I'll Pitch a Fork at you Personally, godd*mn you!

It's a strange experience when you get music input from your old folks. My mom, before she died, used to like Morrissey, Sisters of Mercy and Ian C. a lot; my dad was a regular Beatles and Stones junkie (as you can expect!). Oh yeah, and Wagner. FYI: the last record they bought together was 'Fear of Music' by the Talking Heads.

Well, I was young too. Didn't like the Beatles - my parents liked them. Didn't like the Stones - on the radio too much.To my mind, that left two choices:
- go psych = Pink Floyd
- go real rock = The Who

For what it's worth, I liked both about equally (I went with the Who on princincple).

Oh, and I forgot about the Beach Boys. [And Jan and Dean, but that's another matter, as that's not really music!]

Boy, did I ever make a mistake! It turns out I like the close, cloying harmonies attributed to the Beach Boys more than the well-composed sing-alongs of the Beatles or the proto-heavy-metal of the Stones. Also, I don't do drugs and I'm not one for fighting on the beach in leather jackets.

So where did that leave me?

In 1 band: The Russian Futurists.

In 2 bands: TRF and Panda Bear. You know, the guy from the Animal Collective.

Person Pitch by Panda Bear is really quite amazing! At first it sounds like your Beach Boys tape is running badly in your tape recorder, then you pay attention to something else and it sounds like someone's mumbling in the background, and THEN you start paying attention properly.

It is all and yet none of the above - it's not "Californication/-a Girls", it's also not the "Let's dance to Joy Division/She 's Lost Control" dichotomy, not the Beatles versus Devendra Banhart, it's more like "Zen and The Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance"/"Even Cowgirls get the Blues" and it's not even like that!- it's what you make out of it!

(I make a happy clap- and sing-along out of it!)

Listen to "Take Pills", as that is the best 'capsule' intro I can find; the speedup at 2:30-ish may well be the most brilliant invention in music ever. God, I can keep bouncing around like a Teletubby on speed on this record. Let's push publish....