Fractionals

Psst

2011-07-27T00:59:00.000-04:00

And you'll never see me go

2011-06-30T08:35:00.003-04:00

Between work being ridiculous and attending this (even more awesome than you'd expect, which is pretty awesome; yes the Q&As were both pretty much like this), I've had an email full of links to post for far too long now. Many of which contain my own work; the biggest example would be my Playing Favourites interview with Mountains over at Resident Advisor, which I am immensely proud of. There are also reviews of Junior Boys and Jesu over at PopMatters, and a few contributions to their best of summer lists: The Crying of Lot 49, Slowdive, and Teenage Fanclub (you have to scroll down for those three).

In less personal news, here are two riveting stories about the limits of the human body that I've read about three times apiece: one on The Barkley Marathons and one on the training for Seal Team Six. Both are relatively insane things to do to yourself; is it weird that I kind of want to try the Barkley one day (if I can ever manage to get into good enough shape)?

Speaking of getting in shape, which is partly an issue of willpower, Reason had a really good essay on the idea of precommitment. It's an idea that's as old as Odysseus lashing himself to the mast, and it's surprisingly powerful. Don't get me wrong, Reason largely publishes bullshit ("free minds and free markets," lol), but this particular essay is worth reading.

This essay on Roger Federer and the inevitable passing of great athletes was already great, but recent events have given it a bit of extra poignancy. Although (awkward segue alert!) not as much poignancy as this note from Iggy Pop to a young fan (courtesy of the always great Clem Bastow).

Finally, if you can read all of this article and not think that Paul Bridges is a fucking hero, you either don't know shit about illegal immigration in the United States, or you lack basic human empathy. I want to give the guy a hug, myself. And if that story is a bit too depressing to end on, well, there's always this (and the next strip too)...

My self esteem is heatin' up the room

2011-06-17T12:59:00.003-04:00

Feel good hits of the 17th of June, 2011, special "I'm in one of these videos" edition:

01. Jessica Lea Mayfield - Our Hearts Are Wrong
02. The Delgados - Witness
03. Red House Painters - Wop-A-Din-Din
04. Radiohead - Give Up the Ghost
05. Memoryhouse - Lately
06. Tindersticks - Travelling Light
07. The National - Available
08. Low - Something's Turning Over
09. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Albanian
10. The Mendoza Line - Sleep of the Just

Notes:
1: I had such a hard time trying to decide which track from Tell Me to post; I am completely obsessed with that record. Her voice! The arrangements! The lyrics! Her voice! The pervasively doom-laden atmosphere! Her freakin' voice!
3: About a cat, which is not normally a type of song that I'm fond of. This is a great one, though.
5: These guys live. Jesus. Hurry up with the album, already!
7: I know this is an old song, but it's a recent performance; these guys get mislabelled as just being about fashionable ennui (or something) too often by people who aren't really listening to the band. "How can you blame yourself, when I did everything I wanted to?" is one of the more horrifying lyrics I've ever heard in an otherwise normal rock song.
8: Yep, that's me. I'm pretty sure you can see my housemate as well, but the person in question never turns enough for me to be sure. It was a great show; the same guy has a bunch of the songs up on YouTube, which is awesome.
9: Does not even come close to accurately representing them live.
10: Believe me, I am more upset than you that this is the only video version of this cover that I could find.

All of my fragile kingdoms

2011-06-06T18:18:00.001-04:00

This song can be found here, and is awesome. I am shamefully remiss when it comes to answering emails from musicians who want me to listen to stuff, and honestly a lot of what is sent at me essentially randomly isn't very good. Clara Engel (real name or Scott Walker homage?), however, is clearly on to something, even if I don't like anything else I've heard quite as much as I love "I Wear Your Coat."

So yes, it's been about a month, and I've had stuff I want to write about piling up. Maybe I should start one of those tumblrs or something. First of all, my review of EMA's astounding, essential Past Life Martyred Saints went up, and I honestly think it's the best review I've written in, let's just say a while. Comic book/video game/music writing genius and occasional correspondant (because I wrote him a fan email about Phonogram) Kieron Gillen even liked it enough to mention it, which is flattering considering his own words on the subject (found at the link).

Also, as people might have seen on Facebook, I interviewed Nick Offerman. That was pretty awesome. Hopefully I wasn't too much of a goof.

And actually, the rest has to wait... I'm going to Detroit for a soccer game tomorrow, and I still have to pack for that. More soon, I hope.

A kind of mortal nerve

2011-05-30T10:24:00.004-04:00

It's been a busy month, and I have a larger post full of all the things I've been wanting to write about that's half done, but sometimes you read something and feel that it's imperative to share it with people.

So: one of those things I wanted to share was Joan Didion's amazing essay "On Self Respect," which an enterprising blogger has shared in full (with an interesting introductory note concerning what it's like to type out an essay). I think I may have quoted Didion's essay with approval before, and it is a fantastic piece of writing, but I'd like to draw your attention to two parts of it:

Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.

and

If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us [...] At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.

