This is from last year's Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State. I totally missed out on Sufjan Stevens until yesterday (thank you for the suggestion, Sean). How could I? Rarely did I hear a piece of music which was so much in the spirit of the late Nick Drake without being as depressively detached than Holland.

It's a rather slow song full of space built up from the intricate interplay of an impressionist piano and a discrete acoustic guitar. Sufjan Stevens gentle, almost whispered voice adds a graciousness that completes the magical ballad. The humming develops and underlines the melody in a smooth way. In between the two verses it also alludes to the fact that words alone fail to evoke the blissfully sad memory of youth this song is about. Here we have a hymn on a city at Lake Michigan which is calm and airy at the same time. The fragility makes it even more powerful. Only at the end when the English horn joins in for the last 20 seconds of the song there is something like a warm breeze. Sufjan Stevens lived in Holland, Michigan so it doesn't come as too big a surprise that the wonderful lyrics are quite personal:

Suggest me a song to listen to and I'll try to write something about it.

Will there be a My Bloody Valentine EP Box Set and if yes when will it come out? According to the latest news the release date will be late 2005 or early 2006. All this sounds very My Bloody Valentinesque to my ears.

robin proper-sheppard announcing the song the sea as a song he'd written for his daughter who said that she found it too boring and too slow. and who he disinherited as the adressee of the song. that's what i'd call honest. his daughter was right btw. the song was unimpressive. but i didn't care.

robin proper-sheppard who says and shows that after 15 years of playing around with guitars he still isn't capable of tuning a guitar, that's so simpatico.

overall i was slightly underwhelmed by the concert. on disc they sound better but it didn't matter.

swept back, my ultimate goose-pimp song by them was nice but i really loved when they let themselves loose at the end with the noise of if a change is gonna come. instead of all those ballads they should have done more noise because they know how to do it. not like lambchop who are still virgins of noise.

If you like endless groovy jams full of dub with a grain of disco and a voice being used as an instrument Arthur Russell is your man. I just discovered him via ILM where several people ranked his rereleased compilation The World of Arthur Russell as one of their favourites from 2004.

Interested? Head over to haboglabobloggin' where three songs are online. The thirteen minute jam In the Light of the Miracle which sounds like extremely danceable world music with a magical touch and the slightly jazz-rocky (but something else entirely) Go Bang are my picks. This music is the kind of precious oddity I am always looking for but hardly ever finding.

Further reading: an instructive article by Jess Harvell at freaky trigger: Secret Plunges

Could one of the people who came here via seach windowsmedia please stand up and tell me in the comments (short and painless registration) or via e-mail (alex63 at bigfoot dot com) how he/she got here? There are still about 200 visits coming from there every day. The only query which lead to my blog I found was the one for "Field Mice". That surely can't be the reason for all this traffic, can it?

1 Sophia: People Are Seasons - fascinating mix of slow sentimental heartbreaking songs and half noisy rockers. I am very much looking forward to their concert on Tuesday.

2 Stereolab: Margerine Eclipse - great comeback of the minimal indie poppers. I had lost them for about ten years. The first nine songs are essential easy listening. Some electronics but mainly the good old sound of 1992.

3 Lambchop: AwCmon/NoYouCmon - not as intense as in concert but still an amazing double album. The strings are a little too much in the foreground on the discs but the songs and especially the instrumentals are so relaxing you can even enjoy them without a Bourbon.

I am extremely disappointed by the new Blonde Redhead album Misery Is a Butterfly. There are exactly two excellent songs on it. The opening single Elephant Woman I wrote about recently and the second song Messenger. Touching stuff. The rest is boring slightly over-produced pop of the measured balladesque kind with a nymph voice in the register of Björk singing. There are also some echoes of Supertramp when the guy provides vocals. They seem to try to appeal to a bigger audience which apparently worked as the album already sold quite well (30.000?). I want the Sonic Youthy more experimental Blonde Redhead of 1998's In an Expression of the Inexpressible back!

every time i put on the cocteau twins it is heaven or las vegas. i have got many other cds by them but this was my first one and there are some memories attached to it. it probably is the poppiest outing of the scottish dreampop pioneers and it is the first one where liz fraser sings in human language, at least partly. and still they create a new world. a sound of cotton (or which is the translation of watte?). soft and cuddly like a teddy bear. the paradise which could have been my childhood and was in retrospect. on the other hand this is the best chilling-out music imaginable. the music you listen to between 3 and 4 in the morning before going to bed after a night out. with or without company. it's much better with of course, taking off to the stars in pairs is so much more exciting.