Well hi.

So I stagger in from the airport last night, head full of phlegm and soul burning with contempt for Prime Time Shuttles ("I paid twelve American dollars!"), to find a CD waiting in my mailbox which might as well exist solely to lie in ambush for yours truly.

The Guillemots, "Trains To Brazil" - I know we're all super-hip and beyond the pale and we'd never be caught admitting to enjoying an album as gauche and populist as Funeral in public ("your winnings, sir"), but cast your mind back, if you will, to the first time you heard it. (I'm well aware, of course, that this is a really dangerous comparison, and if there's anything that's going to turn the Guillemots into a painfully unfun band really fast it's going to be a billion extended rapturous comparisons to Win & Regine & the Good-Time Gang, but this is all I have; please do not use your chloroform.) See, the great thing about Funeral that people never seem to acknowledge directly is that in spite of all the touchy-feely return-to-sincerity dead-grandmother-y concept-album horseshit that enabled a thousand steakheaded indie pop dunces to charm/bulldoze their way into the panties of a thousand girls who really should have known better, it's a motherfucking great singles album, easily on par with Country Life or Ziggy Stardust or etc. I mean, even people I know who hate the Arcade Fire for entirely legitimate reasons have copped to liking at least a song of theirs in the past; this is because it is entirely possible to be immune to all the tiresome bullshit that comes free with the purchase of the album yet still get completely suckered in by all the glorious pop-music melodrama that the album just brings in spades. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it's nothing to be ashamed of - I mean fuck, it's not like I'm going to be selling my copy of Snow Patrol's Final Straw back any time soon.

BUT I DIGRESS. The thing about singles albums, of course, is that by definition, some of the songs are simply better than others, and while that's a pretty strong contender for the most egregiously obvious thing I've ever said on this blog, it's worth pointing out if only because on occasion (as was the case with Funeral), the contrast between the "singles" and the "album tracks" can be striking in a way that bears mention in its own right. I mean, with Funeral, I thought (and in all honesty, still think) every song on the album was at least "pretty good" and usually "really good", but the thing that makes the album is the monstrous gulf between stuff like "Haiti" or that song that's half in French and world-killing axe-murdering grizzly-bear rockers like, oh, you can probably fill in the rest. Speaking personally, it's pretty rare that I like a band without having a focal point to my affection for them; sometimes this can come in the form of an album (for instance, I can boil my Brian Eno fetishism down to Music For Airports with startling efficiency), but it's always more invigorating when I settle on a single or two that sums up everything I like about a band, which is probably why I never ended up having much use for that Wolf Parade album.

I bet you can see where I'm going with this.

You see, the thing about the Guillemots' debut, this autumn's insta-eBay fodder I Saw Such Things In My Sleep, was that it was just about the most accomplished thing I heard all year, like they'd all been saving up stuff to put on a record since the first time they ever came in contact with pop music and waited until they were sure that they'd made a record that matched up to the stunning grandeur of whatever they were holding in their heads before releasing it on a sleeping world. Needless to say I wasn't exactly expecting them to ever reach those heights again, let alone top it; most bands would take long knives to their genitals just to get one song as good as "Who Left The Lights Off Baby?" after all (and that wasn't even the single!). But MOTHER OF GOD, I had no idea that they had a song like "Trains To Brazil" in 'em, although, to be fair, I didn't know anyone on earth had a song like "Trains To Brazil" in 'em; it's one of those songs where the fact that it sounds like a billion other songs I love without the tinest shred of irony (a short list of songs I've compared "Trains To Brazil" to in my head: ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky", the Decembrists' "The Sporting Life", Mr. Scruff's "Get A Move On", Dexy's Midnight Runners' "Come On Eileen", Madness' "Our House") hardly restrains my love for it - if anything, I'm ten thousand times as thrilled to experience a sugar rush of a song like "Mr. Blue Sky" in the context of the artist and the moment it was released into than I would be otherwise. Songs like this always make me feel like I've discovered something, although I tremble in fear at what's going to happen when the Guillemots detonate on the public's consciousness next year as I can't help but see them doing and EVERYONE ends up feeling like they've discovered something - y'know, kinda like the Arcade Fire.