Strong, true stuff. Jonathan Franzen's current NYT op ed (adapted from a commencement speech I haven't had time to hear in full yet) is not specifically about self-respect; it is about technology, and love, and the distinction between love and like. Although I have never read Franzen's fiction (and still have no real intention to do so), it is an amazing piece of work. And more than anything, it made me think of Didion's essay. To follow up on my two quotations from Didion, consider these two:

[I]f you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick. (emphasis mine)

and

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.

Strong, true stuff there too. And while this might all seem obvious, the way that reading these two essays in succession sets out a view of the world in which real love and true self respect are not just related but inextricable is a little breathtaking. If you've got twenty minutes or so to spare, I highly recommend reading both of these and then just thinking about it for a minute. I can't imagine it will make your day any worse.

And of course, continued praise goes to Clem Bastow for bringing the Franzen to my attention. You should be reading her Tumblr.

"I don't believe that equal rights for same-sex couples, or anyone, is a partisan issue"

2011-05-02T18:45:00.003-04:00

Yes, there's an incredibly important election in Canada today. Yes, they killed Bin Laden. But this is important too; a young, straight, Republican woman who did not have a gay family member or close friend to spur her on, unequivocally rejecting the idea of discriminating against same-sex couples. This is the future.

OUR DREAMS, ALIT, SINKING IN THE HARBOUR

2011-04-26T18:43:00.003-04:00

(normally this is where I'd post a video, but you know what? no)

So the reformed-at-least-as-far-as-live-music-in-2011 Godspeed You! Black Emperor (oh, I wish they'd never moved that exclamation point) played four shows in three days in Toronto last weekend. I attended the first two of them, and while some part of me was glad for the respite on Sunday, a larger part of me wishes I'd gone to them as well. Both nights Godspeed began around 11:30 and ended about 2 am, and in both cases I would have happily watched for another couple of hours. They played largely the same sets (the lists are here and here), and it didn't really matter. The redoubtable Frank Yang of Chromewaves has it right when he writes,

There was something unbelievably primal and elemental about what Godspeed You! Black Emperor create; like a force of nature if nature were sentient and pissed off. They moved slowly and inexorably, with massive weight and delicate grace and meant to be simultaneously marvelled at, feared and celebrated. The sound was deafening while perfectly clear, brutally beautiful and hitting with the impact of unchecked emotion made sound. I don’t doubt that the marathon-length shows are intended to add a dimension of actual physical exhaustion to the experience – are your knees buckling because you’re tired or because the existential momentousness of it all is too much to bear? Probably the former, but you can’t be sure.

I go to plenty of concerts, many of them excellent (tonight, in fact, I will be seeing Mogwai live, and they're one of my favourite live bands in the world). But Godspeed, both this past weekend and eight years ago at the Palace Royale, are something different. I plan to write elsewhere about the shows, at greater length, so I don't want to say too much now. But if you have any chance at all to see Godspeed play live, you should seize it.

Also, penguins are great

2011-04-19T15:04:00.003-04:00

So I wound up being busy all weekend and not posting my listening from the Music Diary project... but you know what? Other than reading a particularly egregious review of the new Wire album in Mojo and listening to Object 47 at 1:30 AM late Friday/early Saturday to confirm that it's still as good as I remember it being (it is), my listening was pretty much monopolized by the Low review I wrote that weekend. So there you have it.

And now, some links that I've been sitting on:

This might be my favourite weird photography thing I've seen in a while, and was even before I read the explanation.

I've recently been corresponding with Dan Zapruder Phillips, and he happens to have written an excellent post that happens to have been at least partially engendered by something that I wrote. I think the key thing that Dan seizes on, although I'm not sure he ever phrases it this way, is the circumstantial nature of our early listening. When I was growing up (in a town with a Radio Shack as the closest thing to a record store, and the owner would order stuff in for you even if you offered to prepay for it), I listened to certain albums over and over because there was nothing else to listen to. I'm not trying to lionize that experience (and frankly, I suspect that even with increased options there's something in the teenage mind that lends itself to monomania), but there's something to be said for the strength of our affections for those works that we let wear a groove into us.

My friend Hans semi-recently linked to this science fiction short story, called "Understand." You should read it. Yes, you.

A little while back I linked to the online version of my friend Theon's wonderful EMP paper. Now the mighty Tal Rosenberg and Jeff Weiss have both posted their joint paper at their respective internet homes. Even more than Theon's, though, what you're missing here is the delivery; Stylus alums accounted for most of the really well delivered papers at the conference (although not all), and it's shame we can't duplicate that experience here.

I don't normally link to a blog here just because I start reading it, but Slaughterhouse 90210 is a special case. I am a little obsessed with it right now.

Lastly, but far from leastly, you should probably take this test.

Music Diary #5 (last Friday)

2011-04-15T15:24:00.003-04:00

Thursday, April 7

This is going to a lot shorter than the rest of the week so far. I had a bunch of work to do, so I listened to music sporadically throughout the day at the office, and then in the evening I went out to dinner with friends and spent the rest of the night watching Dollhouse. A fun evening, but not very exciting from a musical perspective.

