Grizzly Bear - "Don't Ask". I expect a band called grizzly bear to have two brown-furred feet planted firm on the ground. I expect an album called Horn of Plenty to smell of moss and wheat and pinecomes. But no, no, no. This is an underwater record. It's seeds in a stream, pebbles in a pond, anemones on the bank, a mind swimming in a big ole' bear's head.

The first song's called "Deep Sea Diver", so that's a hint. There's no sign of fur. Instead, overlapping seaweed voices, the emerge-jar-and-shatter of drum samples, an acoustic guitar like a waving length of old twine.

Why do we go swimming? Because it's fun. Okay. See below. But we also go swimming in order to think. This is stupid. When I'm swimming, I'm always too busy swimming to think. It sounds great beforehand - there's something beguiling about concepts of "water" and "clarity"; there was that thing I heard at a dinner party about the "liquid embrace" of the womb; and, yeah, unbound by gravity I'll really be able to be.

It's nonsense though, right? There's the exhileration of moving face-first through water, breaking through bubbles and into cool eddies and then up up splash into sunlight, but the only thinking happens when you're floating on your back looking at a rock-and-tree or a girl or the waves rippling against the shore.

I find swimming confusing. It's a sensory overload, sight and sound and taste but most of all, too much touch. Touch, all over. I can't keep track. Maybe if I paused I'd be able to keep track, I'd be able to consider these sensations, the clarity and the womb and the freedom from gravity, and I'd be able to really think. But if I pause, see, I drown.

So we swim for fun (see below). And if I want to swim to think, there's Horn of Plenty.

There are similar sounds (Liars, Mark Hollis, Cocorosie, Animal Collective, The Microphones), but these sounds aren't as tender; they live in shells. It's an album full of memory, and feeling. It's full of scraps of wisdom, suggestions, secrets. It's got water and jellyfish and bottomless pits. It's got deep sea diver voices, rattles and brushes, pieces of songs. You need to keep your wits about you, if you want to hear it all. You need to submerge yourself but still keep breathing. And if you do, well, there's a lot to learn.

"Don't Ask" is the easy song. It's the one you can cling to. The tricky thing is that it comes so early on the record. (You can always skip back to it if you need it.) As it repeats in circles, guitar and Kings of Convenience voice, that weirdly out-of-place organ, you might get bored but then you remember that it's there to help you pause and rest and think and so you listen to the words, you wonder about it, you think about Woody Allen's Manhattan, which you watched last night, and you feel - well, you feel pretty good.

This album's being rereleased in the fall, bundled with a CD of remixes. Solex! Final Fantasy! Tim Finney! Booty-shaking from the Soft Pink Truth! Oh yes. They're also in studio, working on a new album (with a band!). And i think it's going to be a marvel.

[buy horn of plenty for only $11.06]

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Girls Aloud - "The Show". If you're done with your stupid "swimming for thinking", come, friends, and join me in the POOL OF AWESOMENESS. Yes, this is the place. The water's azureblue and heated, there's steam, and you can zip around in doubletriplespeed. There's colourful swimsuits! There's tropical birds! And ohlook, there's Girls Aloud!

Girls Aloud don't seem to exist in North America, so I'm only just now discovering What Will The Neighbours Say. If you love a good pop song but mourn the dearth of consistent pop albums, well, guess what? You guessed it. Yay!

This song wears regular shoes but struts like they're stilettos, knee-highs, cowboy-boots. There are bits of Avril Lavigne, Anita Ward, The Killers, Savage Garden, Eiffel 65, Rachel Stevens, that obnoxious post-techno dance music that still charts in Europe, and everything's put together so it's great. I mean, even if the synths get your back up, pay attention there's a summer-jangle guitar in there, hiding at the rear.

The song's got a gazillion different sections, and each one's more fun than a Shins record (cheap shot!). I love how it's sung, I love the "chic-a-cherry-cola" play of consonants, I love how each melody tops the one that precedes it, an ourobouros of pop. It's a song so fine I don't want to see the video, cause that would just be distracting. Instead - front-crawl and backstroke and jack-knife dive; swim and dip and arc and leap; yay and wee and zip and pow.

(they have a new "hot" single, too, but i don't like it as much as this. no sir.)

[buy]

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Over at ORTF, some surprisingly well-imagined trip-hop from an artist called Mig. Like early Morcheeba, but with a wider palette.

16mm is the newly discovered blog of an acerbic old friend and marvelous film critic. He was quoted on the box of the Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter DVD, he's got a film at this year's Fantasia-Fest, and I have myself a new bookmark.

"Why the hell would you want to spend all night in a sweaty dungeon listening to some guy in $700 sunglasses play two crappy records at the same time while you get felt up by twenty five ugly people at once? Of course, this is coming from a guy whose idea of a good time is curling up on the couch with a tub of Pringles and a snuff film, but at least I won’t go retarded from the snuff film."