alright and stable. i credit the espresso and the cilantro, carrot, and ham in the sandwich. i also credit the sense of accomplishment that i got from taking out the week-old rotting garbage that had kept us out of the kitchen for several days. one day we will be rich, and we will eat out every night, and never have rotting garbage at home. for now, we'll simply eat out most nights, leaving the garbage from our occasional meals at home to rot. the easy option would be a compost, but apparently they tried that before, and it lured all the rats up from the grandview cut into the coop. so, until we figure out how to deal with the rat situation, there is no composting at the coop.

i was forced to sleep in because i was up until 3 am last night, listening to kate bush's the sensual world, the dreaming, and hounds of love, all while playing apogee's "word rescue". it's a spelling game for children, the perfect thing to occupy my hands and lower brain functions while listening closely to records. i listened to the dreaming again just now, while doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen. it's easily the most creative and complex album i know.

we rented 12 monkeys yesterday, and i expect we'll watch it tonight.

we're not kidding

two cops are looking suspiciously at the crow bartender, who retorts, "it's a crow bar, there's a murder here every night!". i love this comic. i love the ads around my neighbourhood for CROW MOVING. "cawl me!" and "grab the crow!" are the tag lines. i saved the only magazine from last fall with the article about the crow uprising. two of my favourite bird moments involve crows: one was eating vomit in behind the building, and one, a long time ago, was pecking through a styrofoam container by the AQ pond, which prompted laura dilley to say "you're my hero, crow."

the films stealth and you me and everyone we know are remarkable for having equivalent amounts of hype over the last several weeks in the local press. while the word on stealth is overwhelmingly negative, the reports have been far more intriguing than those on you me and everyone we know, which invariably use the adjectives 'whimsical', 'indie', 'fragile', and 'awkward'. stealth just sounds more worth my while. i'm so curious!

i still like the sundays a lot. anytime that a song from static and silence pops up on my random itunes at work, it makes me happy.

kate bush's the sensual world took a very long time to warm up for me. i've had it for five years now, i think, and i'm still learning about it, figuring it out. some parts i like a lot. in fact, i've liked it more each time i've listened to it. the hounds of love was immediate and obvious. the dreaming is an album like mahogany's dream of a modern day. i rarely listen to it, for fear of disrupting the mystique. it's a bad habit.

the money shot

so, as it happens, the cd store is in the same block as the vietnamese sandwich store. the sandwich was lovely, i ate it while reading this week's terminal city. then i went to the cd store, just to see if there was anything that i could dip into my last bit of money for:
kings of convenience, riot on an empty street
lambchop, aw c'mon/no you c'mon, paired in a nice box!

i did listen to the great destroyer while doing the dishes after all. i listened to juliana hatfield this morning as well.

john ibbitson's column in today's globe makes some of the same points that i've been making for sometime around the growing dichotomy between rural and urban canada. he's smart to not draw a parallel with the united states, but he is not smart enough to not jump to conclusions. in the states, the disparity is, in a large part, political: rural counties went bush, urban counties went kerry. states went bush where the rural votes outnumbered urban votes(ohio, florida, indiana, colorado), and states went kerry where the urban votes outnumbered rural votes(washington, oregon, california, minnesota). that's a simplification, but bear with me. in canada, there is no comparable political dichotomy, but there is an income dichotomy; cities are richer, per capita, across the board. ibbitson recommends that, in order to improve their overall standards of living, relatively impoverished provinces such as saskatchewan and nova scotia should simply embark on massive urbanization programs. i'm happy that this dynamic is getting news, but the flippant solution discounts questions of identity, not to mention urban planning, decay, etc, far too easily to be taken seriously.

my question has been "which west wants in?". in canada, you have an urban west and a rural west, with very different interests. to be precise, you have an urban prarie and a rural prairie; british columbia is more properly termed 'the west beyond the west', as a regional model contiguous from manitoba to british columbia is just lazy. the urban and rural prairies have been rhetorically allied together against the golden horseshoe/the golden triangle/central canada in a core-periphery/heartland-hinterland fight. alberta, though, for example, features the same dynamic, writ small: the calgary-edmonton corridor is heartland to a vast hinterland, with tensions equivalent to the country's. it just so happens that the toronto capitalists are bigger and badder, and everyone loves to root for the hometeam. it's not unlike the waffle: what makes the canadian capitalist automatically more virtuous than the american? nothing! well, then what makes the calgarian capitalist automatically more virtuous than the torontonian?

