A gorgeous little paisley underground meets psychobilly song from Dirk Hesse (ligne claire) and mates: I'm Not Sayin'.

A seven minute song (stream) from the forthcoming (June, 8th) new SY album Sonic Nurse I discovered here (album thread). This is very exciting actually. A pretty slow textural almost ambient (esp. the mystic intro) track. The intro sounds a little like Wagner's Parsifal Vorspiel except for those electronic beeps. I love how the song unfolds slowly and never rocks out. The force is in the restraint here. Wonderful interplay between the guitars. A dreamy unearthly melody. Kim's whispering voice is so sexy I can't believe it. I have the feeling this could be their return after all those rather boring albums (the standards I apply to SY are extremely high) after Dirty which was the release that made me get into them. That is probably the reason why it is still my fave of theirs. Goo maybe was even better but doesn't have that "initiation into a new sound" tag on it for me. Sonic Youth are one of the few rock bands with whose music I can imagine growing old.

Today's PopNose (available until Sunday) is a German song! And it wasn't me who suggested it. Of course I had to download the song after Tom's order not to. I thought it was a hint that it was another dance/hiphop track I wouldn't like. If you join the discussion and know what it is, keep it for you, will you? Weird to discover a band of your own country you have read about quite a bit on an English website. I am so totally off the German music scene, it's unbelievable. By the way it was the first PopNose I saved onto hard disk. Retro but in a good way.

P.S. This seems to be one of those songs you only like the first time you hear it. On second listen it is quite banal. I don't want to imagine being overexposed to this song on the radio/music tv.

Strongly recommended: Nusrah Fateh Ali Khan's 25 minute jam version of Haq Ali Ali Haq available for download over at the Tofu Hut. What a voice! When he does his long drawn-out "ahahahahah" is he expressing grief or joy? Is he singing to God (Allah)? It sounds as if he feels pain and bliss at the same time. What a hypnotic piece of music! The kind of mind altering stuff I prefer to any drug in the world. I should really stop this cliché-ridden dancing about architecture. Especially considering that I can't really dance.

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:

I just listened to The Mystical Beast's audio stream (up in the left corner, link) and came across this piece mentioned in the March, 11th post (mp3) which has some of the most hilarious lyrics I have ever heard. Listening to it for the first time I had to grin from ear to ear like after having inhaled the smoke of a certain burning substance. The track is more of a mini radio play than a musical song. There are some weird noises and voices in the background but they mainly serve to accentuate the surreal dadaistic dialogue between Fowley and a woman. It's all about the words and the puns. I cannot imagine that he was not stoned when he wrote them. Maybe they just made them up on the spot.

Bert Jansch & John Renbourn - East Wind from their 1966 album Bert and John (see said the gramophone). 85 seconds of heavenly duo acoustic guitar play. It starts off like a flamenco. But it's not. The repetitive guitar part is like liquid gold. The second guitar playing the lead (I guess it is Jansch's steel guitar) is pure magic. Amazingly fast chord changes. It is fascinating what you can do with a simple instrument like a guitar. Or two.

by among others The Balanescu Quartet, Rammstein, Big Black, Ride and Belle & Sebastian at Sleeve Notes: Talvez. Chris Whitley's take on the European release of Dirt Floor is sadly missing.

Julia 2004. Great cover. Or sample. Or whatever.

P.S. Marcello Carlin is more explicit on this version in his review of DJ Dangermouse's Grey Album:

I came late to the Field Mice. I think it was in 1998 when Bernard Lenoir played Sensitive (probably for the tenth time or so) and I listened to France Inter on the long waves on 160 KHz in our old apartment in Gravenbruch. The reception was bad. A lot of hiss and noise. Which just went well with this addictive noisy pop gem. Which has only one major default preventing it from being my fave song of all time. It stops abruptly in the middle of the drone. Which breaks my heart every time I listen to it. It should bloody go on forever.

At the time I didn't know that the band had been history for seven years already. A couple of months after their retrospective double CD <a Where'd You Learn to Kiss that Way with 36 of their 45-50 songs was released. I bought it instantly. It is out of print now and catches up to 150 US-$ on ebay. And it is worth all those bucks. Because it is the best compilation in the world. Of one of the most underrated bands ever. The Field Mice were on the Bristol label Sarah standing for twee indie pop. I don't like that term and most of the Field Mice members neither. But it is not totally off the mark. Their music is mainly jangly guitar pop (but not only, there is a strong New Order influence) with heavenly hooks.

Robert Wratten their lead singer (now Trembling Blue Stars) writes amazingly frank and pure lyrics on love stories not working out and all those heartbreaking things. Think Morrissey without the irony. Here is their last concert at The Dome in London, November 21, 1991. I like the end of the review in the Melody Maker:

More links:

• Yahoo! Groups : fieldmice (discussion group)
• The Field Mice: Cl*ss*c Or D*d (I Love Music thread)
• Field Mice Biography
• The Field Mice on TweeNet
• The Field Mice (all Sarah releases)
• The Field Mice - Sensitive (Lyrics and tabs)
• sarah (Lyrics to 12 Field Mice songs)
• bull3-0: "Field Mice- 'Other Galaxies'" (long obscure song)

P.S. It isn't forever is another phantastic shoegazer song before shoegazing started. I think that the Field Mice were more innovatvie and had more potential than My Bloody Valentine.