Are You Are Missing Winn-ah?

I had occasion recently to listen to what purports to be the imminent new album by The Fall, "Our Future Your Clutter". (Although, as Winnie-the-Pooh once said, You never can tell with Fall albums.)

Scratch a few Fall fans, or at least journalists/bloggers, and you are sure to find somebody who is prepared to fight to the death to defend at least one of the many albums they have released since the Glory Days of Yore. There are few that haven't been championed somewhere as "return to form", or "the best Fall album since [insert pre-'90s album of choice here]". Heck, somebody at The Quietus the other day was boosting up "The Light User Syndrome".

For a long time there were few bigger Fall fanatics than myself. And yet I have struggled to get excited by anything other than the occasional stray album track since "Bend Sinister". And yet there has always just been enough on display to indicate that the pilot light in Mark E Smith's brain has continued to burn. Recently it has seemed to be sparking into actual flame: the Von Sudenfed album; a couple of key tracks on "Fall Heads Roll"; and I ask you, how fucking mighty is "Fifty Year Old Man"? (I plan to make it my anthem in 2014.)

And here comes "Our Future Your Clutter". (That title is probably not a little nod to Nick Cave, but you never know.) Those who threw superlatives at any of the band's last, let's say, fifteen (a wild guess; I lost count years ago) studio albums might be struggling to find the words for this one. This is not a review, just a heads up: the rhythm section hits so hard you will be stunned; the guitars are as good as any Fall guitars ever (whoops, looks like I've succumbed to the hyperbole bug); and at least three of the songs are the kind of adrenaline rushes that will have you flailing your arms as you bounce around the living room. (Kids -- or, more to the point, middle-aged parents -- don't try this at home.)

On the strength of this, it must be about time that Smith once more sacked the band and started from scratch again.

Take Care

Oh, by the way, RIP Alex Chilton, described rather well by Aquarium Drunkard as "the indelible link between the world of the Beatles and of R.E.M." The broad range of Chilton's activities is such that almost everybody will have a different story of how they were first exposed to him. For some, it would be the chart success of The Box Tops. For others, it would be, obviously, Big Star, either at the time or, more likely, during their long period of critical reappraisal. For myself, it was at something of a tangent, via his involvement with "Behind The Magnolia Curtain" by southern psychobilly freakos Tav Falco's Panther Burns. (Why does nobody ever mention them these days?) Man, that's a record to melt even the sturdiest of turntables. I once saw them live @ The Old Greek Theatre in Richmond, and they put on a fantastic live show, too (I assume that Chilton was off their boat by then, but my memory isn't so good these days; my hair is greyer, too, and I sometimes forget what the hell it is that I'm supposed to be doing -- that's right, getting ready for work; oops).

This Goes With This

Sometimes the computer knows more than we do. This morning it offered up "Yellow Moon", by the Neville Brothers, a track that I have long been quite fond of (the rest of its parent album I can mostly take or leave), immediately followed by the Prins Thomas remix of "The Long Way Home", by Lindstrøm. At some point I realised that I was humming the former while listening to the latter. They fit together remarkably well. Mash-up artists: don't thank me. Take this suggestion and run with it. It's yours.

NSFW

The acronym "NSFW" is an Internet shortening of the expression "New South F#%$&# Wales". As in, "If you want to play cricket for Australia you had better move to NSFW". It is frequently used to warn people not to watch certain videos at their place of employment. This is because many of those videos are made in New South F#%$*&% Wales and therefore are likely to corrupt the morals of our youth. (Unlike those good, wholesome, morally rigid Victorian videos.)

Next week: "BFF".

Fart joke of the week

Seen on "The Daily Show" one night last week: Joe Biden, at a ceremony in Israel, with flames appearing somewhere behind him, leans forward, at the same time that the flames increase in height. All it took was one well-placed sound effect. You can take in as much clever, intelligent political satire as you like, but really there's no humour like bum humour.

(And it's a surprise and a privilege to have Jon Stewart on our screens less than 24 hours after he airs in America - and with no ads! - on Your ABC. They used to say that the ABC costs us five cents a day. Allowing for inflation that's probably up to twenty or so today, but nevertheless it's money well spent when they give you this level of service.)

Song of the day

"Love Cry", by Four Tet. In which Mr Hebden takes a bunch of old records, and by a process of chopping, splicing, looping, flipping, whatevering, manages to create ... a Kruder and Dorfmeister track?

Don't get me wrong; I love me a bit of the old K&D. But in 2010? On the one hand, why would you bother? And yet, on the other, preferred, hand, when the results are this striking, why the hell not?

And be sure to stay for the gorgeous thirty-second coda, where the percussion drops away entirely, leaving just a shimmer of guitar fragments and assorted bleeps.

Song of the day

"Woman Of The Ghetto", by Marlena Shaw. Such power. Such grace. Such the deep, rolling funk groove. When I listen to this song I am conscious of the fact that this is not "my" music (but then The Clash was not "my" music either) and that there are elements of it that I am not equipped to understand. But mostly when I listen to it I know instinctively that I Am Not Worthy.

Song of the day

"The All At Once Club", by Belbury Poly. Imagine if Krafwerk, around the time of "Computer World", recorded a cover of The Beatles' "Get Back", using only the equipment with which they made "Autobahn" some years earlier, and inviting Jean-Jacques Perrey in to help them. Then listen to this song.

YouTube of the day

Here.

Trust me. You won't regret it.

(via Aquarium Drunkard)

Cows

[Note: This piece should have been a fantasia of whimsical observations, poetic imagery and the like. But, you know, once a farmer, always a farmer. "A pint of plain is your only man": Flann O'Brien. (Mind you, it does get a bit "Great Gatsby" towards the end ...)]


As I have said, I grew up on a working dairy farm. It was home for the first seventeen years of my life, and intermittently thereafter for the next eight years, and when it wasn't home it was a frequent respite from the tumultuous life of a university student and, when those halcyon days ended, the slightly less turbulent but somewhat more affordable life of a young "professional".

When I wasn't spending my time hanging around the house, playing with Lego or, later, listening to records and reading music magazines that were fresh off the boat from England and "only" three months old (tell that to the young people of today and they won't believe you), I was more likely than not getting involved in one way or another with the focal point of the farm, which was the cow shed.

The cow shed was (I use the past tense because I have it on good authority that it is no longer there) a long, corrugated-iron structure, with two elevated concrete platforms separated by a walkway at ground level. The platforms were where the cows stood while they were being milked. The elevation of them was such that a person standing down in the walkway was about eye level with the cows' udders. There were two other rooms, one containing the engine that drove the milking machines and the other containing the milk vat and a big trough for washing up. These rooms were separated from the milking area by a breezeway. Attached to the shed was a somewhat elaborate series of yards and gateways, enabling cows to be brought in from one part of the farm, milked, and then sent out to a new paddock, where the grass had not been chewed for a few days. The shed sat on a flat area halfway down a hill. You got from the house to the cow shed by way of a gravel road which ran down from the top of the hill, where the house sat, past the old pigsty (on your right), which in my time was used for housing the young calves when they were first removed from their mothers (yes, farming is a cruel business), and also for storage of junk, such as old bicycles, prams, and other things that had outlived their usefulness but that couldn't quite be gotten rid of. The road then turned to the left and ran past some very tall and old cypress trees until it reached the shed, where it widened to allow a milk tanker to turn around.

The cows were milked twice a day. I liked being involved. This is something that made no sense to me then and it makes no sense to me now, given that I am inherently lazy and introspective. I think I liked the routine, and the feeling it gave me of being a part of the farm, along with a sense of achievement, of having contributed in a real way to what my father did with his life.

For most of my childhood we had sharefarmers, who did the milking for us, but at various times, and sometimes for extended stretches, it was mum, dad and me, or dad, Uncle Charlie and me. I also sometimes helped out when a sharefarmer was on his own (see "Dennis, Part 1" and "Dennis, Part 2" passim). In fact, one of the times dad and I did the milking was during the first part of my HCS year, and so I somehow had to fit school and homework in with farm work. (That seemed to turn out okay, somehow. On school days mum would come down to the shed and take over from me so that I could have breakfast and get ready for school. I owe a debt of gratitude to Helen Thomas, breakfast presenter at the time on 3RRR, whom I credit in large part for getting me through that busy time, and really for getting me through HSC, and whose brother Greg, curiously, I would get to know the following year when I moved to Melbourne University.)

The morning milking involved getting up very early, while it was still dark. I would take my dog, Woof, for a long walk, sometimes to the further reaches of the farm, to bring the cows up to the yard. Depending on the time of year, the cows would either be waiting keenly at the gate to be let through, or they would be hanging back at the furthest corner, trying as hard to hide from us as their tiny brains would allow them to. Woof had no training, and she turned into a raving lunatic whenever there was a tractor around, but when it was just the two of us, on foot (or paws in her case), she demonstrated a good instinct for knowing where to go and how to get the cows moving. (She had no sense of how to get them moving in the right direction, but the cows knew where they were supposed to go and all Woof needed to do was get them up and about, which she did by running up to them and barking a lot.) My role was to encourage the dog in her endeavours, and to do a rudimentary head count of the cows as they left the paddock and headed along the track towards the shed. Then it was just a matter of pushing them up into the yard and closing the gate behind them. By the time I had brought the cows into the yard dad would have arrived at the shed with a cup of tea for me. (And, to borrow a line from Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are", it was still hot.) He would also have set up all the hoses, turned the hot water on and started the motor. After that, the milking process was fast and incessant.

In case you're interested, this is how it worked.

The first row of nine cows would be herded up the steps and onto one of the platforms. There they would be washed, and the milking machines put on them. Milk was pulled out of the cows by a pulsating suction operation, kind of like a vacuum cleaner with the hiccups, and sent along a stainless steel pipe into the stainless steel milk vat, which was refrigerated to a temperature of four degrees Celsius to keep the milk in pristine condition until the milk tanker arrived, later that day, to collect the milk and take it to the Murray Goulburn factory.