see, it's not just about records! it is also not just about death; sometimes it is about canada.

one less egg to fry

i've realized that what they're doing to my house is not dissimilar to scoring an orange. the man in the dust mask takes his circular saw to the stucco, cutting vertical 6-foot lines spaced by about a foot or two. over the next week, they'll put small jackhammers into the grooves and demolish the stucco. the dust and noise is quite incredible. soon the building exterior will be nothing but plywood. the window order has been delayed repeatedly, so they've pushed forward the rest of the schedule, bringing fully half of the co-op to the same stage of progress. the idea is to keep work going; if they can't finish the first set of townhouses, they'll start demolishing the apartment block, rather than sit idle. apparently everything will go very quickly once the windows arrive. we KNEW the windows would be a problem.

sorry about the jefferson starbucks link. i'll try and find an active one; it really is worth hearing. most of the discussion of this song has focused on two things: 1)the awfulness of corporate america for thinking that this was a good idea and 2)the awfulness of the original song. i quite enjoy the original song, and i believe that decrying corporate culture is old hat at this point in history; what excites me about we built this starbucks on heart and soul is the wonderful surreality of it all. who did think that this was a good idea? it's incredibly faithful, even replicating the faux-radio announcements.

ok, lunch break is over, and they're back to the stucco scoring. the noise is really terrible; i couldn't imagine how awful it must be to have to do that job. the worst part of the sound is the inconsistency. i can handle a steady, solid drone; however irritating, it is at least monotonous. the circular saw noise is irregular. i find that it makes me very tense and nervous. my back and upper arms get very sore.

i think i'll take my lunch break now, and head out for a vietnamese submarine sandwich. i'll do the dishes later, while listening to the fifth dimension and/or low's the great destroyer.

making coffee right

i've put the new depeche mode single on to all three computers that i have access to now, so i can hear it everywhere i go. the song has little buildup, and the chorus goes nowhere(except for the bass line at the 3.35 mark), but that's fine. i've written elsewhere before about the total sheen of sex that's all over every depeche mode song since 1986 or so. this new song is no different. it's a good confluence of violator and ultra, i think. the guitar comes in at about 2.20 and makes the whole song. i've played the track at least 10 times today, so it's still second to swing out sister's you on my mind, clocking in at 14.

another song that i found through the early bird request line was the guess who's sour suite. i had no idea that it was the guess who until i tracked it down; i'd never heard them do 70's quiet pop, but there you go.

the latest step in my ailing computer's gradual collapse has been the corruption of my itunes music library file. somehow it's erased everything since july 2004, forcing me to rebuild everything. all of the files are still there, but i've had to delete the many, many tracks that i've deleted from the hard drive over the past year, in addition to re-adding everything that i've put on to the computer in the same time frame. it's interesting to see how much flux the library is in; more than half of my library has turned over in the past year. i have no tolerance for bad music, and will delete it. not without fear of losing some gems unwittingly, mind. i'll always be nervous, but noticing, now, that i haven't wanted to hear any of the songs that i've blasted away over the past year makes me feel more secure.

i've also lost the last year's worth of 'most played songs', which is not unlike losing a diary. i admit to having manipulated it, though. i'll feel that i really like a song a lot more than the play list reflects, and i'll play it just to improve its rank. or, conversely, i'll be embarrased at how high a song is ranked, when i didn't think that i liked it that much at all. it's refreshing to not have the statistics at work. when the numbers are avaliable, i'm compelled to look at them, analyze them, master them. if they're not avaliable, though, i'm perfectly alright, and lot more content to just listen to the music.

