Right. Let's move on, shall we? Songs with vocals now. "Translucent Sparrow" is just as acid-tinged as the title might suggest - the fuzzed-out guitar at the end makes a nice foil for the horn section, or vice versa. (And again, more great drumming. Yay!) "1000 Cities Falling" is chockablock with apocalyptic imagery - "The angels killed the devils / hung them in the streets and reveled / in the bloodlust and the fires of revenge" - accompanied by acoustic guitar and some very nice pedal steel. The song is part of a suite, along with "Song of the Chief Musician" and "Why Be So Curious?", although I'm not sure how that last one fits into the rather dire, "end of days" mood set up by the first two. Then again, I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box.

The first time I heard "A Good Flying Day", I was waiting in an airport for a flight down to California to visit my parents. With its jangly guitars and harmonies by the Brothers Good (Dallas and Travis), I took its upbeat, Byrds-y tone as a good omen for the flight ahead, for whatever that's worth. Also on the Byrds tip is "Only You and Your Eyes", the instrumental I forgot to mention above. Ooops. Well, it's been a long day, buckaroos. Anyway, that's five instrumentals for those of you keeping score at home, out of a total of 13 cuts altogether. If that scares you, you really need to get out more.

Ahem.

"As Much As Such" is an amiable sixties-style county-ish romp, and probably the weakest cut on the disc. Hey, there has to be one, right? "Coming Back" puts me in mind of nothing so much as The Meat Puppets, although not quite as, uh, herbally challenged as they were. "Why Would Anybody Live Here?" is essentially "Only You and Your Eyes" with vocals by Robyn Hitchcock. Or, since Hitchcock wrote "Why Would Anybody Live Here?", which features the phrase "only you and your eyes", perhaps it's the other way around. Either way, it does tend to set the mouth a-water for a Hitchcock/Sadies album, in the mode of his recent collaboration with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. If I live a good and virtuous life (it could happen), perhaps this will come about.