I'm pretty sure that this is my favorite piece of music to come out of 2005, and of course as luck would have it I find this out after I write up all my year-end lists. The whole Trains To Brazil EP is pretty astonishing, better than their debut EP by several factors of ten (and that's not something I'd say without just cause), but good as it is, I'd be kidding myself if I tried to act like my bread was buttered anywhere other than the title track, or at least at the moment. I'm well aware that I'm probably building this song up to ridiculous, untenable proportions that'll only do it harm; a bunch of you are probably going to download this and feel monstrously deflated in the face of all my fulminating praise for it. I don't care. I'm the one paying the hosting fees, I'm the one arming my friends with a record of my public shame, and goddammit, this is the song I've been waiting all year to hear, whether I knew it or not. Indulge me. (Click here to buy the Trains To Brazil EP from Rough Trade - keep in mind that Guillemots EPs can disappear REALLY quick and frankly I'm pretty shocked that Rough Trade has any left at all, so you will plz to be advised to jump on this quick if you're interested)

Dogs, "London Bridge" - I also think it's pretty interesting that I stumbled over "Trains To Brazil" when I did; 2005 marks the third year in a row that saw me discover my very favorite song(s) of the year in the last few weeks of it, in light of 2003's "Are You Ready For Love?" from Elton John and "I'm A Cuckoo" from Belle & Sebastian and 2004's "London Bridge" (as well as another song that I'm planning to post tomorrow during another bout of Epworth mania), all unearthed in the closing weeks of December. Part of me, of course, thinks that I'm just giving these songs a little too much credit simply because I like wrapping up the year in a nice little single-sized package, but facts are facts, and I still think the world of every single one of those songs now as much as I did when they first busted a musical nut all over my consciousness, even if I admittedly don't listen to them as compulsively as I used to. It is still, for instance, a total mystery to me how Dogs' "London Bridge" didn't conquer the world with staggering facility; the song might as well be Coldplay's "Fix You" for all its beat-you-over-the-head melodic force, only with the rocket thrust of a jetliner blasting down the runway instead of the whimpering bleat of a third-rate Air Supply song reverberating off the walls of a cavernous vagina. It's just one of those things where you've got to shrug it off as the world's loss and push the song on everyone who'll listen to compensate; if you are anything like me, odds are pretty good that one trip through this song will have you doing just that. (Click here to buy Turn Against This Land from Amazon.co.uk)

ELSEWHERE:

- MEGA CONGRADULATIONS are in order to Gregg Gethard on his recent engagement to long-time girlfriend Ilana (who I've never met but who likes "Since U Been Gone" and is therefore A-O-K in my book). At long last, we may be nearing an answer to the age-old question: Do people in Philadelphia throw batteries at weddings?

And speaking of Gregg, it is also IMPERATIVE that you all go read his magnificent and epic community theater piece, which, if you are like me, will leave you desperately furious with yourself for being incapable of appreciating excruciating social discomfort while it's happening all around you. (actually this is pretty much true of everything posted on his site, so go read all that too.)

- Final word on the Goldfrapp/DFA debacle: It's been confirmed that the track will get an official release next year after all, as everything seems to be set in place for another epic DFA compilation comprised mostly of their remixes, including this one (and I hope and pray feverishly that it'll also include the long-promised yet-to-be-released second Black Leotard Front single and the Delia & Gavin track from the Holiday mix which RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULES). In the meantime, if you don't want to wait, Moebius Rex put up a far-superior rip of the remix on his blog while I was away on break; it is entirely worth the time spent downloading it unless you are a DFA-hating anhedonist (in which case you can suck on MY nuts).