the immediacy of acquiring new music has, i'm sure, led to a severe reduction in my attention span. laying down $20 for a new album means that i'll put a lot of work into enjoying it, but if i've just plucked something off of soulseek, i've got no impetus to focus on it. john darnielle wrote well about this, and reassured me in my committment to spending so much of my disposable income on albums that i already have copies of.

on lately, and unmentioned:
the left banke
readymade
mojave 3

starship's we built this city on rock and roll has been rerecorded by STARBUCKS as we built this starbucks on heart and soul. it's incredible. here's a link!

early bird request line

three days a week, the alarm goes off at 5.30, waking me up in time to hear the early edition's early bird request line. i rarely hear it, and when i do it is often through a sleep fog. monday's song, however, made my morning. i tried all night to track it down: swing out sister's you on my mind. it's a big 80's pop song, reminiscent of everything but the girl's more produced albums, but more.. propulsive. solid. i love the melody, the double tracked vocals, and the anthemic chorus. it's what i want from so many of my 80's hits but can rarely find. it all builds, and the climax is, for once, appropriate. i think i'll go buy the album soon. i bet i can find it on vinyl for a dollar! 'if we could make it work this time...' i've just listened to it six times in a row.

there's a whole vein of this stuff: mid-period everything but the girl, sade, matt bianco and basia, and apparently swing out sister. i may be signing up soon.

i'm glad that this song turned out for me, that its initial rush wasn't just a sleepy delusion. i'm more aware than i think when half asleep.

see, the day that bombs went off in london i slept in until 7.30, maybe, despite having had the radio come on at 6.30. i dreamt about bombs in london. then i woke up, and all the regular CBC programming had been interrupted. i didn't believe it. i'd DREAMED it! but it was real.

still listening to low. earlier, before the swing out sister-mania, i listened to trust, from 2002. it's a good album, very good, in fact, but not one i ever feel compelled to listen to, unlike the great destroyer.

aha! i made the connection: you on my mind is what the fifth dimension could have recorded in 1989, if they'd still been a going concern and had moved to england.

the emperor's tomb

still waiting for an oportunity to use the phrase " the greatest thing that has ever been organized in the history of the world ever".

don't think anyone got my solipsism crack this morning.

hooverphonic were all set to be my very favourite band until they released the magnificent tree, which is still one of the most atrocious albums i've heard, save the title track, for which i keep the album in my collection. i'm listening to it now. it's as if i still can't get over how awful it is. 'it can't be that bad!' i'll think, but yes, it can be that bad, and, in fact it IS that bad. i should just get rid of it, but the title track steals the guitar bit from the beginning of crosby stills and nash's guinnevere and puts it under luxury-sedan-at-night-in-the-countryside euro-gloss, rather than a relatively trite hippie love song. the rest of the album is forced and really quite awkward though. yuck.

saw bullitt tonight. there is an entire scene near the film's beginning, set during dinner, that exists solely, so far as i can tell, to showcase the flute-rock band at the front of the restaurant.

oh, yes, the wine. tonight i drank a syrah from argentina, i think. still left on the rack are a pinotage from south america and a little penguin shiraz from australia. i've never had the former before, but i know i like the latter. it's spicy! very exciting. i had another shiraz last night that was bad. broad, wide, watery, bland. it fell all over. i wouldn't get it again.

now, low's secret name. still can't pick a favourite low album, but i am leaning between secret name and the great destroyer. the latter is worthy of a lot more study that i've had time to give it. the great destroyer. 'sometimes your voice is not enough'. i think i'll start the day off tomorrow with when i go deaf, because it's an appropriate frame of mind. i'll also keep track of a random 10-song run on my shuffle feature at work. i have nearly 1,000 songs now. now in the booklet for import:

archer prewitt, three (2002)
veda hille, here is a picture (1998)
cowboy junkies, one soul now (2004)
steely dan, coutdown to ecstasy (1973)
mark eitzel, the ugly american (2003)
blue rodeo, palace of gold (2002)
blue rodeo, the days in between (2000)
nick drake, bryter layter (1970)
the sea and cake, oui (2000)
zumpano, look what the rookie did (1995)
kate bush, hounds of love (1985)
morrissey, vauxhall and i (1994)
broadcast, work and non work (1997)
american music club, everclear (1991)
alpha, stargazing (2004)

i'll be taking at least one, in some cases no more, from each of those albums tomorrow. i'll try to do all of my work at school. i don't get paid enough to take my work home, and if i make this job my life, then the terrorists will have won. it comes down to professionalism.

