Maybe I'll eventually get around to a coherent review and maybe I won't, but man oh man you guys: this album by De Kift is truly wonderful. There is no other word for it; it's just wonderful. It's sung entirely in Dutch, so it doesn't stand a ghost of a prayer in the American marketplace, but you shouldn't let that deter you from hunting it down. The horns, the percussion, the ensemble vocals: this is a deeply felt, very witty, simply wonderful album. The passion for music that so many touring American bands experience when they tour the Netherlands is present here in glorious relief. Here are the people who've been good enough to release it in the U.S. Thank them by seeking out this charming and unique record.

Syd Barrett has died. His songs have meant too much to me over the years for anthing I might say to be even somewhat sufficient. Goodbye anyhow to a wonderful and sometimes troubled man whose songs were like no-one else's. The world is a poorer place without you on it.

Kaki King keeps putting up new tracks on her Myspace page ahead of the 8/8 release of her new album, Until We Felt Red, which was produced by John McEntire. I have been excited to the point of fanaticism about this record all year, and I can't wait to hear it. The posted songs find King exploring both slide guitar (the title track) and a delicate and nuanced fingerstyle alongside her customary tear-up-the-fretboard pyrotechnics. As reported earlier, she's singing, too; she's also adding what sound like hammered dulcimers and pump organs, and horns, and some drums. There's a real emotional heft to the title track, but it's not trying to get over on feeling alone: King's rightly-heralded technique provides the skeleton, and her willingness to try new things puts flesh on the bones. I'm going to put a preorder link up - here it is - because I think Kaki King is an artist whose work should be heard by everybody, not for bogus reasons like "importance" or anything but just beecause it's so damned good. I want her to sell a lot of records so that she can keep on making them, though I should confess that I personally will be buying the record from iTunes when it comes out, and that, morever, if the album isn't available from iTunes when I wake up on the morning of August 8th, I am gonna throw a huge tantrum. The tantrum will be filmed, and then I'll get my own Myspace account on which to post an mpeg of the tantrum, thereby closing the loop. This is what's known in the trade as a win-win situation. But never mind all that. Just go listen to the new Kaki King tunes. They are so wonderful.

I have a big ol' crush on the idea of Ecstatic Sunshine: "two guitars, two humans," according to both their website and their MySpace page, the latter of which is too ugly to link. Some of the tracks on their album Freckle Wars are fantastic, especially the ones that come up toward the end of the album; the first few feel more like exercises than songs. By the time you get to "Golden Rule" or "Swirling Hearts," though - tracks eight and nine of twelve, respectively - you're in near-prog territory, and the chops are starting to joust with the hooks for privilege of position, which is way cool and quite welcome, since as of right now the band's formidable chops are a half-lap ahead of their hooks. When they're in full gallop, Ecstatic Sunshine remind me a little of an Alabama acoustic duo called Flop, who explored similar two-guys-playing territory in the early nineties. (For those keeping score, this is the most obscure reference I have ever made.) One gets the feeling that ES is one of those bands who will be poorly served by the indie club tradition of putting a band on a stage and having a bunch of people standing around staring at them: all the less interesting aspects of what they're doing ("how amazing! they can play their instruments!") will get the focus in such an environment. What's good about this band is the sound they make, not the fact that they're able to make it.