It’s a rather weird coincidence, if you think about it. The last time Rainsound was updated was nearly two years ago. By that time, we were celebrating another great album by Miracle Mile, Alaska. Our cover story had been quite explicitly titled “It’s A Miracle”. Now, two years later and another attempt to start the site up again, there is a good reason to leave that title unchanged. One of Rainsound’s favourite bands ever, The Trash Can Sinatras (pictured left), have just completed a new record, and one of the new songs (maybe not the best in the album, but that’s a different story) is called – doh! – “It’s A Miracle”. But the real miracle here is not the song in itself, nor the album in itself, which is fantastic anyway. Rather, it’s the Trashies’ comeback to life. Eight years after their latest effort, A Happy Pocket, we quite seriously feared we might not be able to hear from the guys anymore. As A Happy Pocket suffered from poor sales, the record company just dropped them. Since then, the band have been trying to get a chance to make more music, and possibly sell it. Their 1999 ep sort of reflected their status at that time. From then on, despite the prolonged silence, the TCS mailing list continued its sort of background activity, discussing topics and music the fate seemed to have consigned to history. They also collected some money to send to the band, in order for the guys to buy new equipment and eventually start their own label. And, of course, to come to produce Weightlifting, a gem of an album which you shouldn’t be missing for anything in your life. And, if you know what has brought forth such a record, you won’t be able to help shedding a tear of joy for Frank Reader’s lyrics, when he sings “Everyone’s alive / Everyone survived” in the opener “Welcome Back”. They really did survive, and we’re grateful it happened.

So, what has this rambling got to do with Rainsound? Well, it’s after we heard TCS had a new record out soon that we thought it wasn’t time to give up the site yet. We had to be share and be part of this little miracle. And not only of this we had to tell about. So many things have happened, not only here at Rainsound, where it has become very hard to find some time to keep track of all the news and the new releases. Well, you know that the Blue Nile have released a new record, we could not refrain from posting our own personal review, in Sarina Scott’s words. And Trevor Jones’ Miracle Mile have got a record out too (Stories We Could Tell), and it’s another miracle that, somehow unfortunately, nothing has to do with the business. James Grant too is still part of the game, with his new cd Holy Love, and Boo Hewerdine is said to be working on an upcoming record.

Who can no longer be part of the game is Graheme Kelling, once guitarist with Deacon Blue, the band who's responsible for the name we bear. The news of his passing away hit us like and unfair thunderstorm, like we’d been caught in a hurricane day, that won’t easily pass away this time. Wherever you are, Graheme, we miss you. And the music still lives on…