That's love. Heaven's Above. Here come The Pastels again.

It’s taken far too long to write this….but the euphoria hasn’t diminished. I was in the company of The Pastels last week. And I missed The Fall this weekend but you can’t have all your heroes in one week – you know things could just implode with that kind of excitement. So here I am tonight – at home – with the incessant drone of charity ringing in my ears – you know the only time I wear my pyjamas is in my bed maaaaan. I’m old like that. You don’t want give anyone a shock. McCartney’s on in the background all wrong sounding strings, and Yesterday played in glittering jackets – like rock and roll has been wrung out of it all.

But rock n roll was alive last week in the Scala. I’ve told this tale many times before – but The Pastels are my Velvets. Art for the outsider. Now you know I’m part of the (main) stream –but I like to think that no one really listens to Sister Ray like I do. Well The Pastels – do that for me – that difference – but sincerity and fragility and noise and melody- just like Lou did – a band to fall into when the going gets tough and you just need a friend. We’re not freaks – we speak the same language – it’s just you lot out there that hate. Here - we're up for mutual respect and laughs and jokes – smiles and glances and late night chances.

It was good to have The Pastels back in London (although who was minding monorail was anyone’s guess) It was good to go to a Pastels show. It was an early start this one – doors were opened at 6.30 – and closed by 10.30. It was my kind of  night.  So I arrived with the strains of Bill Ryder Jones echoing through the labyrinth that is the Scala. You seem to be endlessly ascending stairs and opening doors in the hope of finding the band – kind of a Yellow Submarine scene without the psychedelic sights. Bill’s from Liverpool see –used to be The Coral and had the room hushed in wonder at his paeans to love lost and found. There's a deep rooted melancholy to his songs. You can tell he's lived it. A much more superior Jake Bugg - if you know what I'm getting at.

And the room was filling up. A friendly crowd. Waves and glances and nods and hellos – we’ve stood together in rooms across this city before. We like the same things. We all like The Pastels. It’s been 24 years since I last saw the Pastels – that was way back at the ULU. A four band bill – finishing with the kings of independent pop, before we them we had pale saints, Teenage Fanclub and the first London gig by Ride. I still have the poster. I didn’t get one from this gig. There was a part of me that wished I had. Funnily enough that ULU show had been populated by a mighty presence of Showsec security guards – this had that feel to - as my bag was searched and pockets were patted down. We’re a rowdy bunch us Pastel fans – I keep my blade tucked deep inside my anorak.

And on the bill this evening was another reference to the past – Lightships are Gerry Love’s extra curricular outfit – a Fannies for the future shall we say. I didn’t know that at the time – so it was a pleasure to suddenly see Love stepping out of the shadows to play a set of acid folk rock explosions (I’m trademarking that by the way) with a band that looked both glam rock and tinged with a Danish detective sartorial style. Gerry’s voice was in fine form – as harmonies and merged with delayed guitars and suddenly we had lift off (do you see what I did there?) I mean it when I say it had a folk attitude – authenticity again – I couldn’t quite make out the words but I got sense of it being about home. There was that familiar Fanclub feel to it but the sonics where doing something else. There was a guy making lovely squelches and producing shards of sound that took it away from what I was expecting and made it all the better for it. I really should look up his name – he’s in the Pastels aswell (so’s Gerry). There was a time – I’d know all the names – but when you get to my age it’s hard just remembering the names of your neighbours – let alone line-ups.  I need to go and listen a little more to Lightships – I like Lightships – I like their style.

And from one style to another – super style icon Stephen Pastel (as seen in A Scene in Between) and his band – except as I said before – this isn’t about leaders – this is a collective – a gang.  Always understated – but never overrated – The Pastels emerge to warm cheers and claps and whoops – and that was just me. Once again finding myself positioned at the front - this wasn’t intentional – I wasn’t jostling for position I just happened to be standing stage left –  where Stephen was singing. There’s no front with this group. As I said they were/ are my Velvets from the 1980s. A super Scottish crew – making tunes for the few – that’s what it felt like back then. A few pictures - got to base your look on something – like those few photos we had of The Byrds and The Velvets – MC5 and The Small Faces – The Pastels were in there too – we were carving style out of sound. And the Songs for Children EP on a bootleg blue vinyl and random purchases from record shops dotted across the North. Each and every one of their songs holding something special for me. I was rocking a quiff at the gig – but inwardly I was shaking my bowlhead all night. I’m done with the anoraks. But without The Pastels in my teenage years – I might not have made it.

