Pjoe (a kind of link log to his own music writing and other stuff) has a couple of articles based on interviews online of some excellent bands from that decade. Very nice insightful succinct interviews you don't find a lot today anymore:

• Catherine Wheel 1995 (Happy Days)
• Eleventh Dream Day 1997
• Low 1996 (The Curtain Hits the Cast)
• Luna 1997 (Pup Tent)
• Silver Jews 1994 (Starlite Walker)
• Tortoise 1995
• Yo La Tengo 1997 (I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One)
• Yo La Tengo 1999 (And then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out)

• Aerial M 1998
• David Grubbs 1998
• Lilys 1996
• Rachel's 1997

Many fans consider Pornography or Disintegration the pinnacle of The Cure's art but I cannot agree. I never really got into Pornography. Too many songs which lose me. Last time I heard Disintegration I found it hadn't aged well. Something about the production repelled me. Seventeen Seconds is my favourite of theirs. For me it somehow conjures up shadows of the past. It is about the lightness of being sad. And it has the most mysterious title of all their records. I advise you to listen to it in the dark. The impact is much stronger that way.

Keyboards sounding like a jew's harp start the first track and fuse into a simple slow theme played by the guitar and the piano setting the atmosphere of the record. Dark but not heavy almost like a piano piece by an English Satie A Reflection engraves itself on the memory of the listener. A minimal opener preparing us softly for things to come.

Play for Today has already all ingredients of a good upbeat Cure song. A bass forming the base, propelling lively guitars, some spacy synthie, hypnotic drum beats and Robert Smith's unique sombre high-pitch but not whining vocals. And it is so tuneful, so pop. The Cure were the Beatles of dark wave (I don't like the term goth rock). Sounding as fresh now as then. The first highlight.

Secrets is dominated by a simple bass line and is a very rhythmic affair. An impressionist track serving as a transition to the next piece.

In Your House is very heavy, Smith sounds extremely tired. A hint to future ominous musical developments. Like pretending to be deep and profound. This is the first Cure song which sucks a little. Many more were to come later on in their career. Until there was nothing else. Until Robert Smith would sound like a ridiculous parody of himself. But even in this rather dull song there are bits which almost save it. The end is a release when there are only synthie, meandering guitar and drum machine left.

The two instrumentals (except Smith background radio voice) following are rather weird. I love them though. Experimental, almost atonal, mounting the tension and leading directly to the heart of this album:

A Forest. One of the best songs of all time. Starting slowly with the theme repeated a couple of times by the acoustic guitar with brooding synthie sounds and suddenly accelerating to an irresistible beat when the drums and finally the bass kicks in. Nobody can stop this hypnotic trip into the night. Dark power pure.

And did you ever listen to the lyrics? I did before but I never really got the meaning. It seems clear now. They are about hopelessly falling in love. Told from the point of view of the guy of course. He runs after the girl without paying attention to the outside world. He only sees her or thinks he sees her. And suddenly he realises that he is lost. In the forest. And she isn’t there. He has been chasing a phantom. He didn’t fall in love with her but with his picture of her. And now he is on his own, lost in the forest. Running towards nothing. And he will do it again and again and again and again.

It’s difficult to think of a bigger contrast to the black (without the 'and white') A Forest than the following song with the obscure title M. We are almost back in sunny pop country now. The guitar jangles, the synthie wooshes like the ocean waves, there is hope. Beauty still exists. And

Can there be a better succession of songs than A Forest and M in the world?

At Night is the abyss. It can’t get more desperate anymore. A weighty song which works though.

At the end some improvisations on the theme promise a brighter future.

Seventeen Seconds is a serene finish. The world is still sad but we have accepted it. Though I didn’t get it yet:

Some mysteries should remain...

Mike from Troubled Diva offers mp3 downloads of three interesting Scottish bands from the early eighties. I hadn't heard any song by any band before. Josef K and Orange Juice (led by Edwyn Collins) who both were on the mythic Glaswegian Postcard label made jangly pop-rock whereas the Fire Engines did funk-punk quite similar to the Pop Group:

Josef K - Sorry For Laughing (1981) Orange Juice - Poor Old Soul (1981) Fire Engines - Get Up And Use Me (1980)

Hurry up! I guess they will only be online for a couple of days.