The farmer, whose head, as I said, was more or less at the height of the cows' udders, was vulnerable on two fronts. For a start, the cows, and especially the younger ones, didn't always particularly enjoy the intimate human contact they were being subjected to, and could be inclined to lash out with their back legs. Cows, being much stronger than people, have been known to break bones, but they were facing away from you, and cows kick out to the side rather than straight back, so a person who was concentrating and exercising caution should have been able to keep himself safe. For particularly ornery critters, a kick clamp was applied to prevent their legs from lashing out too far. (The kick clamp restrained the cow but didn't appear to cause it any pain or discomfort. It never seemed to me to be at all cruel, and I tend to be sensitive about that sort of thing.)

The second area of vulnerability arose out of the fact that the cows, while they were in the shed, were a little bit on edge and therefore prone to outpourings of one type or another from their rear ends, which outpourings, remembering again that the farmer was at eye level with the cows' udders, could land upon the head of the unsuspecting and/or unprepared. From personal experience, this didn't happen anywhere near as often as you might have expected it to; I think after a while some kind of sixth sense kicked in that would let you know when there were rumblings afoot. (One or two of my university friends, not being as skilled in the ways of cows as us natives, were not so lucky.)

Once that first row was quietly milking away, the next bunch of nine cows would be run up the steps and onto the other platform. They would have the mud washed from the area concerned, and the machines would then be taken off the first row of cows, swung across towards the other platform and placed on the newcomers. The first row would then get a bit of a rinse, in the interests of personal hygiene, and be sent on their way, out through the "exit" doors and off to whatever paddock the gates had been set up to send them to. They usually headed off without any need for encouragement, because after each milking they went into a new paddock, which meant fresh grass for them.

One thing that soon became clear, if you were a student of cow psychology, was that there was a clear pecking order amongst the cows in the yard. Certain cows would insist on standing in the same place each milking, waiting for their turn to be brought into the shed. Some cows would insist on being first in. Others would want to be anywhere but first. Still others would hang right back, like reluctant schoolboys, until they had no choice but to be next into the shed. A feeble but effective electric fence pushed the cows up the yard as their numbers decreased, just to make it easier to chase the laggards into the shed. (A two-foot long lump of polythene pipe applied to the rump of a cow also came in handy, but shhh, don't tell anybody. (And anyway they didn't need to be whacked very hard to get them moving; it was more of a friendly reminder.))

And so it continued, row after row and cow after cow, until before you knew it the only thing left in the yard was a patchwork quilt of cowpats. Dad then washed and sterilised all of the milking equipment and I got to do my other favourite job, which was cranking up a high-pressure hose and washing all of the manure out of the shed and the yard, from where it cascaded down into a pit a short distance downhill from the shed, and thence via a very long hose out into the paddocks nearby. (Occasionally we would let it bake in the sun for a little while, shovel it onto a trailer and take it home, where it was added to the compost heap for eventual use in mum's veggie garden.)

Once all of that was done, one of us would go into the engine room and flick the master switch to "off". The engine would slowly wind down until the cow shed was shrouded in a peculiarly enveloping silence. The noise of the milking machines, when they were running, was everywhere, making it difficult to have a conversation (which you didn't have time to do anyway), but after the first few minutes you didn't even notice it, which made the silence when they were turned off even more striking.

One of us would then wander down to where the cows were supposed to have gone, chasing any stragglers along in front of us, and lock them all in their allotted paddock, where they would stay until next milking.

As you all know, cows need to be milked twice a day, and so off we would go, again, after our four o'clock cup of tea, following the same routine. There was something special, though, about evening milkings. In winter we didn't finish until well after dark. There is nothing quite like the feeling you got walking homewards with your father, the only sound that of the gravel road crunching underfoot, with nothing but the stars and perhaps a bit of moonlight to guide you, the lights of the dairy having been extinguished, the lights of home not yet visible, with the ghostly presence of the cypress trees beside you, and yet feeling perfectly safe and knowing exactly where you were going. Perhaps you walked in silence, or perhaps you were talking about whatever it is you talk about when it is just you and your father, and you are at the end of another long day. And then you round the bend in the road and start to walk uphill, the lights of home appearing out of the darkness, and you know there will be a hot shower and a home-cooked meal waiting for you, a meal put together, with love and home-grown ingredients, by your mother, the largely unseen and unsung hero of the piece, the person who kept the home front ticking over with such efficiency and independence that it was easy to take her for granted (which, of course, you did) even though, should you have chosen to think about it (which, of course, you didn't), you would have known damn well that you couldn't have managed without her.

Song of the day

"Dandelion", by Charlotte Gainsbourg. Let's face it, there is a small part of every last one of us that wants to be Marc Bolan. Beck is not an exception. On this song he takes the loping gait of the title track of his last album, "Modern Guilt", and ramps it up by way of some very T Rexian rhythm guitar, as a cushion atop which Charlotte Gainsbourg quietly lays down her very, very English singing voice. Mournful, but beautifully captured, string and horn sections stop things from getting too glam.

Song of the day

"I'm A Man", by 101 Strings.

Insane. Completely insane.

Song of the day

"Who Makes Your Money", by Spoon. I would trade anything -- either or both children, eye teeth, kidneys or other vital organs, memories of growing up on the farm (no, not those) -- for the part of this "song" (a word which, when it comes to Spoon, is used loosely) from 1:40 to two minutes, where they break everything down and then build it all up again to the point where it rejoins the song itself. It may not be quite as stunning as the moment in "I Feel Love" where that song takes off into the stratosphere, but it's pretty impressive. Man, Spoon are a quality unit.

Song of the day

"Snow Days", by Real Estate. To my ears, which may not be entirely honest or faithful, this song represents a kind of unexpected mid-point between David Kilgour and Fleet Foxes. The guitar has the same kind of crispness that you (or, at least, I) get when listening to Kilgour (think "BBC World") while the harmonies, while not being as exhilarating as those conjured by Fleet Foxes, are at the very least growing from the same root. The fact that the drums have been recorded from two rooms away using the crappiest microphones known to man, well, we remain to be convinced that this is due to financial necessity as opposed to affectation, but it doesn't in any way detract from the song.

Song of the day

"Keeper of the Flame", by Nina Simone. Did somebody say "Antony"? I always favoured the Bryan Ferry comparisons, myself, but this song is clearly, and indisputably, where the Antony-does-Nina story derives from. I'm not convinced anybody could tell the difference on a blind test. Having said that, this song is so emotionally raw that it almost hurts to listen; the instinct is to turn away, which is also something I get when listening to Antony's solo work (guilty secret: my favourite Antony is Disco Diva Antony, see for example "Blind", by Hercules & Love Affair). But how did he get in here, anyway? This is Nina Simone's song ...

Song of the day

"David Watts", by The Kinks. I am sorry to say that I have come rather late to the Kinks' late-sixties albums. And yet it seems like they have always been with me. Let me count the ways. "Days", by Elvis Costello. "Victoria", by The Fall. Ed Kuepper's take on "Last of the Steam Powered Trains". (Sorry about this one) "You Really Got Me", by Van Halen. And, it transpires, "David Watts", by The Jam. There was nothing about this song, as I have known and loved it for thirty years, that gave any indication it was anything other than a Paul Weller original. In its lyrics' theme and tone, and musically, it blended perfectly with what The Jam were all about. (Which, in many ways, was also what Ray Davies had been about -- a certain type of Englishness, which, being Australian, I am not qualified to dig into any more deeply.) The Jam were never really "punk" as much as they were, what, "British Invasion?", ten or a dozen years after the fact.

Hearing the originals of all of these songs after (in some cases long after) becoming attached to the versions listed above requires a bit of reverse engineering. But it is surely a testament to the quality of Ray Davies as a songwriter that each of them, with very little tweaking or manipulation, sounds just as comfortable in their old skins as in their new I'll shut up now ok thx bye.

Song of the day

"For Ex-Lovers Only", by Black Tambourine. Sure, in 2010 this sounds like it has been cut from a template. But didn't Black Tambourine invent the template? Oh, and since when can the word "twee" have anything to do with a sonic onslaught such as this?

(Watch it here.)

We Were Wrong (a continuing series)

Nine years later, I have no recollection of what it was about The Strokes that rubbed me up the wrong way [not intended to be a reference to the front cover of "Is This It" - ed]. But rub they did. Perhaps it was something along the lines of what seems to piss countless people off about Vampire Weekend: a sense of calculated, studied "cool", of advantage being, well, taken advantage of. What they did was, they made it all look too damn easy.

I now turn slowly towards the camera, cap in hand, and announce that "Is This It" is, and always was, a remarkably tight little nugget of a rock album: concise, full of impeccable tunage, everything (another line I have used before) in its right place. Each song produces, even in the most jaded listener, a little adrenaline rush. Nobody should be entitled to ask for more than that.

What is hard to own up to is that the criticisms I aimed at "Is This It" all those years ago, particularly the line (which I also, and I am now seeing the error of my ways there too, used in relation to The xx's "xx") about if I wanted to listen to The Ramones / Television / sundry other rock bands from the golden age of downtown NYC I would listen to the originals rather than these young upstarts, well, those very criticisms were thrown back at me, if I cared to recognise and/or admit it, by my falling head over heels, barely two years later, for LCD Soundsystem, a band that, lets face it, were for the first part of their existence nothing more than the sum of James Murphy's record collection. It's not as if The Strokes' tastes were any worse, from my perspective, than Murphy's. It's not even as if Murphy's songs were particularly better (although a couple of the early 12s would wipe the pants off anything, anywhere, anytime).

The really funny thing, though, is that at least two of the songs on "Is This It" now reveal themselves as being templates for, or predictors of, or precursors to, LCD Soundsystem's song for the ages, "All My Friends" (something I probably wouldn't have noticed if not for my peremptory dismissal of The Strokes, which at least has allowed me to listen to "Is This It" with a fresh pair of (cloth) ears). And so we see, as we so often do, a wheel turning full circle, and proceeding to run over a blogger whose opinions, like those on The Daily Show, are "not fully thought through".

