I hadn’t touched a record player in at least six months, but now we’ve got Dimitra’s turntable sent from Greece. I don’t want to sound overly sentimental, though I know I do, but it’s really a great feeling to let the needle descend on the vinyl and then to hear sounds through the speakers. So I have been playing lots of 7-inches, mostly from Dimitra’s collection which has arrived too (and which makes me stop feeling bad for not owning anything by The Fat Tulips or The Chesterfields), but also to the new Celestial 7″. Oh, you still think it’s 2004 and come here to read about new indiepop releases? Well, Celestial have released a new one. It’s called Fragile Heart, it has four songs, two of which are remixes of the other two and it’s released by Music Is My Girlfriend, that has an mp3 of the title track available from their website. And it’s really good, quite like their hit single Nothing Happens; Twice or the Christmas song they’ve put online recently. In fact, they might be the best Swedish pop band of today. Well, with the possible exception of The Electric Pop Group and The Tidy Ups.

Speaking of those latter two: we got The Electric Pop Group’s self-titled debut album (on Fraction) sent, which is totally brilliant , but you knew that already, because you had been listening to it on last.fm. And we got The Tidy Ups‘ Dizzy Heights EP sent too (that’s also released by MIMG). We’re spoilt brats, really. Rumour has it that the band has broken up recently, but that can’t be true. They haven’t even topped a TweeNet poll yet. And, hell, they don’t even have a website.

It’s great to have access to the local library and even better that it is only five doors away. Even though its collection isn’t very impressive: if you leave out the fantasy, the science fiction and, uhm, the kind of books with quotes from Elle and Cosmopolitan on the back cover, only a small and rather random selection of books is left.
I picked up Brendan Halpin’s Long Way Back from the shelf because the title reminded me of Nick Hornby’s latest book. And then the description sounded nice and –yes, I am a snob– it had quotes from the right newspapers, so I decided to take it home. And to read it.

The book is, basically, about growing up. And there is a lot of music involved (among the numerous musical references, The Ramones are most prominent), which rather explicitly symbolizes not growing up. Add to this the tons of witty remarks and we find about a thousand points on the Quite Like Nick Hornby-scale. Some points need to be subtracted for more death than in all of Hornby’s books together and for quite a lot of religion too, but it still could easily be a missing Hornby-book.
Don’t get the death and religion wrong though: although it does get sad at time, Long Way Back is not depressing; it’s just like life should be, really. And though Halpin is American and the book is mostly situated in Boston, the religion is far from the typical American stuff (partly because the people are Catholics). There were a few times were the American references made it harder for me to identify with the characters, but it did not get in my way of enjoying the book.
The only thing I kind of minded is the slightly corny ending. But then, it is not a bad ending really and probably suits the book well. And anyway, by that time I was too absorbed by the book to really mind.

We have a Christmas Tree. We were probably the last people in the whole world to decorate their tree, late afternoon at Christmas Eve, but now it’s standing there near the front window and it looks pretty. Who would have thought I would say that one day? We’ve got lots of books too, as Dimitra’s boxes from Greece have been sent here, making the flat look ten times as good (and the bookcases a hundred times as full). And I finally read a proper book again (more on that later), one that is not about maths or computers. And the CDs that were in Greece have been sent too, so we were finally able to listen to Mocca’s My Diary, that Isman had sent us so kindly in spring. It sounded even better than I thought it did and the artwork is totally brilliant – there’s something really good going on there in Indonesia. And then we even went to the church down the street for fifteen minutes or so. And then we went to bed and I started really looking forward to working. And also, to reading most of Dimitra’s books during those probably lonely evenings in Oxfordshire.

Life is pretty good, this Christmas. Hope you have a good one too.

(Here’s a YouTube video from Mocca. And another one. And then another one.)

I’ve got a job. A very nice one really, where I can do lots of things that I actually enjoy (and many that I have been doing for years in my spare time). The contract hasn’t been signed yet, as there are some small details to be finalised –I sound a bit like a footballer, don’t I?– but that can’t really go wrong. I might tell you more about the job later. I probably will.
The only downside is that it is in Oxfordshire, which isn’t quite commutable from Exmouth, so I’ll have to stay there during the wee. But I’ve decided to make this into a good side really, by working very hard during the week and have happy and long weekends down here in Devon. I’m sure it’s going to work.

And now I am exhausted. I had to do a test on Perl, which I hadn’t touched in at least six months, so I had to study quite a bit. But it’s worth it, not in the least because I realised once again why it is one of my favourite programming languages. But I think it’s time for a short break. I’ve got some proper books from the library –you know, ones with a stories rather than with code– and spend most of the weekend reading them.

