My new favourite 40-minute-thrill

My favourite new band, for the next five minutes anyhoo, is the Shins. Their new album, Wincing The Night Away, is great for fans of literate, eliptic, college rock, and they pick up the obtuse compass last used by Pavement (do you like my attempts to write all muso? it's true what they say about writing about music being like dancing about architecture). Quite what drugs are being piped into the water supply in Portland, Oregon, is unclear, but I want some of whatever Shins singer James Mercer is having; witness new single Phnatom Limb, which contains the lines: We wandered through your mama's house, And the milk from the window lights, Family portrait circa ninety-five,This is that foreign land,With the sprayed on tans,And it all feels fine, Beat it circa slime, So, when they tap our mundane heads, To zombie-walk in our stead, This town seems hardly worth our time,And we'll no longer memorize or rhyme,To fall along in our crime,Stepping over what now towers to the sky,With no connection.

And that's the chorus! It's hardly From Paris To Berlin, but it's great, somehow. In other news, the slavery blues project continues to grow into some kind of crazy blues behemoth, with lyrics now written including Bransholme Tesco Blues (Folsom Prison), Hull Hound On My Trail (Robert Johnson), Black Magic Telly (Fleetwood Mac) and Monotony On The A63 (Route 66).

Also, with Hull about to get a spanking casino licence, what future for Teddy's Amusements?