My copy of Sun Kil Moon's "April" arrived in the post yesterday. I've only really wanted 3 CDs in the last couple of months. The latest Sigur Ros, Autechre's "Quaristice" and this one. The last album, "Tiny Cities", was good, but it just left me wanting to hear more of Kozelek's original material.

And so here we have it. Over 70 minutes of it (not counting the bonus disc, which I haven't even played yet). My first impression is that the album is not quite as good as Sun Kil Moon's classic debut, "Ghosts of the Great Highway". Thinking back, however, I recall not being altogether impressed with that album the first few times I listened to it. I'm sure that was the result of wanting to compare it with the last Mark Kozelek-fronted release, Red House Painters' "Old Ramon", which had by that time become a favorite of mine. I don't know how long it took, but eventually "Ghosts of the Great Highway became one of my all-time favorite albums. There's only one track on that record ("Lily and Parrots") that I don't absolutely love.

All of which is simply to point out that first impressions can be deceiving when it comes to ANY of Mark's work. "April" sounds like it might take several hearings to grow on me, but I think that once it does I am really gonna like it. A LOT. Maybe one day when I slip into the old familiar melancholy mood and I slap it on---BOOM! It'll hit me like a ton of bricks. I'll finally get it. It will find it's place in the exalted canon of RHP, SKM and Mark Kozelek solo albums.

I've heard a couple of these songs in a primitive acoustic guitar/vocals arrangement on Kozelek's "Little Drummer Boy Live" disc. The versions of "Unlit Hallway" and "Moorestown" sound good there, but that whole album has crappy production where all you hear are the higher registers of the guitars. The vocals are buried way too low in the mix, or sound muffled. At any rate, the fleshed out arrangements of both those songs are wonderful.

Anyhoo, I'll get around to writing a review as soon as I feel like I'm qualified to do so (I'm just now ready to pull together a proper review of the new Sigur Ros...an album for which I am going to have to devise a nickname for...there's no way I'm going to use that cumbersome title they've chosen). So I don't know when that might be, especially since I'm expected that Autechre album in the next couple of days and it may monopolize the player for a little while.

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I stepped outside yesterday and could have sworn I smelled someone cooking on a charcoal grill. I didn't think too much of it, even though it seemed a bit too early to fire up a barbecue. I headed to the post office and that was when I noticed the fire truck. It was in the immediate vicinity of the local optometrist's offices, but as I drove around the block I saw that it was actually the meat packing plant across the street.

That explained the smell of the meat cooking. Before too long the smell had mutated somewhat into a less savory odor and it permeated the whole town.

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I caught the last 15 minutes of the Porter Wagoner show on RFD-TV. It sent me back in time to when my dad, my brother and I used to watch it every Sunday morning over 35 years ago. It is surprising how well I remember this stuff. Still, as goofy as I recalled Speck Rhoads to be, he was actually about 10 times goofier. Not necessarily in a "funny" way, either. More like a "scary" way. It is somewhat surreal to see these old shows and to mark how much things have changed, but I swear Speck was the dictionary definition of "bizarre".

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