Between the business of the past week –which seems to be rewarding, more on that later– I wrote a guest post for Filles Sourires, the blog of my friend Guuzbourg. The blog writes about (and links to) almost any song that is sung by a woman, as long as it is sung in French. Which means the obvious ones like Françoise Hardy and Jane Birkin, but also lesser-known examples like Amelia Fletcher covering France Gall, which is what I wrote about. (If you’re a true indiepopper, you already knew this song of course. Or at least you’ll pretend you did and then sneak to the blog to download it.)

Oh, and if you scroll down a bit, you’ll find a nice Christmas song by former Shelflife-favourites Souvenir.

But* if you don’t care about the geeky stuff and just want some nice music, what about The Carrots? Tom wrote about them the other day, so you might have heard of them before, but these Texan 60s pop girls are too nice to be overlooked in these busy days. A six-song EP can be downloaded here. They will probably get tired from being compared with three polka-dotted English girls, but it just makes so much sense. And well, it is not such a bad thing, is it now?

Speaking of carrots, they’re delicious when sliced and put in the oven in a tin with some (free range, organic) chicken legs.

* I am assuming here that you read that posts in the order I write them, something that doesn’t agree with blog-reading reality. In fact, the assumption that you read everything that I write about is most likely rather unrealistic.

Thanks to the almighty Wikipedia, I learned that two of my computer-famous compatriots, the bloke who wrote vim and the bloke who wrote python, now work for Google. Both are heroes of the free software community, thus the step seems kind of surprising. And it poses the natural question: isn’t Google getting too big? And given the fact that Google Mail occasionally marks emails from Google Calender as spam, the question probably has an affirmative answer.

(Speaking of Google, I had promised to finish the Google Reader Sidebar plugin, but a deadline in two days force me to put that one off for another few days. Sorry.)

Apparently, Will Westbroek of The Gerbils died earlier this week. I used to listen to their song Glue a lot (in the Neutral Milk Hotel-version, that is, but then it was written by Scott Spillane who was in both bands anyway – just so you know). Listening back it sounds so 1998, which is not necessarily a good thing. People on the net are saying that they miss him, which is rather sill, as most didn’t know him. It’s probably mourning 2.0 or something. I just hope that those who knew him, will keep good memories of him for a long time. They probably will. (The Gerbils-version of Glue is on the page I linked above, but the NMH-version is a lot more subtle and therefore a lot better. The difference is actually bigger than I thought it was.)

Robert Long died too. You won’t know Robert Long unless you’re Dutch, but he’s kind of my parents’ favourite artist. They used to play his tapes in the car over and over again, and his name brings back memories of an uneventful but happy childhood in general, and Sunday car trips to relatives in particular. I still find myself humming one of his songs occasionally, even though I might not have listened to his songs in years. I have often said to mind the fact that my parents weren’t into The Smiths back then, or even U2 or New Order, but then, I’m not sure if I would want to change Robert Long for those artists. I wouldn’t be me anyway.
In his early years, he had cabaretesque lyrics in which he openly sung about his homo-sexuality and called a leading Dutch bishop a bastard – it’s about as rebellious as my parents, and most people in their generation, ever got. But then, like most people, he lost most of his rebellious side and had some crappy TV shows. But perhaps, if he’s got some spare time up there, he could write a song about Pinochet?

Yes. Indeed. Busy. Blah blah. And apart from that, it’s Dimitra’s last week of school for this year, so there were lots of assignments to be written. Fair enough she took the only computer we have to do that. So I have done lots of ‘dry programming’, which isn’t so bad, really. But it seems we’ll finally get the other computer sent to us, which means soon I’ll be able to work with Linux again. Running Perl scripts from the command line. Yay! And last.fm not thinking I’ve been listening to Vashti Bunyan, while I didn’t play it, any more. Yay!

Anyway, there is the new design. Dimitra made it, but you had probably guessed so already. She took the photos around Exmouth last month and she chose the font, which is called Andrew Script, in case you were wondering. And I am the one who is responsible for the fact that it has been put online, before being sanitised. But well, I wanted to put my portfolio online and I think it looks better in the new degisn. (Hey, you probably don’t care about me showing off my programming skills, but not everyone is checking this site to read about my opinion on the new Lovejoy EP, so that’s why.)

Oh, music. Soon, really. I haven’t even finished my breakfast.

It’s good to be busy, really. Even if that means that I have started to think in PHP-code, and try to communicate using the VIM editor. And even given the fact that we have only one computer for two people who both urgently need it (and, admittedly, my need is slightly less urgent). Writing programs and websites without a computer isn’t as bad as it sounds.

