Squad rotation

So Veckatimest is a baroque, intricate, microscopically detailed and nuanced wonder, somewhere between avant-collegiate alternative and jazz-folk. But you already knew that, and besides we've got to save some words for the top end of the end of year list.

So let's talk about some rough recordings of one bloke and an acoustic guitar recording eleven tracks in a single day (24th April, unofficial biographers) instead. Ben Parker has a new Superman Revenge Squad album out, the awkwardly linguistic We're Here For Duration... We Hope! and, well, it's as lyrically special as This Is My Own Personal Way Of Dealing With It All was. Like his occasional comparison point Jeffrey Lewis he seems more bitter about love and his own failings this time around, but eventually turns even that into industrial strength self-deprecation. He still has too many words and ideas to fit the tune, he still namechecks American rock touchstones of the 1990s, and he's still a darkly compelling presence, and borderline unmissable in doing so. The album's just three of your English from this link.

When Everyone's Dead, which was on an earlier single, is invited into the long form fold on here, so here's that done live.



And here he is covering Cher.



(Previously on STN: The Music That Made... Superman Revenge Squad)