I cannot describe my misery. It is not a misery of illness or regret over heartbreak, at least not such a monster as could emerge from my own life these days. Instead it is of a creeping existential dread. It is the festering fact that I cannot for the life of me find a physical copy of this record:
Moofish Catfish - Yours to share (on CDr, of course) on Cosy Recordings (RIP)
A Swedish band would release this masterpiece in 2009 and unleash pure torture on my psyche every year for 15 years. It’s a nightmare dollar-cost average that continues to appreciate much to my dismay whenever I check the balance.
Why is the world like this? If this record continues unheard we deserve the apocalypse.The world deserves the apocalypse anyway, but before the world sees the abyss everyone should listen to Yours to Share at least once.
This is an indie pop record I have treasured for such a long time, and so now I write a belated loveletter at 1am on a Monday.
These songs are perfect, rough, and complex, such pop gems that I want to say you don’t deserve to hear them, and neither do I. I found them, I want to keep them to myself. Morality kicks in under this hood, and through the layers of dirt and grime strewn across the surface of Earth there is beauty and generosity to be found, so I owe it to you to dig it up and rest it on the mound of dirt I've formed by disturbing your turf.
I will also disclose that somewhere along the way, I managed to squirrel away all 9 songs from the LP into my digital archive. This procurement was probably not legal. If I could lay down money for these songs 100 times to make up for that I would. Please @ me.
The first 5 seconds of every song ended up a little garbled in my copies. The fact that I don’t have perfect recordings of Yours to Share makes my anger swirl even more violently into a glittery, resplendent, indie pop whirlpool. Perhaps it will comfort me (after all it’s all about me apparently) to relate to you what I remember from 2009, and then maybe the universe will take pity on me and drop an actual copy into my weeping lap.
My partner and thankfully still wife and I lived in North Carolina. The state capital had then some semblance of civilization so I could frequent a subaculture coffee shop or rock n’ roll bar should my heart desire it, any given day of the week.
Back then, the indie pop list in it’s truest form still had some vestiges of life. You could fire a random email into the list and any number of horn-rimmed clad super nerds like me could feast their eyes/ears on alternatives to Belle & Sebastian, if you felt so inclined and dared to present one.
Sweden was all the rage. Scandanvian darling Jens Lekman was enormously popular, and beloved Nordic crooners managed to eek out a living slinging 7”s and cassettes for the novelty to all hemispheres.
Twee was my suit, so I wore that badge on my lapel, since my sleeve was inhabited by the Pains of Being At at Heart and what vestiges of Voxtrot still remained.
From “10 Days In My Room” to “Are You a Boy”, these songs are written with real knowledge of harmony, melody, and thankfully some serious punk rock DNA.
If you can find anything like it, please tell me, and I will tell you if you’re right or not. My ears are the unapologetic informants. Im sorry and you’re welcome.
Some gracious soul has uploaded these songs to YouTube. At the time of this writing, you can hear them in all their glory.