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No question for me that this is the best SY of the decade. Destroys Nurse for my money. Sympathy For The Strawberry deserves to be remembered as one of the great epic SY closing tracks, up there with Expressway, Trilogy and Diamond Sea (and possibly Titanium Expose).
I think the sequencing is also total genius. The first 5 tracks are all really lush and dreamy, and Kim doesn't sing at all, which really surprised on the first listen, as I'm fairly certain it's longest period of non-Kim on an SY album? But then, after the total beauty of RALGS with that Borbetomagus ending, when you're really just totally buried in the hazy jammy awesomeness, Kim just explodes into the album at her skronkiest with Plastic Sun, totally shaking you out of that dream state. Then the real genius comes, because just as you're slightly disgruntled at having been thrown out of that expansive loveliness, Kim forges on for the next 10 minutes with easily one of the most flat out beautiful moments they ever recorded, completely bring everything to this breathtaking conclusion (as in I literally subconsciously held my breath for the last bit when I first heard it).
That perfectly conceived 2 track knockout punch is absolutely up there with Kim's finest and most album defining moments, and, coming at the beginning of the "album killing" digital age, made as good as argument as any for why the idea of releasing music in the 40 minute album format can still be so valid an important. Love love love love love it.
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The toothaches got worse, she dreamed of disembodied voices from whose malignance there was no appeal, the soft dusk of mirrors out of which something was about to walk, and empty rooms that waited for her. Your gynaecologist has no test for what she was pregnant with.
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