The Whole Day

This album by Roy Montgomery and Flying Saucer Attack, "Goodbye/and Goodbye/The Whole Day Song" has been a soundtrack for my life the last 3 years. Montgomery, a great New Zealand experimental psych guitar player, and Flying Saucer Attack created this amazing compositional and instrumental guitar album, a beautiful maelstrom of melody and guitar feedback some time ago. It is probably as significant, compositionally, as Igor Stravinksy's The Rite of Spring.

While I travel, I have my iPod loaded with Flying Saucer Attack tunes, since I miss Spencer, my kid, when I'm away. The Whole Day Song is etched in my mind with memories of the walks and explorations that Spencer and I take around Lincoln's badlands and railyards, finding weird stuff and the strange corners of the city. Its pretty, desolate sound evokes the barren western landscape of the Plains, and impresses our solitary treks on the edge of the urban fringe in my mind so I can recall them while I'm away from him. For us it is always the whole day.

This album is worth having in your record collection, one of the great compositions ever written for a traditional four-piece rock formation.