It doesn’t seem like twenty four years have passed – Stephen and Katrina still feel the same – this duo manning the helm of the good ship Pastel. From the opening mariachi melodies of Slow Summits we were ready for our adventure to higher plains. Moving from new to old – this all too short set encapsulated all that’s often missed about the Pastels – this is a band with a whole heap of perfect pop (corn) tunes – and references that take in far more styles than the ‘shambling and twee’ bands they supposedly inspired. This is Miles Davies meets Lou Reed downtown with a twist of the Shrangi La’s and Can. It’s experimental and sentimental – which is good thing in my eye and sounds even better in my head. So we were tripping through the old and the new and everything sounded divine. If you haven’t got the latest Pastels tunes – and come on – this is their first ‘proper’ long player in 16 years – then buy it.  And in the flesh this beautiful album came alive – with a band of players augmenting those well-crafted words of Katrina and Stephen. From Wrong Light to Check your Heart (surely the BHF’s next song of choice for any health campaign) with Nothing to be Done , Different Drum and Summer Rain in the mix -  the interplay of the two singers was perfect in every sense. I guess when you’ve known each other that long things are going to kind of click. It doesn’t just click with the group though – as I’ve said before there’s no front with Stephen – the conversation is flowing back and forth with an awestruck audience but Stephen never plays the star. He’s humble and appreciative that we’ve even bothered to come to.

We wouldn’t have missed it though. Even though I had to go home to fetch my ticket at the start of the evening when I realised I’d left it at home.

All of this was leading to a final blistering onslaught of one-chord feedback drones in the shape of Baby Honey. With a temperamental pedal and six members locking down into a six minute odyssey to love. You couldn’t ask for anything else. But understandably we wanted more. So we were treated to even more wonders from this brilliant bunch of outsiders – who it seems have been spending their time becoming the wedding band to book if you’re getting married in the West of Scotland. Well not really but Katrina treated us to a rendition of an old soul tune (someone please tell me it’s title – my mind is not what it was) given the Pastels treatment and recently aired at a friend’s wedding (Pastels tune update - Stephen tweeted to tell me it was Love (It's getting better) and was actually released on the Worlds of Possibility EP - so thanks for that) and Daniel Johnson’s Speeding Motorcycle was revved up and run out.

And then after a lovely gentle downbeat ending (And once again I can’t name that tune – I thought I could but it seems to escape me now) – The Pastels were gone. It was 10pm and I was going to  be back home by 11pm with the biggest smile across my face since the last time I saw them.

It won’t be another 24 years. I’ll be seeing you soon. 

Here's Baby Honey from Glasgow a few years back - I'm hoping that a video will surface from The Scala gig but it's not there yet.Although I am reliably informed that there's footage out there - and i'll update this page as soon as it's available.  So thanks to mudonthedoor for posting this. 

Oh and it's Tom Crossley - the wonderful noise wizard in Lightships and The Pastels. 

I'm digging your scene (in between)

It’s been a mixed up, muddled up sequence of months. I can’t seem to find the in to write about sound. There’s old Junior Boy’s Own mix CDs in the car, back to back with a compilation of Horrible Histories numbers – all wonderfully sung and set up and they are jostling with three separate CDs for the kids  - hand picked for the holidays – Adam Ant, The Pale Blue Dots, Dion, Floyd, The Mamas and the Papas, Euros Childs, The Wellgreen and The Velvets and The Ramones – their choices – not mine – and I don’t need to buy them childsize t-shirts to prove a point – they just like the tunes  - and they are competing against downloads of every Festive 50 from 1977 with J Peel’s dulcet tones telling me that Mega City Four are at number 47 and all that. And then chancing across a Planetary Assault Systems Archives Two CD in a second hand shop in the ‘village’ – all adds up to a mixed up muddled up month of this sound and that.

So where to begin?

Sam Knee has a book coming out – book, well collection of photographs and interviews and recollections. It’s called ‘A Scene In Between’. It documents in colour and print this heady mix of youth rebellion neither post-punk nor grunge – not acid house or Britpop. It documents those that existed out there in cities and towns (guaranteed to bring you right down) dressing in secondhand clothes – not ‘vintage’ – we weren’t trying to start a fucking fashion trend. We weren’t stockpiling and ebaying as a business – it was what we wore. We had no money.

