Hey gang — little late this week. Nevertheless, I have good reason. The second installment of Purple Vu just dropped, so go on over there and get a paid subscription to check it out. More records for us all! Anything I missed last year or before, all reissues and archives, and anything other aged consumption goes over there now, while Heathen D stays chaste for new music.

My mailbox misses your records and tapes: PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 // [email protected]

THE SLEEVES s/t LP (12XU)

So good that I’ll review The Sleeveens another time to give this the air it needs. You know, some music is above a pun. Jack Cooper and Tara Cunningham of Modern Nature have paired off to do this understated, moody, spare jazz guitar/vocal duo with the most subtle phrasing and well-matched vocal stylings, using both Low and Loren MazzaCane Connors/Suzanne Langille duets as a starting off point and going in and through that world instead of around and outside. No shell around that stuff; if they’re cold, we’re cold. Voices blend at the whisper, the suggestions, to where we can’t know who is always who, and by the time they get to the major 7th unison of “You, Now, Again” or their US Maple-esque cover of Orange Juice’s “Rip It Up” you are either in here with me and the rest of the enlightened or assed out with the streetlights palely flickering on. Somehow the Sleeves seem like an appropriate group for either side of the crowd, intensely alone and intimately together.

Four more heaters below, gotta cough up!