Timber Timbre - Timber Timbre (11:50 AM)

After the show the night before, I wanted to hear these songs again (yes, the way I am used to them). Because I saw Timber Timbre live before I heard the record, at first it was a bit of a disappointment (not as loud, wild, spooky, stark as what I'd seen), but I find that often happens with recorded work when you know the material live beforehand. Since then, my affection for Timber Timbre has grown by leaps and bounds - I think I underrated it in 2009, and I'd say it's just about perfect, an opinion that this listen only confirms.

Clinic - Clinic (2:50 PM)

This brief (25 minutes!) EP compilation was the first time I'd heard of Clinic, via the NME at the time. I found downloads of "I.P.C. Subeditors Dictate Our Youth" and "Porno" (still one of my favourite Clinic songs, maybe my favourite one if not for "Distortions"), and while I liked them, I'd never heard or seen this until I got it in the same order as Bombscare. I'm wary of overromanticizing Clinic's garage-y roots (I hate it when people claim that Internal Wrangler is their only good album, and still think that Walking With Thee/Winchester Cathedral is their best work), but this is very good. I'm glad I finally rounded out my collection.

Low & Spring Heel Jack - Bombscare EP (3:15 PM)

Trying not to overplay this one, but given that I'd already gotten familiar with even C'mon by the time it arrived, I'm loving having more Low to absorb.

Low - One More Reason to Forget (3:25)

We got in early, so we're leaving early, and I'm trying to finish one more document before I go, so I just grab something that's close to Bombscare on my iPod. This live album is stellar, and not just because of the gorgeous version of the 17-minute "Do You Know How to Waltz?" The opening combination of "Be There" and "Venus" might be the best versions of those two songs I've ever heard, and the juxtaposition of the two is just perfect.

Next: I might do the weekend all in on go, both because I'm busy this weekend, and because I didn't do much listening, or at least not much interesting listening.

Two interviews

2011-04-15T14:16:00.002-04:00

Both worth your time.

Norm MacDonald: I’m not original, but I strive toward it as much as possible. I tried really hard on Weekend Update to do something that I considered original, which was, I tried to cut all cleverness out of the joke. I’ve always been very averse to innuendo, especially sexual. I find it cowardly or something. Like on Will & Grace, my mother will laugh at it, then I’m like, "You know what that joke’s about, right? Like, that one guy fucked that guy in the ass." And then she’s aghast, and I’m like, "That’s what he just said when he talked about the tunnel! So why didn’t he just say it?" It always maddens me that people can laugh at sexual innuendo, then you say what it really means, and they’re like "Ah! I can’t hear that!" So on Update, the only real original thing was trying to take away the cleverness of the punchline and make it as blunt as possible. And then I tried to make the punchline as close to the setup as I could. And I thought that was the perfect thing. If I could make the setup and the punchline identical to each other, I would create a different kind of joke.

David Simon: You start talking about a social compact between the people at the bottom of the pyramid and the people at the top, and people look at you and say, "Are you talking about sharing wealth?" Listen, capitalism is the only engine credible enough to generate mass wealth. I think it’s imperfect, but we’re stuck with it. And thank God we have that in the toolbox. But if you don’t manage it in some way that incorporates all of society, if everybody’s not benefiting on some level and you don’t have a sense of shared purpose, national purpose, then it’s just a pyramid scheme. Who’s standing on top of whose throat?

Music Diary #4 (last Thursday)

2011-04-14T20:17:00.001-04:00

Thursday, April 7

Toro y Moi - Underneath the Pine (6:40 AM)

I'd never heard Toro y Moi before this album, and previously I had listened to it once and deleted it (I think it was the one that sounded like a limp Elliott Smith parody that decided me). But I got to talking with a friend, and she told me that it was one of her favourite records of the year so far, and that it reminded her of the Beach Boys. (My official Beach boys opinion, by the way: "Good Vibrations" = one of the best songs ever, "Kokomo" = one of the worst songs ever, most of the rest is pretty good to decent) That sort of orthogonal opinion is enough to get any record at least one more listen. This one started in the bus on the way to the gym.

Phoenix - "1901"/Triangulo de Amor Bizarro - "El Culto al Cargo o Como Hacer Llegar el Objeto Maravilloso"/Butthole Surfers - "Ulcer Breakout"/Whipping Boy - "Blinded"/Six By Seven - "So Close"/The New Pornographers - "The Body Says No"/Idlewild - "A Modern Way of Letting Go"/Rival Schools - "Shot After Shot"/The National - "Mistaken for Strangers"/Primal Scream - "Rise"/Kitchens of Distinction - "Quick As Rainbows"/R.E.M. - "So Fast, So Numb" (7:00 AM)

Another exciting morning at the gym, another good batch of songs. Generally the ones I put on the exercise playlist I know and love, and I know them a lot better after hearing the playlist on shuffle hundreds of times. A couple of these are just live versions, but hey, at least one of them is a version of one of my favourite songs that's about 8x fiercer than the version I know (with altered lyrics, to boot; that would be Whipping Boy). In case you're wondering, the Triangulo de Amor Bizarro song title translates rather wonderfully as "The Cult of the Charge, or, As Wonderful to Get the Object" (according to my friend Andrew Casillas, who introduced me to the band; I thought it was going to be about cargo cults). Also, whatever you think of Primal Scream and/or Bobby Gillespie, you have to admit that when "Rise" came out, the line "Are you collateral damage or a legitimate target?" summed up the Western political landscape pretty pithily.

