"The line about magazines still applies."
I really thought that Raincoats song I liked a few weeks ago was a fluke, but, along with a cold, I apparently came down with a British post-punk jones that's had me craving PiL and Wire, freaking out over Bowie's Low and "Heroes" (pre-post-punk blueprints!) again, and making specific plans to dig further into The Pop Group and This Heat because I only know them tangentially. But the record that's been hittin' me the hardest has been Swell Maps' 1980 grand finale, Jane From Occupied Europe. Swell Maps' work towards the end of the '70s was something of an inspiration for the post-punk art-ness that burgeoned and mutated well into the '80s, consolidating The Buzzcocks and Can into one ramshackle home-schooled savant punk drone attack, and effectively prefiguring the noisier, goofier end of indie rock (Sonic Youth, early Pavement, etc). And the nice thing is that it doesn't fall prey to all the sometimes overbearing post-punk affectations--there are no self-serious conceptual put-ons, the scrappy amateur approach isn't a liability, and it rarely feels political, and even then in only the vaguest sense (just oblique references to World War II and, in the case of "Border Country", the Welsh Border Wars of the 1400s). I honestly can't tell what they're going on about most of the time, either because the vocals are mixed weird or because the words I can pick out seem abstract or really simple at the same time, but they always make it sound right. Jane is sort of to their 1979 debut, A Trip To Marineville, what Chairs Missing is to Pink Flag--an immediate follow-up that's a bit less brazen, but arguably more compelling as a full piece. Secretly Canadian reissued both albums a couple years back with bonus tracks (though not as many as the Mute reissues from the late '80s) and some great liner notes, so check up on it because these few songs are just the beginning.

Swell Maps - "Let's Buy A Bridge"
Swell Maps - "Border Country"
Swell Maps - "Cake Shop Girl"
Swell Maps - "...Vs. The Mangrove Delta Plan"

I missed the Hitchcock movie last week at the Dryden, so "Shadow Of a Doubt" will have to do. Also the new Yesterday's New Quintet album sounds alright so far, and "Cold Nights and Rainy Days" sums up this week pretty well, AND it even reminds me of my co-worker Jake's album that he just gave to me and everyone else in the office the other day. I really honestly like it a lot and am kind of blown away by it. I'll probably talk about it in my next post. It's called Latin Journeys. Oh and Eric Fensler did a pretty good Ariel Pink video, while I'm thinking of it.