well-meaning teachers

veda hille lost it, or i lost it, but something was lost such that her last three albums don't connect with me at all. i was present for the recording of auditorium, but it lacks the resonance, as expected. it's decent, certainly, but not special enough to listen to, well.. ever. maybe twice, three times. escape songs is worse, in that it is almost purposely difficult to listen to. what songs may be there are diced up into bits and spread about, in between stretches of noise and silence. i'm still at work on return of the kildeer, and it may yet pay dividends, but it strikes me as too much, too scattered, and lacking the definition that makes her best albums so worthwhile.

the two i enjoy the most are here is a picture and field study. the former is written for emily carr, and is drawn in large part from her books and stories. the latter is full of observational lyrics, in the sense that they are often merely the singing of facts. it is constructed in two parts, one of which is, in fact, a field study of the yukon, the other a collection of songs about science and nature. of course there is subtext; the liner notes state, in bold, that really it's all about death. but the lyrics are gorgeously bare. gristle turned to backbone in the very first fish. i came out from surrey to see the first performance of field study at the east van. cultural centre on an absolute whim, which is probably why i hold the album in such esteem today. it never fails to make me very happy, and quite invigorated as well.

i am forcing myself into a habit of keeping four bottles of wine in the house at all times. we have a kitchen cart that has room for four bottles on a pseudo-wine rack, so i'm attempting to keep it full. i dearly hope that this is not a sign of impending alcoholism, but it gives me an incredible sense of security to see that rack full and tidy. i don't always want to drink it, but i like to know that i have access, at a moment's notice, to several different bottles of wine.

i'm not really that cynical an individual; i'm just an old man. i am certainly less cynical now than i was as a teenager, which bodes very well for the rest of my life. i just have a good sense of what makes me happy and conversely, what makes me unhappy, so i take very few risks in that area.

i'm not sure what to do with records that i've listened to a lot in the past, but simply can't tolerate anymore. i've kept the four pixies albums on my shelf, but haven't played any of them in at least a year, maybe two. i hadn't thought about them until someone was playing a pixies' greatest hits! at work, and it drove me crazy. i hated it. it was whiny, annoying, the guitars abrasive, the songs self-conciously 'quirky!', everything about it was intrusive and piercingly irritating. bleah. i got rid of my soul coughing records some time ago, and haven't missed them. i bet i could do the same with the pixies. it's still difficult, though. my dad still has all sorts of horrible records from his youth that he couldn't stand to hear today but has kept for their autobiographical worth. i may not want to hear an album today, but the fact that i once did enjoy it should earn that album a place in my collection. it's space that i'm concerned about, and the ideal of a streamlined collection. the thought that i can put my hand out and touch any of these albums and enjoy it. this is an ongoing dilemma, and not one that i expect to solve soon.

i claim that my writing here is just about records that i listen to, but it's obviously just like field study. really it's all about death.

this is the first entry with a title, because i didn't know how to turn on the 'title' option before today.

when i bought mark eitzel's the ugly american i really did believe that it was out of sheer loyalty, perhaps some curiosity, but definitely very little expectation. as an album, though, it is more consistently listenable than anything else he's released without american music club. the songs are some of his best from over his whole run of albums, and it sounds remarkably unassuming. the invisible man sounds largely desperate and overwrought in comparison.

they've made meat in a vat now. wow. this is the company: new harvest: advancing meat substitutes.

tales from turnpike house hasn't crossed the ocean yet, it seems, so i bought sebastian tellier, politics, and josh rouse, 1972, instead. i'm losing faith in the bruce cockburn reissue schedule. salt, sun, and time, joy will find a way, and night vision are still unavaliable, but fucking big circumstance is out? that's frustrating. i've held back on picking those three albums up for several years now, waiting for the reissues, so that i wouldn't end up with two copies, as i did with humans, dancing in the dragon's jaws, and in the falling dark. i still like that last title a lot. it's a good album.