Earworm of the day

"A Little Bit More", by Jamie Lidell. Honestly, listen to this three times in a row and I challenge you to chase the little bugger out of your head. You won't be able to. It's just like that tiny creature in "Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn".

How can you extract so much melody from just drums (probably electronic) and the human voice?

Will there be a silver lining?

And if there is, will it really be silver?

A lot of questions present themselves. The most obvious one, and the one that largely determines the answers to all others, or at least the direction the answers will take, is: what exactly had J D Salinger been doing since he turned his back on the world in the 1950s, and in particular since the publication in the New Yorker, in 1965, of his last known story?

Rumours have been circulating, of every possible stripe, and mostly contradictory, for a long, long time. (Drinking his own urine? I don't think so. Although Brian Eno writes, in "A Year With Swollen Appendices", of doing just that: what is it with these creative types?) He seems to have confirmed at one point that he had indeed been "writing". The fact that he struggled to describe exactly what it was that he was writing is, of course, entirely consistent with him having done what we all (don't we?) hope that he has been doing: working on the continuing adventures of the Glass family. Of course, it is also entirely consistent with whatever might turn out to have been the case: even if it is that he hadn't been writing anything at all.

And if he had been writing: what are his instructions to his executors? Is it all to be destroyed? And, if so, will they honour that? Should they? Now, there's a good one, isn't it? If he had been writing away, year after year, for much of the last 40 years, say, that amounts to a volume of work. It could, of course, be the ravings of a madman. (And who would decide that?) And if it isn't the ravings of a madman, what right would the executors have to follow Salinger's wishes (to destroy it) in the face, or more particularly to the detriment, of, let's call it, the broader heritage of American letters?

I think I wouldn't want to be in their shoes.

(Here is an interesting tangential question: how do, or should, the wishes of the public intersect with a person's last will and testament? Imagine if Frank Lloyd Wright had owned Fallingwater, and that he had stated that on his death it was to be destroyed? Would that be okay? Imagine if only one person in the whole world knew the secret formula for making Coca Cola, and he stated that on his death the secret formula was to be destroyed? Imagine if a famous but reclusive scientist had developed a cure for an incurable disease, and stated that on his death the secret formula was to be destroyed? Would that be okay? I'm not saying yes. I'm not saying no. I'm just puttin' it out there. (Isn't this fun?))

The fact that Salinger's literary representative, agent, spokesperson or whatever has apparently declined to comment about future publications suggests, well, what does it suggest? That there aren't any? That there are? That nobody knows? Oh, this is so exciting.

Another question. The recent Raymond Carver brouhaha has brought into sharp focus the relationship between writer and editor. Assuming there are stories. Assuming Salinger has kept them entirely to himself, and under lock and key, unread by any living soul. Are they to be published (if at all) verbatim, as it were? I would suggest (and here I put on my editor's hat) that that would not necessarily be a good thing. I am not aware of the level of editing that his Glass stories underwent before publishing in the New Yorker. Assuming (as is almost certainly the case) that it was considerably less than Carver's stories seem to have been subjected to, they are nevertheless highly unlikely to have gotten through unscathed. Nothing ever does, not really. (Which is why blogging and talk radio are such problematic media.) So some lucky person may well be given the job of taking the Red Pen of Death to unpublished J D Salinger stories, without the vital luxury of a two-way dialogue with the author. It has been done before, of course. But it is hard to imagine it having been done with such a singular literary stylist, in the face of such expectation, and in what will surely be a pressure-cooker environment, with the eyes of the whole wide Internet upon them.

I don't think I envy the person who gets that job, either.

I have only recently embarked upon the Glass stories. (From the pages of the New Yorker, where they originally appeared, of course, with surrounding advertisements and all that, because that's the kind of pathetic geek I am.) They are extraordinary, they haven't dated a bit, Salinger is a great writer of dialogue (he knows exactly which syllable to emphasise), yes, but not only that, the entire concept, of a series of independent stories involving the same fascinating and complex cast of characters, clearly lends itself to more, and more, and more stories. The Glass family is like a canvas (not a blank canvas, more a kind of multicoloured, geometrically complex canvas) upon which almost anything a fertile mind could think of (and Salinger clearly had one of those) could be written.

The world is full of "if only's". We are about to find out if the mystery of the reclusive writer is another one. If only.

lost

J D Salinger.

I may have some more to say about this. You may not be surprised to hear that.

Song of the day

"Psykick Dancehall", by The Fall. Ah, there is nothing quite like the feeling you get when listening to prime Fall: the thrashing guitars, pummelling rhythms and Mark E Smith's mouth, all working together in perfect, uh, harmony. I was thinking of calling this blog "Medium Discord" but I couldn't settle on the preferred spelling of "disc(h)ord".

Song of the day

"The Mystery Zone", by Spoon. Depending on who you read, the first three "major" releases for 2010 are "Transference", by Spoon, "Realism", by The Magnetic Fields, and "IRM", by Charlotte Gainsbourg. The first to reach these four walls (and, unless I was looking in the wrong places, the one that hasn't leaked) is "Transference". Spoon, without doubt, are major. They are so good at what they do, so confident, so comfortable in their own skins, that sometimes all you can do is smile. (Imagine if REM had maintained their sense of playful experimentalism, combined with swagger, beyond the first two albums (but remembering that REM managed still to release another four - at least - classic albums after that).)

The new album, on first listen, is a more abrasive, somewhat less user-friendly affair than "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga". It sounds like the members of Spoon have been giving their old post-punk records a spin or two (there is more than a touch of Martin Hannett in some of the production gewgaws). But they know what they are doing, and they do it well. "The Mystery Zone" stands out, perhaps because it is the song that most recalls "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga". Whatever. It has a very classy piano vamp, and strings that could kill. And, as usual with Spoon, the elements of a perfect pop song are stripped back to the absolute basics before various bits are added back - and those are not necessarily the bits you were expecting.

The liner notes for the album finish with the following statement: "Buying records from record shops is cool." How did they know?

Nigeria Special

There is still, five (or whatever) years after the most recent change in fiction editor, a recognisable type of New Yorker short story. Of course, any magazine that publishes new fiction on a weekly basis is to be cherished, but for the most part you have some idea at least of what you are going to be getting. Occasionally, though, something comes along that surprises and stays in the mind. That goes back to the 1940s, actually, with the publication of "The Lottery", by Shirley Jackson. (Salinger's Glass family stories, come to think of it, don't really look like anything else, either.) The surprises in my own reading lifetime include a remarkable horror story by Nicholson Baker about (not a typo) Mister Potato Head; the first piece I ever read by Roberto Bolano (whose "The Savage Detectives" I have just finished reading, after toughing it out for almost a year; it was the opposite of a page turner until the last fifty pages or so; but I finished it with the sense that I had just read something extraordinary, and also that I had completely missed what was actually going on for most of the book - I don't know if that is a recommendation or not, read it at your own risk!); "Super Goat Man", by Jonathan Lethem; and a story about a clown set in South America somewhere, name and author forgotten, sorry.

The most recent story to break the mould is "Baptizing the Gun", by Uwem Akpan, from the issue of 4 January 2010 - that's "twenty-ten". You can read it here. It tells the story of a night in hell as experienced by a country priest who is driving his brother's clapped-out VW Beetle when it breaks down somewhere in the badlands of Lagos, a city that, based on what I have read about it, might be a fascinating social experiment if there weren't millions of actual human lives involuntarily caught up in it. The story is a bit like "Slumdog Millionaire" but stripped of the bright colours, stunning cinematography and, y'know, "hope". Nevertheless I can, and do, recommend that you read it.

Song of the day

"Rockit", by Herbie Hancock. My friend and work colleague Denis asked me today if I had any songs by Icicle Works. I checked this evening, and I do have one song of theirs, from the 1983 UK top 40. Having listened to it, I put that year on a random rotation and, after several songs ranging from forgettable to slightly above average (1983 pales in comparison to the year that preceded it, but shines in comparison to the particularly fallow years that came after), "Rockit" came on to blow all cobwebs away, just as it did in 1983. The thought of seeing Herbie Hancock on Countdown (were those disturbing robotic contraptions actually designed by SRL, or by some mainstream usurpation thereof?) still amazes. The song itself still amazes. It seems at least 10 years ahead of everything around it (strangely, what comes closest is a throwback to an earlier era [unlike Herbie Hancock? - ed], updated by the father figure of New Pop - I speak, of course, of "Owner Of A Lonely Heart", by Yes).

The other thing I noticed about 1983 is that, if you ignore their vastly different accents, the singing voices of Eddy Grant and Men At Work's Colin Hay are practically indistinguishable.

Home Taping Is Killing Music

Once upon a time, in a galaxy that seemed to be a long, long way away but was actually only a few miles down the road, there was no Internet. Exposure to music was different then. You could read in the pages of the NME about what kids were getting up to in the UK, but you couldn't hear much if any of it. If you were lucky enough to have access to, say, Three Triple R in Melbourne or (what was then) Sydney's 2JJ, you could hear what was bubbling up from underground, but even so, to get played there a band had to have recorded an album in an actual studio, with an actual producer, using other people's actual money.

Aside from personally knowing a young band and/or being able to get out to pub gigs, your ability to hear music made on the absolute ground floor was very limited. (And, correspondingly, the ability of neophytes to get heard was very limited.) But there was one way out: a combination of cassette tape and the postal service. We came in around the mid-1980s, but presumably this sort of thing had been going on before then. Enterprising people like Wayne Davidson in Melbourne and Calvin Johnson in Olympia, WA were somehow able to put together compilation cassettes of what we would now call "unsigned artists" and if you sent them a dollar or two, or a tape of your own, or a fanzine, or a badge, or pretty much just begged them, they would sent you their latest compilation tape. Many of these were of fleeting interest, but others have lasted to this day. I'm thinking of the "Let's Together", "Let's Sea" etc series of K Records tapes, and especially of Toytown's epoch-defining (at least for a small group of youngsters in a small town in South Gippsland) "Display Ideas For Supermarkets".

