I’ve been playing with time lapse lego builds and this spring I created a new one.

More info on this particular set is available here (Lego.com product page). Songs: Meet me in the Basement by Broken Social Scene (used during the time lapse build) and Entrance Song by The Black Angels (used when showing the features of the model).

This week David performed in his first school Musical. Here’s the video!

I have to tell you I was a bit stunned when I heard about Alex Chilton’s passing yesterday.

He’s probably the most important American musician you’ve never heard of.

I can’t do a better job describing him than the words spoken on the floor of the House of Representatives in his honor.

The first time I ever really figured out who he was, was because I’m such a huge replacements fan. When they sang:

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes ‘round

They sing “I’m in love. What’s that song?

I’m in love with that song.”

It was probably no more than a week later that I was listening to his solo albums, and his Big Star records. No more than a month later I was a huge fan.

I’m certainly going to miss him, and my heart goes out to his family.

First of all let me be clear.

• The Beatles are one of the best rock bands of their era, and definately on the list of most influential rock bands of all time.
• They had an incredible work ethic, world class musicianship (yes even on Drums) and a knack for relevant, complex yet accessible song writing and lyrics.
• They dealt with fame well and effectively used the attention of the world without becoming irrelevant and cliche (though media attention was kinder and gentler then).
• They grew and changed showing an uncommon courage and versatility that few bands before or since have been even close to.
• They were very aware of the current social issues and spoke to them without losing sight of their own perspectives.

So I like, respect and am incredibly impressed with what The Beatles were able to accomplish.

I am appreciative that there’s at least two if not three demographic generations that can, and arguably should, be brought up to speed on what an incredible rock band The Beatles were.

I also have an appetite for something new, and I’m not an audiophile, and apart from noticing “Wow you can really hear Paul McCartney’s amazing bass lines better on these mixes” I don’t have an ear for what’s so much better. I guess if I still played vinyl albums, it would be worth picking up new ones, so there is that.

I also appreciate that video games are an important medium now, and The Beatles Rock Band promises to be very profitable (and even looks fun to play).

Having said all that, I’ve had enough of The Beatles. I have been over saturated with the Beatles since I bought and played The Soundtrack to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Movie (Featuring The Bee Gees) to death in 8th Grade. A band I still think was amazingly talented¹.

The Beatles were great, if you’ve never listened to them, please do. Get Revolver at least and play it non-stop for a few days, it’s amazing. Frankly all their records are at least good, and starting with Rubber Soul onward they are all really great.

While your catching up, or looking back, please bear in mind that many many people in the world have already discovered and rediscovered this amazing musical act, probably a few times, so we don’t all need to catch up with this whole The Beatles re-re-re-re-re-release thing. Again, if you’ve never really noticed how amazing songs by this fine band are, well you should take some time to sit down and figure that out for yourself. But please don’t talk to me about it. I get it.

That’s all I have to say. Thanks for your time.

Oh and one more thing, you all can blame Yoko Ono if you like, but really it’s pretty small minded. Do you think so little of the bands commitment to excellence that one members spouse could really break them up? They were done, that was it, now move on. She’s probably a very nice person.

¹Yes you read that right, The Bee Gees were amazingly talented, and unlike The Beatles were still performing together when I was in 8th grade.

At that point in my life I figured out:

Wow, the Beatles are revered to the point where people that could otherwise record a new album or play new songs can master a Beatles song or three and people will like that better.

Years later I figured out that the Bee Gee’s at that point in their career were pretty much over and that doing a movie musical of Sergeant Peppers was essentially them sucking very badly.

I do firmly believe that, despite being inextricably associated with that unfortunate Disco business, they really were amazingly talented. Further The Bee Gees were a good enough band that they could have gotten a whole lot braver than wrapping themselves in one of the more critically acclaimed Beatles records. It would have been better had the Bee Gees actually tried creating an album that wasn’t “disco” but instead was really new. Certainly the Beatles bravely went in new directions during their career.

We had a nice Labor Day weekend. This video sums it up nicely.

Some highlights:

Saturday

we had a nice visit with Emerson a friend of David’s from pre-school. We went to the Children’s Museum of Phoenix, and had lunch at American Taco, a new place for us which we really enjoyed. After lunch we played around the house and were joined by our neighbors Mark and Caroline, who we’ve not played with enough lately. We swam in the pool Saturday night (video at the start of this post) and David and Laura went to bed early from our busy day. I stayed up and watched VaTech in a valiant effort against Alabama. Good game, too bad the Hokies lost.