Toro y Moi - Underneath the Pine (8:40 AM)

The rest of the album, at work. It did sound better (a few tracks even sounded a bit like Twin Shadow), but I think I'll have to listen to this again before deciding.

The Delgados - Hate (12:00 PM)

Today I happened to wear my old Delgados baseball shirt to work. I got it on the tour for Hate (I think I saw them three times before they broke up, at least once with a small string section and a flautist, which was AWESOME); it says "Hate the Delgados" in flowing illuminated-style script, with a fake bible verse, some doves, and a cross. I love it, even if I get sick of explaining what it 'means.' Anyway, seeing it in the bathroom mirror reminds me I should listen to this again. God, I miss the Delgados.

The Lemon Pipers - "Green Tambourine"/The Association - "The Time It Is Today" (12:50 PM)

The AV Club had a primer on sunshine pop (incredibly smooth/well produced hippy music, basically; not something I'd normally like, but...) that I read while eating my sandwich, and when I get back to work I play a couple of the videos that go with the article. I was pleasantly surprised to hear "Green Tambourine" again, it turns out that it was included on one of a series of old compilation cassettes we got from a gas station in the 80s. I'd never heard the Association before, but this song was fine, if not really my thing. But I still love "Green Tambourine," and more importantly, when you watch the video it quickly becomes apparent just how much those kids hated what they were doing, which makes them weirdly lovable as far as I'm concerned.

The Low Anthem - "A Shot in the Arm" (1:00 PM)

The AV Club also had the newest installment of their Undercover series up, and so I leave that in my second monitor as well. I love "A Shot in the Arm" and had never heard the Low Anthem, and to be honest I wasn't that enthused about the match at first. I'm still not very interested in the Low Anthem, but by the middle of the cover I've begun appreciating the ragged, faltering beauty of this version of the song. Maybe it's that organ, or the clarinet, or the initially offputting vocals.

New Order - "Bizarre Love Triangle" (8:15 PM)

So myself, my housemate Julia, and our friend Peter are in the car on the way to Hamilton for a Timber Timbre concert, and nothing much that was on the radio really struck me (we skip back and forth between an old-fashioned oldies station and an 80s station), except for this. I adore this song. As a kid growing up in Kincardine, it was actually the first New Order/Joy Division song I ever heard, albeit in the Frente! cover version. The radio didn't quite play the full 12" version, but that's what you get here.

Fujiya & Miyagi - Transparent Things (8:35 PM)

Julia doesn't really like driving at night, so she pretty much controls what we listen to (and that's fine, she's driving after all). We have this album in the car and play it a lot, although in this case we skip a couple of the slower songs. As much as I like Fujiya & Miyagi's other work (and I do like the new one a lot), nothing really stands up to this one, at least not yet. A very nearly perfect album.

Timber Timbre concert (9:00 PM)

The show is a slight disappointment for me, but quite frankly I have unrealistic expectations for Taylor Kirk live. I first heard of him/saw him playing a solo set opening for "Stars Like Fleas," all gulping Screaming Jay Hawkins voice and stark guitar, lights off except for some red ones; then I saw him at Hillside with his band, face covered in mud, kick drum pumping. This show is good, but the first two were both great and singular, which is a hard act to follow. He also messes around with the songs from the first album in a way I don't find compelling, but I like the stuff from the new album quite a bit. I kind of wish he'd played "Magic Arrow," but that's offset by the fact that I think they may have used Asva as intro music. I'm not complaining, it was a good show and we all enjoyed it, but I guess I had oversold the concert in my head. Aside from some random radio on the way home (which I believe included "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress," which sounds awesome on a staticky oldies station driving in the middle of the night), that was it for the day.

Tomorrow: I don't listen to very much music.

Music Diary #3 (last Wednesday)

2011-04-13T14:13:00.005-04:00

Wednesday, April 6

I didn't manage to make it to the gym today (I usually go for 3-4 week days and then once on the weekend as well), and for whatever reason (the very long document I'm working on, all the non-album listening I did on Tuesday, the phase of the moon), everything I listened to during the day was on my iPod, at work, head down.

Subrosa - No Help for the Mighty Ones (8:30 AM)

I've mentioned this record on Facebook, but not here. So here's the relevent information; suffice it to say that this female-fronted, electric violin-using doom metal band made the strongest positive first-listen impression of any record I've heard in years, and so far it's still standing strong (it's also on Profound Lore, easily my favourite metal label, who happen to be based out of my province). I needed something to help me get up and go on the work I have for the day, which is (mostly) finishing off a really long document, so I turned to Subrosa's soaring, crushing sound. It worked really well.

