THEY SAY WATCHED POT NEVER BOILS

Wait, wha? So all the sudden watercooler buzzes about the Good, the Bad and the Queen being actually, holy shit, mostly the first thing. Like even though those guys totally snoozed at ESS EX ESS DUBS, snitches, bonjour. (Whatever of course this is all in quotes. Yes unremixed is better, as Tom said first.) Except like actually, holy shit!

I'm always last in, but let's none of us forget new jack soul, OK? I BEALIVE (hey, it's a good time, is all). Not just Bell Biv Devoe (shit, I even got Above the Rim once, friends-- vid), though by now "Poison" has easily assumed its rightful AWSOME status beyond the strange-cultist/total-douchebag nexxus. Not even just SWV's "I'm So Into You," my most recent lucky 12" find (plus "Weak" vid-- recommended!). The first proper pop recording I ever owned at a time when it was actually contemporary was a cassette of Hi-Five's Keep It Goin' On (earlier vid) in fourth grade (this comes after a blue dubbed copy of Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em-- BTW are the rumors true???--, some out-of-print volume of a Beach Boys Greatest Hits comp, "Dude It's My Turn *I* Wanna Be Mav", and Rosenschontz, among others sadly forgotten). Boyz II Men will always have their merits, and I bet I can still sit down for later stuff like Silk (freaky!), Shai (indie-pop!), Tony! Toni! Toné! (that one song!) and-- gulp-- All 4 One (Arcade 4 Hire?) ...(uh check plz). Then those kids on the bus wearing Pearl Jam t-shirts-- "oh, cool, I like 'jamz'"-- and OH NO alternative and quick (silver) plz thnx Offspring, Green Day, Weezer, Purple, Soundgarden, Live (incl. pre-Throwing Copper), Oasis, Beatles, &c... Meantime there was KSFM 102.5 Sacramento. Oh shit, "Baby Got Back"! Bummer, I actually don't think I ever heard Hi-Five on there til "I Never Should've Let You Go" off their *next* album, Faithful, which came after a tragic automobile accident, when I'd already given up hearing from them again. Such sweetness, so unjustly overlooked. (FORESHADOWING?)

I just didn't want to *hurt* anymore, y'know? Blur were It for me in high school almost as soon as I read about their legendary-sounding feud with my beloved "Live Forever"/"Supersonic" boys in the then-"pink section" of the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle my Mom still splurged for at the new Barnes & Noble after we'd moved to Tennessee. A thorough, no-frills music joint called CD Stockroom opened up nearby; they occasionally had promos to give away (I still probably spent most of my potential CD money on, like, baseball cards), and one day I got lucky and picked up The Great Escape. The lyric sheet has the songs out of order, so first I heard was "He Thought of Cars." You've never lived, man. Dan Abnormal, Morgan C. Hoax, A.J. Sexmeal and, uh, Dave Rowntree stayed with me as my favorite band through moving to Arizona in 10th grade, learning to play guitar but never figuring out how to sing, and meeting the Internet one summer at Arizona State, spending whole days talking to Brits in chatrooms. So what if "Song 2" didn't make sense to me at the time as the single (sheer brilliance obv.), I was gonna defend the self-titled album until the death of my social life. That faint heartbeat didn't die, though, picked up in fact, and then there was 13, prom, a melodramatic view of my own undesirability, graduation, college, beer, an utterly fantastical view of my own desirability, Think Tank, love, graduation, work, New York, adulthood... gaga freelance-writer infancy.

I first heard Damon Albarn of Blur's new project, the Good, the Bad and the Queen, via a stream on some blog or other of the song "Herculean" (streams, mp3s). It struck me as dubby, sonically interesting, but a little slow and pretentious, like Gorillaz without the aspiration toward party-friendly pop. Without realizing it, I kinda freaked-- think I was able to cover it up bc the same blog was probably streaming something like "Nag Nag Nag Nag" (oh hell yes). Pretty sure I listened to the full album once after that, but not closely, and ho-hum reviews virtually guaranteed I'd stay away to save myself any further soul-crushing, confidence-melting, autobiography-shredding disappointment. "It's too close to home, and it's too near the bone." And then. And then!

Latest buzz is right; it's a pretty darn good album, a worthy entry in the Blur-related canon (even though Damon should just get Graham back and reunite already) (see offnotes, 3/16/07, "DINO BORE JR. (NOT)"). At its best, it's "noisy art-glam," to use Joshua Klein's words, approaching David Bowie's '70s peak from an entirely different plane than yr biggest indieblog bands. One of the highlights for me is out-of-time Enchantment Under the Sea piano waltz "'80s Life" (stream)-- mash that up with Acid Casuals' sadly overlooked "Bowl Me Over" ("132a Column Rd." vid) and I'll die. You hear that? Anyway it's like a sad '50s prom theme as imagined by the '80s as recorded right goddamn now. "Oh Lord, can a stone be ballast for an aching soul?" Damon sings, or something. I love that voice.

And don't be scared by dang Danger "Tit" Mouse (I just said "Tit." [Did I mention this is just a blog?]). Should've smoked the salmon first, you say? Listen, "Kingdom of Doom" (vid) is fully realized acoustic gloom-pop ("Drink all day, 'cause the country's at war") with guitar squalls; if Blur's Blur met OK Computer, or, a less actively self-destructive 13. The title track really does it for me, too, I won't lie-- there's the Bowie I was talking about, complete with over-the-top piano grandeur. What was I so scared about, again?

"If you don't know it now, then you will do."

Oooooh. Ahhhhhh. Woooooo. Hooooo.











JUSTIFIABLE HYPE: David Torns: Prezens (via that DJ Martian guy).

AND AGAIN: Matthew Dear: Deserter (via Philip Sherburne).

UPDATE: A visit to astute reader Dave Rawkblog's (what's Matt Skatterbrain's real last name, anyway? No offense was intended!) site reminds me I also really wanted to remind you to really want to watch this video by the National.