Sunday

Started out with my attending a lovely service at the Church of the Beatitudes. Some of the members of the bell choir performed at the 9:00 AM service and sounded great. After the service I was chatting with our vocal soloist Stephanie and she mentioned that if I wanted to sing with them at the 10:30 service, they would love it, as they were missing their bass voice. I really like the piece they were singing, Lord I Know I Been Changed so I jumped at the chance. It was really fun to sing with a small group A Capella, first time I’ve done that.

While I was at church Laura played with David as he created a TV set out of a cardboard banker’s box that was just amazing, complete with a remote control and crackers all made out of cardboard and decorated with magic markers. I’m going to post a video of him providing instructions for use later this week.

After I came home from church and we had a fun Sunday afternoon of Star Wars Lego - The Complete Saga on the Wii, more swimming and a few errands.

Monday - Labor Day

I like to grill on holiday weekends so we had Laura’s parents over this evening. Most of the day we tidied up the house and prepared for our guests. David had some nice play time while Laura and I took care of the chores. The barbecue was alot of fun. It was great to have Laura’s parents over.

All weekend

It was just awesome weather for a three day weekend. One of the nicest Labor Day weekends for weather in the 17 years I’ve been living in Phoenix. Started out with a great Monsoon storm Saturday morning and stayed in the high 90’s or low 100’s for the rest of the weekend. Started to peak back up into the 105+ range on Monday afternoon.

So today I was playing with the Last.FM visualization service at LastGraph and I produced one of their Poster graphics.

For a Last.fm user like me, it’s really an interesting project.

Here’s the graphic representation of what I was listening to over a couple months around the begining of the year.

see full size image

Just because I’m blown away by what this band is about, I’m going to start with this before I talk about what’s been happening around my life lately.

Anamanaguchi is an 8 bit hardcore punk band that plays music they create with hacked Nintendo NES hardware.

I’m going to repeat that, because it bears repeating.

Anamanaguchi

Is an 8 bit hardcore punk band that plays music they created with hacked Nintendo NES hardware.

They sell their “album” directly from their label site for $5 using Google Checkout. And they allow anyone that wants to to embed the following multimedia version of their album anywhere on the interwebs. What’s stunningly, joyfully and aesthetically exciting about all of this is how it is simultaneously nostalgic, contemporary, and completely different.

Enjoy.

It’s been a pretty interesting first half of 2009. Halfway through it seems, at a national level, that 2009 is living up to being a year of the really hard work that creates lasting change. We’ll see if we manage to do it without furthering the empty saber rattling and mind-numbing hate that is the “culture wars”. Don’t you have to have a culture worth fighting for to have a culture war? Seems like we’re starting to get into cultural scorched earth territory.

On a more personal note, this year has been a year of really dramatic change. My work continues to challenge, surprise and puzzle me. I like puzzles so it’s been pretty cool.

David is getting ready for Kindergarten and amazes me daily with his maturity. Wednesday morning this week he announced, after he put on his shoes.

more...

The video is great, but the way they made the video is also very interesting. Definitely one of the most interesting fund raising ideas I’ve ever seen.

Check out the rest of the videos for Playing For Change: Song Around the World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo. I may even buy the DVD.

This is old news to those who get to see me frequently, but for the rest of you….

The Phoenix Chorale (formerly the Phoenix Bach Choir) has won another Grammy. This time for Best Small Ensemble Performance for their album The Spotless Rose.

They were also up for Best Classical Album of the Year (again!) and 2 others.

Joel Rinsema (who Charles Bruffy mentions in his acceptance speech) is also the Choir Director at the Church of the Beatitudes. Three other members of the Phoenix Chorale sing with our church choir. It’s sure an honor for me to sing next to such talented voices and under such talented direction.

Tags: Phoenix, Music, Choir

So for the last two and a half years a close friend of mine and I have been working on a labor of love that is finally live.

It’s called Figment, and it’s a game for people that like to make up fake bands.

It was certainly a lot of work creating it, and now that it’s in actual use, it’ll be nice to see where it goes from here.

Now I just have to get all my fake bands into it

When I first joined the choir at the Church of the Beatitudes, our son David wasn’t born yet. We had just become members of the church, having decided to regularly go to church.