further adventures of..., the only reissue that i picked up new, was always phrased to me as an interim album, a stopgap between much more notable releases. the pick for compilations has always been the relatively insipid laughter. the album is a precursor, i think, to my very favourite of them all, 1996's the charity of night. the comparison comes first from the similarity of the instrumental pieces, but second from the variety and explorations of the albums. i got to know further adventures... well while staying at the delta hotel downtown through last year, which gave me a lot of time to focus on the albums i had around. also notable from that time is damon and naomi's with ghost and phoenix's alphabetical. that was an odd year. listening to damon and naomi and reading george melnyk at 1 am, 18 stories above downtown. still haven't found a way to recapture that sense.

if i leave this year with one conviction, it may be to stay clear of anyone who openly refers to themself as an artist. i don't want to hate artists. i really don't, i swear, but i think i hate artists.

each night, i listen to my illegitimate copy of saint etienne's tales from turnpike house, a habit that may change once i purchase a legal edition. i'll listen to it in transit, at work, in bits and pieces, here and there. i got to know it in snippet form. there were 60-second samples of each song on the saint etienne central command, which i downloaded before the album proper was leaked. sadly, as much as i love the album, most of the songs don't live up to the promise of those one minute bits. hear the prechorus/chorus rush of a good song, and you can only build the other 3 minutes up to be absolutely incredible. 'oh god, it can only get BETTER!' i think, but of course i'm disappointed. stars above us led me astray, for example; i figured that the pre-chorus line would be the main melody, but it pops up once and then subsides for a relatively unremarkable verse. when i hear a taste, i can build the rest up to be the BEST EVER, but it never will be. i worry about that new goldfrapp album, apparently titled supernature, because i've done the same thing. a series of 45-second snippets have been edited into one 7 minute file. i'm already picking out the references; one checks blue monday, another checks spirit in the sky, i think.

i listen to the two goldfrapp albums less that i'd like to, but i think it's another case of keeping the memory stronger than the actual record. i have to listen to stina nordenstam's the world is saved on a more regular basis, or it will definitely fall into that trap.

the only other complete album i listened to today was the smashing pumpkins, siamese dream. here's a case where i'll pretend there simply isn't any singing, or that what singing i must hear is wordless. billy corgan as liz fraser. i skipped past disarm, because it's simply too much. hummer, though, is worth whatever patience is necessary to get through the duds. mayonnaise, too, and geek u.s.a. it's all in the guitars. so many guitars.

i'm still not over my 1960's sunshine ornate pop infatuation, now in the form of mort garson's big sur, also roger nichols and the small circle of friends. i'll have to make a few cds of this stuff for road trips, where it will be appropriate. i also just realized that i haven't applied the adjective 'uniquely canadian' to a record in a very, very long time, which can only be healthy. just wait for bruce cockburn's early 70s records to be reissued, though.

i fucked up my syntax tonight, which disturbs me more than it probably should. look at that, it's not just about records after all.

over the day, from the start to the end:

morrissey, bona drag (1990), while doing dishes
joni mitchell, for the roses (1972), while reading the globe and mail
mojave 3, out of tune (1998), while reading the globe and mail
mahogany, the dream of a modern day (2001), while reading the globe and mail
saloon, if we meet in the future (2003), while reading dominic lieven's empire
a camp, a camp (2001), while reading dominic lieven's empire
neil halstead, sleeping on roads (2002), while reading dominic lieven's empire
the carpenters, the singles 1969-1973 (1973), while eating dinner

and now, joe jackson's body and soul from 1984, i think. his first 'weird' album, supposedly, and the first one i listened to. definitely among his best. an uncle bought this album for the cover and didn't like it, so he passed it to my dad, who did like it, albeit mostly because of the sound, i believe. it was recorded in a new york theatre, and has the 'feel of the room', or so goes the argument. it is perhaps overdramatic, but one of the last gasps of straight production before joe fell into the 80's trap of way too much treble(see laughter and lust or the atrocious blaze of glory). if pressed, i'd put big world down as my favourite straight album, but this one is very close. tried night and day again last week, but it's still not solid for me.

