At the Department of Forgotten Books (6)

Geography...

I finished ‘Girl in a Band’ this morning, so I’d better get back to something off the ‘half-finished’ reading pile – currently containing, as it does, an old John Harvey, a H.P. Lovecraft biography, a book about Bert Jansch and the British Folk Revival, ‘Conreteopia’ and a book about the history of cinemas in Nottingham…

Oh, and I was listening again earlier to the rather wonderful recent album by the Fireworks – indiepop but with a serious thudding, fuzzy, joyous, Mary Chain, wall-of-sound vibe. It kind of reminds me of early Dinosaur Jr. in the way that the rather fragile vocals gear-mesh precariously with the maelstrom as if they’ve been thrown against a wall, or struggled, out-of-breath, up a precipitous and rather rocky hillside. Anyway, definitely ‘Album of the Year’ so far if Sufjan Stevens hadn’t already released the beautiful and brittle  ‘Carrie and Lowell.’ (Not to mention ‘No Cities To Love’ by Sleater-Kinney, it’s been a good year so far… I’ve been remiss about commenting, musically, so when I look back at this, ahem, ‘journal’ it’ll look like it was all very quiet round at Chez Prime when, in fact, the year to date has been characterized by a number of short, intense, fanboy enthusiasms for, amongst other things, the Wake, Flying Nun (especially the Clean), the aforementioned Sleater-Kinney and Australian popsters the Lucksmiths…)