Loveblind

Loveblind – Secret Shine

A dream put this song in my head. I was back in high school but the age i am now, and i hear from my maths class a band rehearsing it in the music room. Through no small amount of desperation – desperation i had enough of then, but has accumulated to unbearably unused amounts now – i run out of class to find this band and this unknown kin of mine they are. Of course they’re young and beautiful, well-dressed and affluent, but they were at my school (ten years later) and they had been affected by Secret Shine enough to replicate them and speak the exigency of their youths through it. What could i do in front of them but a thing possible only in dreams and dance requisitely as hard as this song means to me? All the while i was thinking why they didn’t ask me to join their band.

Well that was my dream. There’s a lot of ugliness here: Jealousy and spite towards youth who haven’t wasted theirs yet, regression back to high school, the want for all this, the want to be noticed, dancing just to prove a point that this music affects ugly, old me just as them. It’s boring to say, and i’m sure it happens to everyone, but i think my time has passed. I’m hulled in, invisible, ineffective, and everything i believe i might have to offer the world is hulled in with me. How can people tell you’re a decent person if your ability to communicate that you are – in any way from verbally, qualifications, appearance, other sellable qualities – is completely non-existent?

I’ve decided i’m giving this up in the new year. I have to change my routine, and i haven’t written anything good in years. If it’s to give up to try and be more effective in the real world or to better disappear from both worlds, we’ll see. At least i’ll spend less time on the internet. I’m very depressed. To chronic levels, if i’m ever to believe i can actually admit that. To write it doesn’t seem like the admission it should but i don’t think i will ever do anything more. What do you do? Friends, call me. People, like me. Jobs, hire me. Life, work out. World, stop seeming like not the place for me. Hair, come back. Me, try for once. Try in the face of every crippling thing, imagined and not, that says you can’t. Or just disappear. This is a great song.

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The Boy From St. Ives

The boy from St. Ives – Another Sunny Day

Of course it being one o the only CD’s i have left means inevitable inclusion and perhaps flooding of them here. I would have thought more by now. This is not originally an Another Sunny Day song, but a demo of a cover from another band from Cornwell called the Choughs. I’m not sure if there was a connection, if Harvey Williams was a part of them, or they were just local heroes caught in young Harvey’s heart, but this version has definitely outstripped and outlasted the Chough’s version as the version of this song. Who knew it is meant to have a trumpet part? Who knew Another Sunny Day’s best song was a cover?

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New Year’s Honours

New year’s honours – Another Sunny Day

What a wimp. I’ve had to put all my CD’s in boxes at my mother’s garage for space issues, and the Another Sunny Day singles compilation is one of the only i have left with me. It was in my car when we moved, and there it has stayed, and there i must have heard it at least twenty times driving to and from those places i do. It is mostly due to having nothing else, but i’m totally ok being stuck with it. And not only because of these songs. Through being spoiled, it has been years since i’ve listened to anything this concentratedly, and i’ve been given such space and time with this it’s made me question the way i’ve taken in music these last few years.

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One Step Forward

One step forward – Even As We Speak

It would have been a very simple, very natural process of likemindedness, communication, demo tape sending and no big deal at all really, but it always amazes me there were Australian bands on Sarah. It’s the height of reverence i hold the label at, i suppose. But Australian bands, Australian people, Australian perspectives, on Sarah! That means time, ability, want and scene circle all aligning to a singular perfection, i could have been on Sarah.

Of course what has happened with Even As We Speak with this modern veneration of the label above all else that was happening in music back then is that all the records they released before and apart from their time on Sarah have fallen to a forgetfulness, and made the songs on Sarah as the essence of what Even As We Speak were and would be remembered by. Before and apart, Matthew sang a lot more and Julien hadn’t yet laid his sound exploration stamp on the band.

But some/most of their best songs are found here on Sarah. It must have been very exciting for them. If it were me i would have been more excited that Boyracer chose to cover one of my songs. This one. Maybe i would have been most excited that i wrote it in the first place.

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Star Of David

Star of David – The Field Mice

I’ve been turning to the albums the Field Mice released more these days. Partly because of exhaustion with the EP’s, singles and demos, but mostly in search of more Field Mice. I put up barriers to their larger records initially. Something about the size of the things, the length of the songs, the competence of craft, the elevation of it, a proficiency writing over all the amateurish tinkling they began with. When they found how to be the band they wanted to be, something seemed lost from when it was just two people and a drum machine.

I find looking on the internet (never in person, because who am i going to turn to?) that the albums are what people cling to and cite as model Field Mice. I can see why. It sounds more like music is meant to. But i can also see another reason, and that is the weight albums have taken on as the correct music parcel in people’s consciousness. The amount of vendors at my last record fair (or any record fair) without 7″‘s attest to that. It’s a rewriting of music history and i’m damn opposed. But to leave out the Field Mice’s albums completely would be to leave out some very nice songs, along the same vital thread as all Field Mice songs, regardless of record diameter.

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The World To Me

The world to me – The Field Mice

This is an odd Field Mice song but it’s not really. The synthy brass that was never before or again used by the Field Mice makes it so. While very of the time, it is just so bold, out of place, a stylised reminder of other bands, and, now, dating. But in every other way this, like all their other excursions (New Order, wah guitar, country, etc.), is very much still a Field Mice song. Stripped and realigned, all these songs co-ordinate to a single inconsolable vision of inconsolation. Of love and distance to and from. Of nothing else because there is room for nothing else, only different ways to carry it.

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Starshy

Starshy – Heavenly

The warmest opening to an album ever. One chord at an ever-felicitous tempo, compressed to the blanketest of fidelities, and then it becomes a Heavenly song and even better. Here’s a picture of the biggest injoke in the world:

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If You Need Someone

If you need someone – The Field Mice

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Below The Stars

Below the stars – The Field Mice

This is the most bedroom song ever written, sending out private hope, private sentiment over some night sky to an other. Clunky lyrics, uninhibited fragility, unconstrained intimacy. An intense fawning in all other respects best left within, swelling and seeping out through song. Everything unsaid, withheld, everything past its moment forced out in quiet desperation. A line drawn, a world bridged, distance cut and need served by wishing, hoping and keeping enough. A vigil carried up and away on hope as those last chords arpeggiate, twinkle and repeat. Longing and regret tied to the string of a balloon.

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Carbrain

Carbrain – The Wake

One of the bands who came to Sarah Records with an established history, coming to the label with a reputation, not having their reputation shaped by it. From them forming in 1981 to arriving at Sarah in 1989 they did some things and went places that look good on paper/internet, played with and had members of bands that are fun and advantageous to namedrop, were on a record label with greater prestige than all Sarah will ever be able to snowball, and achieved their perceived important and career-apexing things – all of which burned them so much out.

It’s nice and so fitting that they should find home, support and new life on Sarah. A sanctuary after having their bones crunched by the ogre that is the music business. Sarah defined – music as a business done right. And the Wake fit perfectly.

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