We Are the Village Green Preservation Society

I find myself devouring liner notes again. One of my favorite states of being. Private elation. A desire to tell everyone about it. To burn twenty copies and give them out to friends and would-be friends, hoping to turn them on. Always wanting to share joys.

I was deterred from this album by Robert in the late 90's (holy shit the bass line in "The Last of the Steam Powered Trains" -- before the tempo quickens-- it gives me shivers). He dismissed it with a quick one-liner. Overhyped or something. But I find this album so adventurous, intense, really present, really now. And sincere. It's just got everything. Robert could maybe use another listen.

Well maybe I wasn't ready for this in the late nineties. What was I listening to? Anything vaguely psychedelic? Well yeah, actually. But it's good to space loves out. So you can always discover things, and maybe have a constant stream of thrills carrying you through to old age.

I keep thinking, oh my god, I'm twenty-nine. I must be aging, because I'm listening to Donovan or Leonard Cohen -- like "easy listening" for the musically curious. But goddammit I've been listening to Cohen since I was nineteen. I just am not changing all that much, at least on certain levels. Maybe the biggest thing that's changed is an admission, a coming out of the closet of sorts. I like country -- there I said it. A small, well-lit corner of country- Gillian Welch, M Ward, and the like. Please don't come at me with knives, or set me afloat on an iceberg, waving farewell in your seal-skin coats.