The first year in the choir I was not really sure what I was doing. I’d never sung before, but could read music well. Within two months of joining we sang the Requiem as we do every year for the All Saints Day service.

Well 4 years later, I’m much more comfortable singing in general, and certainly comfortable singing the Durufle again. This weekend we preformed the Durufle requiem again.

It was quite fun and I think the best the bass section has sounded since I started in the choir.

Seriously, you must do this in your lifetime.

I've seem him 4 times and he keeps getting better.

If you like Blues, Stunning Acoustic Guitar, Even More Stunning Lyrics.. well what the heck, just take my word for it ok?

Stunning Acoustic Guitar

Buy an album by him and listen to it. Or you could take one of his songwriting classes at McCabe's Guitar Shop.

Stunning Lyrics

one of my favorites is

though I've loved you for a long time, it can't be denied, someone sees the dreams we hide, the dreams we hide

From the song Hidden Love

what the heck

What else you going to do? Watch American Idol? Go see a show! Go see this guy specifically.. but really, shouldn't you be going to shows more anyway?

I had to study for a month to go to a rock concert. I mean, every day before the concert, my musical selections were predetermined, all so I could feel "ready" to go to a rock concert. This is probably the antithesis of rock-n-roll.

Let me explain. My husband is very musically inclined. I like music, but not as much as he does. He prefers music so much that he won't wake up to an alarm, but he will wake up to music. He will also wake up to me yelling, but that's not very melodic. However, it is song-like, in that it has several loud choruses, spaced about 7 minutes apart.

So, when the husband's new favorite band The Hold Steady was coming to town, on his birthday, we made plans. The plans included lining up Grandma for overnight babysitting, and booking the "Romance Package" at a local resort. So I had a quite a bit invested in the evening. I figured I'd better enjoy the music as well. So to do that, I had to listen to it. A lot.

My husband aided and abetted this effort by giving me an iPod Nano for Mother's Day. (We have a three-year-old son, so big ticket purchases are rare. Except if it is for him.) "You've needed an iPod for a while," he said. By chance (not), the first download included two Hold Steady albums.

So that's what I listened to, every day. In the car, Hold Steady. Doctor's waiting room, Hold Steady. At work, Hold Steady. At first my response was, "This is very loud and I don't understand the words." (Yes, I'm one of those type of music listeners.)

After looking up the words, I started to appreciate the songs. At first, I thought it was odd, since the band are guys in their 30s, singing about kids in their teens getting high and trying to deal with the Catholic version of God in Minneapolis.

Then I started to feel the common elements. I've been a teenager, I've been in my 30s. I grew up Catholic in the Midwest, and some of my family lives in Minneapolis, so I'm familiar with many of the local place references. I haven't ever gotten high, though. But I have gotten drunk. I can also appreciate a good turn of phrase, such as, "Shoes and socks, baby, socks and shoes. We spent the night last night in Newport News."

The night of the show arrives. We get to the hotel and drink the cheap champaign we get as part of the "Romance Package". We also enjoy the very large "executive" suite, complete with huge conference table. We were upgraded, since it is the dead of summer in Phoenix, and not much is happening in town. The hotel is literally 1 mile from our house, and I chose it because I wanted the fun to start as soon as possible when we left our driveway.

Many people that knew me in High School, especially my senior year, identify me with my enthusiasm for the music of The Police. They are still a band I enjoy today. I firmly believe that they are the best pop band that has ever existed.

I saw the Police live only once. By the time I became a fan they were quite popular, and I was only old enough to go to the concert by myself on the Synchronicity tour in 1983. A friend of mine Eric and I waited in line for two days to get the tickets. We ended up in the 13th row pretty much right in front of Sting's third of the stage.

You'll notice the Ticket cost $13.50. That's right. $13.50. An equivalent ticket to the upcoming police concert will likely cost you $325.00 (because you pretty much have to buy a membership in the "Police Fan Club" whatever that is) to get a shot at a seat this close.

Over the last two weeks I've received numerous emails from friends and family asking me about The Police Reunion Tour and if I'm excited. Frankly I'm a bit ashamed of what they are doing to the idea of The Police.

There's not much to say about how this Reunion Tour is at odds with what The Police were than to look at the ticket price.

