Space Is The Place (again)

Can it really be true that Windy & Carl have been making records for 20 years?  I guess the fact they are just about to release the "3rd & final installment" of their celebration of their "20th year of releasing music" on their own Blue Flea imprint means that it is!


That single and their adorable recent 7" for The Great Pop Supplement provide ample evidence that they are creating some of the most touching, effortless-sounding music of their career.  "Carnivale" - the B-side of the GPS single - is particularly great and is undoubtedly the single song I've listened to most to date in 2014.  Over a tinkling, all-percussion backing, Windy Weber sings in thee most heavenly voice, foregrounded as never before, about a scene that could have been lifted straight from a David Atttenborough nature documentary:

"Little crabs on hot sand
 Dancing on the hot sand
 Claws outstretched toward the sky
 Snapping claws, feet in time"

It just so exquisitely expresses the wonder of small, everyday things.  Both sides of the Blue Flea release and the A-side of the GPS 7" are more typical of their previous records (shimmering guitars, subdued atmospheres, buried melodies) but done so beautifully and with such understated emotion as to make them career highlights.  With Grouper's steady rise to a certain level of prominence over the last few years, hopefully the conditions are right for Windy & Carl to receive a little more recognition again.  There's no doubt that they deserve it.

Around the time I was first fully immersed in the spectral music of Windy & Carl and their Michigan peers (Fuxa, Auburn Lull, Mahogany, Once Dreamt etc.) I bought a little 4 track cdep of demos by Alison Statton's post-Young Marble Giants group Weekend.  It was flawless from start to finish and seemed to sit just right alongside the similarly elegant music made by those groups.  Earlier today, I was jolted from the tedium of work when I read the Twitter announcement from Norman Records that Blackest Ever Black is set to restore these demos to print, this time on 12" vinyl.  Now the end of February can't come soon enough!

The New Era "We Ain't Got Time"

"A hey, hey, hey"
tap
tap
tap
tap
perfect, perfect emotive jangle

The above sequence, give or take a few taps, occurs about 1 minute and 40 seconds into The New Era's unsurpassable (sounds rash but I mean it!) "We Ain't Got Time".  It's one of those moments that catches the ear and stops the heart for an instant with its inexplicable brilliance.

The final 30 seconds convert aching into beauty in the most intense, moving way, too.  Based on the raft of Michigan garage compilations released over the years, the state was awash with the most incredible groups in the 1960s.  I've long held that even in that fertile scene The Sheffields' 45s for the almost mythical Fenton Records and select other local labels were nigh on untouchable so it was no surprise to learn that various Sheffields were responsible for "We Ain't Got Time".  Tonight, I'll lie awake in bed imagining the thrill of casually happening on a dusty copy in a second hand store in some unlikely town for an affordable price.  Sure it won't happen now that shop owners can easily check what collectors are willing to pay for such stupendous records nowadays but I can dream, can't I?  I'll also clutch the sole Fenton release I own - the aforementioned Sheffields' "Fool Minus A Heart" (b/w a supreme take on Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind") - just a little closer to my heart for its having been brought into being by the geniuses responsible for "We Ain't Got Time".  Increasingly, when I think of 60s pop, there's The Hollies' "Bus Stop" and there's "We Ain't Got Time" and then there's the rest.