LaRM day 79 (Cinerama-Clannad)

More Cinerama for the morning, starting with 2000's Disco Volante. This is pretty much more of the same but the sophistication of Gedge's songwriting has improved yet further and there are some great songs here. The underpinning of the gently arranged strings once agan anchors the tunes and gives them a solid structure. Lyrically the concerns are the same as they've ever been, the complications and frustrations of relationships, the workaday mundanity of being with someone, but the whole album is full of really great tunes and it's a pleasure to listen to.


Then we have the three volumes of Peel Sessions covering 1998-2004 and released respectively in 2001, 2003 and 2007. Not much to say about these really, as session stuff goes it's really solid, but then Gedge had been recording Peel Sessions fairly constantly since 1986 so it's no surprise that he knows what he's doing. The songs are taken from the two albums and various singles and there are a couple of covers (including an excellent if silly version of Groovejet's 'If This Ain't Love').

I love Circulus, I love the fact that it's impossible to tell whether they're being serious or not despite the fact that they clearly aren't. When it comes to prog-folk this is as good as it gets and debut album, The Lick On the Tip of an Envelope Yet To Be Sent (2005) is phenomenal. It's absurd, laughable, utterly ridiculous and completely awesome. Every track is a barnstorming piece of idiocy and brilliance combined, from 'Power to the Pixies' to 'The Scarecrow' and 'Candlelight', it's all great overblown prog pomposity. With wimples. The finest tune is 'My Body Is Made of Sunlight' which encapsulates everything that's great about Circulus and attached is the official video which I think proves that they may be the best band ever.

The Civil Wars first album from last year, Barton Hollow, is a nice little bit of gloomy Americana and although it's not entirely convincing throughout, there are some fabulous songs along the way. It's all pretty rootsy and sometimes it can feel a little bit forced, but when it's good, and particularly when their vocal harmonies work, it's really very good indeed.

Finally, and weirdly, it's a couple of records by Clannad. Now the reason for this is that I loved Robin of Sherwood when I was a kid. I thought it was the best TV show, like, EVER. And it was. But anyway, the music was part of why it was so brilliant so I had to have the soundtrack. And that meant that I also picked up another one along the way. Fuaim (1981) is a cloying, irritating and essentially unlikeable bit of Irish folkery which sounds too much like a parody of Irish folk to be possibly taken seriously. Legend (1984) is the Robin of Sherwood one, and despite the fact that it's deeply, deeply naff and totally rubbish, I love it. So there.