$13.50 at their creative apex. $325 for all you kids today that wish you had a chance to see them 24 years ago.

I really enjoyed how they would tour Latin America when no other rock bands would go. I liked that, even if it ends up being "empty gestures" from a famous bunch of guys, they would try to cast attention onto the plight of the worlds poor in a constructive way. "One World, Not Three". I really dug that they were everyone one of them fantastic at their respective talents.

I can easily imagine seeing them on this tour. I would attend in ernest and forgive them the passage of time. Returned to his lead vocals and bass role, would in my mind instantly erase my sadness at the ridiculous turn Sting took his solo career in. My admiration for Andy Summers creativity, adventurousness and flat out courage as a guitar player would be more congenial when I would inevitably compare my own extra pounds with Andy Summers' aging frame. Probably the most amusing part about my imaginary attendance would be my discussing with anyone who would listen, that of all the band members, the girls we attended with were unanimous in their assessment that Stewart was the hottest member of the band.

Yet, the price of the ticket, such a simple thing.. makes it impossible for me to imagine any of that occuring. I can certainly afford to buy something that costs $325, but the exorbitant price devalues the show I saw and the Band I remember in a fundamental way.

I wish them all the best tour, and I'm sure a generation of fans that never got the chance to see them will have a great time. I'm certainly not going to resent that new fans can see such a great live band, and they will be great. Nor will I claim the band I saw was "better" because bands change and grow and it's just never the same river twice.

I guess the reason I'm not going to see the police is it would feel like buying a new memory to replace a very dear memory, and especially at the price, it's just not worth it.

I have an old post that included a compressed archive of a Wilco concert a friend of mine recorded a few years ago. Well I was showing someone the fun, and we noticed that the archive was corrupted, and that Windows has a bit of a fit with Tar.Gz files. So I’ve updated that post to link to the show compressed in the more Window’s friendly Zip format.

So blah, blah, blah.. here’s the new downloadable Wilco concert (note it’s ~94MB).

So, I love music. I don't have the time as a working adult to focus on it like I could as a young person. I miss that. One of my good friends started a music group, of which I'm a member. It's very fun.

One of the things we do is recommend bands and specific albums to each other. One of these bands that I've gotten in to directly from this experience is The Old 97s.

Most of the time I really enjoy just about any album that has real heart in it. In fact I can't tell you the last time I really hated an album and wasn't impressed with it's bravery and or commitment at the same time. The opposite of love is not hate, after all. It's indifference.

What really get's me excited about a band is how much a specific song captures me. It's that one song that turns me on to a band and then the whole thing opens up from there. The Old 97s have written such a song.

more...

I’ve been listening to chill electronica while I work for a couple years now, and it’s kind of hard to find good stuff in the genre, at least not without investing heavily in mix cd labels like Ministry of Sound et. al.

Lately I’ve been jamming to a podcast from Chill Syndicate and I highly recommend it.

I just bought a new album called Dog Problems from a local Phoenix band called The Format. It’s really, really bright pop, which I don’t hear very much these days. It’s sort of somewhere between Ben Folds Five’s first Album and Jellyfish’s first album. It’s quite fun.

There’s a band a family member of mine is in that I’m really enjoying. Maritime. I put a song on my mix cd from last year off of there Glass Floor album. This year they released an album called We, The Vehicles. I like it well enough to recommend it. Eric Axelson, is my sister in law Kristin’s Brother, so that makes him..my .. umm.. he’s related to me somehow. You may know him as the bass player from the now defunct Dismemberment Plan. The rest of the band is from The Promise Ring. Anyway, very poppy, very well written, great vocals. It’s really a very, very good album.

What else is new for me musically?

Collin Herring - The Other Side of Kindness. Released last year, just picked it up. Very eclectic but I really enjoy it.

Golden Smog - Another Fine Day. Kind of an all-star band, but interesting stuff!

The Long Winters - Putting the Days to Bed. I really am turning into a fan of this Barsuk label band.

I don't know why, but I guess about the third or fourth time I met Travis Morrison I realized I was being rude to him, and it was too late to stop.

After that I just kind of wrote it off, because, well... I don't know. I guess it's that sometimes in life there are some people you know you will only talk to very briefly, and you are pretty sure they are very different from you in terms of life experiences, and you just sort of don't click.. and then you are kind of frustrated about that, and then you try to figure out what the hell that's about and you just step all over yourself. So now you're embarrassed and if you mentioned to the other person, you know they'd think you were crazy, cause all of this happened in your head. You wind up pissed at yourself and you just want to forget the whole thing.

more...

