Like the Windmils of My Mind

Okay, let’s come clean. I have been in a bit of a slump lately, in terms of finding music that excites me. This morning I realized I had mostly blown through my iPod earphones, so that pretty much everything sounds tinny and awful, so that might be part of it. And, no question, I have been running full-out, reviewing 4-7 records a week for a while and even my week up in Montreal wasn’t enough to get me hungry for new tunes again.

But despite all this – which maybe explains my indifference to a whole string of records that other people like – I did really enjoy a new record by the British bedroom act known as Windmill, which balances a cutting-sharp, high voice against the conventional pop elements of strings and piano…very odd, very nice.

Windmill
Puddle City Racing Lights
(Friendly Fire)

There’s a doomed romanticism running across these songs, as if Matthew Thomas Dillon (aka Windmill) was the only living organism left in a dead-white plastic universe. He is, not surprisingly, upset about this, his nervy, piccolo-sharp voice raised in anguished protest of fluorescent lights, airport departure lounges and plasticine earplugs. His voice is so razory, so unusual (though Wayne Coyne is obviously a reference point) that it cuts through lush arrangements of piano and strings and bangs right up against the limits of song.

More here

Tokyo Moon


And I also had a pretty good time at King Khan and the Shrines, which I’m going to try to write about today, but meanwhile a couple of photos. (Probably not good enough for PM, but you get the idea.)





And one of the NY-area punk band Live Fast Die whose general bent may be suggested by the fact that they closed with the Ramones "Do You Wanna Dance"