It's a rare and unusual thing for an EP to achieve the kind of consummate perfection that resonates from a truly wonderful full-length album.

Of course, hardly anyone even makes EPs anymore. The CD single packed with irrelevant remixes (or else nothing at all save a radio edit) is de rigueur these days.

Still, there are those rare EPs that reach lofty heights that exceed the brilliance of all but the best albums. Cocteau Twins' Love's Easy Tears is one...completely floored me when I first heard it in a record store, stood perfectly still to hear every last note of it, thinking this must be the way that angels sing, this must be what the reflection of me who stars in all of my dreams sings as he falls to another inexorable end...

Today I'm listening to another one: the rather deceptively-named The Comeback EP by the indie electronica band Stars (on the Le Grand Magistery label, home also to Momus and Baxendale).

Anyone who heard their marvelous debut album Nightsongs is sure to be asking "Comeback? Comeback from what, precisely?"

The gentle, accomplished bittersweetness of Nightsongs made for a remarkable debut. Consequently, one might think the title merely a tongue-in-cheek joke, but as band member Torquil Campbell writes: "Nightsongs was a loving pastiche, but a pastiche nonetheless; The Comeback e.p. is easily the best, most original music we've ever made."

Indeed, this EP, in the course of 5 brief songs, propels the band to a new level of personal expression, savvy hooks, and gently-applied electronic and acoustic musical textures. More a progression than a comeback, it is in any event a brave step forward, an expansion of the New Order and Smiths influences of their debut into a wider, somewhat more sinister world.

And I could tell you in depth about each of the songs, but I won't, because I find myself returning repeatedly to "The Aspidistra Flies", the waltz-time love song that is the centerpiece of the album.

Its title an apparent homage to the George Orwell novel Keep The Aspidistra Flying, the song is an unabashedly sincere love song, declaring

All the umbrellas in London couldn't hide my love for you, All the rain on Thames-side couldn't stop it shining through

I wonder a lot about the apparent homage. The Orwell novel is a depressing tale of a young man's frustrated rebellion against money and station, and includes episodes of equally frustrated desire.

Into the midst of this reverie spins the twirling, sunny sincerity of "The Aspidistra Flies", its only hint of frustration a tendency toward the minor key.

What does it mean? I'm not entirely sure it means anything at all, except that the band really likes the book.

Or perhaps their reaction to this song is the same as mine: once they have played it once, they feel compelled to return eagerly to the beginning and play it again.

As I do, when "The Aspidistra Flies", and I feel I must, at any cost, keep it flying, keep it flying, keep it flying...

An interesting discussion is underway on the current state of IT hiring and how it relates to HR practices, CS education, etcetera.

Jump into the fray and comment, or just read to see what my working world is like.

For myself, I'm a computer-science autodidact. I'm a poster boy for the fact that the ability to solve problems is more important to programming (and most other technology tasks) than knowledge of the specific language / hardware / software used.

Any good problem solver can learn a new language in no time, because "how do I learn this language quickly?" is, after all, also a problem to be solved.

All of this makes the "keyword-based" stringent-requirement HR approach to hiring for IT positions look absolutely laughable.

This reminds me of the job interview I had for a position as Network Administrator for a defense contractor several years ago. One of the techs had reset the clocks on their Netware and HP/UX servers in advance of my arrival. Prior to the interview itself, I was set down in front of the servers with their respective manual sets in plain view and asked to reset all of them to the correct time. I'd never used HP/UX before -- my Unix experience was confined to a passing familiarity with Unixware -- but I reset all of the servers in less than 5 minutes by consulting the HP/UX manuals.

After completing this seemingly inanely simple task, the tech who had reset the servers took me down the hall to meet the supervisor who would conduct my hiring interview. On the way, he told me how many people had been unable to complete the task, completed it incorrectly, or taken as much as half an hour before even trying the manuals. I was the first of several applicants to actually pass the "pre-interview" for this particular position.

And all of this was before the dot-com bubble.

It's a weird aspect of American culture, this unwarranted emphasis on book-knowledge and buzzwords over the simple ability to learn and acquire new skills. But it seems to pervade everywhere, from primary and secondary education to collegiate curricula, technology certifications such as MCSE, and corporate perceptions of ability and hirability.

Wake up, America! It's the "can do" problem-solving people who CAN do whatever you ask them to do.

If they can't, they'll learn how before you can blink.

Naturally, you only want to read my opinions on things, right? No? Well, then...

Links to outside sites referenced in stories on the front page will now have a [b] link following them. This enables you to query Blogdex see other blogs that are discussing the same link.

So, for example, if you'd like another opinion on NeCoRo, you could find additional commentary from other blogs by clicking on the [b] symbol right there next to the link.

This feature comes to you courtesy of the Meta Linker code, at ThinkBlank. It's an elegant little piece of JavaScript. I highly recommend it.

Note that this only works on the front page. If you're reading the archives, or a specific topic area, it won't work. That's not a limitation of the code, it's just the way I set it up to avoid too much JavaScript running all over the place.

Then again, this entire site is essentially powered by JavaScript, so maybe I'll rethink that at some point. But for now, only on the front page.