Some of the bands on these tapes didn't really exist. Others disappeared without trace. But you also had your first exposure to future household names like The Melvins, The Magnetic Fields, The Cannanes, Beat Happening and Mecca Normal. And there was a special feeling you got when what you received was a cassette tape that had been put into a case into which a hand-photocopied and hand-folded cover (and sometimes even hand-drawn, such as one I received from XPressway in Dunedin) had been inserted by a real live person just like you, and it fell out of an envelope that had been hand-addressed by somebody just like you. What you got was a sense of belonging to a community.

Now, of course, you can wander around the Internet and download hundreds of new songs by people you have never heard of, without even looking too hard. But I can tell you from dismal personal experience that you will then delete after one listen at least nine of every ten of them. These are, then, the best of times, but also the worst of times. Who is there to help you? Underwater Peoples, that's who. You can wander across to their site (or the site of someone they know) and download the Underwater Peoples Winter Review. What you get is the C21 equivalent of one of those tapes. You don't get quite the same sense of personal involvement, but if you close your eyes and listen you can almost imagine it.

Obviously on a venture such as this nobody is going to like everything they hear, but there is much to enjoy, and come back to, on what they have put together. The loss leaders on this particular venture are tracks by Real Estate and Ducktails, both of whom aren't exactly household names but have at least poked their heads up above the grass roots. But everyone involved does a great job of evoking the sheer joy of making music for its own sake, in that special but narrow period between when an individual voice is discovered and when commercial considerations, however subtle or benign, necessarily intervene. Sound quality is rudimentary at best, but since when has that been relevant? (If you dubbed it onto a C-60 using a shitty tape recorder you would barely notice the difference, and you would also end up listening to it in the medium it was really designed for.)

You want influences? I hear variously Galaxie 500, T Rex, Jonathan Richman, Sebadoh, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and what might be described as the Pacific North-West branch of the C86 Diaspora.

And if you do download it, and like what you hear, do the right thing and send a handwritten note (or virtual equivalent) to its compilers. It's what the old timers would have done.

Lost

RIP Kate McGarrigle. I don't think it was possible to hear the twinned voices of Kate and Anna McGarrigle and not be moved. Even the hairs on the back of a bald man's neck would be standing on their ends.

Song of the day

"Caroline", by Espers.

I felt it was my civic duty to listen to the three albums that sat somewhere near the top of most 2009 critics' polls: "Merriweather Post Pavilion", by Animal Collective; "Bitte Orca", by The Dirty Projectors; and "Veckatimest", by Grizzly Bear. Having done so, I can announce that my considered response to all three of them is a resounding "Whatevah". They all, to my ears at least, have about them an earnestness, a sense of scale, of reaching towards the status of "important", of making some kind of boad, majestic sweep, of, what, bigness?, maximalism?, that makes them easy to admire but, for me (I am clearly in a pretty small minority here), not easy to actually like. No, I have never been particularly keen on U2 or Radiohead either, other purveyors of the serious and/or grandiose, and I also failed to click with Arcade Fire. So either I am old and grumpy (yes), or I am lapsing into a kind of reverse snobbery that I thought was dormant and/or that a one-two combination of Adrienne and Darren had long ago talked me out of (viz, everybody else likes this so there must be something wrong with it), or the pop zeitgeist is somewhere that I don't particularly want to go (as happened with the rise of grunge at the end of the 1980s) and, pop music being the caravan that continually moves on, something more amenable will surely be about to appear.

Of course, I might just be lazy; all of these albums clearly require more work than I have put in. (Or is that no different from "Eat your greens, they taste like filth but they're good for you"?) Outright ejection may well turn out to have been my loss. (I also didn't warm to Fleet Foxes at first, and it in fact took the spark of Adrienne's interest in one of their songs, which was being heavily rotated on the local ABC radio, to get me to give them a second listen, whereupon in no time their album became the most played record at Stan's house ("Whose house??"), and it remains so. This just goes to show, as if any proof whatsoever were required, that I am capable of being very, very wrong.)

If you forced me to speculate, my guess would be that, of all three of these records, I would be most likely to develop warmer feelings for "Veckatimest". There is a song on it called "While You Wait For The Others" that has some nice guitar. That would be my way in, if I were looking for one.

All of which brings me to the third Espers album, "III", which appeared with no or slightly negative fanfare towards the end of last year, and which takes a very different tack from their previous album of extended arboreal psych jams in favour of an appealingly loose but concise take on English folk (there is at least one song on here that could slip unnoticed onto, say, Fairport Convention's "Unhalfbricking"). "Caroline" is lovely. It will have you checking that it isn't a reissue of something that might have originally been released on Island in 1969. It is also one of the few examples I can think of where electrified violin (if that's what it is) actually enhances a song.

Caravan of Love

The Emmerson Travelling Circus went on its annual Victorian jaunt, as usual, over the Christmas break, this (as every) year visiting Geelong and Melbourne. Many families, at this time of year, head off for a relaxing holiday at the beach, or to Japan, or whatever, in order to recharge batteries and regain some semblance of equilibrium in their busy lives. Our family is a bit different: our stresses and anxieties simply relocate to a different place for a couple of weeks. They say a change is as good as a holiday. They aren't necessarily right: we arrived home mentally drained and physically exhausted, almost as if we had never been away (except with bookending full-day drives down and up the Hume Highway to remind us of how bloody far away from Melbourne Canberra is).

Nevertheless we did, as we always try to do, get to say hello to many of the Melbourne people we most like saying hello to. We were looked after, and/or accommodated in one way or another, by so many good and kind people that we will refrain from naming them for fear of forgetting someone. They know who they are and we thank them. Those who were themselves away from home, or whose lives, for one reason or another, we were unable to invade, should be warned: we will be back again in 12 months' time. (And if half of the people who have threatened to visit Canberra in the next month or so to see the Post-Impressionism exhibition at the National Gallery follow through we will have many opportunities to reciprocate people's hospitality.)

And, as Mark E. Smith once said, "Of what went on here, we only have this excerpt".

Santa managed, once more, to find us in Geelong. The world's stocks of Lego have once again been depleted. No matter how many Star Wars kits you buy, you never seem to be able to have enough of them. There is always one more limited-edition mini-figure that must be procured. The word "scam" might come to mind. (The day before we departed Canberra the December Lego Club magazine arrived, with 2010 catalogue enclosed, to enable the 12-year-old to start his 2010 Christmas list before Christmas 2009 had even arrived.) The grown-ups received a game called "Ticket To Ride" (which, amongst other things, contradicts Lee Hazlewood's musical statement that there ain't no train to Stockholm), and Adrienne was the lucky recipient of "Can You Dig It?", a new Soul Jazz two-disc compilation of blacksploitation soundtrack music (highly recommended).

Santa delivered to me, on Christmas eve and via Book Depository in the UK (you cut that one a bit fine, old fella), "Asterios Polyp", a "graphic novel" (one that actually does fit that description, for once) by David Mazzuchelli. (Pocket review: I have a few misgivings about it, although these are maybe the inevitable result of the strong reviews it has been getting, especially in the mainstream media (problem: mainstream media don't usually have "graphic novel" context for the few books that get on their radar, and are inclined to either overstate or understate individual cases accordingly). It is probably one of the most stunning visually rendered comic books I have ever seen: close to as perfect as you could imagine an illustrated story ever getting. The story has a very novelistic trajectory and is satisfyingly told. The reader has some work to do, and that work is well rewarded. There are many instances of seeing something incidental in the corner of one panel and thinking, ah, yes, that refers back to something earlier in the book that didn't make sense then. And yet the writing is not quite right, and this puts the balance between "graphic" and "novel" ever so slightly on the side of "graphic". There are two unnecessarily misspelled words and one glaringly bad example of a dangling participle. (Don't you just hate that?) I am sure these wouldn't have escaped the editor's eye if this were being edited as a "novel". (This makes me a bit grumpy. It suggests that these books are not yet being taken entirely seriously as "literary works". Just because you can't spell-check hand-lettered prose doesn't mean you can't endeavour to make sure it is right.))

Santa also gave me, pre-installed (how does he get the time to do that? how does he know my password!?), a computer game called "Spore", which (surprise!) the boys have been using and I haven't yet had a go at.

Jules was taken on a nine-year-old's rite of passage, viz, day four of the MCG test match between Australia and Pakistan. It was a compelling, if not always entertaining, day's cricket. He got to cheer Shane Watson's maiden test century. I got to see Pakistan bowling to an 8-1 field, something I can't recall ever having seen before. And the paucity of the crowd meant that we got to watch the cricket from several vantage points.

I managed to fit in a pilgrimage to Pellegrini, but had no time to get to any of the Three M's: Minotaur, Missing Link Records or Metropolis Books. (And it must be eight years now since I have been to Brunswick Street.)

A large amount of time was spent at ACMI. While Jules and I were at the cricket, Carl and Adrienne were watching episodes of "Lance Link, Secret Chimp", a show that I worshipped as a small boy but which surprisingly few people seem to have heard of. "They" probably wouldn't allow it to be made today. Carl, as predicted, was an instant convert. (Me, I love a good "chimpsploitation" picture (copyright Adrienne Gault). One of my regrets in life is not (yet) having seen "Dunston Checks In". At least that one can be remedied.) The next day, which was very, very hot, we all spent quite a bit of time in its air-conditioned galleries. The new permanent display is too big, and busy, to be fully absorbed, but in bits it is great. For the second time we caught an exhibition of the best independently made computer games of the year (my fleeting impression, again, is that this is some of the most arresting visual work being done in any medium), while I snuck off to see the Dennis Hopper exhibition, which I'm not sure was worth the seventeen dollars of admission, although I did get to see a large Basquiat canvas, which is not the kind of thing that comes to Australia every day (c.f. Post-%!@%@#%-Impressionism - mind you we have seen the exhibition and the chance to spend 10 minutes standing in front of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" must, on its own, be worth the price of admission, plus any airfares and accommodation involved).

