What defines good music? When exactly is it good? Can there even be a completely objective answer? To me music is good when I hear it, like it, and feel like it has been there all my life. It has not been tampered with by humans, in stead it has been conjured out of star dust and made listenable to our human ears. But had already been there long before we heard it. I feel this way about The Long Year by Ivan The Tolerable And His Elastic Band.
Strangely enough I don’t feel the need to pigeonhole this sound they are playing. I wouldn’t very well be able if I wanted to, but I don’t, so that’s fine. I do want to talk about this poet they talked into reciting her amazing and mindbogglingly profound poetry onto their tunes and make this record so, so, so good.
Her name is Karen Schoemer, and she is a miracle of language. Her spoken word poems hit me so hard, I wish she had it written down somewhere so I could post it here, I’d buy her poetry bundles! But alas. I love her “sunset” analogy in Indigo Blue the most. It is a story about the sunset being a drunk, sad middle aged man stumbling through his life partying, neglecting his wife, and being obnoxious. I am probably describing it wrong, the best thing you can do is just clicking on that Bandcamp link I posted underneath the artwork and listen for yourself.
It is art. And it is music. It is good art music, or music art. I bet people will categorize it and put into a box, but that is irrelevant to me. What matter is that it is here, and that it is gloriously good to me.
I hope it’ll find your heart and ears too.
Weirdo Shrine 
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