Unfortunately the remember me feature for users with login has been changed by the Antville programmers due to a security leak. It only works with a static IP address now. The automatic login of dial-up modem connections like mine at home doesn't work anymore and I have to log in each time anew. The nice Antville people are looking into possible solutions for this though.

Thanks for the many subscriptions. I think there are 24 people who have subscribed now. Up till now the subscription makes sense for you if you are subscribed to several Antville weblogs as you then get a list of all weblogs you have subscribed to in order of last update. Maybe there will be an e-mail notification one day though. Another side effect of subscribing is that I can see who reads my blog and I will surely visit your site if you entered it in your profile.

I closed the poll for the favourite album of 1988. The winner didn't come as a surprise for me. It was The Pixies seminal Surfer Rosa followed closely by Leonard Cohen's great comeback album I'm Your Man. My choice didn't get any votes.

Thanks to Paul for the link to the latest poll which directed a sweeping 19 visitors here. Someone even voted already for my favourite. More on that tonight.

I changed the titles of the posts in the 40 years, 40 albums series so that Google should be more friendly to them in the future.

• Bad choices: U2, The Cure
• Unclear choices: Sonic Youth, Wilco, Lambchop, New Order, Radiohead (after Amnesiac I wouldn't put anything past them)
• Good choices: Giant Sand, Beck, REM
• Excellent choice: Yo La Tengo

With Catherine I saw this movie on Sunday night. The German press had praised it unequivocally like few others this year. Beforehand I wasn’t too keen on seeing this film as somehow I had lost interest in Kaurismäki. It’s like if you have seen one Kaurismäki you have seen them all was what I thought. Like a band who does not evolve and always makes variations of their first then original record, for example the Red House Painters.

I was right and I was wrong.

Kaurismäki tells another fairy tale story set in the country of losers and social outcasts. Again it owes a lot to the film noir and is close to the early Jim Jarmush films especially Stranger than Paradise. Even the music used by Kaurismäki is quite similar. Instead of Screamin' Jay Hawkins with I Put a Spell on You it is blues like Blind Lemon Jefferson, rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll which comes out of the jukebox in M’s (the man without a past who is brilliantly played by Markku Petolta whose facial expression is as vivid as that of an Easter Island statue) container. M even transforms the band of the salvation army into a rock 'n' roll outfit with the lead guitar sounding very much like Mark Knopfler though. This brings me to a nice reflection. M owns virtually nothing but he has music. He found the jukebox on the road. Music is free. M doesn’t even need an internet connection.

This time nevertheless Kaurismäki captures the sense of togetherness of the down and out who have nothing to lose in a succinct laconic way he didn’t before. I don't think the ideologically loaded concepts of solidarity and compassion are fitting here. An electrician branches the container of M to the power supply system. M who has no money asks the electrician what he owes him who responds:

That is probably the most striking trait of Kaurismäki’s characters. Despite a hard life without illusions they don’t lose their sense of humour. They actually create humour out of desperation. Like Zen masters they only live on the minimal and essential, are free like birds and full of practical often paradoxical wisdom.

Another scene illustrates the extreme improbable hard luck M encounters and how he gets out of the situation with an incredibly absurd action. M has found out by accident that before he lost his memory during an extremely violent attack by three young men he had been working as a welder and a company wants to employ him as such. He needs a bank account to get the job so he tries to open one. When talking to the female bank employee the bank is robbed and the two are locked into the strongroom. Unfortunately the alarm has been turned off as the bank is bust and the oxygene concentration in the room is decreasing rapidly. As the first idea to stop breathing simultaneously doesn’t turn out too practical M says that in this case he can as well smoke a cigarette. He rolls it and lights it. The exhaled smoke moves towards the smoke detector but the alarm doesn’t go on. Following the direction of the smoke with her eyes the bank employee sees the detector and switches the sprinkler system on by hand.

