Baby's So High that She's Skying

New muxtape.  I rather like this one.  It may have turned out to be more about Death than I'd intended but don't let that get you down.  Sometimes that's how things work out.  A lot of times, actually.  Some Fripp, some Bowie, two-and-a-half Finnish bands.  Including this one:

The Dø - Travel Light (mp3) (buy)

I mentioned The Dø (myspace) and A Mouthful and the hat tip in passing the other day.  The Franco-Fin M/F duo's put together a fine record - a pretty great one if you excise (or excuse) tracks 9 thru 12 - that feels both instantly familiar ("On My Shoulders" =  Fleetwood Mac, I swear "At Last" is built around a late Sleater-Kinney riff) and quietly restless.  Avoids overt over-tinkering.  It's the sort of CD you're sort-of in love with by the third song.

"Travel Light" is a hike that seemed easier at its outset.  Marches in steady surges, pauses for breath.  The marker here's the wistful "Lately I've been walking away/floating like a song in the air" refrain, which - as Olivia Merilahti (she can coo, does bark, elsewhere on the album) swerves off into a sad soar - somehow reminds me of Big John Wallace's haunting bridge from Harry Chapin's "Taxi."

(Comes in around 3:30.  And if you find Wallace's falsetto awkward, check out the Shatnerized version.  According to Wikipedia, those particular lines are "from a Sylvia Plath poem," but no title is cited, no sources are mentioned, and there seems to be no other corroboration via Google.)

*

Found "Silence in the Library" - no spoilers! - enjoyable but upsetting (and not in a good way).  It's mostly a bunch of bits cobbled together from Moffat's three previous Who stories.  "Hey who turned out the lights" is the new "Are you my mommy."  Some great lines, a great death scene, but its regurgitations from "Blink," "Fireplace," and "Empty Child" felt less like auteurism and more like a clip show.  Not encouraging that, when he'll have the whole season to fill, he's already recycling ideas.

Also, the plotting was iffy and the Doctor felt dumbed-down.

Hopefully Part Two will introduce something grand.

tags: the dø  doctor who  steven moffat  

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