Did You See Jupiter?

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times into Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me into Fennesz's new Live In Japan and it's all a little bit }}}f-freaky{{{ in here. The Fennesz is pretty good but not great, a bit static in its static fetish, fine texture rub and phoamy ooze until around the 15:00 mark when his guitar fades in clearer than it ought to be and sounds like some kid checking out the pedal selection at Guitar Center and driving away dreaming of the one — the flanger-type one that's not quite flange or chorus but probably something with a corny brand name and bad graphics — that he'll come to scorn and mock and be a little embarrassed by a few years later.

I’d listened a few times and found stuff to like here and there, but the other day it jumped out at me and, well, the drumming on Ted Leo/Pharmacists’ Hearts Of Oak is a fucking marvel, isn’t it? Constantly flailing, loose in its tight spaces, never too sure of where the groove is gonna go. Like each little fill is just to buy time to figure out what to do with the next bar, but then you hear the drummer pause and think, Hey, this fill is kinda cool too! All digression and wind-backs. “The Ballad Of The Sin Eater” alone has like 12 ideas swirling around a beat that never falls off, a kicky boom stretch here, a spell of cymbal snip there, bell taps that wink and say Uh-Huh.

Can’t think of the last time I heard a rock drummer I’d actually like to interview.

“Hats off to wine bars,” he says, eyes in soft-light haze and tongue tasting of grassy fields. The mirror won’t play, but time sears just the same. Most magicians duck and run; some leave the leaving to relevance.

Of the many that would top Gene Kelly diving off the Woolworth Building into a damp rag, the greatest Moment Of Genius in Singin’ In The Rain: in the “Good Morning” sequence when they play their brown raincoats like guitars for the spell of a brief mariachi breakdown.

…and the sun sets on she shaking her quantum maraca madly.