The clothes in Oxfam, The Salvation Army, Banardo’s and piled high on jumble sale tables – smelling faintly of death –reflected our 1960s and 1970s mentality. Not mining our past but repositioning style in an age of rampant commercialization and greed. We didn’t pay over the odds for our fabrics and fashions – it was a 50p t-shirt and an old fella’s anorak. Preferably brown.

We had home cut hair and found Chelsea boots in Shoefayre. It wasn’t a scene you could get just off the peg. There wasn’t ‘Urban Outfitters’ – you couldn’t even get it at the time in one place – not Topman nor Clockhouse (note intentional 80s referencing) We did not want to dress like Spandau or Duran Duran. We just wanted something that little bit different – shaped by our musical musings – our attentions drawn to the screech of feedback and threat of rock n roll.

And I guess – as Sam documents so well – it was a scene.  A whole freak scene – this in between lark. We were like minded youth dotted across the country. Of course there was that odd emergence of brutal working class thuggery – I remember in the final days of The Smiths – coach trip to Nottingham – when football chants merged with the chords of The Queen is Dead. Or those throwback misogynistic ogling and bellowing at the blonde singer in whichever ‘shambling’ band was hitting the charts that week.

Now I haven’t seen Sam’s book yet. I’ve read about it – and I hope you have too. I was goint to get myself along to the ‘release’ party – all private invites and nods and winks from publishing companies. It’s hard to imagine that photographs of bowlheaded youth and bands playing the Hull Adelphi and Kool Kat’s in Nottingham suddenly becoming worthy of a private launch – but here we are. Those photographs of an emerging scene – The Pastels or My Bloody Valentine snapped on cheap cameras (110 film anybody?) with cube flashes attached suddenly winging their way around the world into your arms.

But they are.

Sam’s got Stephen Pastel deejaying down at Rough Trade – ba baa ba ba ba baaa (that’s love). Heaven’s above.

It will be a great night I’m sure. I can’t get there. Other commitments. It’s what happens when you get older – but my photographs are in there. I guess yours are too. But seeing those snapshots of past times and fond crimes (against fashion and hair) had me return to the sounds of those singers and strummers of independent pop music. Music on the outside – yet to reach the charts. As I said earlier – way back at the start – my brother managed to get hold of the Peel Festive fifties. Ranging from 1977 right up into the 1990s. And I haven’t listened to it all – I never will – if I’m being honest. But I can read the entries – you don’t have to wait for each night when Peel played them. It’ a simple stream of songs. I  never voted in the Festive fifty. I remember a form in the NME – I think – it may have been a different end of year thing. Anyway you could fill in your choices and send then to John Peel. He would compile and count them. I believe he genuinely counted the votes. You’d just make it up now – you’d have a phone vote and rig the results.

Apologise, take the money and carry on regardless.

But it was that scene – the one from in between – that 85, 86 and 87 thing. Peel’s fifty begins to hint at the crossover – where in between becomes mainstream. Now don’t get me wrong there’s nothing untoward in being popular. Every artist wants the recognition. Just on whose terms is where the line is blurred. But you can sense the change – where Mega City 4 and The Weddoes becomes The Roses and De la Soul. I like the change. But you can we were entering different times. Flares were coming back. I don’t think you’ll see a pair of flares in Sam’s book. You might. Duglas was a true hipster – so you never know what to expect.  Yet I have a feeling I won’t see a pair. That was a scene too far.

Yet I was one of those bowlheaded youths in Sam’s book. And the connections made in the past resonate in the present.  We were all out of time and step with the modern world. We weren’t trying to recreate a sixties – we were just having our phase of experimentation with jangling guitars and stand up drums. It was a backlash to mass production. We were sick of style over substance – of that wake me up before you day-glo sheen on our screen when the Tory government were tearing down everything the spirit of ’45 had overseen. You know common sense prevails in the face of socialism – because it just wouldn’t work. Oh well – better listen to the Sea Urchins then – takes your mind off the fact the factories were closing and you were on free school meals. Or it just might have focused it.

Different strokes for different folks see. 

