Sinister: Say it loud, I'm P!O!P! and proud

[Brian Pennington]

Heyyyy Sinister,
	Oh, how could I not post! Those silly Glaswegians are getting me 
worked up like a schoolgirl. First tour reports, then a new single, then 
more tour reports, then a fantastic Peel session. It's all too much. I 
think I may be swooning....

	Alright I've recovered somewhat. I got my roomate to tape the Peel 
session, a somewhat precarious operation involving placing my iBook next 
to my stereo and hooking them together, running a phone line across the 
room to the stereo and setting the iBook up to play Radio 1's RealAudio 
feed. Moreover I had a previous engagement and my roomate had to do all 
the recording, I'm just glad he remembered. As it was the poor iBook 
crashed right before "The Magic of a Kind Word," so I only heard the 
other three. I must say I am by no means disappointed. Also, Peel said 
none of the four would be on the next EP. The skinny for you who are 
searching Napster frantically...

(My Girl's Got) Miraculous Technique
I mention this one first despite its being played last because I love 
love love it. I suspect it is their take on dub. The culprits - the 
offbeat reverby piano chords, the warm organ (yes I just said WARM 
ORGAN), the plodding bass, and Richard going crazy on those skins every 
so often (although these outbursts lacked the dub-eriffic echoes usually 
reserved for their traditional dub counterparts). This song is 
unabashedly happy and oh-so catchy. The only problem is that it's full 
of snowy wintry imagery and it seems a travesty to hear it in the 
summertime. But I give it a perfect 10. I keep rewinding it and playing 
it over and over. It has a decidedly un-dub ubertwee flute/strings 
breakdown too.  Mmmm ok moving on.

Shoot the Sexual Athelete
Another case of Struan getting more and more self-referential about him 
and being in a band and all. It's almost like a spoken word rap a la 
StuD with just bass, drums and Struan rapping and then those guitars 
kick in. Oh those guitars.... it's like Felt doing a rap song. Lawrence 
did sort of have a sing-songy way of vocalizing from time to time didn't 
he? But anyway the song is lovely and fun. Ohhhhh my god and I just 
figured out a line and realized the whole song is about Robert Forster. 
I just couldn't understand what he was saying in one line but he spells 
it all out. It's even got a sort of Forster-ish quality about the 
singing. Now all the lines later on make so much more sense. Mmm, you've 
got to love a band that write songs about Go-Betweens.

The Magic of a Kind Word
Didn't hear it, my roomate missed this one. Is it the sort of 
electronic-y number?

Something in the Silence
I've forgotten the title to this one, sorry. Truth be told I've only 
listened to it twice as it's buried in the middle of the tape and 
finding it is trickier than finding the other two, and I have to keep 
replaying Miraculous Technique over and over. It's got Isobel and Sarah 
singing a duet, and some patently unorthodox instrumentation. i.e. very 
quiet guitars, lots of vibraphone and harmonica. It's nice but didn't 
catch my ear as much as the others. Sounds sort of Gentle Waves-ish.

I'll have to MP3 them for, ah, my own personal listening enjoyment, and 
listen to them over and over a bit.

	So I got Jonathan David the day it came out, walked down a few 
blocks, checked one record store, didn't have it, checked another, got 
it there. No fuss no muss. I've listened to it a few times...I must say 
I was actually a bit concerned about my favorite band starting to get 
sort of dull. The overwhelmingly upbeat Jonathan David didn't float my 
boat right away, but I've come to give it a grudging admiration. It's 
certainly upbeat enough to be the single...anyway the B-sides are lovely 
too, but not especially exciting. I agree with previous assertions that 
they dulled down Loneliness a bit too much by burying the guitars in the 
mix. But it's a damned good song anyway. Oh those organs. But yeah, 
something in the tension of the song got lost.

	So now there's a bevy of new B&S songs floating hither and thither 
and we're going to have to start figuring out how to make sense of them. 
There's these four tracks from the session, and Big John Shaft (played 
at Glasgow Uni, equally ace) and the 'Spanish-influenced song' Stevie 
was asked about by the NME, all of which the band claim won't be on the 
next EP. Then there's "I'm Waking Up to You," which Stevie said involved 
23 session musos in the studio and will be on one of the EPs (so it 
sounds like it will be on the second...), "I Love My Car," which sounds 
as though it would be the frontrunner for the A-side to the next single 
as it's the only new song that they've not specifically dismissed from 
the EP that they've been playing live. I can hardly imagine them not 
playing the second single on their tour, and it's supposed to be so 
catchy and all. I'm excited. Then there's "Lord Antony," which seems 
sort of forlorn but could still see release. After all, Loneliness 
finally came out. They seem to have a thing for putting songs that have 
been languishing on trainspotters' ears on EPs. First Middle Distance 
Runner, now Loneliness. Who knows. I doubt Rhoda et al will ever see the 
light of day anytime soon though. Very exciting, that's all I can say.
And that's not even counting the whole Storytelling soundtrack....

Brian Pennington | cellophanesky at mac.com | AIM: aVespertineDream
Semi-regular observations: <http://mcmcmc.scribble.nu>
the Cellophane Sky: <http://www.mp3.com/thecellophanesky/>
Sandcastle Records: <http://www.indiepages.com/sandcastle/>
"Better a tear of truth than smiling lies." - Duncan Browne
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+  "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001   +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+