anatomy · of · distance

The first My Favorite album, Love at Absolute Zero, arrived in the mail today. It's similar to The Happiest Days Of Our Lives/the Joan of Arc trilogy: a combination of synthpop keyboards, live drums, gloriously jangly guitars, the odd dub influence, upbeat pop tunes and beautifully heartbreakingly poetic lyrics, like some combination of OMD, New Order and The Smiths, only with better songwriting than most, if not all, of those. (IMHO, as a songwriter, Michael Grace Jr. holds his own alongside 1980s Morrissey quite comfortably.)

My Favorite are increasingly living up to their name in my book. There are bands you like, and then there are bands you feel passionately about, see whenever they play (assuming they still exist), whose CDs you end up buying in large quantities to give to people and whose tracks end up on mix tapes; the bands which are transcendently brilliant because their music says something profound (whether with words or otherwise). For me, there have been a handful of the latter: The Paradise Motel, Slowdive, The Field Mice and ninetynine. And it looks like there is now another one.