Sam’s book is a majestic affair – an affair of the heart. I can see why we all contributed those photographs from the past. Because back then it mattered. It felt we weren’t just part and parcel of a system that serves to commodify and homogenise culture. We were politicised – we talked about equality – we wanted a different system.

My Bloody Valentine feature in the book, you know that Dave Conway era – slightly airbrushed and rewritten now. But MBV offered something different beneath it all, and the Mary Chain, and The Pastels – and  and and.  MBV can’t even get nominated for an industry award these days – because they’re still on the outside looking in – well actually not looking in – looking away.

Looking the other way. Just as we did back then. Here’s to more scenes in between – they unite the fray(ed) and the fucked up.

As it’s been a while here are three songs to listen to.  They represent the scowl and the menace – the aesthetic and dedication to find glamour in the faded towns we all grew up in. 

It’s what’s different that makes them strong

I’m going to write about The Pastels properly this time. There’s a post buried in here (the blog – not these words) about the honesty and integrity of a great Scottish band but I want to say more. I grew up in a steeltown. You should know that by now. Where we jostled for meaning in our lives as mighty furnaces blew smoke and sulphur into the air.

I was never going to be part of that shift scene (6 – 2 then 2 – 10 and 10 – 6 and back again) – believe me I wasn’t harking after a 9 to 5 slot either (I didn’t want to become one of those steps on the boss man’s ladder - You know I had dreams they could never take away.) I had music in this England’s dreaming - growing up was shaped by music – the difference and diffidence of youth movements. And you can only chose from what’s around – I wasn’t going to form a new sub cultural existence in Scunthorpe was I? I mean how could we? The Pistols hadn’t played here. You need that sort of shit to rebel and set up Factory records – oh and a job in television and that. That was the other side - the west – we were strictly East coast – Slaughter and the Dogs and Sham ’69.

So those early eighties were spent immersed in all sorts of cultures (clubs) – the bootlace tie blues with Elvis and Shakin’ Stevens, I was wearing grey pointed shoes, pleated trousers and new romantic ruffs whilst listening to OMD, Duran Duran and Kraftwerk. I was jitterbugging with Wham. I dabbled with a touch of Madness. I even bought two U2 long players. And Paul was digging the Velvets, the Bunnymen, The Cure, The Fall.

It was a trajectory that was always going to lead to The Pastels.

I cannot recall when I first heard The Pastels. It certainly would have been around 1986 – because they were so C86 maaaaaan. Of course they weren’t – they weren’t invented by the NME – they were invented by Rock ‘n’ Roll. I never quite get all that shambolic nonsense – I know the band I was in wanted to be able to play – we wanted our noise chaotic but controlled. The fact I couldn’t play didn’t help – but in my head I played the right notes. I always thought that The Pastels were pretty tight as a band – as a unit – as a community. It might not have been over produced – but it had a beat – you could bug out to it.

Anyway it might have been earlier – sort of Million Tears, Truck Train Tractor, Crawl Babies time – which I think spans a few years. There is nothing twee in their approach. It’s as barbed and controlled as The Velvet Underground. Just because Stephen never rolled on the floor – took his top off and told us he wanted to be our dog – didn’t mean there wasn’t/ isn’t that sense of urgency and confrontation in the music of the Pastels.

Listen to their cover of Pablo Picasso.

So during that time of finding friendships and all the fumbles and smiles and letters and mixtapes through the post and passed between lovers - The Pastels would invariably work their way into the fabric of my existence in that steeltown.

There was a time that making or receiving a tape cassette from someone was as complex a decoding mission as that of those at Bletchley Park. The cues - the codes – the inferences and comparisons – the melody and lyric – a message to you and you alone because you had the tape – it was given to you - made for you.

Constructed with you in mind.

Each song ringing with subtext because this was made for you by someone else. I still want to compile – to set one song against another – it’s list making for other people. It’s thinking about them. But do you remember that feeling when you placed a song next to another and another and another that inescapable feeling of falling in love? The need to be involved in the physical act of selecting, or rejecting a song. I have fallen in love many times to the 45 revolutions per minute of a 7 inch single, or the whirring of the tape spools as they passed through and over the heads of whatever tape player I could find that worked. Finding those hidden tunes on records as you flipped them over and released the b-side. I once had a friend – who never played b-sides – he couldn’t see the point. I expect his record collection consists of all the NOW albums – just the hits my friend- just the hits.

