Sitting still and staring straight ahead

OK, so you know that little post that Cat made earlier about Rings Around the World? How she talked about the type of bands that you always want to check out but for some reason never get around to it until much later? Well, the same thing happened to me with this little band that I'm writing about in this post.



Let's take a time-machine and go back to early 2007: A Philadelphia band called A Sunny Day in Glasgow release their debut album. A certain popular hipster review site then gives it a R*c*mm*nd*d rating, and soon features it on some list that compiles the most under-rated stuff from the year. Of course, I hadn't really given a shit about that site's ratings (and I still don't) - however, curiosity may have killed the cat on for that one. The shoegaze/noise-pop comparisons were convincing enough, but I still hadn't bothered to check them out. Fast forward to now: a few days ago, I had gotten this record on a whim, only familiar with the name from the aforementioned review. Sure, I was listening to Supreme Clientele, You Turn Me On and Pinkerton, and those three records are good on their own, but given my slight compulsion to get more records, it was time to check out something new. Hence the whole "acquiring on a whim" thing.

The very moment I played Scribble Mural Comic Journal, I was enchanted - it really was shoegaze, but it felt like it had this modern twist to it. The lyrics were just as indecipherable, but the music that was drowning out the already-quiet voices was so dreamy. Whatever little lyrics I could find for the album felt like so dada-esque, like a slightly more understandable version of Liz Fraser's lyrics for Cocteau Twins' songs, but just as puzzling. Once the final seconds of the last track "The Best Summer Ever" had come to a close, I decided to play it again just as I went to bed that night, and it finally caught onto me. The fact that I hadn't checked this record out still makes me want to kick myself sometimes, but then again I did just listen to it a few minutes ago while I was typing this. Sometimes I feel the same about half the records that I get, but after a week or so it kind of fades away - those records still get played, albeit not as obsessively as the first week or so I had listened to it. Given how my city is halfway near the last month of winter, Scribble Mural Comic Journal only seems appropriate as the soundtrack to the tail-end of winter, fading as the sunrise only steps in even more everyday. Sure, it's no Loveless, but it's close enough as its modern counterpart.

Bon appetit!

hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?vfugkpyvauc