Hard to figure out what purpose was served by making this an “internet EP”; the steps necessary to get access to the audio stream were apparently complicated enough that they went awry when attempted on my computer, so a friend of mine passed along mp4s. It’s not earthshattering, but it also has none of the album’s putrid condescension or production mistakes (and, I guess, none of the big choruses written for Liz by the Matrix). What I really don’t get is, if she was okay with including a few songs from the Michael Penn sessions on the album, why not these instead of the ones she used?

That rare beast, a record in the ambient vein that I feel like I really can just leave on in the background, trusting it to grab my attention more firmly when something interesting is about to happen. I don’t know or care much about the semiotics of country music that they’re playing with so this could be much richer than I realize (or just as easily more vapid, I guess). Actually, even when the effects aren’t meant to be ‘ambient’, I think plunderphonic stuff like this really benefits from sort of having the listener eavesdrop, mimicking the overlapping nature of sounds heard while walking down the street (or whatever) rather than foregrounding the bright shiny spices between samples the way Negativland often seems to.

Short, considered version: a depressing mess, though it probably suffers even more from indecision than from pandering.

Long, unconsidered (first listen) version: here.

Music composed entirely on a Game Boy. I’d be curious to listen to some actual video game music from the era when this hardware was created to see if it was ever this dense, because I’m really enjoying Bit Shifter’s stuff. Especially check out his version of “The Entertainer” at the beginning of part 2 of the live set he posted.

The Blue Aeroplanes’ lead singer has lifted instrumental tracks from seven other bands (not sure what or how — the bands are listed on the back, but for example I don’t recognize the music credited to REM) to perform poems over. I don’t think there’s any other musician whose settings of poetry I would be too interested in, let alone fork over 17 pounds sterling for, but this ranges from good to triumphant. The second half consist of already-released Blue Aeroplanes tracks (all still other people’s poetry) but two of them were b-sides and you can’t hear the rocking version of Sylvia Plath’s “The Applicant” often enough, so I’m satisfied. And it came in thick, elaborate packaging that I’m bowled over to see created for a run of 50 measly copies.

This actually makes my body ache, for reasons I don’t quite understand. I’m put irretrievably in mind of early Everything But The Girl… maybe if they’d never gotten into dance music but instead had in the end been revived by very subtle touches of ‘02 sad-rock. If I can get past the physical discomfort (or if I just turn out to be coming down with something) I could see myself listening to this a LOT. Oddly, though the bassist/vocalist’s Thorn-y voice is a huge part of the appeal, I do like the few tracks where her standard-issue indie-voiced male bandmate sings lead almost as much.

The one thing this quietly confident band just can’t do is name things: themselves, their album, their songs. From the outside of the CD case you’d think these guys sounded like Bunnygrunt and were trying to paper over laziness with cutesy baby grammar.

(There’s some second other singer, maybe another Brit but from the C86 crowd, who Esperanza Spalding sounds like, and it’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t place it.)

It blows my mind that anyone really wants to listen to a “one riddim” album like this — i.e. a sequence of 12 different people toasting over the same digital background (which, it must be pointed out, is already pretty repetitive when it’s only three minutes long).

I wonder if Sean Paul’s career in the US has been affected by people having the subliminal preconception in the back of their heads that he is either Puffy Combs or the Pope.

I can’t say what would make someone listen to this accordion album as opposed to any other, but it does remind me pleasingly of France, and the one track with vocals (Pfeifer’s? who knows? not eMusic subscribers) predictably makes me wish the whole thing had them.

I’ve seen so many people roll their eyes about this band that I was curious to hear them. There’s nothing objectionable about them in themselves; I just share my friends’ alarm that this might be getting any particular attention. I heard a lot of bands that sounded kind of like this in the mid-90s, and yet I’d like to think their general dullness would be clear to me even if I hadn’t, as I assume a lot of the people hyping them didn’t.

The last thing I expected after four (?) Holiday Flyer albums and the band’s breakup into two different outfits was that John Conley and Verna Brock would make an album that rocked — it rocks in a peppy indiepop way, but I mean, that’s fine; it would be weird if they turned into Black Sabbath or something. Catchy and joyous. I now suspect they just didn’t have their sealegs yet for the first Oranges album, which mostly just sailed past me.