You Are What You Play

I've been listening to KEXP out of Seattle lately at work. I keep a text document open so I can jot down records I may want to buy. They also have a really excellent archive which includes the recent American Music Club set with Another Morning.

As I type this I'm listening to a My Morning Jacket EP that I'm really enjoying. I think I first heard them on a Darla sampler, but they were played a lot this week by John Richards. I'd like to buy Loretta Lynn's new record that Jack White produced and also Morrissey's latest, both also heard on KEXP this week.

I am so glad that Morrissey made a new record. I'd been a Smiths fan since I was quite young. I remember stopping by Newbury Comics almost daily when either the Queen is Dead or Strangeways was about to come out--I was so anxious for more of their music. Unable to wait, I asked someone at the store for a band that compared to the Smiths. They convinced me to buy a Mighty Lemon Drops tape; I wasn't very happy.

I was faithful to Morrissy until 1992 when Your Arsenal came out. It's not that it was bad, but it just wasn't the same. I saw him a few years after that in Boston and he was great live--I was shocked at all of the look-a-like boys that gathered in the corners looking solemn. I was sure they didn't exist any longer. Morrissey was very charismatic; he was no longer the skinny fella with flowers drooping out of his back pocket who I had pasted on my walls in earlier years.

Irish Blood, English Heart is excellent, but I wasn't sure about the rest of the record until I heard First of the Gang to Die on KEXP this week. This is perfect Morrissey:

You have never been in love
until you’ve seen the stars
reflect in the reservoirs
and you have never been in love
until you’ve seen the dawn rise
behind the Home For The Blind