Three Balloons

Today is very grey outside.
Wish I had my camera with me yesterday, I sat on the beach watching the breakers rage against the stones. Walk away with salty lips. It would have been more perfect had there not been a large amount of very foamy pollution floating around - I blame France, it all floats across from the industrial towns on the coast there.
Have been listening to a lot of Stephen Lynch lately, and by a lot I mean I put all four of his albums on yesterday and very little else. It's frustrating and I hate to admit it but he's really gone downhill. The songs have so much less of that inspired, twisted, surprising idiosyncracy which was what made them funny. They now tend to contain swearing instead, or generally far more crass humour, such as 'Medieval Bush' (too much strange imagery about having a hairy vagina) or 'America' (main argument: 'fuck you'). The 'Dear Diary' songs, while clever, contain the underlying horror of what is actually implied. Rather than joking about a fictional mentally retarded child, or a hypothetical father who likes gambling, ten dollar whores, and rubbing against little boys on the bus, the reality of what happened to Anne Frank or Christopher Reeve leaves a melancholy taste in your mouth. Certainly there's a raw edge to all of his songs, but founding them on real-life tragedy seems even more insensitive than he might have seemed before. I'm not afraid to laugh at it, nor do I think it should be in any way censored, god knows 'they' probably do, but the humour is derived from a different place now, somewhere a little bit darker and also a bit less original. That said, his latest album (3 Balloons) is a studio produced affair, whose polished vocals and backing sorely lacks the genuine charm of his live performance. He's sexy, he has a great presence and rapport with crowds, and I think recording studios forget that. Hopefully his next release, when it happens, will be live. And hopefully he'll have found some of that old inspiration, too.