Sun Araw - The Inner Treaty



Bondi - Last Sunday. Spent most of this trip ill in the Hotel room
with a tummy bug! Great! Fantastic pic by The Mrs though!

When I got back and started to feel a little better this was waiting for me. This being the only glimmer of happy in my life in the last 4 days.

It's his slickest yet most stripped back recording so far. I have only listened to it twice but I have to say it has a Compass Point/Adrian Belew vibe, maybe an influence from his time spent in the Caribbean recently or just listening to Talking Heads/Lizzy Mercier Descloux records. A bit weird after 5 or 6 LPs where it's been hard to pinpoint the slippery Sun Araw that now I can say something like that. Is it the stripping of the hypnogogic fog that's revealing or is it just a new direction/coincidence?

*Blogger spellcheck offers an alternative spelling to hypnogogic - Spongecake!

The Last Top 10

OK one more from the Rolling Stone 500 then I promise that's it.

• Remain In Light - Talking Heads (126)
• Paul's Boutique - Beastie Boys (156)
• Loveless - My Bloody Valentine (219)
• Something Else - The Kinks (288)
• Rain Dogs - Tom Waits
• Electric Ladyland - Jimi Hendrix (54)
• Off The Wall - Michael Jackson (68)
• Beggar's Banquet - The Rolling Stones (57)
• Pink Flag - Wire (410)
• Nuggets - Various Artists (196)

Another Top Top Ten. This one seems a bit odd. I think I just wouldn't wan't a mixtape made from it. All those records are all fucking great though!

Dull Smug Mum & Dad Mortgage/Renovation Rock

I'm on holidays at the moment so I decided for the first time in about a year and a half to put the radio on. The second song was by the Melbourne indie band (I think) The Twerps who I gave a go to once, couldn't see the point, kinda 80s Aussie/NZ indie vibe but I gotta say I quite liked it.

The Twerps: I don't hate them!

 Later on though I heard the worst fucking song ever. It was a boring schmindie tune. The lyrics were like some middle class turds explaining their 1st world problems to you. They were singing about paying the mortgage and not being able to go on a Bali holiday. Then I think there was a bit about ripping up the floorboards perhaps renovating. It was a bit like watching Getaway interspersed with a bank loan ad followed by one of those renovation shows. This was the pits. It wasn't funny. It wasn't angry. I couldn't detect any irony. They were just gonna write a song about their boring lives and sing and play it in a boring way. I don't think there was any art project pretention about it whatsoever. This is how rock has ended up right where it was supposed to take you away from ie.the domestic drudgery of ordinary daily life. Yeah I know MX80, Devo and Talking Heads sometimes sounded vocally bored but they were funny and the music was always fucking excellent, electrifying & exciting. Ordinary things have been subjects for rock many times before but never this badly and witless. I get the whole inverting of rock: Debbie Harry's awkward dancing, Elvis Costello lookin like a nerd, new wavers putting their knees together, cuties acting pure, virginal and innocent, the faux naivety of Beat Happening and Jonathan Richman. I still like glamour, weirdness, sex, gender issues, creatures from outer space, drugs, seedy stories, love, lust, creepiness, celebration, heartbreak, mentalness, the unthinkable, awkwardness, fantasy, the dodgy, being wrong, politics, cars, strange theories etc. This can all still be done in new and non-cliched ways. But fuck me if I ever wanna hear a song that sounds like a conversation at my friends house on a Saturday morning unless it's really bloody funny or is set to the the most incongruous music imaginable. I don't know what that band was called but I hate them and their dull smug mum and dad mortgage/renovation rock.

MX80 SOUND
At their funniest/most exciting when sounding bored.