Finally, I get to combat Bobby Trimble and his nimble, quivering voice on TMT (kinda like covering that Tim Buckley record after all those years), the stuff legends and odd nightmares are made of. Those, such as I, whom already own Secretly Canadian’s Harvest of Dreams will already have these two tunes; if you haven’t wet your beak in these waters yet, this is a great way to get-with-the-goddamn-program-already. “Selling Me Short While Stringing Me Along” (you can tell it’s tight from its title alone) is such an odd take on a prom-night ballad, guitars phasing back and forth, drums quietly surging beneath the disco lights, distant arpeggios holding it all together in challenging circumstances. It’s humbling to know there was music this challenging happening in 1981, as you could easily mistake it for some weird, quasi-Amen Dunes outtake or Panoply Academy ditty. I also have always heard Supertramp in Trimble’s delivery, specifically Roger Hodgson’s gender-neutral wails; I don’t have a point to make here, just revealing something about myself. Oh yeah, and “Take Me Home Vienna”: Another apt look into Trimble’s enchanted forest of slightly off — and thus so ON — sounds. There’s a guitar solo in here that mimics a tune I can’t put my finger on. Might be a nursery rhyme or something, and there’s no one more Humpty-Dumpty fragile than Trimble. That’s my awful outro and I’m stickin’ to it.
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