I should note here that, while we were away, Rowland S Howard died. The visceral, incendiary nature of Howard's guitar playing in The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party was an undeniable part of Nick Cave's development as an artist. As is so often the case, two oversized egos couldn't survive the confines of one band for long, and didn't, after which, as is also all too often the case, one went on to fame and fortune and the other struggled with both his art and his personal life. For a time I owned an Iain Sinclair paperback, which I bought from Penny Siber's second-hand bookshop (which I am pleased to note is still there) in Chapel Street, just across the road from Windsor Station, and which had Howard's full signature on the inside front cover. (Why, I don't know.) I suppose I should have kept it.

Our Melbourne accommodation this year was in Prahran, quite close to where we used to live, so it was nice to spend some time down Carlisle Street way (even if much of that time was spent provisioning at Coles). Carlisle Street hasn't really changed, except for the appearance of many, many cafes. (It was nice to see that Wall 280, which opened not too long before we relocated to the Nation's Capital, is still going strong, but a bit sad that Coco, where Carl spent many mornings as a baby, happily chewing on a corner of bread, has gone.) On New Year's Day we were treated to a display of precision driving by the Caulfield Drivers' Team that far surpassed anything we had witnessed in the good old days. Having survived the Friday-morning chaos of Glick's bakery (Mr Glick, who is of indeterminate but considerable age, hasn't changed a bit in the 11 years since we were regular customers; he must by now be permanently preserved by the haze of flour that follows him around the shop, just as Keith Richards appears to be permanently preserved by various chemicals and Iggy Pop by who knows what) we turned right from Carlisle Street into Westbury Street, only to be rendered stationary by three vehicles, the one in front of us simply not moving, another one half-way across the road and perpendicular thereto, and the third entirely on the wrong side of the road and trying, as far as we could tell, to move forwards even in the face of traffic that would have been on-coming if there had been any way for it to actually move forwards. In other words, just another day on the road in East St Kilda. Some things really do never change.

On the long road home we were accompanied for much of the way by Eric Idle reading Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". He does a terrific job. Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr Fox" opened a couple of days ago. It's definitely on the Do Not Miss Register. January may prove to be Roald Dahl month at our house. You could do worse.

Song of the day

"Take You Home", by Annie. Am I the only person in the world who hears this song and starts singing "North By North", by The Bats?

Idea for Glen Baxter cartoon

Caption: "He hasn't been quite the same since the day he fell out of the vegetable patch".

(Based, somewhat embarrassingly, on a true story.)

One more hypothetical mixtape before we go

On to 2010. Well, eventually.

"McGuire In The Ocean", by Ducktails. The best things in life are free, as the Flying Lizards, and many before them, once sang. It may in fact be true. I once read a piece by a gaming "enthusiast" arguing that you didn't need to actually buy computer games because there was enough enjoyment and satisfaction to be had in the freely available "demo" versions that most games offered. Well, we wouldn't know about that (someone in our house is enough of an obsessive that a demo version would never be enough for him; hell, even the full version itself isn't enough for him), but we do no that there is such great music offered up, Free-'n'-Legal, across the whole wide Internet, that you can actually put together a first-class playlist using just those. Try it. Just look for "Norway", by Beach House, for example. That might just be enough to convince you. Ducktails are giving away three "outtakes" from their (i.e. "his") most recent album. At least two of them are crackers. This is one. The guitars are straight out of Vini Reilly via Manuel Gottsching. That's good enough for us.

"Ghost Town", by Zeep. Ooh, a Latin-inflected cover of one of our personal touchstones. Normally we don't like people messin' with the classics, but this is so tasty, so infectious, that we find ourselves falling for the song all over again. Which is a nice surprise. Featuring a liberal helping of piano accordian (this wouldn't always be a selling point).

"Ohayo Mada Yaro", by Yura Yura Teikoku. More free stuff. The return of the reverb. Sometimes I think that rock and roll was invented in order to facilitate the invention of reverb. What more reason do you need?

"Politicians In My Eyes", by Death. One part Led Zeppelin intro, one part proto-punk-rock verses, one part Classic Rock, Big Hair Power Ballad chorus. By the end of the song the three are fused so tightly together you have no idea which is which. (Neatest trick of the week.)

"Time", by Open Mind. Damn me if this doesn't come across as a classic Chills tune hovering on a dreamy psychedelic tip ("Pink Frost", "I Love My Leather Jacket"). It also carries with it echoes of many other songs ("Bela Lugosi's Dead"(?), "A Forest", Joy Division's "A Means To An End", and others that linger just beyond my grasp).

"If I Knew You Were The One", by Richard Twice. A gloriously soaring 1960s psychedelic pop song. They appear to have grown on trees once upon a hazy time ago.

"Too Long", by Jake Holmes. According to the Internet Jake Holmes was responsible for "Dazed and Confused", a song later made kind of famous by Led Zeppelin. According to the tags on my iTunes playlist, he also co-wrote a fabulous Four Seasons song called "Wall Street Village Day", which I may or may not have written about here. Anyway "Too Long" is another fine sixties psych-pop gemstone, this time hewing rather closely, but not in a bad way, to what you might imagine to be a Tim Buckley melancholy template (but sans vocal gymnastics). The words "fragile" and "delicate" cannot help but come to mind.

"The Kids Are Alright", by The Who. Whereas "fragile" and "delicate" aren't words that sit well next to the words "The Who". Until recently I only knew this song through a twee-pop cover version. Oh the gaps in my musical knowledge are long and wide.

"Shadow Falls", by Hello, Blue Roses. And speaking of twee-pop, it is clearly the genre that will never die. (Something that was never in fashion can, by definition, never go out of fashion.) Actually, maybe this song sits close to the tipping point between twee-pop and dream-pop (is there any better place to be?). It is no surprise, perhaps, that a New Pornographer is involved in this.

"Passionate Introverts (Dinosaurs)", by A Sunny Day In Glasgow. This, however, is pure dream-pop. "Shoegaze" be damned.

"First Class Riot (A Touch of Jules and Jim)", by The Tough Alliance. Wherein JJ (who featured in our last hypothetical mixtape) sand off some of the harsher edges of the original (n.b. this is no criticism of the original, which is a fine song in its own right, and one of the better impersonations of OMD going around -- the synths in this remix are more early New Order) and sets it floating off gently into (inner) space.

"Fire", by Codebreaker feat Kathy Diamond. For a long time we were in love with Kathy Diamond, on the strength of the cover photo on "Miss Diamond To You" and her perfect singing on that album. But then it dawned on us that who we were really in love with was Maurice Fulton, its producer, so we dropped the issue pretty quickly. On this song she sings. As perfectly as ever. The song might be a teensy bit dull, but there's no real need to dwell on that, is there?

"This Case Is Closed (Johan Agebjorn Remix)", by Friday Bridge. We may also be in love with Johan Agebjorn. Whatever. Is it our imagination, or does the singer here sound faintly, and tantalisingly, like Kate Bush? This may be verging on blasphemy, but we may actually be attracted to this song more than anything on the new Sally Shapiro album. (Although our impression of the latter is still a work in progress.)

"City Of Lights (Prins Thomas Vocal Mix)", by City Reverb. It wouldn't be a hypothetical mixtape without something from either Lindstrom or his buddy Prins Thomas. Hark, is that a melodica I hear?

"Coastal Brake", by Tycho. This is the most recent track on the list. The cover, an airbrushed silhouette of a female form encircled by authentic 1970s colour reproductions (think Australian surfing movies, such as "Morning Of The Earth"; the only thing that's missing is the surfboard that should be tucked under her arm), is as good a guide to the music herein as any writing I could do.

"Dead Man's Tale", by Terje Rypdal. Tell me that's not Jarvis Cocker on vocals. What's that? It's not? I don't believe you. What? It was recorded in 1968? I still don't believe you. (Okay, so Jarvis would have been four years old, but still ... It's him. I swear it ...)

Song of the day

"Silverwater", by The Necks. A new Necks CD is always accompanied by a sense of expectation, and, partly, anxiety. Generally speaking, with any group of musicians, especially when they have been working together for some time, when buying their latest release you have a sense of what to expect. Sonic Youth? The Clean? Belle and Sebastian? Stereolab? The surprise is no longer in their basic template, but in what variations they may make to it, or whether this one is a "return to form", or in the case of The Clean the fact that it exists at all. Even Yo La Tengo, the masters of the kitchen sink approach to indie rock, have their records freighted with preconceived ideas, which, post-"And Then Everything Turned Itself Inside Out", are never too far from the mark. In one way, you know what you are getting with The Necks, too: one long piece of music involving keyboards, bass, and drums. But, in another sense, you have no idea what you are going to get. And therein lies the anxiety: if you don't like the opening few minutes, you have most likely blown not just one track, but an entire CD.

Thus, the first time you listen to a Necks CD, the pause from when you press "play" until the music starts is like the moments of silence at the start of one of their concerts, when everyone, including the group themselves, are waiting to see what happens: you are on the edge of your seat, tense, nervous, excited, waiting. And then it starts, and there is no turning back.

For this reason, I don't read reviews of a Necks release before listening at least once. A review can't help but give away at least some of the mystery of what may be contained within the grooves. They should be prefaced in big black letters by the words "Spoiler Alert". It's a bit like finding out the sex of your baby before it is born. Or what Santa is going to bring you.

So it would be unfair of me to write anything specific about "Silverwater". It is a new Necks release. It is seventy minutes long. Its name sounds rather romantic until you realise that Silverwater is also the name of a prison. It is the first in a while to be recorded in the studio. This fact opens up the possibilities even more, because they don't always confine themselves in the studio to the piano/bass/drums of a live setting. The only thing I am going to say about the music itself, because this is a good thing (and hopefully doesn't give too much away), is that Chris Abrahams has blown the cobwebs off his trusty Hammond. After that, you are on your own. But if you have followed The Necks this far into their extraordinary career, I have a feeling you will like what you hear. The cover art is gorgeous, too.

