TWAS: Greatest Hits

Search for: Life Against Buildings (the whole essay's pretty good, but that part in particular nailed EXACTLY how I heard the album), Juliana Hatfield (those open letters are awkward and perhaps a bit too personal for some folks' taste, but definitely interesting, even in the non-voyeuristic sense), anything involving Sarah Records (glenn's introduction & immersion into the wide, wonderful world of indie pop breathed new life into the site just as it seemed, to me, that he was hitting a dry patch - check the essay on the Field Mice 2CD retrospective from Shinkansen for the beginning of it all), Guided By Voices (wherein, over the course of a couple of years, glenn's enthusiasm for GBV turns to confusion and then disgust; the write-ups for Bee Thousand & Isolation Drills are the bookends, from what I recall). Also, there was a write-up on the World Cup earlier this year that's probably the best thing I ever read on glenn's site.

This Vanessa Carlton review is brilliant, and this Loud Family double edition got me into them, if that counts for anything.

I agree with David R about Life Without Buildings and GbV - amazing stuff. The review he did of my band left me speechless.

The piece on The Reputation perfectly mirrored my own frustrations with that album and the persona(e) contained within it.

All the ones mentioned above, especially the final GBV kiss-off, Life Without Buildings and Vanessa Carlton. And the World Cup thing.

Glenn M. on 69 Love Songs: "My attempts to summarize what I think it is this album achieves read like acrostic clues, like I can't possibly mean them as single thoughts: Three minutes each of any style that can be played sober; the Yellow Pages for a quarantined city of derelict clowns; a West Side Story for the doomed courtship between anoraks and apartment radiators; every introvert's heroes sitting quietly in one junkstruck room; a shut-in's extrapolation of the Anthology of American Folk Music from catalog blurbs; proof that all cynicism is heartbreak under its make-up; an unlabeled cassette library of PixelVision sunsets; the picket line demanding that the Island of Lost Toys also admit metaphors; Leonard Cohen's eulogy for Dr. Seuss."

There's a great image of him driving around, quickly running up and down the radio dial, and getting caught as by a fish-hook by Thom Yorke's falsetto on Fake Plastic Trees.

Yeah, that World Cup piece was wunnerful. :-)

And anytime ol' Glenn holds forth on Talk Talk and/or Mark Hollis, it's like a meeting of true minds. But all that Juliana Hatfield stuff is scary. Well, great-scary, but scary nun-the-less.

On Modern English.

Also the LWB/etc. trilogy:

http://www.furia.com/twas/twas0320.html

Life AGAINST Buildings? Oh man.