the morrissey is obviously fantastic. i'll sometimes skip such a little thing... and ...playboys, but just to get to haidresser on fire sooner. hairdresser... is my very favourite morrissey song. i tend to listen to this album very loudly while doing dishes. for the roses is a step towards more consistently sophisticated songwriting after the incredible the last time i saw richard off of blue. more arrangements, too. out of tune is solid, usually unremarkable but really quite accomplished... just quiet and unassuming.

the dream of a modern day is due a fuller treatment than i have the energy for tonight. there are those albums that simply can't go on very often, for fear of diminishment. the saloon is solid, decent, and an album i should spend more time with. a camp is another album that i once feared diminishing, but i think it can enter regular rotation. it's not *that* good, but it is very good indeed. better than any complete cardigans album, definitely. for sleeping on roads i have to pick my songs. it's a flawed album, but driving with bert is among halstead's very best songs. i blame the trumpet... who knew it was all about the trumpet for me. the carpenters were by request for something happy during dinner... 'they're not happy!', i said, 'they're very sad!' oh well.

i will get paid tomorrow, and i've already planned to head downtown tuesday afternoon to find the new saint etienne, tales from turnpike house. i've been listening to an interweb copy, and it's up to expectations. i'll look for josh rouse's nashville as well, but that's about all i can spend. oh, i'll also look for sebastian tellier's politics, which is so fun(zombi! wonderafrica!) and wonderful(la ritournelle! mauer! broadway!) that i simply must have a copy to wear out.

'cause there's places that i've never been to
sunsets to be ridden into
not a lot i can do but give into the drifter
there's a drifter in me.

that's my new favourite chorus, from my new soft-pop fascination. the sandpipers... who knew?

it was largely the fith dimension that soundtracked our last camping trip to maple ridge. that and the second disc of saint etienne's the trip compilation. maybe i'll just list off the songs that i find affecting. or mention that i listened to the fifth dimension this morning on the skytrain and bus up to work, loudly, just to, well.. calm down. i'm still working on whether save the country is earnest in its love for jesus or whether jesus and the devil are simply allegory for the actual state of the nation. time and love is about jesus too, though. i wonder about laura nyro. apparently, their dramatic rendition of the declaration of independence was considered 'seditious'. as a seditious element myself, apparently, i find this fascinating. the marilyn mccoo songs are my favourite, esp. love's lines, angles, and rhymes, which is a love song about geometry. i also enjoy the girl's song, carpet man, light sings, and one less bell to answer.

the most important pairing of songs on saint etienne's the trip is marsha malamet's i don't dare with dusty springfield's i start counting. we listened to that on the way to tofino in the spring. i spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about those two songs. i'd listen to more dusty springfield but so much of it is so damn cheesy. worse than the fifth dimension, though? probably not...

a new goldfrapp album is out this fall, along with, apparently, albums from mahogany, mojave 3, depeche mode and broadcast. there's also a new kate bush album listed.

speaking of which, i've still yet to hear kate bush's the red shoes. i own everything else, along with a few 12" singles, but i've always passed on the red shoes. goodness knows that there are enough used copies floating around.

and i'll mention stina nordenstam too, before trying, once again, to sleep. even thinking about from cayman islands with love gives me chills. oh man, there's a trumpet on that one too. not at a climax, though, just as flourish. i'll listen to her first album too, as glossy as it is, for the sad sad christmas song, which ranks with lisa germano's messages from sophia for total pathos. maybe and she closed her eyes is still the best album... i would have said dynamite at one point, but i've lost my taste for it somewhat. i'm still at work on the world is saved, but i do love the title. the world is saved.

the world is saved. i think writing this would be better for my general health if i could only work on it before 1 am. the world is saved. if only.