Sun Kil Moon - Ghosts of the Great Highway (9:50 AM)

I don't know if I'm the only one to do this, but I listened to this record next because I did not have a particular album in mind, hadn't heard this one for a while, and it was next in my iPod. As great as this one is, I'm not that familiar with it. I love Mark Kozelek's work (Red House Painters, here, solo, whatever), but I have so many albums by him that I haven't dug deep enough into many of the more recent additions to my collection (partly because I wind up just opting for Music for a Blue Guitar or the first self-titled Red House Painters record when I want to hear him). But this really is lovely, especially "Carry Me Ohio," "Duk Koo Kim," and "Si, Paloma." I make a renewed vow to actually give more time to Kozelek as I finish listening to this (not that the vow will be reflected in the rest of the week's listening).

Talk Talk - It's My Life (1:30 PM)

Spirit of Eden has been one of my favourite records of all time ever since Nick Southall (the guy who started the whole Music Diary thing) introduced me to it when we both wrote for Stylus. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it on this particular blog, but Nick is not only a great writer but also a great encourager of writers; if not for him I would not have written for Stylus, which is functionally identical to saying that I would not be a music critic.

That has nothing to do with why I love Spirit of Eden, of course, although Nick's gorgeous essay on the album is what made me finally pull the trigger on tracking a copy down. That happened when I worked at the Beat Goes On, which led to me putting in reservations for all of Talk Talk's albums as well as Mark Hollis' solo record, and now I own all of their records except the first (which I don't think I really need). "Such a Shame" and "It's My Life" were the only Talk Talk songs I knew before I heard Spirit of Eden and they're both on this one, so I listened to it a lot after being temporarily stymied by my relative lack of reaciton to Laughing Stock (I'll get there, I'm sure). I've been a little obsessed with this record recently; when you get to the point where you even love "Call in the Night Boy" you know you're a committed fan of pop-era Talk Talk.

Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring (2:20 PM)

By contrast, I haven't really gotten into The Colour of Spring yet, and as much as this record reconfirms that, yes, it's gorgeous, it still don't leave much impression. It's definitely a blend of two records that I adore, and I imagine at some point it'll make more sense to me, but it's still a little fuzzy for now.

Twin Shadow - Forget (3:05 PM)

Hmm, it turns out I do more talking about music I'm listening to on Facebook than I thought (probable reason: more immediate response from people I know). When watching some other video I saw the clip for "Slow" tagged as NSFW, and I was at home, so I watched it out of curiosity. It's not actually NSFW (although it did make me feel a little filthy), but the tag did the trick; I'm still a little gaga over that song. I mentioned it to Stylus friends including the esteemable John Cunningham when I was in LA, and he told me that Forget was one of his favourite records of the year (I didn't even know it existed); he uploaded it for me when I got back, and sure enough, I am kicking myself for not knowing about it last year. This is just a really great record; I think this listen was prompted by hearing about the rather hilarious official video for "At My Heels."

The Radio Dept. - Why Won't You Talk About It? EP (3:50 PM)

At this point I've been at work since 8 AM and my ride is making noises about leaving, but he's not ready to go yet and I've got a good rhythm going on my document so I play something short to keep things going. I don't have a lot of EPs and the like on my iPod, so this one is one of my go-tos. It's not quite the single, although it has the same cover art. It's some sort of promo with the two songs from the single (the title track and "I Don't Need Love, I've Got My Band") plus "Liebling" and "We Would Fall Against the Tide." I got it from the student newspaper years ago on the basis that I'd heard of the band and it's small and perfect. It's kind of ridiculous that I've never investigated these guys further, although I do have "The Worst Taste in Music" on my computer (also good). I should at least get this.

Radar Brothers - The Singing Hatchet (4:00 PM)

My ride is running a little late and I'm suffering delusions that I can finish the document before he arrives (I don't), so I don't take long selecting my next play; this one is directly before the Radio Dept. in my iPod. I love love love this record and it's successor, as you can tell from my review of the next album they made (they mostly go by Radar Bros., it appears, and only used Radar Brothers for And the Surrounding Mountains, but I prefer the look of it and so that's how all my MP3s are tagged). But this might be my favourite album, maybe partly because a free download of "Open Ocean Sailing" was the first time I heard/heard of them. I kind of stopped keeping track of them after The Fallen Leaf Pages (and the album art for the new album is so ugh I just don't think I can bring myself to bother), but The Singing Hatchet and And the Surrounding Mountains will forever attest to Jim Putnam's genius in my books.

After all that, Wednesday night had my customary pub trivia night, which includes a music round. But I completely forgot to think of that in those terms, and I can't remember the answers (we got at least nearly all of them right, I don't think we had a perfect round this week), or even what the theme was. Apparently when I only hear less than 15 seconds from a song and I'm trying to remember which Led Zeppelin track it is (or whatever), I don't think of it as music.

Tomorrow: Another gym playlist, shirt-related listening, and a concert.