YouTube of the day

I might be the last blogger on earth to link to this, but it's better to be safe than sorry: I wouldn't want any of you to miss it.

Song of the day

"Sweet Gingerbread Man", by The Mike Curb Congregation. If anyone offers to play you this song, run, screaming, in the other direction, with your hands over your ears. Hear it once and it will insinuate itself into your brain, appearing when you least want it to: when you have been woken up by the 11-year-old in the middle of the night and just want to get back to sleep; spending some quality time with your favourite person; trying to concentrate on umpiring a game of under-10s cricket; having a serious conversation with the Chief Justice of Australia.

Of course, you can always just give in to it. That's what I do. But beware: as the title suggests, this song is so full of sugar that prolonged exposure will cause all your teeth to fall out.

of the year 2009

I am starting to get the impression that the number of things that must be done between now and Christmas is longer than the number of days in which they can be done. So, if I am going to get a chance to put in my own, humble, bid for "Record of the Year 2009" it had better be now.

At least from my own singular perspective, it has been a fabulous year for music. Everywhere I turned, there was a discovery to be made (Jeremy Jay) or a new appearance by an old favourite (Air, The Necks). Lists will be proliferating very shortly, possibly even as we speak, and many of those lists, if you are looking in the right places, will contain many albums that I would be happy to endorse. So all I want to do is mention a couple of major records that might have slipped under the radar, and then nominate my favourite.

Under the radar 1: "Immolate Yourself", by Telefon Tel Aviv. In many other years, this would have won hands down: an album conveying such emotional depth by way of analog electronic sounds that it is no surprise, perhaps, that one of its makers didn't survive its making. How is it that sounds that have no existence in nature can stir up such inner turmoil in the listener? Kraftwerk knew this. Brian Eno had an idea or two. But the slightly off-kilter, wobbly warbles that emanate from "Immolate Yourself" can be so destabilising, and at crucial moments so crushing, that you will be convinced of the existence of ghosts in the machines.

Under the radar 2: "Liedgut", by Atom(TM). Another Kraftwerk reference (2009 might be the year that their influence, never slight, was the strongest it has been since 1977), and a vocal appearance by one of their number, too, on this brief but fascinating album, which manages to be a combination of Kraftwerk and white noise. Atom(TM) has spent a few years widening his fanbase, and (arguably; I don't agree) diluting his reputation, by releasing a series of Latin-tinged electronic albums under the name Senor Coconut (one of which is, you guessed it, an album of Kraftwerk cover versions). This record is much more tangential (it is frequently at a tangent to what most of us might think of as "music") but, in its own way, is also pleasingly light and playful. You could easily, having listened to it once, miss the point entirely. There may not be a point. Suffice to say, it warrants, maybe even requires, further listening.

Finally (drumroll) -- my favourite record of 2009 is "Begone Dull Care", by Junior Boys. It chooses itself, really. The funny thing is, though, that I can't really put a finger on why. I think it might be as simple as admiration for the level of attention to detail lavished on its recording. There is a sense that every note, every pause, every sound, has been considered at some length before being committed to. And the choices made are universally the right ones. You can listen to this disc many, many times (and it is another of a small number of records that should be listened to on compact disc -- some will no doubt scream "vinyl!!" -- regardless of the bit rate of your MP3s) and still notice things you could swear you had never heard before. So maybe it is more of a work of superior craftsmanship (whereas "Immolate Yourself" assumes the status of "art") but sometimes a well-made chair can be admired just for being a well-made chair.

Plus, it has the added benefit of breathing new life into their second album, "So This Is Goodbye", which until now could only be seen as Jeremy Greenspan figuring out the direction he would go in following the departure of the Stereo Image guy, who was such an important component of "Last Exit". Now that we can hear the direction chosen, we can appreciate anew the early forays in that direction, and also the paths considered but not taken.

Song of the day (2)

"A/B Machines", by Sleigh Bells. These days, much more often than not, when you actually get to listen to something new that has been hyped to the heavens by music bloggers, your response is, "ho hum". When you listen to Sleigh Bells, you get kicked in the head. In the old days, bands had a chance to settle down into some kind of normality before most of the world got a chance to hear them. We have been hearing about Sleigh Bells since they day they were born. It's a bit like reading reviews of the early Jesus and Mary Chain gigs in the NME all those years ago. Sleigh Bells are if anything more chaotic, more of an unstoppable force of nature. Even Jesus and Mary Chain settled down. There are a bunch of Sleigh Bells demos floating around that catch them in full, naive, flight. It's almost a shame that one day they will figure out what it is they are trying to do.

What to give a hamster who has everything?

A resort holiday.

Ah, those Europeans. They know how to treat a rodent.

Song of the day

(Sorry for being a bit slow on the update.)

"Eagle", by ABBA. By the time of "ABBA: The Album" I had disembarked from the ABBA cruise ship and was about to board the Post-Punk Express. So I missed hearing the bulk of ABBA's "mature" work, until many years later, because of course you couldn't be a Man In Black and also an ABBA fan (at least publicly, so it was best not to do it at all).

And so I come to "Eagle", via its appearance on Lindstrom's "FACT 100" mix, with fresh ears. And what do I hear? All of the bigness you expect from a great ABBA song: outsize arrangements; outsize vocal harmonies; outsize underlying psychodrama; outsize ambition; outsize success. But something else: a pre-echo of the New Pop that would grip the world four or five years later. In fact, there is an element buried in this song that is so close to the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" that ABBA's lawyers must have pricked up an ear or two. (Not only that, but the song's opening also prefigures the music of Studio, and others of the (for want of better descriptions) nu-Balearica school. They really did have all bases covered.)

Song of the day

"Antenna", by Sonic Youth. From "The Eternal". In which Thurston Moore does the best impersonation I've yet heard of Beck circa "Sea Change".

Is 40 the new 30?

It adds something to a piece like this one about climate change to be reading it in Canberra, in November, when you should be enjoying another glorious between-seasons Springtime in the Nation's Capital, and it's 38 degrees (that would be 38 degrees Celcius) outside. No. That "38" is not a typo. Twenty-eight would be quite warm for this time of year. But 38? That's just fucked. (And it's going to be the same again today.)

It's a bit like Dylan said: something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?

William Steig presents "Punch and Judy: The Later Years"

Here.

This Goes With This

"Darkness Falls", by David Sylvian and Robert Fripp, from the album "The Last Day", which I must confess I don't listen to as often as I listen to other Sylvian records, bears a striking resemblance, at least when Sylvian isn't singing, to Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze". Really it does.

Song of the day

"Lite Beam", by Jeremy Jay. This song is what happens when the primitive pop sensibility of K Records' International Pop Underground butts heads with the icy glamour of David Bowie's "Station To Station". Surprisingly, it has a lot going for it.

Thought for the day

Apparently you can now buy a record called "The Fall", by Norah Jones. Well, I don't know about you, but I would much rather hear a record called "Norah Jones", by The Fall. I suspect it's just a matter of time.

Song of the day

"Double Barrel", by Dave and Ansel (or possibly Ansil, according to some sleeves) Collins. This has been on some heavy rotation at our house since yesterday afternoon, when Carl, while looking for "Aidy's Girl's A Computer", which I seem to have hooked him on, for some reason clicked "play" on this song instead. Has anybody ever figured out what the heck the toaster is saying at the start of the track? I get "I am the magnificent", but then nothin'. "Storming", perhaps, is in there somewhere. Or not.

Also, this is the perfect soundtrack for the present unseasonal (is anything "unseasonal" in these strange days, though?) hot spell Canberra is going through.

The facts on the ground

It was looking like being the best strawberry crop ever. (Enough, even, to comfortably share them with a very large blue-tongue lizard, who has been seen helping himself.) But a couple of nights ago I though something looked wrong with them, and today, after a visit to the nursery, I have, on a rare day off work, had the sad task of pulling one entire patch out by the roots. Curse you, fungal infection.

I should, of course, have listened to my mother, who would never have allowed a strawberry patch to stay in for more than three years. They did so well last year that I thought, Another year can't hurt. And, as has so often proved to be the case (another example: "You are no handyman"), she was right and I was wrong.

Song of the day

"Aidy's Girl's A Computer", by Darkstar. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to nominate this gorgeous piece of dubstep-meets-New-Pop as song of the day, but I don't know shit about dubstep and thus I didn't have the words to say it. Now, thanks to Marcello, here are some words.

Fun with words

I quite like the look of this. But then, I am a bit of a sucker for that sort of thing. It's easy to do, but slightly more difficult to do well.

Heroes and Villains

Kevin Huizenga has been busy putting all kinds of lovely stuff on his web page. Check it out.

The return of the hypothetical mixtape

May 2009. It's not that long ago.

"Emotional R", by In Flagranti. If this song got stuck on an endless loop on my stereo I wouldn't feel too disappointed. Essentially the best bits of the Rolling Stones' "Emotional Rescue" (Jagger singing "Is there nothing I can say nothing I can do"; that snare hit and bass doink half-way between the third and fourth beat of every second bar) chopped up, screwed with, and looped together, with the piano bit from "She's A Rainbow" thrown in for good measure, this naughty piece of music demonstrates that, in certain contexts, less really is more.

"Return of Starlight (Invisible Conga People Remix)", by Woolfy vs Projections. Coming at you from a Lindstrom (or is it Prins Thomas?) tip, this is a slow build to nowhere, but you shouldn't let that put you off. A small fragment of what might be an actual song drifts in for a couple of minutes towards the end, and then drifts right out again. Welcome to music in 2009.

"The Sun (Parallel or 90)", by Bo Hansson. This is the guy who put The Lord of The Rings to music. On one of his album covers (not the record this song is from) he appears as a cross between Rick Wakeman and Gregor Samsa. This is where I get my electric-piano fix for this month. Actually, if you played this back-top-back with the Woolfy vs Projections, you might think that music hasn't travelled far from the early 1970s. You would be wrong, but not far wrong: in fact, music has gone quite a long way since then, but, like an overextended piece of elastic, it has been pulled back again. Music is like that.

