sweatshop, sweatshop, take a glimpse inside my sweatshop

If you don’t have that Neon Neon sleaze banger curling around your head right now after reading that title, then you haven’t been paying enough attention to the words that I’ve been saying.

So it might be an opportune time to tell you about some of the other words you should be listening to, the ones sprouted by the kids that reside in the (always amusingly titled) blogroll of links down the side… I am alerted to this cause because todays post by John Darnielle in his brilliant Last Plane To Jakarta blog, I completely disagree with.

the album-opener, “Another Day,” is absolutely the most perfect song for putting on first thing in the morning that I have heard in ages: that piano! that melody!

he writes, showing just how different we must be as people, when the only time I’ve put on Jamie Lidell’s “Jim” album in the morning has been whilst driving somewhere, and within 2 songs almost crashed my car on the Anzac Bridge frantically trying to find the skip button/change albums function on my ipod.

The rest of the album is as good. It went directly to the year’s-best list. Nobody who wants or needs the affirmation of goodness that great pop music can sometimes give should put off hearing this record for long.

More lies! There are actually two relatively awesome moments on the album compared to the sappy pap that makes up the majority of it, those two songs are big, soulful, funky numbers “Little Bit Of Feel Good” and “Hurricane”. The rest are appalling… as though someone heard Flight Of The Conchord’s “The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room” and decided maybe that style of song was really good, and maybe they should make an entire album of songs like that but maybe less funny. “Jim” for the most part is slimy, revolting and completely everything that makes me glad I have noone attempting romance on me at present…

The reason this is important, is that John Darnielle is so often on the money. Or close to it. And you should read his blog, often.

I would talk about some of the others with a bit more depth, but its too cold for that today, Instead I will just mention briefly that I met one of the girls talked about in Matt Levinson’s “Fortune Grey” blog at a gallery opening the other week (and being reminded of Jess by this blog gave me a thrill of sorts), and that I really like Emmy Hennings writing for music magazines and so on, and her blog, Fangirl, does her justice.

What’s the weight of the world worth?

I think its customary, after a long break, to apologise to readers. But seriously, what for? My concept for this blog wasn’t to entertain you, if it was going to do anything to you it would be one of three things: Inform you of something good you previously weren’t aware of; Make you feel like a dickhead for sleeping on stuff that you shouldn’t have been sleeping on, or; Allowing me to vent my fangirlism across the world without having to bombard my best friends, housemate and family with sociopathic rantings that they just dont seem to want to even try and get anymore.

If you have been missing me, then hopefully you have had time to track down that Gravenhurst album, and dig it. Whilst not my favourite effort by Nick Talbot + co, its still better than everything else out there, and when he gets his whistful remorse on, nothing makes me melt more.

I have been experiencing a whole bunch of music that, I’m not overly fond of, but its interesting enough to talk about. Some p2p person hooked me up with I Hate This Place’s new album “Never go” which is a wonderful example of pretty much carbon copying the Postal Service, but doing it way more quickly than the wait for a new Postal Service album suggests about the difficulty of making this stuff. And its lovely… kind of fitting in somewhere between the afformentioned Postal Service, and later day Hellogoodbye, its sweet (often syrupy thick sweetness) with a slight attitude that takes the edge off, and a naive innocence to the style of lyrics that fit with me way better than they should. And sure, I liked it initially for the name of the band, I Hate This Place are really worth checking out.

It came into a pigeon hole a little while ago, but I have become really quite enamoured with Neon Neon’s “Stainless Style”. Basically, Lex records whiz kid turned electro boy Boom Bip has teamed up with Gruff Rhys from the Super Furry Animals, and made this wonderful concept album about Richard Delorean, the guy that made that ultra eighties sports car that was used as the car in Back To The Future. Steeped in wonderful eighties reverie, there are songs about Raquel Welch, Michael Douglas and love songs set on Alderraan, as well as some really wonderful hip hop tracks that kind of serve as the naration to the more esoteric eighties space-pop ditties. I cant get enough of it. I put my sunglasses on, wind down the windows of my car, crank it up, and cooly smoke cigarettes at pedestrians and other drivers when stopped at lights, listening to this album. And you should too. That, or you will realise how much of a dork Darcy Wigram really is.

My bestie took my broke behind along to see the best DJ set I have ever experienced – the Hard Sell tour by DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist. It was truley amazing and if its coming to a town near you, dont miss it. For days afterwards I was waking up, inspired that there is some creativity left in DJing, and awed that I had the chance and privelege to witness a set ‘by music lovers, for music lovers’. Much love to friends that love their realness as much as you do…

Anyway, thats enough for now. I hope you see me again soon, but I have a feeling I will have some nagging reminders to keep this up. Its kinda important, in the way that its not at all.