Today Warren Zevon passed away. On the internet there are lots of posts from people remembering his talent, his voice, his passions.

I remember when Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School came out. A friend of mine played it for me and I thought it was ok. Not great, not bad, just ok.

It wasn’t till years later that I really came to appreciate why Warren Zevon was different, why he mattered and why, to my surprise, I really liked his music.

I picked up his anthology a few years ago. I listened to it a few times. I liked it, the music is good. It’s mostly his more popular tunes (I can’t call them “hits” because only a few could be considered such). Anyway even now when I listen to just his music, I come away with the same reaction I had when I first listened to “Bad Luck Streak in Dancing Class”. It’s ok, not great, not bad.

But Warren Zevon, well he was great., not ok, not bad but great.. The guy had a voice, a creative courage and willingness to live his life on his terms that was very admirable. He wasn’t a ‘celebrity’ he was a musician, an observer of life, and an iconoclastic ‘excitable boy’. I’m going to miss him.

John Viega was nice enough to share it with me (which is ok because Wilco allows fans to tape their live shows and distribute copies of them).

I’ve gone ahead and created a tarball of the whole thing. It’s in Apple’s AAC format so you’ll need a Mac running OSX and iTunes 4 or greater to listen to it. The sound is surprisingly good considering:

• Constitution hall is a pretty noisy venue
• John was ‘toward the back’
• He was using a small portable recorder¹

It’s certainly good enough quality to enjoy though. He said it sounds as good as it does cause he turned the bass filter on. In fact he said it sounds better then he was hearing it in his seat.

You can download the whole concert here. It’s ~94 MB so you should have a fast connection.

¹ It was recorded with a Sony DAT Walkman (don’t make them anymore) and Core Audio microphones with a Bass Roll Off Filter.

If you haven’t read a review of The Thorns cd go read one of those now. I don’t care which one.

Many of the reviews I think are spot on. It’s a good album, it’s a refreshing sound, and a very promising collaboration. Not all the songs are good, but the ones that are, are great. I agree with all that.

What’s nice about the album is that it’s so damn pretty. It’s rare enough to find musicians that can really write both great melodies and good lyrics. All three of these guys have demonstrated that in their solo careers. Together they are potentially much better then their solo gigs. One thing that I will say against the album is it sounds like they’re not quite completely sure where they want to go. If they figure that out, and keep the song crafting up to this level, they could get really huge.

Lots of (well deserved) comparisons to CSN later, it makes you wonder why more people don’t get airplay for simply pretty music. (These guys may be getting airplay actually, as I’m an old fart now, I don’t listen to radio much.)

If you like the Jayhawks, CSN, or bands with great harmonies and acoustic guitars, you should check this one out.

Other albums I’m enjoying this week:

• Clothesline Revival - Of My Native Land. A jazz, electronic, folk/roots album a friend lent me.
• Tin Hat Trio - The Rodeo Eroded. Amazingly another jazz, electronic, folk/roots album (how could there be more than one!) that I bought cause i enjoyed Clothesline Revival so much. This one is a little more jazz oriented.

For my birthday a couple weeks ago I got a very nice surprise from a good friend of mine. Guadalcanal Diary’s formerly out of print first two albums have (finally!) been rereleased on CD. The albums are called: Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man and Jamboree and are very good. In fact the first one ranks right up there as one of my favorite albums of the eighties.

Order it today!

At the beginning of the movie the song “Nature Boy” is sung.

There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy

With the great lyric:

the greatest thing, you’ll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return

On the soundtrack, it’s credited to David Bowie. But I first heard it sung by Alex Chilton and Big Star. Alex Chilton is one of my favorite artists so I was wondering if it was actually written by Alex, or by David Bowie. Turns out neither of them is the original lyricist.

According to this page Eden Ahbez wrote and first performed song, and Nat King Cole made it famous.

Trey Anastasio’s solo album does not qualify as “Alternative and Punk”.

In fact I’m not sure most of the albums I’ve received with this heading were not really “rock” but I suppose I’m just not into parsing every little category the way some people are. Why do we need all these categories anyway. I don’t know a band that’s qualified as “Emo” that likes it, for example. My brother in law’s band, The Dismemberment Plan, is a good example of band that should be classified as a Rock band but isn’t.

