Cortney Tidwell and the precious noise

I love Cortney Tidwell. I adore Don't Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up. OK, maybe it flags just a teensy bit toward the end, but the first six or seven songs are pure aural erotica, like having your ear-drums gently tickled by french maids. What's in there? There's a little Sundays in the delicate guitar, a little Bjork in the melodies; the whole thing is hazy, gaudy, almost claustrophobic, a feminine version of the feedback-nirvana of American Music Club's Everclear.

Like Proust and his madeleine, listening to Cortney transports me to a sunbaked field in Glastonbury, the narcotic blues of Spiritualized mingling with the marijuana smoke and wafting across the blissed-out supine crowd. I'm high, I'm gazing into the infinite blue as it's crossed by a wispy contrail, I'm happy.

So it's not just the fragile drone drapery of Cortney Tidwell that get me giddy. It's also the billowing noise beats of Mark Holden's At The Controls, where Mad Professor meats Death In Vegas; or the hot feedback magma of My Bloody Valentine; even the brutal noise of Swans, all these can remind me of that one day in 1992 that's informed my subsequent life as a music fan.