It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fish-Men.

And with this jolly tune I bid you goodnight and sweet dreams with the smell of salmon.

Since not everyone understands Swedish — this is a design flaw of unmeasurable magnitudes — here’s another new Hardcore Troubadours song. This time an original called Sin City Serenade and in English. 

The friends to whom I drew that album cover a few weeks ago have now been in and recorded things. This is an Ebba Grön cover which is never a bad thing.

Theoretical Girl doing a cover on The Fine Arts Showcase’s Heaven To Me. In a way it might have been a mistake to listen to this, in other ways it wasn’t.

Laura Veirs — Where Gravity Is Dead

The problem with only eight gig of space in the mp3 player is that there’s this rotation. Everything I want can’t fit. This is also a strength as I’m forced to shuffle around and remove things in order to add new albums. There’s no room for anything I don’t want to listen to right now. Being a pre-cog is hard work though.

So due to the trip I’ve filled it with things that reminds me of autumn and winter. Laura Veirs is winter for me. Long scarves and the snow going crunch underneath the boots. Wind scratching the cheeks, the nose slightly numb. I don’t think there’s snow where I’m going but still… Winter’s still here.

Jed Whedon and the Willing — Tricks On Me.

Sometimes I think I hate the Whedon family. Mostly I like them, even when they’re awkward and do things that are a bit ill-thought out (ehrm, far too much of Dollhouse)  but… You know. There’s too much talent in that family, leave some for the rest of us will ya?

Sandy Denny & Thea Gilmore — Glistening Bay.

While Sandy Denny never recorded these, the words are her’s and this collaboration of ten songs is damn pretty as well as very affecting. The music written by Thea Gilmore feels true to them both. There are musical hues from both Fairport Convention and Sandy’s solo works but at the same time the melodies unmistakably are those of Thea’s. You can hear it on the guitars — sometimes more, sometimes less. But it’s there.

Carbon/Silicon — It’s Not Over Yet.

It’s so easy to get bogged down with punk rock from the period when you first discovered it and lament that music like that isn’t there any more and scoff at everything older or newer. I’ve been guilty of this myself, just as much as I’ve been guilty of too much musical archaeology — digging further down in the soil and not looking up as much as I ought to.

This though, it’s both old and new. From… 2006 I think and Mick Jones can still beat everyone when it comes to melodies.

Kate Rusby — Let Them Fly

I was going to write something here but fuck it. Just listen instead. It’s better that way.

Anna Ternheim - Bow Your Head

Of course it’s a risky thing to go where your music takes you. Anna Ternheim went to record in Nashville and despite that it doesn’t sound like Nashville, I’ve read about people being dismayed. You know, the usual “Why did you turn your back on your loyal fans? Why?!” As if the fans are what decides what directions an artist is supposed to take.

Me, I like the new album. The previous one — Leaving on a Mayday — was better and excellent and I love that one to pieces. But to expect the same thing about the new one would have been silly. It’s a bit more like her first two in tone and texture.

Then again, I abandoned the preconceived notion that country must be bad years ago. Sometimes the songs on The Night Visitor have that same feeling as Greg Edmonson’s Firefly soundtrack. That’s not a bad thing. At all.

Cats Laughing — Black Knight’s Work.

They appeared as themselves in Excalibur #5 as well as the Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem as Kitty Pryde’s favourite band. Obviously mostly drawn without references, the singer Emma Bull is the one most recognisable. This song was written by the late great author John M Ford.

Perhaps posting music can be used as an example that people do learn. There’s more assumed readers now than before but earlier I could have lots of more people who listened to the music — I think some went up to a few hundred. But on the same time, it can also be used as an example that people do not learn. The last time I posted a The Gilmore song it had zero, nought, none listens and here I post another one with It All Gets Buried In the End.

My argument though is that it’s good music and some of you are just plain in the wrong. Learning the wrong behaviour is… lamentable at best and a downright shame when it means good music is ignored. Until you relearn there will be Thea songs.

I haven’t written about today, and there’s been these reasons for it. Self-censorship and I don’t want to be more annoying than I am. There’s too much things I take personally and at the same time I assume — there’s no basis for this — that others do it too and that I disappoint them. I think there’s small amount of paranoia too that springs from abandonment issues, not much really but it’s there (and I don’t want it to but some things are hard to get rid of).

There’s this line in this song, one of many, “I will think of all the ways next time I will try not to let you down / I thought that I’d live long enough / that the light would come shining through” and it feels true you know? Despite that it’s not. First off, I’m not that sure what I’m doing can be called living. And deep down in my mind I’m not sure I do let people down except when I occasionally fuck up. It happens just not as often as I imagine. 

Don’t This Look Like The Dark? It does, but that’s not the whole world. A flash-light would be nice though.

Up the country: I like that it takes the three Americans, two Englishmen and a Welsh from the Waco Brothers in order to make some damn fine drunk tavern music. Of course, I’m partial since two of the members are also in the Mekons — objectively the best fucking band on earth. This might be more down the country than up, but that’s how it is: “the Fox River flows wherever it wants to go / past prefabricated homes, geodesic domes.”

You know that old saying “if you don’t have anything nice to say it’s best not to say anything at all?” I don’t think that’s true in most cases¹, but I do think at times it’s appropriate. Like when writing about music. There are lots and lots of bad music out there but you know what? Everybody know this. Writing about how bad the bad is, it’s the music fan equivalent of Dane Cook. Don’t be Dane Cook. Please. Instead try and spread the good stuff. I honestly think that would make a better difference.

As a kid, and some of you would probably be offended if I said a specific age because to you that’s not a kid, I listened quite a lot on New York punk and hardcore. I don’t do that often now, I’m too restless I guess. I want to discover new music. Anyway, me as kid would have been appalled by what I listen to now. Me as a kid had not the biggest scope of taste, occasionally this meant that I was a moron. Me as a kid would not have liked the Unthanks, me today though, I think their Last is one of the best albums of the year. This song from that album is called Close the Coalhouse Door.

_{1) But on the other hand, if I did believe in “don’t say anything mean” I would never be able to write about myself here. I’m sure some would like that, to have me just focus on inane pictures but fuck you. I need this as therapy.}