Yeah, Sweden, fuck you with your pleasant way of life and beautiful scenery, and legendary ladyfolk and being good at hockey and all that shit.

Well, no, that’s not what I meant by Fuck You, Sweden.  I’m sure it’s very nice there.  What I meant was to express was incredible frustration at that fact that for some inexplicable fucking reason, my computer thinks I am in Sweden.  There must be an obvious setting somewhere, but for something so simple, I can’t seem to find it.

Who cares, I hear you say, but actually it’s quite annoying. I can go straight to Google UK, for example, but when I type anything into that little search box on the top right of the browser window, it gives me the results in Swedish, and tries to send me to Swedish websites (no, not that sort of Swedish website).  This is merely annoying, but in writing yesterday’s Mimicking Birds post, I was actually sent to MySpace Sweden, for fuck’s sake.

Erm, anyway, I am writing this from the 6am train up from London after last night’s chat with Sony which was, erm, pleasant.  I am not entirely certain quite what was achieved, exactly, and I am wary of becoming part of the circle of mutual backscratching which is an inevitability for an insider in any industry.  But it was a fun evening, and it was really nice to meet Jamila, Tim and Brendan.  And it was really nice for Brendan to let me crash at his house.  As good as it was to see people at a big label in the UK start taking bloggers seriously, however, and as nice an evening as it was, I can’t help but feel that once we start going out for drinks on a major label tab we become part of the problem for the music industry, not part of the solution.

That picture at the top of the page was contributed by my friend Dev from New York, incidentally.  He does Blog Fresh Radio, which seems like it might be in the process of becoming Hype Machine radio, but I’m not entirely certain.  I’ll ask him next time we speak.  But he’s indeed right, this week’s five are going to be ‘mint’.  Gosh I’m street.

1. Oddest flavour of ice cream you’ve seen.
2. Name of a herb which sounds quite cool – just as a word, not the comestible itself.
3. Is frozen yoghurt any good?  Better than ice cream?  Just different?
4. Toppings – evil or splendid.
5. An ice cream-based anecdote from your childhood.

These five songs are all promo mp3s from recently or imminently released albums.  Isn’t that nice.  Actually, the St. Vincent one sounds rather good, I think. And My Latest Novel – can’t wait for that one.

My Latest Novel – All In All In All is All

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St. Vincent – The Strangers

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Maximo Park – Wraithlike

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Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Hysteric

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Eulogies – The Fight (I’ve Come to Like)

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I’ve had about enough of yelping, eccentric female vocal stylings.  This in another release which occupies the same sort of everso fashionable territory that you might imagine emanating from Kate Bush and Bjork locked in a passionate 69.  It’s vaguely similar territory to the likes of CocoRosie and Feist, but less intimate and with far more of the faintly spastic ejaculations to which the patron saint earth mother of tortured 80s intellectual eccentrica was so very prone.

Don’t let my frustration with this particular musical niche distract you though; I’m not denying that there are some very good songs on this record.  The first single, Now Now, is terrific, as is Paris is Burning, but when I listen to the whole album all at once I find the style starts to grate on me a little too much for me to ignore it and listen to the songs on their own merits.

Ultimately, I always get the feeling that listening to this sort of music eventually turns you into a sensitive feminist who is a bit overly intellectual and thinks she alienates everyone because she’s too intelligent and sometimes demands too much from people, when in actual fact it’s more to do with the fact that she’s just dull as shit.

St. Vincent – Now, Now
St Vincent – Paris is Burning

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