The Beloved - Where It Is [1988]

Where It Is

Acid House Kings - Pop, Look & Listen!

A lost Jangle Pop gem from, Swedish, twee-pop trio, the Acid House Kings, who formed in 1991 and made their first full-length pop album a year later in 1992 on the German label Marsh Marigold. I thought I'd post this album in spirit of the season thanks to track 6, Christmas, which also happens to be one of the more boring and drab songs on the line-up. But anyways here it is, a twelve song sing along cornerstone for any Jangle Pop fan.


TRACKS:
1. Thirteen again
2. I'll still be there
3. Your favourite flower
4. Say yes
5. Please be
6. Christmas
7. Song of the colour red
8. Mrs. Green
9. Times
10. Autumn afternoon
11. Adorable
12. Sadly, I'm never loved


RELEASE DATE: 1992
LABEL: Marsh Marigold Records
Pop, Look & Listen! [1992]

Wrong: Stories - Dennis Cooper

Wrong – Dennis Cooper

Slick. As far as gay & lesbian literature goes, I'd consider this to be as good as it gets. Though it would be wrong to falsely disguise Dennis Cooper as only that. William S. Burroughs said it correct on the front cover, "...a born writer." His sentences are crafted like a well sequenced fight scene in an interesting and intellectual movie, peculiar and courageous, but believable--it makes you stop and take another look, then take a step back and say to yourself, 'well that's pretty "badass".' An entertaining, humorous, and a beautifully constructed cross section of the dark and bizarre and ridiculous monstrosity of human nature.

Wrong: Stories - by Dennis Cooper

The Names - Swimming + Singles

Originally released in 1982, Swimming, was The Names debut LP. From Belgium, The Names would later sign with Factory Records and join the famous Post-Punk line-up with bands such as Joy Division, the Stockholm Monsters, and Crispy Ambulance. LTM has reissued this Post-Punk, Goth Pop masterpiece and has even added 8 extra tracks in its customary fashion. Quite the impressive record.

Tracklisting:

01 Music For Someone

02 Discovery

03 Floating World

04 The Fire

05 Life By The Sea

06 White Shadow

07 Calcutta

08 Postcards

09 (This Is) Harmony

10 Shanghai Gesture

11 Leave Her To Heaven

12 Light

13 Nightshift

14 I Wish I Could Speak Your Language

15 The Astronaut

16 Cat

17 I Wish I Could Speak Your Language (Premix)

Swimming + Singles [LTM] (2000)

Even As We Speak - Nothing Ever Happens EP

1990's 7" EP, Nothing Ever Happens EP is a tremendous 5 song contribution to early 90's Indie Pop and to the Sarah Label as a whole. 5 songs that display Matthew Love's (vocals, guitar) striking songwriting talent and musical range and ability. A popy version of New Order's Bizzarre Love Triangle is a nice break off from a song that's been beaten to death with electronic and post-punk remixes you hear over and over. Nothing Ever Happens EP is a must have for any Sarah lover or an excellent introduction to the Sarah Label for those who are just hearing its sound for the first time.

Year: 1990
Label: Sarah Records
Album: 7" EP, Sarah 037


TRACKLISTING:
1. Goes So Slow 2:27
2. Blue Suburban Skies 2:26
3. Bizzarre Love Trianlge 1:55
4. Nothing Ever Happens 1:26
5. A Stranger Calls 1:50

Sarah 037

Harper Lee - Everything's Going To Be OK

The former members of Sarah Records's Brighter team-up with Matinee Records and make one hell of a second album. Keeping with their same broken-hearted sound, Keris Howard (vocals, guitar, and keyboard) and Laura Bridge (drums, guitar, and piano), make a solid compilation of Post-Sarah [Records] Pop ballads with jangly, Guitar Pop hooks that will get stuck in your head all day long.
Excellent example of the contemporary, Matinee sound. Don't miss it.

Year: 2002
Label: Matinee Recordings

Everything's Going to be OK

The Field Mice - Skywriting + Singles

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One of the most important Indie Pop bands that on the Sarah Label in the late 80's and early 90's, The Field Mice, sadly goes utterly unnoticed within the mainstream history of British Indie Pop. LTM put together three, two disc remastered albums plus extra singles, to put The Field Mice's lengthy array of out-of-print, pop gems back into the eyes and ears of Indie Pop fans. 21 songs taken from 1989's EP So Said Kay - Sarah 38 and 1990's, two disc, album The Autumn Store Pt. 1 & 2 - Sarah 24 & 25 make up the extra 15 songs that weren't on the original 6 song, Skywriting album. An excellent collection of fluffy, melancholy pop songs that is a perfect cross-section into the jangly, neat and clean pop sound of the legendary Sarah Records and the similar bands on the label. The Field Mice were arguably the most popular and best-selling band of the many that started out on the Sarah Records Label catalogue though their fame is minimal compared to the hundreds of other Indie Pop bands that came out of Bristol, England in 1988 (Surrey, England to be exact). The Field Mice disbanded in an onstage quarrel in November of 1991 only to play one last farewell gig in London. Wratten, Davies, and Dobson later reunited to form the Northern Picture Library and Trembling Blue Stars which were both fantastic bands in themselves. 

TRACKLIST:
Disc 1
01 - Triangle
02 - Canada
03 - Clearer
04 - It Isn't Forever
05 - Below The Stars
06 - Humblebee
07 - Landmark
08 - Quicksilver
09 - Holland Street
10 - Indian Ocean
11 - So Said Kay

Disc 2
01 - If You Need Someone
02 - The World To Me
03 - Song Six
04 - Anyone Else Isn't You
05 - Bleak
06 - I Thought Wrong
07 - Right As Rain
08 - A Heart Disease Called Love
09 - This Is Not Here (1998)
10 - Other Galaxies

Disc 1

+

Disc 2

The Magnetic Fields - The Charm of the Highway Strip

In case one is about to take a road trip through the dark.  2:55 AM is arguably the best time to drive from Phoenix, AZ to L.A., California. Role your windows down and drive 86 m.p.h. while listening to this album two times over. "Time, measured in dotted yellow lines."

The Charm of the Highway Strip

Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction - Flannery O'Connor

Not all of Flannery O'Connor's stories and novels involve some aspect of the grotesque, murderous plots, and unspeakable monstrosities, but a good amount of them do. In this chapter, Miss O'Connor, defines the Southern Gothic genre she helped create, housing such Southern notoriety as William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Carson McCullers, to name a few. It's a fantastic introduction for anyone interested in Southern Literature and the substantial provenance the grotesque has within it. Here's an exert from her essay "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," Chapter II of "Mystery and Manners":

     "Even though the writer who produces grotesque fiction may not consider his characters any more freakish than ordinary fallen man usually is, his audience is going to; and it is going to ask him–or more often, tell him–why he has chosen to bring such maimed souls alive. Thomas Mann has said that the grotesque is the true anti-bourgeois style, but I believe that in this country, the general reader has managed to connect the grotesque with the sentimental, for whenever he speaks of it favorably, he seems to associate it with the writer's compassion."


View the entire essay here:

Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction - Flannery O'Connor

The Bats - At the National Grid (2005)

Their first album in ten years. Kiwi Pop's cornerstone band The Bats have come back, colouring their canvass with a solid array of beautiful Guitar Pop.  "Bells" and "Western Isles" are two particularly pleasant ballads.

At the National Grid

The Neon Wilderness - Nelson Algren

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZxWdNlbHJigC&dq=the+neon+wilderness&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=kMOiTLStAo_EsAOamsT6Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false