I'm doing a last round of the 200 CD changer before I restock it from scratch, and up came Stephen Cummings' a new kind of blue, which I remember precisely because it was the very first CD we had in the house - my sister bought it (despite already owning it on vinyl, but I guess she wanted a safe choice as her first CD. I can't say I disagree in retrospect) along with her CD player from Brashs in Brandon Park. I'm pretty sure it was April 1990, and the weekend before I'd just bought They Might Be Giants' Flood on vinyl ("if only I'd waited a week !" I kept thinking at the time...).

But it's the first track, when day is done, that hits me, every time it starts up this album, like some kind of homecoming tune. Perhaps we can't escape our destiny, whatever it is. Perhaps the grass might have seemed greener on the other side, but in the end...

It's an odd choice for an album opener, really. The way most of Stephen's albums go - relationship stories twisting this way and that - you'd think maybe it'd be the feelgood final touch, that wipes away the rest of the album with something akin to the old "hey, it was all a dream." But this isn't Hollywood, this is Lovetown, Melbourne. Our pasts remain to haunt us - just look at all those waitress songs, the second part of which, the melancholy hour, appears on this same album. Our mistakes stay as mistakes. But there's still hope...