Beautiful. I first heard Doiron on the same Shanti Project disc that exposed me to Edith Frost and Paula Frazer; unfortunately, I still have more trouble telling the three of them apart than their (similar, sure) music can be blamed for. I think this is more wistful and legato than her other records… not sure.

It’s fantastic that Emusic occasionally licenses quality box sets by artists I’ve been curious about, but that’s also where their trademark indifference to packaging hurts most. I have no idea what I’m listening to — classic records or outtakes? A consistent group of performers or a cast of hundreds?

It’s not that I don’t listen to jazz. I, like most other people, hear lots of jazz: in movies, in stores, in ads. I don’t dislike any of it (unless you count what I think was dubbed “lite jazz”), but I also don’t know anything about it, and I tend to hear it as background. The times I’ve gone and intentionally listened to jazz, it still sounded like background. This, though… I recognize these as songs. Interesting.

Though it’s not explicit, the liner notes suggest this EP was made in the memory of someone who died young — Phelps’s sister? His cousin? Someone else? The fact that six of the seven songs are covers only makes whatever’s going on more affecting. Phelps doesn’t have to protest that words can’t express what he wants to express; that much is clear, as is the fact that he intends to carry on anyway. I hardly even care that all but one of the tracks strike me too far distended, musically, to listen to more than once. (The exception, a cover of the Go-Betweens’ “Apology Accepted”, cuts me up the same way Phelps’ last two solo albums and previous EP often did.)

A constraint that may be useful (I don’t know if I’m replicating someone else’s work here): the relation “A knows about B” induces a directed graph with characters as the nodes. The edges may then be colored or weighted according to the strength of the relation, maybe as follows.

1. A knows that a nonzero number of people fit a description which also fits B. (”I saw this guy running at top speed past the bank yesterday.”)

2. A knows that exactly one person, namely B, fits a description. (”My friend says his mom is the head booking agent for Club Katmandu.”)

3. A recognizes B.

4. A knows all public information about B.

5. A knows a secret about B.

6. A is omniscient with respect to B.

7. A is omniscient with respect to a world containing B.

And also

i. A cannot contact B.

ii. A can contact B but chooses not to.

iii. A communicates with B.

iv. A communicates with B expecting to be believed.

v. A communicates with B expecting to be deferred to.

vi. A communicates with B expecting to be obeyed.

vii. A has complete control over B.

It seems to me all 49 combinations are possible, though some offer very few narrative options; moreover, once you start looking at quadruplets (A’s relationship to B and B’s relationship to A) you get things that don’t make sense outside of a philosophy book.

As advertised (this is one of those reissues that gets people excited), a great Factory Records band captured here before they became a once-great Sarah Records band. Sounds like Joy Division, early Comsat Angels, etc. And while a few songs drag, the three seven-minute tracks aren’t the culprits.

Despite Graham Smith’s obvious fascination with hip-hop, the rap breaks on this record (all three or four of them) are shoved to the ends of songs or detached from them completely, left on as codas separated by silence from the rest of the track. Signs point to him genuinely not realizing there’s more to hip-hop than “Bring a girl on stage, make her stick her ass out / Get her back home, play Dreamcast and pass out” (in the words of Beowulf, one of the four rapper personas Smith adopts on After Mathematics) — at least, that’s a less alarming explanation than figuring that he’s engaging in full-scale Jungian projection, with hip-hop as the shadow.

Anyway. Though most of the record is in the familiar Kleenex Girl Wonder style, the great Sisqo-homage “Ain’t A Damned Thing Changed” shows Smith actually can unify his influences when he tries; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the next KGW record were unremittingly brilliant. And I like the fact that Smith’s imaginary rap crew, Seven Against Thebes, features a Flavor Flav-analogue named [Unintelligible]. But still, the boy ain’t right.

(Practical note: this “really” comes out in 2002, but can be ordered now from futurepopshop.com, who shipped my order surprisingly fast.)

Self-released record from five years ago, containing many of the same songs as her major-label bargain-bin-habitue Public. Pretty good, but not so different from Public that I needed both, nor liable to create anything like the rapture induced by Girl Versions, her piano-and-cello covers record from this summer.

Quiz: Which of the following books credited by Amazon to Diane Williams (an author recommended highly by Ben Marcus) is NOT a collection of experimental short fiction?

- The Stupefaction
- Weather Thematic Unit
- Some Sexual Success Stories
- Excitability

Not sure just what I’ve got here — it has three tracks each from Distressed Gentlefolk and A Scandal In Bohemia, the two other JBC discs Vinyl Japan just reissued. There’s almost nothing from the three (?) other early albums by the band, but the “almost” keeps it from being clearly a licensing issue. Many tracks are apparently unreleased, but aside from the draggy cover of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, none is filler. Enlightenment would be welcome.

Whether this is supposed to be a greatest-hits, a rarities collection, or some third thing, it’s a terrific CD. Even the few slow songs don’t fall into the Creation Records-style torpor that afflicted chunks of the later Jazz Butcher experience, and Pat Fish’s didacticism is in full force. He’s never condescending — it’s more like he’s very, very confused himself and thus thinks you might likewise need a refresher on why kittens are cute or drinking is fun.

Meanwhile, it still seems I like every cover of “Roadrunner” better than the original.

Another Pollard solo project, of course. For the first time, I’m glad to see how little he contributed to the making of the album — just lyrics and vocals, according to the credits. Wonder of wonders, the vocals are great; he sings differently from song to song, reviving the decisive/fragmentary aesthetic that made everyone talk about radio dials spinning when Bee Thousand was first busting out. Todd and Tim Tobias do a wonderful job with the music, too. At first blush, this seems to bear the same resemblance to grunge that Guided By Voices’s best work did to indiepop.