Psychic Twin’s Strange Diary
Beautiful vocals and driving synths on this poppy album full of lovely love songs
http://open.qobuz.com/album/fnb59vg2fj0fb
https://tidal.com/album/256090677
Strange Diary is an album I encountered by chance while shopping online at a defunct local record shop. Their 45s ranged from 1950s jazz and pop, to contemporary pop/rock, indie, and other genres I don’t remember or didn’t encounter. The ability to search online was a better option for me than sifting through the random assortment of clearance vinyl. For one thing, being at home on my computer made checking out albums and artists by listening to them was easy. Anyway, I got the 7” 33-1/3 rpm single for a mix of “Strangers,” that differs from the album version.
I really enjoy this album. I’m generally a sucker for love songs 🥹, both new and old. I don’t like angry love-hate songs (anymore), and all these songs are beautiful, not painfully self-absorbed or overly self-examining in superficial ways. They tend to express the falling-in-love sense of helplessness and desperate yearning for the beloved. I well remember early love, and the feeling is still pleasure-bringing.
The synth pop short of dream pop is a kind of music I generally like. My favorite dream pop is See Through Dresses, particularly their album Horse of the Other World. I’ve written about the in my review of the Schiit Valhalla 2 SET OTL tube headphone amp-preamp, which I use about every three days, going back and forth between it and the solid-state Schiit Asgard 3 solid-state friend of the Valhalla. They’re both class-A amps—well, the Asgard has the Continuity technology that extends class-A operation beyond its normal power range, by performing as class-A-like amplification, as Schiit put it on their website before they discontinued the product. Anyway, here’s the review of the Valhalla, a good amp.
Review: Schiit Audio’s all-tube Valhalla headphone amp and pre-amp†
I have owned my Schiit Audio (https://www.schiit.com) Valhalla headphone amp for a couple of years, though it seems like longer. It has become an integral component in my stereo system. It works as both a single ended-triode, output transformer-less headphone amp and as a pre-amp. First, it only takes one stereo input, through two RCA jacks, so a balanc…
So, I encourage you to listen. A little radio play—and I don’t know if Psychic Twin had any on stations where I’ve lived—and the single and the album might have come to my attention sooner.