Yesterday was cloudy just like today, a leaden roof floating over or poor heads. I was hungover, a bit depressed and really tired. I had spent the night before at El Compila Funkistador's birthday and a couple broke up there. I drank too much, various things in no real order. What made yesterday really depressing was the music i felt like listening to. While some people try to fight against gloom, i tend to give in. I listened to Low, Smog's Burning Kingdom and Matt Elliott's Drinking Songs.

Third Eye Foundation's (a band which sounds like suicide on morphine) leader releases his second album. The Mess We Made (the last track of Drinking Songs is cleverly and quite disturbingly named "The Maid We Messed") was his solo debut, a brilliant album filled with what i call ghost music. Drining Songs is not a huge leap ahead, the killing just goes on. It sounds a bit like a well, less lively Tom Waits, bar music, like Closing Time on Prozac, melting the traditional approach with delicate experimentation. It's gorgeous, terrifying only in what it conveys. It's one of the saddest most depressing records i've ever heard, just like most records involving Matt Elliott, but it's not dark like some of Bill Calahan's chart-toppers. It's beyond that, it's slow, helpless, hopeless, like a man crawling to his dying bed.

-Barbara H

/feb 15th 2005/