Fractionals

First of all, I read this post on John Darnielle's Last Plane to Jakarta last night, and while I don't know if I'd like Tiny Vipers, Darnielle's point about the importance of attention, of your attention, is both very well put and very widely applicable:

"Too busy with other things to really properly describe what I've been listening to, not ready yet - never! never ready for that! - to just link to the artists or songs in question without saying something, anything, about why I think they're worth your attention. Because: your attention is more valuable than the present age would have you believe. It's the one thing you brought to this world that it didn't have before, and it's the only thing of consequence that you'll permanently remove from this world when you leave. You know? So when somebody sort of cavalierly directs your attention someplace without so much as a tossed-off phrase indicating why you should bother, then you ought, in my opinion, to regard such people/sources/tweets as emissaries of the dark Lord."

(emphasis his)

I hope, I think, I don't do that; it's true that many posts about albums I really like are fairly short, but that's because when I have an album I like as much as Mark Kozelek's masterful acoustic concert recording Lost Verses Live or Jack Peñate's unexpectedly wonderful Everything Is New (which justly gets a slightly lower rating but might still make my year end list), the post about them includes a link to a review where I try and make the case for your attention. Which is a fancy way of saying I wanted to write about Darnielle's post anyway, but I noticed I had two reviews up today and though I'd fold it all into one post.