My wife and I get dressed behind a single boudoir screen. We pee in each other's company. We don't share mirror-time and floss together, mainly because we're typically out of floss, but if floss was in cinnamony abundance in our household, we would likely make this yet another ADL gone communal.

John Dragonetti and Blake Hazard once shared mirror-time. But as the story goes, they split up -- only to reconnect to share stage-time as the Submarines. Their latest, Honeysuckle Weeks, is inconsistent, but I'm digging on the album's keen sense of self-awareness -- as in, the pair are frequently evoking moments and words connected with childhood, but are ever-aware of their status as individuals with nearly graying tones, weakening eyesight, and more cynical viewpoints.

In "Thorny Thicket," Hazard sings about "prickers and briars" -- the former being a word I haven't heard since traipsing through overgrown, empty lots as a kid -- and how she used them to encircle and protect a once-broken heart. "Swimming Pool" is summertime, childhood leisure mixed with a bit of danger-tinged adult thrill: "When you kiss me in ways I've forgotten / Love is a swimming pool with no bottom."

When you're all grown-up, you notice the subterranean darkness below your kicking feet as much as the smooch. But that's cool. When you're also all grown-up, no one asks you what part of your body the pool water comes up to.

Digging the fact that Kevin Shields is being recorded without stacks of Vox amplifiers, or that he can't pluck from a line of Jaguars and Jazzmasters leaned against the walls, or that he can't instruct a trusty engineer to fetch him new mic poppers or Rotovibe pedals. Shields is here, taped and ever twisted ("I'm crazy, but not mentally ill"), without his usual array of studio playthings and that alone makes this record worth checking out. The MBV completist sect will be all over this like white indie kids on Ricemilk -- and will certainly grouse after hearing it. "The strings of music tightening around him," Patti Smith says over Shields' "chordal architecture," quoting from the poem she wrote for dear friend Robert Mapplethorpe, "forming a cocoon within." That's what those folks ever-yearn for. I think it's a nice palette cleanser before the long-awaited My Bloody Valentine release sees the light of day.

I can't conjure up the exact Bill Bryson quote or even the book (must have been Notes from a Small Island), but I seem to recall him saying something along the lines of, "If you ever see an Englishman on holiday, chances are he's one of the following: hot, thirsty, or sun-burned." I thought of this when I learned David Gedge has picked up and moved south from Seattle to Los Angeles. Wasn't one of the go-to whines during England's lethargic crawl in the 2006 World Cup the oppressive heat? Imagine what the SoCal sun would render our favorite love-obsessed Leedsman? A puddle? Blisters? A puddle of blisters?

El Rey bounds with energy, so the heat hasn't sapped him of that. Now he just makes observations like, "I thought I saw a shooting star, but it was just another satellite." If you told me years ago that of the 22 bands on the C86 tape only the Wedding Present and Primal Scream would still be alive and kicking in 2008, and that one of their lead singers would have settled in California, I would have bet Stephen Pastel's lisp that it was Bobby Gillespie.

But I would have been wrong. I would have been wrong about Gedge withering out there and I'm probably going to be wrong about England having a solid chance in the 2010 World Cup thanks to South Africa's "cooler," winter temps.

I make this list for no one's benefit other than my own. My go-to tracks from each disc in Series Two Records' recently issued four-disc compilation.

Series Two Records, Vol. 5
All Our Relatives - "Numbers"
Ellen Beach - "Roaring Fields"
Slowmotion Club - "Parliament Square"
Sweden Japan Foundation - "Atari Gunfighters"
The Mustonens - "A Festival is Here"

Series Two Compilation, Vol. 2
The Harvest Ministers - "Just a Boy"
Electric Needle Room - "Nobody Cares About Me Anymore"
The Endless Bummer - "Itacan of Lakota"
The Secret Ink - "Neverafter"
The Ruling Class - "Flowers"

Series Two Compilation, Vol. 3
Allt ar Musik - "Jag Har Det Bra"
Elenette - "Att Gora En Hit
The Faintest Ideas - "Mountain of Tics"
The Honeydrips - "Wait for the Grief to Come"
Vit Pals - "Wu Tang Clan"

Series Two Compilation, Vol. 4
Afternoon Naps - "Postcard"
The Airfields - "Quiet Nights in June"
The Atom Miksa Reservation - "We're Sorry"
The Gladeyes - "Damien and Monika Party at Yours"
The Jealous Sea - "All Over Town"

In The Plague, Camus told us the citizens of Oran spent their Saturdays "love-making, sea-bathing, going to the pictures." In Nausea, Satre's Saturdays were composed of children playing ducks and drakes, and tossing stones into the seas. But I like Proust's Saturdays the most. It consisted of characters frequently blurting out, "Have you forgotten that it's Saturday?" It wasn't a condescending question, but a reminder to one's self and others of what Saturdays promised and relieved one of (labor and well, any thoughts of labor), as the whole concept of leisure was a fairly new one in late 19th century Europe.

M83's "Skin of the Night" is like a Saturday anthem from adolescence. The vocals remind one of Liz Frasier, though back then I had no idea who Liz Fraser was. She could have been the Roll-On America employee who never wiped her hands in between serving Greek-style pizza and ice cream. "Skin of the Night"'s cheesy, post-chorus guitar stabs are like something from the ballads they played loudly while we skated. I wore Vuarnet; she feathered her hair. And the songs were so synth-heavy and impenetrable, the colors from the disco lights flashing overhead bounced right off them.

But you always found a way to wring the emotion from such works and afterwards, as you stood outside waiting for a ride, your feet still tingling from cramped, beige skates, you quoted a verse and got a kiss in return.

The other day I washed my eight-year-old's hands. He typically does such a task on his own, but I was in a hurry (always) so I grabbed a face cloth and did it myself. In a moment only parents catalog, I noticed how coarse his hands were. He plays baseball and messes around with drum sticks and dabbles in dirt, so naturally the disappearance of any sort of baby-softness is expected. But it still surprised me; it's almost like he totes the hands of an adult now. It got me rolling on some sort of internal rumination about the transition from childhood to adulthood. When I reached the end point, I put on the new Spiritualized album. I wonder if Jason Pierce's mother ever wished to put her son in some sort of stasis, to preserve him from all the bad things he injected/inhaled. To preserve his track-less, fleshy, pink hands. If she ever lectured him, maybe the words are finally coursing through his veins as this new disc seems to stress what the low points can be from indulging a little too freely. Or maybe all the time he spent with Kate Radley's father, the behavioral psychologist, and Kate Radley's father's books are freeing his mind, allowing him to discontinue his demystification of narcotics and reconnect with humanity. Or maybe I'm just getting old and want my heroes to exhibit their age as well.