oddly, it's easier to talk about listening to the carpenters than it is to talk about listening to the tragically hip. the album music@work is one of my favourites. it's very dense and and threatening, like stormclouds. that the album pushes right into the absolutely paranoid and evil tiger the lion makes me very happy. i like the phrasing a lot, both musically and lyrically. 'danger in the language': i like that. like don delillo in 'the names'. i found in the fall of 2002, i believe it was, that i could listen to the whole album on the bus between SFU and downtown with some judicious track skipping. again, the weather was often bad, and i would be tired and zoning out, so i associate the album with stormclouds. the last 6 tracks are the strongest run. the bastard, too. i love hearing the word 'algonquin' in song. i like the album's density. it's thick, formidable, almost overbearing. i like that.

no other tragically hip album is this effective for me. phantom power comes very close, but it's a pop album, more listenable but less meaty, more for doing dishes than for zoning out on the bus. i like half of trouble at the henhouse, but don't listen to it often, for the 2-3 songs that i can't abide. i have the one after music@work, but i never listen to it anymore.

so, it is easier to publically enjoy the carpenters, i think, but probably for the wrong reasons... if i'm listening to the carpenters at work, it's assumed to be ironic. people try to catch me winking. it's like a fucking knight rider t-shirt. i got asked recently, quite honestly, "the carpenters? that's, um... ironic... isn't it?" no, i said, no... it isn't. can't you HEAR? don't you SEE? i have a lot of respect for the person who asked, though, so i went on with my earnest treatise on how much SORROW and TRAGEDY there is in the whole carpenters mythology. goodbye to love, ticket to ride, even top of the world are tragic songs. with the tragically hip, those explanations aren't necessary, because hipsters don't listen to the tragically hip.

i imagine it would be just as difficult to talk about josh rouse. he's so.. smooth. mellow. gorgeous tight songs, though, in a very comfortable 70s fashion. i downloaded the new nashville album and it's perfect. too perfect, maybe; i don't know how i'll like it after listening to it constantly for the next month. that said, i still quite enjoy 1972, esp. the last song, rise. right now the standouts are winter in the hamptons and my love has gone. i'll buy a proper copy when i have some money. i finally have a job, but still can't afford to buy records. it hurts me.

i've been stocking my computer at work full of albums that i might want to hear there. there's not enough room for my whole collection, obviously, so i may be rotating... deleting a lot of songs to get the top 700 songs from all my 700 CDs collected on one crappy imac hard drive. it's an old itunes, so it doesn't count the number of times i've played a track, which is actually one of my favourite features. i realized how much i liked steely dan's pixeleen and the supremes' can't hurry love when i found them at the top of my chart. it's my own personal autobiography.

i think the song at the top at work, if i had a counter, would be saint etienne's side streets. 'the neighbourhood that i live in...'. i was signing it on the way to the liquor store for wine the other night. 'i walk the side streets home, even when i'm on my own, if i let myself believe all the bad press and all the stories, i'd never set a foot outside'. it's true, i do walk the side streets home, etc., but it's easy for me.

i'm still not over sandy denny's the north star grassman and the ravens. it's an incredible album, once the lame rockabilly is sifted out. i wish the lyrics had been included in the reissue package.

also, today i rediscovered the a camp album through the b-side train of salvation. this was my bestest ever album of.. 2002? maybe 2001?

a list, for the sake of accurate record-keeping, of the cds currently in the living room(as opposed to the den, where the shelves are):

low, the great destroyer (2005), on now, and earlier while doing dishes
archer prewitt, wilderness (2005), earlier this afternoon
sandy denny, the north star grassman and the ravens (1971), this morning during breakfast
low, things we lost in the fire (2001), unplayed
fairport convention, unhalfbricking (1969), this morning during breakfast
fancey, fancey (2004), yesterday during dinner
saint etienne, good humor (1998), unplayed
saint etienne, sound of water (2000), unplayed
low, secret name (1999), unplayed
joni mitchell, court and spark (1974), unplayed
the flaming lips, the soft bulletin (1999), yesterday during dinner
the mountain goats, tallahassee (2002), unplayed
throwing muses, limbo, (1996), yesterday while doing dishes
sleater-kinney, the woods (2005), unplayed
ted leo and the pharmacists, shake the sheets (2004), yesterday while doing dishes
traffic, the low spark of high heeled boys (1971), yesterday during breakfast
cocteau twins, four-calendar cafe (1993), yesterday during breakfast
broadcast, haha sound (2003), yesterday during breakfast
stereolab, cobra and phases group... (1999), unplayed
the mountain goats, the sunset tree (2005), yesterday before breakfast