I’m not sure you get that on Spotify – it’s not a mixtape. Recommendations not real revelations.

Which brings me back to The Pastels – you were probably wondering where they had gone. A real revelation. That first listen to The Pastels was most likely on a tape cassette from some other lonely (planet) boy or girl who was stuck in Derby or Durham or Doncaster. A tape hissing and whirring with Baby Honey secreted on Side Two – it had to go there – it was quite long see – and you wouldn’t put that on side one would you?

And then a 7 inch brought home from Record Village – I remember Paul and I just looking at the postcard that came with Comin’ Through. The Pastels – apart from having one of the coolest names in pop looked super fucking cool too – a gang – a gang that embraced all. This was not macho – this was egalitarian rocking out (with rucksacks) and then a 12inch from Leeds or York – adding to our knowledge of superior pop. And that first wonderful long player ‘Up for a bit’ – and we where up for a bit – who wouldn’t be at that age? There was a playfulness in the title – with an air of menace. You don’t survive in Glasgow without it. You don’t survive any city that ain’t that pretty without a slice of the solid. You had to look after yourself in those days. You could get a pasting from the ‘bouncers’ on the Baths Hall doors for having a bowlhead – well maybe not the haircut. I think I got a pasting for calling them ‘cunts’ but that’s another story.

I made a t-shirt – because you couldn’t buy one – you couldn’t just look it up on Amazon. I had to make a stencil and spray paint it. Paul stole it though. He was slimmer than me then. And then a journey to Leeds – The Duchess of York. With Stephen all crepe soled shoes and dazzling shirts – there simple was nothing that couldn’t be done. They were all conquering – as I’ve said before I thought selling out the Duchess pretty much meant the road to superstardom. And then with them at the ULU – early days into my university existence – all friends down to the smoke and drinking Thunderbird wine and rolling around on floors and other people’s beds. The Pastels providing the soundtrack. Ride may have made their debut at that gig - but it was The Pastels who triumphed. They had moved it on a notch. They weren’t looking back – they never had. They’d been (sittin’) pretty forging out a new sound - great songwriting, showmanship and shoes – see when that comes together how can it fail? The Pastels live was and is exciting. A cacophonous sound and a band with women in – no patriarchal rock monsterism on show here. Equality in feeling and expression.

He sings – she sings – they sing. This is a band who take risks – they still do.

I’ve been listening to Slow Summits recently – a record from outsiders – risk takers – not chancers. There's a big difference. It’s got this backwash of sound and structure that is both exploratory and familiar. It’s pastoral and filmic, melodic Morricone meets Russell soundscapes for the masses. Uplifting music for people – all the people – all the time – you can hear it coursing through Slowly Taking Place. All six minutes thirty three seconds – with those simple harmonies breaking through at the bitter end making you want it to carry on for another six minutes.

And then take a song Night Time Made Us – it brings you to your knees. This is not an example of a throwaway pop mentality - as always with The Pastels they didn’t make tunes to be forgotten. You know you don’t hang around for thirty years without a great deal of understanding. Night Time Made Us is so warm – so supportive a tune – father and son – mother and daughter – being born and growing older. I simply love it.

Summer Rain’s outro has a kind of Kes meets Intastella vibe – all weaving flutes and drones. You see it’s what is different that makes them strong. Stephen said that – I can’t claim to have written that – but he’s right. Honesty and truthfulness – this band has never set out to deceive –its eyes were always on what might come along up ahead. Not how to play the corporate game. As I said early – they are outsiders making music to warm your inside. This is not twee, nor calculated marketing. Just because you want a change of ideology you don’t have to cover it in symbolism and anger. You just make things that have a beauty for everyone – you bring about change collectively.

And it seems that The Pastels are being discovered again. A shift in the collective consciousness. Long live the internet and the chance to pass things on. We may not shout about it in fanzines anymore – but you can get a piece of this and that – right here on the screen. Slow Summits is hopeful – it’s got humanity at its heart.

So here’s ‘Check your heart’ the first glorious single from Slow Summits – it resonates in so many ways – you know I’m getting older – I should have my heart checked.

A song in love with the pop moment. A record to dance to. Dance to with the kids. Because I do a lot of that these days. And I want to play ‘pure popcorn’ moments with them because that’s the dad I am. We dance – we sing – we laugh together.

