you know, ten days out of the city might be just about right. long enough to get some distance, far enough away to achieve perspective but not soo far gone you lose touch completely.

for me this week just gone was a watershed (and not just because of the torrential rain and plentiful opportunities to wear my brand-new, bright-yellow poncho) much like in a box of that beautifully branded Dorset muesli - if you shake it up enough, once the rattling has subsided and the oatmeal levelled, all the big stuff finally is left on the top. same thing happens in my life (only with fewer raisins) so with a week in the deafening quiet of the Poitou-Charente countryside, the dust seemed to finally settle on the last year and half and the view ahead started to clear. but i won’t bore you with the minutae of my own personal revelations because we’re here to talk about the music/film/culture/miscellania.

over the great glassy sea to my right, j.tillman’s been busy working on his new album, the Territory, and posted another beautiful demo which you might have seen on gorilla vs bear or his myspace, but since we’re always happy to lend him bandwidth on the latitudes and since it’s (somewhat unsurprisingly) achieved the repeat-repeat-repeat-feat on my itunes since i got back, High Enough to Raise is a welcome back track today.

i know i’ve waxed lyrical about josh’s gently effortless talent loads before, but his is a voice which has followed my last eighteen months through the dust storm, the chiming tales in his lyrics ringing truer than is sometimes comfortable but always worth listening to, i’d urge you buy his records so he can record more and finally get the bits of cement out of his beard.

j.tillman - high enough to raise

buy j.tillman records at fargo, yerbird, amazon or your local record store.