it's about three and 1/2 minutes into archer prewitt's cheap rhyme, off of the absolutely wonderful wilderness album that we have a similar moment to the lambchop bassline pointed out in the last post. again, the song resolves itself into a trumpet climax; i must admit to a weakness for trumpet climaxes.

i also noticed that despite the amount of attention i pay to archer prewitt's albums, esp. the last two(wilderness and three), i've never focused on the lyrics. i spend time on the arrangements, which are resolutely precise and wonderful. so much mellotron. i'm a little worried to spend time with the lyrics, because i'm sure they're obtuse and tossed off. it helps that he doesn't enunciate very well.

wilderness is one of the albums that i've anticipated so much that i took it off of the interweb, along with low's the great destroyer and saint etienne's tales from turnpike house. i left the mountain goats' the sunset tree alone, waiting to pick up a legit. copy before hearing it.

the sunset tree is an interesting case. it took, oh, three tries before i was feeling it and enjoying it. at first i though he'd lost it. then i thought it was worthwhile, but too pat, to easy, and not half as full of urgency and pacing as we shall all be healed. then i acknowledged that nothing will ever match up to how i felt initially upon getting we shall all be healed, and that i should try to find what i can in the sunset tree. and, naturaly, then i got it. there are still parts that i don't completely get(lion's teeth, for one, and some lines in you and your memory), but others are so completely incredible. dinu lipatti's bones and pale green things hit for me, and the rest of the album followed. it's still a work in progress, mind.

i picked up the reissue of sandy denny's the north star grassmen and the ravens along with the sunset tree. it's already soundtracked to a day we spent in chilliwack recently. once i learned t0 skip the stilted awful rockabilly numbers, the album made sense. next time around, especially, is instantly familliar. i've been trying to remember where the piano line has been reused, and i'm sure it has, but i just can't find it.

i've written online before, for almost three years, but have taken a two year break since closing that site up. i've found that all i miss is writing about records that i listen to, and music that i happen to hear through the day. i obsess about documenting it for myself, and have lately been feeling the need to document it outside my head. these are the records i listen to, preserved for posterity.

tonight i listened to curve's doppelganger, an album often derided for sounding like the same song on repeat for 40 minutes. of course, the autoresponse is that if that song is half-decent, who's to complain at its repetition. who indeed! i'll think that when i reach for doppelganger, though. 'why put that on; it all sounds the same!'. i'll put it back. tonight i put it on, and it does all sound the same, but that's fine. it's a solid sound, thick and midrange. it sounds as if the guitars(all 20 tracks of them) are consistently behind the beat, making for a woozy fluid counterpart for the always-on-target drum tracks.

this evening, at dinner, i heard both saint etienne's only love can break your heart and an odd remix of lambchop's up with people. perhaps being able to document these notes here will save my friends and co-workers from my verbal commentary, which i don't doubt is unwelcome. i've tried very hard to like lambchop, and while i do love the nixon album, the rest of what i've heard has kept me at a distance. there's invariably a song that sounds gimmicky, tacky, or corny. oddly, i still don't have a legitimate copy of nixon, but hearing the mangled up with people tonight reminded me of what a lovely song it is, and i expect that i'll try once again to love lambchop. listening to the original version of that song again now, i can pick out a moment when it all comes together. it's about 2:30 into the song, when the bassline finally changes, breaking the ice, leading to a bit of gorgeous noise and the careful, tentative gospel. it's almost eerie, for which i blame the the underlying radio feedback and guitar vibrations. the trumpets hit just after 4 minutes, but the song never climaxes, gliding out on warm but very mannered optimism.