As for music, I’ve really been enjoying Don’t Send Me Flowers, a new compilation the The Rain Fell Down put online. The songs are ‘about women making music and people making music about women’, which means most of them (but not all) are actually sung by women, which is never a bad thing. Especially not if these bands include Girls At Our Best, Dolly Mixture, Strawberry Fair and The Never Invited To Parties.
Other recent favourites include Lucky Soul’s Lips Are Unhappy (mp3 at last.fm), Sally Shapiro’s I Know (mp3 at last.fm) and Tiger Baby’s Move Me (from theirspace). They, not very coincidentally, would all fit within that theme too, though they are slightly more electropop.
But this is still my favourite song of the year.

Useless fact of the day: the bloke who wrote PHP was born in Greenland. You didn’t know that, did you?

Everyone is talking about the Clientele it seems. They will have a new album soon, apparently, rather pretentiously called God Save The Clientele. And they have a new band member: a violinist called Mel. Also, they have some kind of blog, but they do not mention their Athens of last April show and neither do they on their myspace blog. Anyway, we’re going to seem them live next month, in some sort of church in London. And Sodastream will play too. We’re lucky I think.

  I first met you on the internet
  Your nickname was perfect, I just let you chat
  I smiled when I saw that you liked the Smiths
  How could I not like a girl like this

  I sent you a mail and I got a reply
  You seemed to like all the same things as I
  I asked you if you’d like to meet me some time
  You said meeting people is always nice

Such a great song. It’s probably about her, isn’t it? My own popgirly would probably make fun of me for playing the same song over and over again if she were home. Oh well, what can I do?

I just discovered this band called The Electric Pop Group. They might be the best new thing I’ve heard this year. It’s December already, so that was about time. I must be a bit of a Johnny-come-lately as at least one, two, three, four others have been writing about them, but whatever. This is just brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Think Field Mice, think Brighter, think any random Sarah band. Think Gothenburg, Sweden too, as this is where these people are from. Of course. Their self-titled debut album will be out one of the following days –didn’t you need a Christmas present for your best friend?– but because these people are so nice, they’ve put the full album on last.fm. Wow. And I haven’t even listened to the second half of the album yet.

In the Summer of 2003, I went on a trip through Scandinavia, trying to meet some local pop friends (though, basically, it was a get-over-the-ex-girlfriend-trip in disguise). While standing in line for breakfast at a hostel in Oslo, I heard someone in front of me say ‘hey, that’s Chris’s t-shirt!’
It was morning, so it probably took me a while to realise that: 1. I was wearing a t-shirt; 2. It was a t-shirt from a band; Suretoss, in fact; 3. One of said band’s members is called Chris, better known as the bloke who does IndiePages. ‘Oh, hi.’ It appeared that the bloke was Curt, one of the two people behind Portland’s Magic Marker Records.
(Earlier during that trip, I had run into Harold from Tullycraft in Copenhagen. I had failed as a boyfriend, or as an ex-boyfriend, but I had proved to be a pretty good pop kid.)

The last Magic Marker record I heard was that of Boat, which I thought was rather disappointing. Too much indierock, too little indiepop. But now the label has released three new records.

The Manhattan Love Suicides are, to my best knowledge, the first English band on Magic Marker (they hail from Leeds) and, I am sure about this, the first Magic Marker band that I first heard of when they played the Netherlands. They played at a John Peel night in Amsterdam, in October. The late Peel would have probably liked this noisy fuzzy pop and so do I. If you like the mp3 of Suzy Jones, which can be found on the label’s website, there’s also theirspace.

The Fainted Ideas sounded quite familiar to me. This is explained by the fact that hits band used to be called Javelins, which was one of my favourite Swedish bands. The Swedish virus has infected Curt and Mark too. The Faintest Ideas do fit quite well in the label’s catalogue next to Those Manhattan Love Suicides (I used to refer to them as Sweden’s answer to Boyracer, which is probably quite accurate too.). Under their new name, they have recorded a full album (which, sadly enough, doesn’t feature their hit I Was Raised As A Polar Bear) and again, if you like the song on the label’s website, there’s theirspace, as well as some Javelins-tracks on last.fm.

Finally, Dear Nora has released a new album too. I’ve become quite fond of this band after Dimitra played one of their earlier albums over and over again this summer. They’re a lot more quiet than the other to bands of course and will be even more quiet in the future, as this album has been their last one. However, Katy Davidson, the band’s main member, will continue making music in one way or another. Oh, and here is that Myspace-link you were waiting for.