Side note - Electronic music is the worst too. What’s the difference between Acid House and Drum N Bass? I’m sure someone out there can tell me but so what? It’s enough to make Linux Distro’s look organized. My iTunes library has I think 6 categories, and two of those are Comedy and Soundtracks (and I have about 1/3 of my CD collection in iTunes).

Trey Anastasio as neither Alternative nor Punk.. to say so, well that’s quite a stretch. So next time you are actually going to submit something to CDDB.. do us all a favor. Don’t spend much time on this. Basically if an electric guitar is involved and the album is predominantly 4/4 time.. it’s probably rock. So just call it rock and move on.

I could be wrong of course as most songs by you men involve not so much falling in love as expressing their love, which is certainly a good thing too.

At any rate Laura likes the song I Woke Up in a Car (by Something Corporate if you’re curios).

It’s a catchy little pop tune with nice crunchy chorus. Anyways I’ve heard it quite a few times as Laura really likes it. So I figured out what I think it’s about.

It’s about a young man pinpointing the moment he fell in love with America. Which is an admirable thing to be able to point to as most Americans just gradually realize they love this country and some don’t really know if they love it or not. I suppose if I was pressed for I’d say it was about more specifically about a falling in love with the idea of America. Of course, if you ask the songwriter he’d probably say it was a song about getting laid and why his parents should get off his back. Which isn’t really that much different to me, but what the hell do I know.

It is encouraging that a young band would write a song about something that didn’t involve some aspect of their lives sucking. Nice little ditty.

So Laura clued me into a song called “Heaven Right Here” by Jeb Loy Nichols (she wants it on the Birthday CD I create for her every year). Turns out the whole album is really good. Kind of a ‘roots/folk’ sound mixed with a very James Taylor vocal style.

She also likes a song on last years Trey Anastasio solo cd (Phish band leader). So I was only too happy to pick up that CD for her. It’s really good in a not quite Phishy way.

Caught this band on Letterman a few weeks back. Another Swedish band. Really solid album, "Behind the Music". It hits me as kind of a retro-album in the spirit of a sixties kind of aesthetic. Second track is really good. Still getting to know the rest of the record but no real bad songs on it and seems like it could grow on me.

Blinding glimpse of the obvious aside, I'd just thought I'd take a moment to log that "Lost In Space" is another excellent album from one of our best singer songwriters. You should buy it. In some areas it's a little quieter than her last couple efforts but where she succeeds on this one she really nails it. The Moth is my current favorite. Back to work!

So granted I’m not that up on new music anymore. And sure I’m an old fart that doesn’t ‘get’ what the kids are diggin on today. But a couple nights ago I was watching Conan (at 9:00 PM on my TiVo, I don’t stay up that late anymore) and there was a band from Detroit on called Ok Go.

It’s nice to know that there’s still a place in the world today for straight ahead Rock and Roll .

So earlier tonight I swung by Zia Records and asked if they had the album (see the kids today call them discs but to me they’re still albums), but it’s not due out till Sept. 17th. They did have, and gave me, the promo disk that has Get Over It on it (and some other track that’s not nearly as good that sort of reminds me of The Knack, and I don’t mean that in a good way). It sounds a little harder on the studio version than it did when they played it ‘live’ on Conan, but still worth a listen. I’m just glad I don’t listen to the radio as it’s entirely possible this could be one of those tracks that gets totally overplayed.

I’ve been driving Laura’s car a lot this week as she took the day off on Tuesday (she was very run down from all the travel). So I grabbed a CD from the desk to listen to and it turned out to be Change by The Dismemberment Plan.

After repeated listening I can now say this is really a pretty interesting album. The lyrics are a little weak, but the music is really inventive and Travis actually sings in tune on this album. To be fair he started doing this on the last album Emergency & I but he’s really on on this album. Now if we could just knock the lyrics to a new level…

I’m really impressed with the dynamics, and they get some wicked cool chords on this disc too. As usual the time signatures are all over the map and jammed up against each other. This time though they never go off on a rhythmic rant like they do on their other albums. On repeated listens I find myself reminded of bands that surprise me. Bands that I would have never thought the plan could remind me of (XTC, The Talking Heads) leap to mind on a couple tracks. Very nice stuff.