Music Diary #2 (last Tuesday)

2011-04-12T12:59:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, April 5

Sloan - "Losing California"/Mull Historical Society - "Animal Cannabus"/Rival Schools - "Travel By Telephone"/Fugazi - "Full Disclosure"/Plumtree - "The Phone, the Phone"/Spoon - "Quincy Punk Episode"/Ted Leo - "Me and Mia"/Local H - "Nothing Special"/The Stooges - "T.V. Eye"/Prolapse - "Tunguska"/Guided By Voices - "My Kind of Soldier"/Six By Seven - "Slab Square"/The Cooper Temple Clause - "Blind Pilots"/Delays - "Valentine"/The Wrens - "Hats Off to Marriage, Baby" (7:20 AM)

Gym music again; this time I was lifting weights, which both tends to take more time than cardio and also means I'm out of the pool for longer. A pretty good mix - I feel lucky that some of these are on YouTube, really (and with the ones that I realize might have been tough - Prolapse, Six By Seven, Plumtree - it didn't occur to me until I went and looked that they wouldn't be all over YouTube, because those bands are big deals to me). Yes, I am aware of the rather unsavoury conflict of listening to "Me and Mia" while attempting to be healthy, thanks. And who knew that Michael Fassbender starred in a Cooper Temple Clause video?

Oh Land - "Son of a Gun"/Gorilla Zoe - "Twisted"/Jamie Foxx - "Fall for Your Type"/Friendly Fires - "Live Those Days Tonight"/Young the Giant - "My Body"/Battles- "Ice Cream" (11:15 AM)

Tuesday is my normal work from home day, so I often try and get a little productive listening or even writing done in the background. In this case, I got through most of the week's work at the Singles Jukebox; my opinions can be found at the links. Except for Battles. I don't like Battles, but I never have anything to say about them.

Low & Spring Heel Jack - Bombscare EP (2:00 PM)

This has been a bit of a holy grail for me ever since I got into Low, read up on them on Allmusic and the like, and discovered the existence of this out-of-print EP on a tiny label. I figured it wouldn't be Low do drum-and-bass, but I also figured it might sound something like "Code," Alan and Mimi's gorgeous collaboration with Pan*American. I've heard a little of Spring Heel Jack's more abstract/jazzy stuff, and it seems like it'd be a good match for Low's vocals.

I've idly searched for a copy of Bombscare for years, either to buy or just to download, and I've never found anything. And then one day I look it up on discogs and this other Ian over in the UK is selling it for £4. I wound up picking up a few other things from him, and today my package finally arrived. I can't remember the last time I've been this exited to hear anything for the first time, and thankfully the EP (which I listened to twice in a row) lives up to my expectations. I love Low's current work (I still don't think they've ever made a bad album, or even just one that I don't love), but undiscovered stuff from the past? Manna from heaven, as far as I'm concerned.

Eluvium - An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death (3:00 PM)

After rhapsodizing over the Low/Spring Heel Jack EP while editing, I need to listen to something else before I wind up just looping Bombscare ad nauseum. I quick trawl through the shelves turns up Matthew Cooper's brief (26 minutes!), lovely solo piano record, which does the trick. I'm into the meat of an edit, so I'm not paying 100% attention to the music at this point.

Neil Young - "Cinnamon Girl" (10:50 PM)

After the Eluvium, I'm distracted enough by work that I don't listen to any more music at my computer. Tonight my dad, my twin brother, and I went to a beer seminar in Toronto that Dad got for us as a Christmas present. It winds up being part of a bartending course, and at first we're all a little skeptical, but it's run by one of these guys and we all wind up enjoying it thoroughly (and yeah, learning a little too). The radio was probably on in the car on the way to Toronto but we haven't seen Dad in a while so the radio is turned down and we all talk. The same for the way home, although near the end this Neil Young (an artist beloved by my family) track has us cranking the volume briefly. It was a good night, if relatively music light.

Tomorrow: A long day at work, then music trivia.

Music Diary #1 (last Monday)

2011-04-11T22:30:00.002-04:00

So, the esteemable Nick Southall came up with this Music Diary project, and last week I participated. By which I mean I kept track of every bit of music I consciously experienced during one full week, and promised I'd write about it. Due to both the rather hectic pace of my week and the recursive spiral I would enter while writing about each day at the time, I decided to wait and post each day a week after it occurred. Times listed refer to the time I started listening to that album/group of songs/whatever, even if I didn't finish listening for a few hours. You're getting the same sort of write up everyone else who participated did, only a week later. Think of it as an after-dinner mint, if you've been following the project.

Monday, April 4

Matt & Kim - "Yea Yeah"/Los Campesinos - "Ways to Make It Through the Wall"/Johnny Boy - "Johnny Boy Theme"/Oneida - "$50 Tea"/And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - "Days of Being Wild" (9:30 AM)

These days, one of my primary music listening times is at the gym in the morning. And I have an ever-expanding exercise playlist that I listen to on random; this morning, this is the selection I got. (I will skip past a song I don't feel like listening to at the time, but I generally don't pick specific tracks.) Today was a cardio day, so these songs accompanied me on the treadmill; I actually listen to less music on cardio days, because I'm in the pool for longer. This was a pretty good selection, although a bit slower than I normally like it. That Oneida song is a burner, though.

