Curse of the import-onlys

This ever happen to you? You read an album review on New Music Tuesday (say, on Stylus for Delays/You See Colours). It sounds like something you want right away (maybe a "B" doesn't scream "buy" to you, but you know what you like, ok?). You figure maybe you'll swing by the record store on the way home from work (oh, but wait, you have to get back quickly so you can spend the evening on a project for an old freelance client, even though you're exhausted from the eight-hour grind of the regular paying gig and can barely stand the thought of staring at words on paper for another three hours). So scratch that, you'll just download the album off iTunes. But then, horrors of horrors, you run smack into the import-only wall! Damn Stylus and its trans-Atlantic mission. That Delays review was meant for its U.K. readers, the album isn't even out in the States and who knows when it will be, if ever.

So that last part was an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Let's console otherselves with something excellent from the Delays previous album, Faded Seaside Glamour (US, UK), shall we?

Long Time Coming - Delays

Something that is actually available in the U.S. (on iTunes anyway, even though it appears to be an import CD) is Amusement Parks On Fire's Blackout EP (US, UK). I'm not entirely sold on this band since I'm not sure it adds anything to the already overcrowded field of drone n' fuzz post-shoegaze (I've decided that from now on, just for laughs, I'm adding a "post" to every subgenre that's been around for at least 10 years. It seems scholarly.) But I like how the strings in "Solera Reina" swell and swell then refuse to ebb, so that you can sort of imagine the band bailing water with leaky buckets in a slowly flooding basement.

Solera Reina - Amusement Parks On Fire

A kind soul who knows I am a bit of a Will Oldham and Will Oldham cover fan sent me Tract Records' tribute album, I Am A Cold Rock , I Am Dull Grass, this past weekend. I had a hard time moving beyond Pinetop 7's astonishingly lovely cover of "A Minor Place." It's been on repeat ad infinitum.

A Minor Place - Pinetop 7