"From Africa To Malaga", by JJ. The album from which this is taken features, on its cover, an oversized picture of a marijuana leaf. That should tell you everything you need to know. A gentle haze descends over proceedings. The vocals remind me (in a good way) of Tracy Thorn. The song is subtle but catchy. The seemingly obligatory high-life influence (welcome to music in 2009, part two) is present and correct (the title kind of gives it away), but not overplayed.

"Gifted", by N.A.S.A. I am not hip-hop averse; I just don't get exposed to much of it. (I also struggle with some lyrical concepts.) This wins by having the artist formerly known as Santogold doing a verse, and particularly by having a chorus voiced by (my) hot chick of the year, Lykke Li. (Even if I don't know how to pronounce her name. And anyway, I plan to just point and nod. )

"Beach Town", by Le Loup. There is something of a baked jungle-samba rhythm bed going on here. The vocals sound somewhat alarmingly like Sting at his most declamatory. There is some big, reverb-y guitar chording. And some other guitar that might remind me, slightly, of Johnny Marr. And some Fleet Fox-ish harmonies. Basically, I don't know what the hell is going on here. And I'm not sure Le Loup do, either. Best just to let it wash over you. Like, I dunno, Woody Allen's "Shadows and Fog".

"Really Wanted You", by Emitt Rhodes. This guy is, like, the shadow Paul McCartney or something. And this song certainly wouldn't be out of place on any number of Wings albums (although I'm sure I detect a certain Lennonish sneer as well): actually, my sense is that it straddles the bridge (not a terribly long bridge) between late Beatles, Cheap Trick and late-seventies skinny-tie "power pop". With some George Harrison and CSNY thrown in. Like me to do any more name dropping? It won't help.

"Forget All About It", by The Nazz. The Beatles/Cheap Trick connection is even stronger here. Come to think of it, I could probably just repeat everything I wrote about the previous song, perhaps adding a special mention of The dB's on account of the vocals.

"Riviera 69", by Chris Joss. Electric bass is front and centre of this slow-burner from, I can only assume, somewhere within five years either side of 1972, with a gorgeous slice or two of Hammond sneaking in just when you want it to (but not staying as long as you might like).

"Blue Honey", by Pop Levi. Oh, and here is another John Lennon vs Cheap Trick smackdown. With the second coming of Marc Bolan on vocals. Pop with attitude is the best kind of pop. Funny, the dude looks more like George Harrison on the record cover. That probably explains the sitar-like sounds that permeate the second half.

"Oh, You Pretty Things", by Au Revoir Simone. Bowie, covered. By three more of my favourite chicks. Do people still say "chicks"? The glam of the original has been replaced by a well-considered understatement. And a tambourine.

"Hanging On The Telephone", by The Nerves. This is so much a Blondie song that it's not easy to come to terms with the fact that it existed as a Punk Rock single a mere three or four years before Debbie Harry and co picked it up and ran with it. Straight to the top of the charts. But here it is. I hear Lennon again. I hear Cheap Trick again. I hear The dB's again. In fact, I hear all the things I most want to hear when the sun comes out and the weather warms up.

"Walk On Gilded Splinters", by Johnny Jenkins. Man, give that funky drummer some. Taken from a Duane Allman anthology. I don't know what's with that. (The Allman Brothers are not my field of expertise.) If you wanted to argue that it goes on a couple of minutes longer than it needs to, I wouldn't put up much resistance. But still, that drummer.

"Northern Hemisphere", by East of Eden. 1969. If Heavy Metal had been invented then, this would have been called by that name. The guitars are straight out of Black Sabbath. But the vocals, well, it's more like Folk Metal, actually. I love this song. In fact, it might be the greatest song ever recorded (as of this minute).

"Recursion (CFCF Remix)", by Genghis Tron. I like the name "Genghis Tron". I see bearded barbarian hordes streaming across the mountains but rendered in 1981-vintage pixelated computer graphics. Widescreen. But not entirely high-res. Which, curiously, is kind of how the song sounds. I tend to like songs that remind me, however slightly, of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. At three-and-a-half minutes a nice reggae lilt sneaks in, hangs around for a while, drifts out again, and then, later, sneaks back in a dubwise stylee. But really, it's the synths, which by the end of the song are all that we are left with, that this is all about.

"Ant 10 (Remix by DJ Lindstrøm)", by Boredoms, or whatever they are calling themselves this week. This is probably, "Shoes" by Tiga notwithstanding, the individual highlight of 2009, a year that has been, I might say, full of (musical) highlights. I will probably never hear the unremix of this song, and I quite possibly wouldn't "get" it if I did. But man, this 10-minute slab of furious drumming, filtered through Mr Lindstrøm's slightly blissed-out visions, stands entirely on its own. You need to turn it up loud. You need to give yourself over to it. And when you do, you will obey its every command. But will you be ready for the funky clavinet (or whatever) that appears around the half-way mark? No, you will not. And will you expect to be reminded of the full-length version of "Disco Inferno", by Trammps, from the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever"? No, again. In fact, this track contains more tricks and surprises than a magician at a birthday party, but they are all so subtly and seamlessly introduced that no child will leave in tears, unless, like me, they are crying because they wish it could have gone on longer.

song of the day

"Small Hours", by John Martyn. All nine minutes of it. I first heard this song on "Crooning on Venus", a David Toop-curated compilation CD on the theme of the human voice, which I bought in London on our 1996 World Tour. But for me it's not so much the voice that makes this song as the guitars. No matter how many times I listen to this song, I want to hear it again.

Song of the day

"Sky Is Falling", by Tugboat. I'm on a bit of a Library Records kick at the moment, partly because the kind of music they released a decade ago is now being drawn on by so many bands from Brooklyn and elsewhere, and partly because I am in the process of creating MP3 archives/back-ups of all my physical CDs. Just in case, y'know. "Sky Is Falling", from the "CDs and Ideas I Never Got Around To Acting On" half of the final Library-wraps-it-up double-CD, drifts along so delicately and gently it is a miracle that it even gets to the end at all, rather than just falling apart halfway through on account of lack of momentum. The trick with a song like this is to be brave enough to back your audience to stay with you for four-and-a-half minutes. It would be tempting to add stuff to it in order to make it more "dynamic". Tugboat resist that temptation.

song of the day

"X-ray Eyes", by Vivian Girls. No, not those Vivian Girls. These Vivian Girls were from (presumably) Melbourne. They had two tracks on the 2001 Library/3RRR comp "Pacific Highway". And whereas the Brooklyn Vivian Girls are working through some kind of angsty lo-fi issues, these Vivian Girls are all post-punk elbows and knees, in particular echoing the kind of hopped-up, ramshackle propulsion of the first Cure album, but with a bit of Laughing Clowns thrown in for good measure. Always an appealing combination.

Speaking words of wisdom

Here's Tom Waits in a recent Guardian interview:

I used to imagine that making it in music -- really making it in music -- is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jumprope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture.

If Michael Nichols had been lurking around in a typical suburban Canberra street a couple of evenings ago he could have borne witness to five seven-to-eleven-year-olds running around in a backyard and singing "Does anybody here want to buy some cabbage / Right down this way / Does anybody here want some brown-skinned cabbage / Get down this way". (Okay that last line isn't right but I didn't want to spoil the moment.) And I know for a fact that three of them had never heard the actual song. Hanshalf Trio, you're in the culture.

Song of the day

"What I Saw", by Roj. And just to round off the preceding scribble, I give you the last song on the Roj CD. It starts off on some kind of Fripp and Eno excursion before turning several unexpected corners and finishing off in an entirely different place. It is the most instantly striking of the songs on the disc, and demonstrates an understanding of the importance placed by Roj on "saving the best until last" - something I always did as a kid, even if it sometimes meant that my cousin Heather would eat it before I felt I had left enough time (which might be months in the case of a packet of chocolate cigarettes; I don't know how she knew where to find them).

There's A Ghost In My House-ah

I have been labouring under some pretty strong medication (don't drive; don't operate heavy machinery) and I feel as though none of my neurons are quite synapsing as they are meant to do (or whatever). So I have been struggling to put one thought next to another in any kind of sequence. But I've never let that stop me before.

Ghost Box.

Simon Reynolds, among many others, has been flying the flag of this label for some time. Its releases appear to be insusceptible to acquisition by unauthorised methods, and no Ghost Box records to my knowledge have ever graced the shelves of any record store in the Nation's Capital. So I have developed a feel for Ghost Box records, their artwork, the people who make them, and the type of music they contain, in a vacuum from the actual music. I was setting myself up for a fall, but I really did like what I (thought I) heard: a combination of experimental/avant garde music and the type of thing you might have found in BBC documentaries and children's shows from the 1960s and 1970s. (Yes, even on Australian televisions.)

At some point in late 2008, new Ghost Box releases started appearing, unannounced and certainly unheralded, on eMusic. I don't even know what possessed me to look. But there it was: "Other Channels", by The Advisory Circle, which would soon be listed as one of the top albums of 2008 according to The Wire magazine (which usually either means it is essential or unlistenable). And it was soon followed by "From An Ancient Star", the most recent release from something or somebody calling themselves Belbury Poly.

I downloaded them both and was hooked.

Both of these records reek of a kind of nostalgia for an England that probably never existed. Innocence is postulated, but with serious malevolence lurking just below the surface (literally, in the case of one track on the Advisory Circle album, which purports to be a recording of a warning message about watching little children at play on the ice). The word that comes to mind to describe what distinguishes these two releases is "echo": sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical. (And sometimes both.) It is the literal echo, I think, that allows Ghost Box releases to put the "haunt" in "hauntology". It is the metaphorical echo, of childhood, of a lost England, that sets them apart musically and emotionally from most other music being made these days.