The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck (10:30 AM)

This Monday was an atypical one; I knew that I had a ridiculous weekend lined up, so I booked off Monday morning and worked from home in the afternoon. But before that, I went and got breakfast with my housemate; this is what she was playing in the car, and I wound up hearing the rest of the thing while we did errands after work. I really love the Mountain Goats, and this was just my first listen, but I was mostly (disappointingly) underwhelmed. I've heard the album a few times since and I'm warming to it a little, but so far it's the only Darnielle album I've heard that I didn't fall for immediately, excepting Heretic Pride (which I just never managed to like, for the most part). I love Get Lonely and The Life of the World to Come, but this one just wasn't gelling for me. Listening to it in the arm in pieces, driving around and talk, may not have helped.

The Kills - Blood Pressures/The Kills - Midnight Boom (11:10 AM)

I had a half-written review to finish before work, and I tend to find it impossible to write about something without listening to it or something related to the review at the time. It's a kind of fact-checking - yes, the guitar sounds like this, not that. Yes, they use that beat twice. Oh, I just heard a lyric I want to mention. That sort of thing. Neither of these listens were straight through, but I did hear all of both records.

Low - C'mon (4:10 PM)

By this point I've been working for a few hours, and maybe because I was writing earlier I didn't listen to music when I started. Usually working from home is an excuse to listen to MORE music, because it's a little more private (and I don't have to wear headphones), but before I notice it I've let a good chunk of the afternoon slip away. Low's new record is phenomenal, and I've got to review it before the end of the week, so I make sure to listen to it again. I don't know how typical this is (same with the practice I mention in the entry for today about the Kills), but I only start actually writing very late in the review process; most of the 'work' gets done through repeated listening and lots of thinking. Usually at some point that thinking generates a beginning or an ending, and then I start the actual writing. But if I work on a review for (say) two weeks, the business of turning my reactions into sentences and paragraphs might occupy two or three hours over the course of a day or two, and total time sitting in front of my computer trying to write (writing/researching/procrastinating, rinse and repeat) probably no more than four or five. Like I said, I have no idea if this is an odd way to work, but it's evolved over years.

The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck (7:00 PM)

The aforementioned errands and further listening. Boy, I really do not like the choir on "High Hawk Season." Then again, I didn't like Darnielle's voice the first time I heard it. We'll see.

Low - C'mon (8:10 PM)

Finishing off the last couple of tracks and going back and listening to a few specific ones to figure out more stuff for the review. Nothing too exciting.

The Mountain Goats - "Moon Over Goldsboro"/The Mountain Goats - "Isiah 45:23" (9:05 PM)

After another gap, I recall that driving around listening to All Eternals Deck brought these two to mind; the former, my favourite from the underrated Get Lonely and one of my favourite Mountain Goats songs period, partly because a friend recently casually dismissed the album in the midst of writing about AED, the latter for no appreciable reason. Having them brought to my mind while I'm sitting at my computer finally answering long-overdue emails (I haven't really gone through my person account since, oh, a year ago) means that I find them on YouTube and listen to them again. They fit together surprisingly well.

Mountains - Air Museum (9:15 PM)

The new album from a band that is, quite frankly, just perfect. Their genre and method (ambient music, basically) means that their work isn't for everyone, but I have yet to hear or see them put a foot wrong. This is more research; I'm working on something with/about them that won't be published for a bit, but in any case I'm quite enjoying this so more background research is as good an excuse as any.

TV on the Radio - Nine Kinds of Light (10:05 PM)

As I'm going through my emails, I'm also dipping in and out of message board conversation, much of it about this album. I love, love, love Dear Science (and "Wolf Like Me," and a few other things the band has done), but strangely I don't feel that warm towards TVotR. And this is a disappointment, or maybe it would be if my expectations were higher. I've since been informed by some of the same friends whose naysaying made me intrigued enough to check it out now that it gets better, but I just don't know if I care.

Radiohead - "How to Disappear Completely (Live)" (10:40 PM)

A little while back I wrote a brief piece for PopMatters about this song, and while going through my email (an enterprise rife with guilt for me, because 90% of the stuff I hadn't responded to is lovely, some even borderline fan mail, and that makes it much worse that I haven't gotten my shit together enough to write back) I see that someone had sent me the live version I wrote about having many years ago. Of course I listen to the MP3 right away. Of course it's gorgeous and just what I was looking for. Of course I feel like a jackass.

Zapruder Point - "The O.M." (10:55 PM)

And last but certainly not least, I find that the nicest email of all is from Dan from Zapruder Point, and not only should I have answered his email long, long ago, but I finally realize where I recognize his name from; long ago, via glenn mcdonald (still and always a personal patron saint in the field of writing about music) I downloaded and loved "The O.M." This fact, of course, makes me feel even worse that the writer and singer of that song wrote me a really nice and actually quite flattering email and I let it sit there for months. Thankfully, Dan will wind up accepting my profuse apologies.

Tomorrow: A longer day at the gym, Singles Jukebox work, and I get something in the mail.

