I unexpectedly received a couple of gifts yesterday - Chi gave me another of his wonderful mix CDs, along with an album called The Brooklyn Side by The Bottle Rockets, who he described as "urban country" (like, not urban as in hip hop or what "r 'n' b" now refers to, just urban). Great stuff, tackling issues such as the pleasures of watching Sunday Sport in one's underwear, how crap a $1000 car really is, and poking fun at the kind of alt.girl who "loves Dinosaur Jr but can't tell you why" and sees our protagonist as just another redneck loser who's into country music (and hence "deserves to die").

There was a track on the mix CD by Freedy Johnston called This Perfect World that really stood out upon first listen as a great little sad song (eg. "these pills won't even let me cry" - the delivery, the concept...ouch !). This arvo I found myself meeting up with a friend for coffee, to celebrate our respective birthdays (6 days apart), and on the way I popped into Collectors Corner and found myself a copy of Freedy's can you fly, and lurking on the shelf just above was Heavenly's Operation Heavenly.

Meanwhile, acb gave me the new spearmint CD, which is a nice and joyful little pop excursion, especially Julie Christie! (acb's review of the CD is over yonder). The guy's voice occasionally sounds a lot like Ian Broudie from the Lightning Seeds, I reckon.