There’s an album being released on March 16 and though I live and love in Toronto, I feel the same zing about Schyzopolis I felt when I heard the first oozes of Bruce Peninsula or the first soft sparkle of Sandro Perri’s Impossible Spaces, but for the first time since Dave Gregory parted ways with XTC (or possibly since the release of Not in my Air Force by Bob Pollard I am genuinely excited about an album being released in a faraway place, I think it’s the first time I’ve ever thought of an album being released thousands of kilometers away with the same thrill I feel when it’s one of my local friends and admirees making music on their own terms, this must be a McLughan moment, because I am so convinced that Paris is a neighbourhood in Toronto that I am writing a wavelog about it.

Bo has a difficult name to Google, but thanks to the internet I have had the pleasure of listening to a bunch of songs from his forthcoming album Schysopolis on his fanpage and jamming them out on Soundcloud and I’m delighted to be the first to announce on this side of the Atlantic the arrival of the complete Bo, he’s no longer straining to find his sound, he has completely grown into it like a shallow stream in a ravine eroding into a multilayered canyon, and has completed work on a confidently smooth album that will be released on March 16 called Schysopolis. In the years I’ve listened to his songs this is definitely the point where Bo emerges as a truly actualized musical personality who sounds like Todd Rundgren and Serge Gainsbourg with a splash of Scissor Sisters and the macho parts of ELO, wrapped in glam sardonic irony and channeling the absolute delicate assurance of the Spent Poets, Schyzopolis has tastefully undercooked stretches of classical on his tribute to Berlioz, theological clarity on Je Suis Dieu, and poppy but not excessive use of the classic Bee Gees disco beat on the insanely uplifting and catchy No More Mister Nice Guy. There is a duet he does with an artist named Brisa Roché  and I will have to guess at how that turned out based on a rough rehearsal video.

I think my first connection to the Paris music world stuck because I was introduced to some kindred Parisien Wavelengthers during an emotional perfect storm. The first time I heard Bo was the summer of 2006 and I was sitting at a desk at Sony Music trying to dodge the subliminal musical influences of Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, and a vast assortment of tepid Ben Mulroney approved Canadian Idol runners-up, and to completely ruin my day a tuckered out Weird Al Yankovic was in the building, camped out in a meeting room between interviews, having a nap. Everybody was just way too excited by this close encounter with cloying mediocrity (he had written a song about Canada! Set to the tune of American Idiot!) for me to tolerate another moment. I’m not saying everything about Sony Music was terrible, there were plenty of good people there doing good work, and somebody has to do the tedious administration and marketing gruntwork for Bob Dylan and Harry Nilsson, and on most days the illusion of working for Bob Dylan and associates was enough to get me through more tedious aspects of mainstream tastemaking, but on that summery afternoon I was in a rut surrounded by ruts, nearing the end of a doomed marriage, staring down the gun of an empty bank account, and in a pathetic bid to save an unsavable marriage I spent most of 2006 neglecting my Wavelength hosting duties, so I no longer had access to that fountainhead of good music vibes, my weekly antidote. And here I was all alone in the building of a stone silent music label, Weird Al was napping nearby, and in the dead silence I was alone with my inner darkness underneath the leering sneering smile of that son-of-a-pizza-oven-salesman Ben Mulroney.

Next to my computer were some very fancy earphones.

In humourless protest I logged into my myspace account and changed my hometown from Toronto to Monaco. The first music suggestion that appeared was a Parisienne artist named Anabel’s Poppy Day, hungry for something to listen to - anything at all! -  I clicked the link. The myspace algorithm got it right, it must have suggested her page because she also lied about her hometown (she said she was from Uzbekistan), I was directed to a strange harmless website filled with dozens of wonderfully inelegant bedroom track songlets with names like “I’m a Dragonfly” and “Cheese Feet” - the songs have long since vanished but the shell of the website is still online and is worth a look, if you want to revisit the peak of 2005 web development - and she still has some cool songs up on the Anabel's Poppy Day myspace to hold us over while she grows her next album. Tacked on to the very end of her site’s music player was a collaboration she did with somebody named Alexis Hadefi called “Trip Along” (it was a cover of a song by Tripping Daisy). The song hit me like a tonne of bricks that turned to electrobubbles on contact, the harmonies were perfect, the feelings sincere, the song sweeping and expansive - George Harrison was Bjork’s illegitimate father and Steve Hackett decided to stand up to play and they were all riding wild horses through the crashing waves on the sandy beach of the seashore – and like a train crashing into a cliff the song ended and a single stunned tear rolled down my cheek. Bo was one of the musicians in her circle of brilliant musicians. And my secret life as a Parisian show hopper began, though I’ve been e-troduced to a tonne of great music from in and around the Isle de Paris ever since, nothing topped that first moment, and I've had a quiet interest in the progress of Bo and Anabel's Poppy Day ever since. This is Bo's time to shine.

Later on Bo would release a pretty good album called Koma Stadium which was fun, it didn’t blow my mind but it was impressive and expansive, and later I learned of a preceding album called Zap Shanghaï Baseball which was also solid and also eclectic, and also didn’t blow my mind but catchy as the bird flu. I’ve had a fascination with the subversive pop folk and rock’n’roll ever since, and Bo and Anabel’s Poppy Day were at the vanguard of my education. So now that Schyzolopis is upon us, it feels like a neighbor down the street has won a lottery. So far every song Schyzopolis is unique and complete and completely self-contained and reaches the level of that Tripping Daisy cover I heard by Anabel's Poppy Day and Alexis Hadefi all those years ago.

Overall from what I’ve heard of this album all signs and sounds lead me to believe that Schyzopolis has just the right balance of force and restraint to really turn out to be a self-contained masterpiece for Bo, it will most certainly be the album that defines him from now on, and unfortunately for him he will also have to live with the curse of trying to live up to this brilliant album for the rest of his creative life, but that is a very good problem to have.

The hard part of liking a couple bands in another part of the world is that unless somebody has a better plan I haven’t figured out a way to bring my favorite bands to Toronto, they’re all working stiffs like you and me and touring outside of their city limits is as hard for them as it is for us. I guess I’ll ask Soundscapes to help me get my hands on this album, if anybody understands my Paris address it’s them.