My first visit to the small cave club Nachtleben was quite an impressive experience.

It started with the young band Norfolk & Western from Portland, Oregon which played calm and tuneful music radiating a warmth like few other bands. American Analog Set come to mind whose singer's timbre is similarly unobtrusive. Luna is another band covering the same soft and mellow ground. The very slowly evolving relaxed songs reminded me of Low who are going to play with Tom Liwa in Offenbach December, 4th by the way. Besides guitar, bass and drums some extra instruments on some songs added to the sound. There was the lap steel guitar giving a slight country touch, the vibraphone played by the female drummer, something like a hair dryer which intensified the atmosphere. On the cd I bought at the show, their second release Centralia from 2000 there is also a lot of viola which makes the comparison to Australia's Dirty Three featuring Warren Ellis expressive violin play almost inevitable. Actually Cat Power's masterpiece Moon Pix featuring Dirty Three's guitarist Mick Turner also has a similar soulful sound as Norfolk & Western.

After this very good opener I already feared that the main act would be a disappointment. Mark Linkous arrived on stage only with a drummer and started his set with a loud abrasive rocker with distorted guitar and voice. It came as a surprise to me as I would have expected this kind of stuff by Trent Raznor from Nine Inch Nails but not from Sparklehorse. All night long Linkous switched between his melodic sentimental songs and noisy punk interpretations of his songs in which the original tune could still be heard by the attentive listener. He was massacring his own beautiful songs as if he had had enough of the deeply emotional originals mostly from his first brilliant album Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot. I liked these abrupt changes between quiet and loud a lot. They gave the concert a dynamic aspect which I hadn't anticipated. Linkous as a performer was rather shy and did hardly interact with the audience. Between songs he seemed quite nervous and created a hectic atmosphere when he changed instruments. He only gave one encore, a quiet song which was an adequate end of an exciting evening.

Sparklehorse will play at 9pm tonight in the Nachtleben near Konstabler Wache in Frankfurt. I will be there.

The music was somewhere in between jazz, classical improvisation, country and God knows what. As I would have liked Joni Mitchell who had already turned into a boring mainstream pop-rock imitator to be. Mary Margaret O'Hara's voice was a girl's voice similar to Rickie Lee Jones's though less so. O'Hara's way of singing is (sorry I have to change the tense now) absolutely unique. It is all about the intonation, the melody of the phrasing, the strange breaks and drawls in the pronunciation of the syllables. She cuts and breaks them and gives them an individual sound like few other singers. If you really want a reference point the only one in terms of emotion I can offer is Billie Holiday. Though it is obvious that O'Hara is a trained singer she transports a sincerity and expressiveness few singers ever matched till then. Substract the exaggerated opera timbre of Jeff Buckley and you will get close to her.

Not only her voice is absolutely stunning but also the words she sings. It all starts with:

and it goes on

That is so to the point that it hurts.

Not all songs are as depressive as the first one. There is the seemingly relaxed countryesque Dear Darling which goes

which is followed by the swinging almost groovy hopeful Anew Day. The next quite sombre song When You Know Why You're Happy really speaks to me (I am 1.95 meters = 6 feet 5 tall)

Musically my favourite song on the album is the first track on side 2, the upbeat My Friends Have. It goes on with the downbeat rather sad Help Me Lift You Up where she sings

Keeping You in Mind is a relaxed serene ballad without illusions:

After a long free flowing song the album ends with the almost a cappella (bass & her voice) You Will Be Loved Again where O'Hara exhibits all her vocal capabilities:

Sorry that I wasn't able to give you any clue about this album. I guess you have to listen to it yourself.

The new cover has changed colours. The beige yellow has turned into black and the black scripting changed into blue. Obviously this was not for the better. I also noticed that I have to rethink my approach concerning recording years as this album was recorded in 1984 which wouldn't make any sense in this exercise. Therefore I will consider release years in 40 years, 40 albums from now on.

By the way Mary Margaret O'Hara has released her second album this year, the soundtrack Apartment Hunting.