Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues or yet another inexact album review

Most songs on Helplessness Blues sway like trees bending before a gathering storm. There is an elegantly organic sense of momentum and meaning conveyed within the earnest and open harmonies and bare and urgent strumming of acoustic guitars.

All of the expected noises are present, you already know what Fleet Foxes sounds like, and it is comforting to hear the same sound grown into new and more reaching songs. Some are saying the arrangements are more ambitious, maybe they are, but it is safe to ignore those kinds of thoughts and just press play.

I adore the echoey drum sound that plonks through the whole album like an asthmatic child running after his friends. And of course the harmonies, and melodies that surge and retreat like waves. But what I’m really loving right about now is an unexpected existential strangled trumpet freak out. I like those but don’t worry there is only one on the whole album and it doesn’t interfere with the gentle posturing of the album as a whole.

You might need to put on your earnestness hat to properly listen to Helplessness Blues, it will help. It is also best to leave a respectable distance between you and your speakers when you are playing this album. If you sit too close you’ll be listening wrong. This album requires space, distance and a kind of pottering activity to be heard at its best. I suggest tidying the kitchen and then baking a cake, with love.

People keep mentioning the beautiful lyrics on this album but so far I have allowed the sound to wash around unsullied by literary critique. That is a rare and important gift. The only other album I listen to like that is Unhalfbricking by Fairport Convention, which led me to miss the point entirely on most of the songs but I don’t really mind. Sometimes an album is just for listening to and its best to bow down and be grateful for the invention of sound.

First published on RHUM...

Every seven years I forget that I am an idiot and require reminding

Unfortunately I was reading through some of my old journals last night. It seems clear that people who burn their journals once they are full are more sensible than me. Apart from rediscovering that I am an idiot across all the years, aspects and facets of my life I found one interesting entry.

Some years ago now I wrote constantly about longing for a correspondence with someone, someone who would read all the letters I could write, one a day, two a day, three a day but never write back, not ever. I longed for somewhere to send letters where they might be read, where I might at least in part be understood, a one way dream absorber so that I could empty my head. If only I had known about blogs I might not have filled so many pages about trying to send letters to nowhere.

I suppose that's all this blog is really, a letter to nowhere.

An intimate festival in Sydney's Town Hall

I heard him begin to cough from across the aisle, the air rose within him like a great tide and then stopped.  I heard him again begin a cough but the air rushed neither in nor out. I turned my head to find him in the dark hall. He stood in shock and emitted a muffled bark. Stood like a marionette raised on strings. He reeled then, first forwards then backwards while his legs wound around each making nonsensical patterns on the old floor.

I sat in silence, willing the breath either in or out of him but he did not breathe, he fell like a rag doll against my legs. His feet were still winding about, walking imaginary steps, he clutched a plastic water bottle to his chest while I held him upright in my arms. The warmth of him through his jumper, through my jeans, took me by surprise as though I had bent down to hold a stuffed bear and found myself with a mewling infant instead. The heat coming through his clothes, the winding feet,  the never-ending struggle for breath, this man was desperately alive.

My friend Lawless flew out of her seat and down the side aisle of the hall, the ease of her steps incredible in their contrast to the warm flailing man in my arms. My focus on the man was so intense I had already forgotten the easy slide from one breath to another, the possibility of flight on foot, the possibility of anything but sinking out of existence in an agonising waltz.

I did not raise my eyes but if I had I would have witnessed the silent stare of the pipe organ's great mechanical lungs capable of causing a state of reverie with each breath. This is when I wanted to run, my only thought to make it up to the eyrie and pull out all the stops, cause the organ to breathe with mighty force, pull the air up and out of this man's lungs and out through the screaming pipes so he could live. But I sat with my hands flat against his rigid back feeling the heat of him increase with his struggle. And then they swooped, his friends calling, 'Geoff Geoff are you alright!' and the officials from the town hall and then the people in seats around us.

He was stood up and half-dragged to the back of the hall, clutching at his plastic water bottle, where the medical staff Lawless had magicked out of the air would do something, what I am not sure, to unstop his one crucial air pipe and set his lungs back into regular unthinking motion. I sat back silently in my chair and realised the speakers on the panel had not even paused, Lawless returned to her seat and so the evening carried on under the silent watch of the grand pipe organ whose powers of breath and life remain untested.

Interesting and new

I've heard people say they have been so frustrated they wanted to tear out their hair or scream or both at once. I have felt frustration before but never to the point where I am simultaneously shouting, crying, jumping, throwing things and falling down upon the floor. This is an interesting and new development in being the editor of a magazine. It's all a rich tapestry I 'spose.

Storm in a paper cup

I love the cafe Paper Cup, it has a map of the world, an excellent selection of magazines, an interior endearingly like an Ikea catalogue and astonishingly good coffee but is has caused more than one mild existential crisis on my part.

The Peach is situated in a position equidistant from two IGAs, one in Stanmore and one in Enmore. For almost five years my IGA of choice has been in Enmore, not that it is superior, it is just located in a place of greater possibility. There are at least seven thousand cafes, shops and people on Enmore Rd at any point in time and of course it is a short walk down to Newtown where most of my friends, my PO Box and the world at large resides. It was never a difficult choice to turn and left and head to Enmore, not until Paper Cup opened its doors.

I once had a coffee at Paper Cup that was so good I sat in astonishment, holding the steaming cup against my heart as an offering to my internal gods, who had never before that moment been satisfied with anything. It was a perfect cup of coffee, the kind of flavour that other cups have hinted at but never actually delivered. I have drunk nine cups of coffee from Paper Cup since that first moment and am yet to be disappointed, in fact I have begun to experience constant cravings.

Lately I have chosen to turn right and walk to Stanmore, purchase any necessary items at the IGA and then cross the road and once again experience the satisfaction of delivering my inner gods the perfect coffee. What comes next is the main problem. Stanmore, on that side of the tracks, is a terrible place to be, there is a meth clinic masquerading as a doctor's surgery, a pharmacy both ancient and over-stocked with lavendar powders, a primary school full of screaming children running about randomly like behatted fish in a barrel and the distinct absence of everyone I know. There is nothing to do there,  nothing new to observe, there is no one to talk to and it is double the distance to my PO Box and collecting my letters begins to feel like a chore.

Every time I leave the house in search of coffee or supplies I stop at the front gate and face a minor crisis. Should I turn left and top up an inferior coffee drink with the delights of the world or should I turn right and once again experience transcendence with the ritual satisfaction of inner gods? It is an existential crisis that needs to be experienced to be believed.

The enormously frightening job interview

On my way to The Enormously Frightening Job Interview I was telephoned by another employer and asked to attend Another Enormously Frightening Job Interview next week. So long as I am not averaging more than one a week I think I can cope with this ratio of reality/abnormal fear and only use the usual amount of underpants in a week. In other news Grizelda has super vomit, she vomited in the bathroom two days ago and the smell is as fresh as if it were a steaming pile upon the floor. We have discovered a new kind of very mild superpower.