I like taking risks when The Pastels are in involved.

You can read a wonderful interview with Stephen here by Jenn Pelly for Pitchfork  

You can find out all about his 'baker's dozen' here - it's a great trawl through thirteen of Stephen's favourite albums. 

Here's the great video for Check Your Heart. Check out Duglas dancing near the end (alongside others) 

 

I got a letter this morning.

There’s a long history of rock and the post office – a long history.

I had returned from university and found myself temporarily in charge of a red framed bicycle and post bag. My degree had been in Sociology and Communication Studies and wandering back into Goldsmiths’ to pick up my ‘award’ for best UK animation etc and explaining to my previous tutors where I was currently at I was met with the line – ‘well it is a form of communications I suppose – the post office’.

Yes thank you for the support – it was reminiscent of Casper receiving his careers advice. Still I had to leave the capital [Exit this Roman shell] at that time – I had those empty pockets and I couldn’t afford the beer.

I used to sing to myself when I was on the post round. Post rounds have that kind of freedom. I was living out a Bukowski phase of my existence. The round was a means to an end – the round was clouded in the rounds I’d had the night before.

Bagging up and off into the emerging morning – sometimes wide eyed from the night before or tired eyed from the weekend – that sense of camaraderie and then emerging isolation all thrown into one. Shouting out inanities as letters were thrown in racks and bandied up in elastic and then just you and your bike – riding to deliver the good, the bad and the ugly.

I used to get a whole heap of things through the post.

Having attempted to write [insightfully] about music on the page – and then thrust it on unsuspecting bowl headed youth at gigs and concerts – somehow my late night ramblings as to the power of The Impossibles to change the world or how the next Clouds release would bring down western capitalism had broken into the ether and people would scrawl letters and sellotape fifty pences to card asking for a copy from all over the world.

Letters with suggestions of bands and sounds – places to visit and voices that chimed with mine. It was an indie scene see? All wrapped together with staples and photocopies. It was the Post Office uniting minds and [teenage] dreams [so hard to beat] so that we felt part of a gang – a movement – a wave – even if we walked our sodden towns’ streets alone.

I didn’t by the way – I had friends – real ones.

But postmen – like me - would have to deliver these letters with scrawls about ‘that’s love ba ba ba ba’ or ‘see it glow and paint a rainbow’. Our own S.W.A.L.K as we borrowed Stephen Pastel’s words to give our ideas a voice. It was fun really. And inside these delicate envelopes came outpourings of independence – of fight and fury as we rallied against the world with our band allegiances proudly displayed on our [t-shirt] sleeve or in my case [my college folder – lever arch maaaan] You had to wait for a letter – a correspondence between two minds – feverishly trying to drop a new piece of indie news into a letter. Have you heard Dolly Mixture? Here’s a tape of my band – a friend’s band – my dad’s band. It was counter to all the NME blurgh – it was social networking without technology. It was different. We didn’t ‘like’ one another’s page see – we wrote letters to each other – if we disagreed – we either worked it out in ink – or stopped writing. No flaming or trolling for us. So sounds emerged slowly, with less fanfare. You could argue that it gave everyone time to make a decision about music – about selecting and rejecting – living with the listening rather than flipping and shuffling. You had a cassette from someone – they’d taken some time to tape it – it deserved a listen – a real listen – you were going to have to write back.

I ‘liked’ a page on Facebook this morning – and then had a quick skip through a ‘deep house session’ on Soundcloud that I was directed to from the page and haven’t really given any of it my attention. I left with little opinion. But when Stephen from Middlesborough wrote and asked again what it was I didn’t like about the tape he sent – I had to return and listen - form judgements and write down my reasons – perhaps this naïve correspondence of hurt feelings and the race to impress shaped my thinking processes – perhaps I just pause for thought sometimes.

You have to take a breath to read - to listen.

Which brings me to this – a simple song – that I discovered through a shared love of anoraks and bowlheads – or should that read rock n roll and anger. And of course Paul’s recommendations too. There wasn’t anything twee in digging The Pastels - it was about the real rock in roll. There’s that simplicity in all The Pastels songs – chugging guitars and heartfelt responses. Melodies that linger and race around your brain.

Stephen and Aggi making beautiful noise and shared cassettes and memories scrawled down on paper making connections.

They’re raising the price of the post. No more time to pause then.

Put away your pens.