I love the last two David Thomas albums but I do not feel the urge to get any Pere Ubu. What does this mean? Usually when I start to love an artist I discovered (quite) late I want to get everything he/she has ever released. Not in this case. I listened to some Pere Ubu and I was never impressed. But I am with the latest David Thomas albums. Maybe he has just become much better. And nobody realised? By the way I quite like the Rocket From the Tombs pre-Ubu stuff.

Giant Sand's latest It's All Over the Map may be his 37th(?) album. Maybe the 25th including the solo albums and the albums under a different monicker I got. Probably the last. As it is the same unfocussed hodgepodge mess between improv, desert rock and Howe as usual but without the inspiration. Convertino and Burns have left and Howe is with some Danish friends plus Vic Chesnutt, John Parish and who knows whom. I hope he hasn't lost it for good.

The first Go-Betweens Send Me a Lullaby is not easy to get into neither. It has been re-released with a bonus disc. They haven't found their sound yet. I hear a band who has listened to the Talking Heads but is doing their own garage thing. Loveable dilettants.

The new David Thomas & two pale boys 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man's Chest is killer. A voice from another galaxy. Hardly any drums. A trumpet in the distance. A slow motion descent into the darkness. Going where no-one has been before. To one of those places I am attracted to.

Nevermind, coastal seamonsters from dondestan give goat blood to the loveless divinity of spiderland and weld electronic beatsongs to create bandwagonesque screamadelica for gish.