Parts of the Advisory Circle disc, at least, are most likely a successor of the kind of British cleverness and satirical wit that we all know from the likes of Monty Python and the Bonzos. Both records come from a different tradition: the music that appeared, as if from nowhere, from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. (You have probably heard the Doctor Who theme.) Perhaps the Belbury Poly disc breaks the label mould somewhat (and has been criticised for same) by its forays into the edges of a parallel space-disco seventies, but it still manages to exist in its own world entirely, and couldn't possibly be mistaken for, well, for anything else, really.

There are a number of Ghost Box records that pre-date those two. There seems to be no move to put them up on eMusic, which is a bit of a shame. (I know of at least one person who would buy them.) But new releases continue to appear. First there was what appears to be a very thorough overview of the label. And now we have an album by someone calling themselves Roj. (Not a very Ghost Box kind of name, that, so he has perhaps felt the need to overcompensate by titling the album "The Transactional Dharma of Roj". Which IS a very Ghost Box kind of name.)

And here we fall upon an interesting connection.

In dwelling on Ghost Box, and its highly selective discography, seemingly unique approach to sound, instantly recognisable packaging, and general avoidance of the publicity machinery, I was trying to come up with another label that I thought might have operated in a similar way. And the only thing I could hit upon, aside from perhaps Blue Note at certain times in its long and distinguished history, was Warp. Warp is well and truly above-ground now, releasing records by the likes of Maximo Park and generally looking like a business model (no, that's a bit harsh; it still has a strong aesthetic imperative, it just casts its net a bit wider these days, both artistically and commercially). But in its early days you felt that you were on solid ground.

And here we play 20 questions (although we won't get to 20).

Who, it can be argued, was the first band to sign to Warp that didn't play music of the type that most listeners would have associated with the label? Broadcast. And who designs Broadcast's record covers? Julian House. And which label does Julian House run? Ghost Box. And which band did Roj used to play with? Broadcast. And which band has just been remixed by Advisory Circle? Seeland. And which band did the members of Seeland used to play with? (You can see this coming, can't you?) Broadcast. And who designs the covers of Seeland records? Julian House.

And here are the most interesting questions of all: Which band has another Ghost Box entity, The Focus Group, just released a collaborative EP with? Broadcast. And who is the human being hiding behind the name The Focus Group? Julian House. And which label is it on? Warp. (I cannot confirm that Julian House also designed the cover but the bookmakers have stopped taking odds on that.)

It is an interesting record, the Broadcast / Focus Group one. (It's called "Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age", which is another very Ghost Box kind of name.) Some of us don't agree with the accepted wisdom that Broadcast have in some way "gone off" over the course of the last couple of records. Some of us will go to our graves smiling as the voice of Trish Keenan floats around in our head. They have "changed", yes, but change is not necessarily bad. Some of us have been waiting rather longer than we would have liked for a new Broadcast record (assuming, or hoping, all the while that there would be one). Well, this is not the new Broadcast record. Although at times you might be forgiven for thinking that it was. Actually, it is a bit like one of those optical-illusion puzzles where, the more you try to see one thing you see something else, and the more you try to see that other thing the more you see the thing you were trying to look at earlier. So, if I try to listen to this as a Broadcast record all I can hear is Ghost Box. If I try to listen to it as a Ghost Box record, all I can hear is Broadcast. It isn't a Broadcast record, but it isn't really not a Broadcast record either. And it's not a Ghost Box record, but it's not really not a Ghost Box record either. It's all rather vexing. I dare say that over time this disjunction will wear off. I'm curious as to what will then reveal itself.

And then there is Roj. He has just now landed in my in-tray and so I feel unable to comment on what he has on offer, yet. It strikes me, on a couple of listens, as less interested in any kind of song structure and more interested in impressions and fleeting effects. I like it. I formed the view, while walking yesterday morning alongside the golf course and dodging an enormous tractor-scraper that impinged on the usual tranquility, that it is in some way a mixture of, say, Delia Darbyshire and Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" (the latter, yes, is a bit of a surprise, and perhaps a bit of a stretch). I may have more to say about both of these records as I grow into them. Stay tuned. Or, given that we are talking about Ghost Box, perhaps stay just slightly de-tuned.

We're Only In It For The Money

Are we witnessing the death of cricket, not only as we know it but as it has been played since the days of W G Grace?

Just asking.

Song of the day

"Lady Eleanor", by Lindisfarne. This is my next most recent obsession. I can't stop listening to it, and when I can't be listening to it I can't get it out of my head. I know it is included in Darren's List, but I first heard it one weekend recently when we had the 1969 UK Top 40 on random, and I thought it was Kevin Ayers (getting it mixed up with another Eleanor). I had long ago formed the impression that Lindisfarne were English folkies in the style of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, probably from the similarities of their names (just like Adrienne had assumed that Massive Attack were heavy metal) but I may have been wrong: were they actually more sympathetic to the Cambridge prog scene? (Ayers again.) At points it is actually like an English "Horse With No Name". Further research reveals the song was written by Alan Hull, two of whose songs I found on the Internet many moons ago and instantly fell in love with. But beyond that I know nothing.

Hey, Kids! Punk Rock!

The New Yorker is opening its archive to all comers, one issue at a time, for one week at a time. As you know, there is nothing I like more than turning the pages of an old copy of the New Yorker. The most recent one online is the issue of 28 November 1977. Let's look at the Goings On About Town section, specifically the listing for CBGB & OMFUG:

Punk-rock bands on the bandstand; punk-rock-band entourages in the audience -- an interesting jumble of torn T-shirts, dirty sneakers, rear-guard platform shoes, jeans, feathered boas, slicked-down hair, leather, and a wholesome flannel shirt or two. Monday is showcase night. The music usually begins after nine-thirty.

Platform shoes? Really? And was that Mike Watt, visitin' from the West Coast, in the flannel shirt?

Separated at birth?

What appears to be a "new" four-track EP by The Bats (and what a fine collocation of words that is) landed on eMusic this week. It's called "Don't You Rise". As far as I can gather, it is a few songs recorded in the long gap between their last two albums. The quality is high. Something that sounds like Alastair Galbraith's violin makes a welcome appearance. When The Bats are in good form there is nothing better.

But there is something familiar-looking about the cover: compare this with this.

Coincidental I'm sure, but in a year in which the Old Guard have fully proved their worth yet again (here we are talking not just The Bats and Sonic Youth, but also The Clean and Yo La Tengo), it's funny that two of them come up with practically the same cover concept.

Song of the day

"The Greys", by Frightened Rabbit. It was Man Like Raisbeck who first put me onto Frightened Rabbit. It has taken me a while to actually hear them. I don't know if "The Greys" is at all representative of them, but of all the (many) bands presently channelling the sound of early 1980s Dunedin, it is only Frightened Rabbit that have put me in mind of The Verlaines, one of the lesser known mainstays of that scene, but whose "Juvenilia" compilation album, if you want my opinion, is as solid as anything by heavy hitters like The Clean, The Bats, The Chills. Hats off.

YouTube of the day

Watch (an almost visible) Rob Snarski singing "This One Eats Souls", accompanied only by Chris Abrahams on piano. Now that's quality.

What is French for "Announcement"?

I have heard the new Air album. I know I have been burned before, many times, calling out the greatness of a record after one listen, only to eat my words later. So I might as well do it again. This is a very good album. Like, very, very good. Like, "Moon Safari" good. Like, "Talkie Walkie" good. Trust me. Just this once.

What we did on our holidays

Note: the third photo, you need to look very closely or right-click it onto a new page. It shows an echidna that found us while some of us were fishing. It followed us along the riverbank, and then it followed us up to the top of the riverbank. The little buggers can move remarkably quickly. We had camera-battery trouble or we may have been able to get a better shot. It wasn't shy at all.

Other highlights:

Watching the AFL Grand Final in the bar of the Empire Hotel, Wahgunyah, with plenty of a particular type of untranslatable Australian humour (dry as dust) as accompaniment -- especially towards the end of the game, when the locals were well lubricated. I had looked deep within myself, as you do when you don't support either side, in the minutes before the opening siren, and found that I actually wanted Geelong to win. The locals were firmly in the St Kilda camp, as were our camping companions, so I kept quiet. For the most part. But I am glad the Cats won, even though in saying that I have to acknowledge the pain of the many Saints fans of our acquaintance. Sorry, guys.

Seeing a fairly old and clunky four-wheel drive with a sticker that said "Victoria: a great place to live" and, below that, "Unless you are autistic". I wanted to find the driver to ask what was behind the sticker, as it is something we have a personal stake in, having autism in the family and intending, at some point down the track, to move back to Victoria. But we got distracted by other things and the vehicle disappeared when we weren't looking.

Sitting around an actual campfire telling stories. With and without marshmallows.

Downside: having to take with me a ball and chain, in the form of a laptop and wireless dongle to "allow" me to hose down a couple of work-related fires that sprang up an hour after we booked our trip, which we did, unusually for us, on the spur of the moment.

Maybe we should do that sort of thing more often.

Song of the day

"Life From A Window", by The Jam. It is twenty or more years since I last listened to "This Is The Modern World". I am struck by how big the sound is: possibly this is a result of a good remastering job, possibly because what I was listening to 20 years ago was a copy of a worn vinyl LP taped onto a low-end cassette tape, probably a TDK AD90. In the intervening two decades I had also entirely forgotten this song. It doesn't appear on any Jam compilation of my acquaintance, and yet it is a lovely song. Not within a bull's roar of "punk", more Kinks (think "Days") than Sex Pistols or, to use a Mod against Mod comparison, more Kinks than, say, The Action. Paul Weller, for all his Angry Young Man stance, always had a way with a good tune. I think that is why I, unlike some, had no problem with the final Jam album and Weller's subsequent reemergence with The Style Council. They may have been lightweight musically (actually they weren't: when I saw them live Mick Talbot's organ was frequently only a couple of degrees away from being toppled over by the furiousness of his playing) but they were creating a style of music that nobody else was brave enough to go near (or, if they did, to do justice to). A bit like this song, really.