Elliott Smith - Independence Day (from XO)

Got hit by this song this morning in the car. Tears wanted to flow down my cheeks but they couldn't. I should have slept less last night.

Sogenannt oder so genannt. Kann mir mal jemand sagen wozu diese Wort(Kombination) gut ist? Am Besten, wenn man das anschließende Wort auch noch in Anführungsstriche setzt. Damit ist es doch gesagt, oder? Leute, die "sogenannt" benutzen finde ich sowas von unsympathisch. Was wollen die sagen? Wollen die sich distanzieren von dem nächsten Wort, das sie benutzen? Das überflüssigste Wort der deutschen Sprache if you ask me.

Lansing-Dreiden - Laid in Stone (from The Incomplete Triangle)

I have been listening three times to that album now. First (last night on low volume) I thought it was absolute genius, so varied, like nothing I have heard since the White Album or something. A concept album with three sides. Rough psychedelic rock, mellow dreamy psychedelics and the synth beat driven part where you could dance your soul away. On the second listen this morning it felt heavy, contrived. Too much. The third listen tonight and I seem to become more objective. It's not as great as I imagined but it is worth that I write some more about it.

The song from the second side featured here is amazing as it combines the full mesmerising shoegazing sound from the early nineties with vocals which are so totally Beach Boys I still can't believe it. There has always been something missing on the Beach Boys records and here it is. On Pet Sounds the singing is dominating the instruments, here they both fit. The harmonies of men and music are on par. Full blossom, a beauty I cannot escape.

Anyone interested in a third song from the first part? Just to cover the three sides.

Lansing-Dreiden - Glass Corridor (from The Incomplete Triangle)

Synth heaven. First the bell-like keyboards, then the killer bass line and finally those yearning washes. Are we back in the 1st half of the 80s or what? New Order without their dark past which always comes through in Barney's sad seemingly uninvolved singing. Propulsive dance pop with a depth somehow. These mysterious fellows don't sound of our time. This is how I like my retro. Not emulating but reincarnating and reinventing. Sounding like a forgotten classic of new wave. Turning back the merciless wheel of time. They are from Miami by the way and have moved to New York City. They have preserved some glistening sun in this night club tune.

The Charlottes - Could There Ever Be (from liar - the best of the charlottes)

This was released first in April 1990 when shoegazing got going in Britain. A style I have a soft spot for as it was dominating when I got into indie rock. Combine Lush's ethereal female vocals with My Bloody Valentine's wall of noisy guitar sound and Ride's melodicity plus a grain of the Pale Saints unworldliness and you come close to this.

Definitely a lost classic of shoegazing, dream pop, drone pop or however you want to call this music which gives a counterpoint to the grinding mill of everyday routine. I still like it, I still get immersed into it. Something I cannot say about most current music. Is it only because of the recognition factor? Maybe it is the simplicity I love most about it. It was new in 1990 and there seems to be nothing new now. And the newness has survived, shoegazing was one of the last styles in rock music which did it for me. If I wasn't such a late bloomer it would have been punk or post punk I suppose.

Moistworks, the supergroup of mp3 blogs with a penchant for some of the more obscure forgotten jewels of rock music had a post on 39 Clocks recently. I didn't know the band before, I swear, but when I heard the singer on the first song 78 Soldier Dead which is still online I knew that he was from Niedersachsen in the North of Germany (Hannover to be precise). His dead-pan vocal delivery with a strong German accent reminded me of Stephan Remmler somehow, the singer of Trio, the biggest of all the Neue Deutsche Welle bands. 39 Clocks have been compared to Velvet Underground and it makes sense. The beats are simple and trashy, they have the charm of a dead-end alley leading directly to the garbage bin. It was the early eighties where everything was possible. The best and the worst and the combination of the two. Which was the most exciting actually.

I am not quite sure what to make of Chan Marshall's latest. It is not exactly middle of the road but it certainly is going to break her to a wider public and I am happy for her. Right now on Amazon it is #8 in the States, #24 in Canada, #23 in the UK, #77 in Germany and #3(!) in France.

It is a little bit of a homecoming album. Released more or less on her 34th birthday and recorded in the deep South in Memphis with an illustrious cast of session musicians like e.g. Al Green sideman Teenie Hodges on guitar and Booker T and the MGs drummer Steve Potts. The sparse instrumentation and rawness of the early records with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley has given way to a lush sound with string arrangements, horns and a laid-back groove. Even the female background vocals are fine. It is still an intimate record and her sexy smooth voice which becomes raspier and smokier with each new album is as touching as ever.

The most surprising thing is that the songs which are more in the vein of her previous songwriter output don't work at all. Most of the second half of the CD starting with the monotonous and uninspired ballad Where Is My Love is a disappointment. Those songs which sometimes verge on country kitsch like Islands are totally dispensable. The last song Love & Communication before the bonus track which is rather pointless as well is slightly better as it rocks out a wee bit but it also misses the urgency of her earlier songs.

The Greatest has a great vibe in the beginning but it cannot compare to the triumvirate of the fragile What Would the Community Think, the mesmerising Moon Pix and the balanced You Are Free.

Here is the phantastic centre piece (I can't think of a more relaxed marriage of piano and sax) Willie which was already released in a much longer version on the Speaking for Trees DVD.

From an ILM thread on the just completed new Scott Walker album Drift, his first in eleven years: