I find I've swallowed the sun

Back in New Hampshire to discover that the Apple Store at the library is fresh out of Macbooks, which means I need to wait another week, and makes me feel that much stupider for not having foreseen this and ordered one a week ago while I was lazing about in California.

Lack of my own computer made getting these files loaded a bit of a hassle, but I jumped through the hoops because it's so good, I just couldn't wait.

Little Films is the newest record from Vanessa Peters and Ice Cream on Mondays, and if I had gotten my hands on it a month ago, it would have easily made my "best of 2006" list. And while I'll need a little more time to really absorb it, I don't think it's a stretch to say it would have made the top 10.

This is the record I've been waiting for Aimee Mann to make for years. Which isn't any kind of knock on Aimee Mann, who I love, but a statement of just how good I think Little Films is.

The voice is one place where the comparison of the two is clear, but the real similarity, I think, is in the songwriting. Peters shares the strange and wonderful talent of taking abstract stories and making them feel incredibly personal, of exhuming the passion, the glory, the sadness from the most mundane places. It makes for an emotional album, but one that never feels overdone or too precious. In that respect, I'm also reminded a lot of Ani Difranco, in that you feel for the people in the songs, but there is also an element of quiet distance. The album's title should therefore come as no surprise - these songs are each mini-films, brief glimpses of the many ways people live their lives. Each is a reminder that everyone is the Hamlet of their own life, but must also be the Rosencrantz or Guildenstern of countless other little films.

Never Been Good

These themes are perhaps most clear on this song, with an arc as distant and beautiful as a rainbow. It is a lament for what is lost in movement, as restlessness condenses the beauty of experience into a slowly fading image. The little film here is slowly receding in the rear view mirror. And yet, you can't help but wonder, for all that is left behind, might there not be something just over the next hill that makes it all worthwhile?

Bonnie and Clyde

This time, she's channeling Bruce Springsteen - this is the instant when everything seems possible, when redemption is just another word for escape, and when no cliche seems too ridiculous. It's probably my favorite on the record all jangly and full of sunshine and bright dreams - one of those songs that you can't help but start smiling when it comes on.

Other highlights include the rousing "Amelia," a jaunty tribute to someone who ponders Amelia Earhart and then dares to take a risk, "Such Good Actors" which is as joyful and warm a slice of alt-folk as you're likely to hear this year, and the touching and bittersweet "Fireworks." Oh, and "No Sense" is an existential throwing up of the hands at life, love, and all attempts to find clarity set to music. And I would silly to not at least mentions "Signposts" and "Little Films." And "Love Story." And...oh just buy it already.

If you want to check out some of the other songs, the whole record is streaming at her website.