I am a city of habits

2011-04-10T06:43:00.002-04:00

Feel good hits of the 10th of April, 2011 (special not related at all to the Music Diary thing edition):

Robert Ashley - The Park
Radiohead - Fog
The Mountain Goats - Moon Over Goldsboro
Mississippi John Hurt - Goodnight Irene
Joe Henry – Your Side of My World
Metric - Gimme Sympathy
Jesu - Sun Day
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Dull Life
Twin Shadow - Castles in the Snow
The Delgados - Coming in From the Cold

(For generational and other reasons, I never have and never will make a music video on YouTube for a movie or show I love. Instead, I always get a song stuck in my head right after watching something that really hit me hard. For the first season of Party Down, consumed in one big gulp tonight/this morning, it was "Coming in From the Cold.")

Recent work

2011-04-06T08:14:00.003-04:00

I am, in fact, participating in Nick Southall's wonderful Music Diary project this week, and I even plan to post my listening notes on this here blog. However, work is EXTREMELY busy this week, so I don't have time to do much more than keep track of what's going in my earholes for now. On the weekend or during next week I'll be posting stuff.

For now, I've at least got some recent fruits of my labours over at PopMatters for you; record reviews of the solid new album by the Kills and the really wonderful, long-awaited (by me) return from Rival Schools (you need to listen to this record). But I'm most proud of my contribution to the month-plus-long spotlight on Joss Whedon, a rather significant introduction to the ridiculously underrated Dollhouse. I've recently rewatched the first season with a friend, and it holds up very well indeed; I can't wait to get to the second season.

How could they leave us so soon?

2011-03-22T17:32:00.003-04:00

After a, err, lengthy hiatus, I've finally made another entry on my Low blog. I'm aiming for one a week (most weeks, at least), and we'll see how it works out, but I am determined to finish the damn thing.

And if that holds no interest for you (heathen!), go read this, which confirms what I've long suspected. It's not that women are less interested in casual sex than men because of some sort of inherent difference, it's because most men are really bad at it... the vital bit (emphasis mine):

In a newly published paper describing a series of studies, University of Michigan psychologist Terri Conley asserts that "when women are presented with proposers who are equivalent in terms of safety and sexual prowess, they will be equally likely as men to engage in casual sex."

Her research suggests women, like men, are motivated by pleasure-seeking when they enter the sexual arena. It’s just that women are less likely to be satisfied by a short-term encounter, and they know it.

2011-03-18T10:45:00.002-04:00

I don't like booking time off for St. Patrick's Day, but luckily I also don't like going crazy for it either, so while I may have slumped into work today with a mild hangover, I can't say I felt much worse than sleep deprivation normally makes me feel. For whatever reason, this particularly magesterial song started humming through my head shortly after waking, and it's been there ever since.

My dad sent my brother and I the link to this interview, which is laudable in a couple of different ways, although none more so than this exchange:

A: What makes an interesting woman?
J: Same qualities. Same thing. No difference.

The mere fact that the subtitle to this article is "The Invisibles and Hauntology" ought to clue you in that it's right up my alley, but even then Amy Poodle does an impressive job. Basically, if you've read The Invisibles (you should read The Invisibles), Poodle skillfully articulates some really important stuff that I don't think anyone else has. Essential reading.

Anybody who's talked to me about personal stuff knows how often I refer to the work of Dan Savage, so it was more than a little gratifying to find this fine article (by a Lutheran pastor, no less!) that points out that Savage is actually quite a skillful ethicist, in a field that needs them. Even the area where Dueholm has the biggest problem with Savage is one that I would say is a question of emphasis (he's a sex advice columnist, of course he is going to treat sex as the most important factor!), and overall it's an excellent explication of Savage's ethical criteria for romantic relationships (1. full disclosure 2. autonomy 3. reciprocity 4. GGG - "Think 'good in bed,' 'giving equal time and equal pleasure,' and 'game for anything' - within reason.") and the reasons why it might be valuable to listen to his show or read his column.

Lastly, and in some way paired in my head (I read one of these two links before the other, then encountered both linked in the same place, which might account for it), there are this account of a mother's death and this entry from my new favourite advice column. Both are beautiful, and both hurt a little. As I continue to get older (every day!), I find that both qualities are what I am looking for in the things I read, or watch, or hear. And on the latter note, if you've got a little money to spare (AFTER you've given some to relief efforts in Japan), I've got another worthy project for you...

And I closed my eyes like Marvin Gaye

2011-03-08T12:38:00.004-05:00

Feel good hits of the 8th of March, 2011:

Low - In the Drugs
Spiritualized - Lay Back in the Sun
My Bloody Valentine - I Believe
Pavement - Zurich Is Stained
Radiohead - Sulk
Ikara Colt - Rudd
Hot Chip - Made in the Dark
Twin Shadow - Slow
Crystal Castles - Celestica
Populous/Short Stories - The Holy See

Conference (and other) notes

2011-03-04T15:03:00.004-05:00

So, one of the many things that's made this post a bit overdue was the 2011 EMP Pop Conference; the tenth year of the conference, the first one in LA, and my first trip to California. The normal logistical difficulties in getting around LA (especially while drinking) notwithstanding, it was an incredible time. On top of being a chance to catch up with some Stylus people, I got more heavily drawn into the actual conference than I'd expected to be; the papers were generally great, and the people I didn't already know were fantastic. Probably my favourite paper of the weekend was by my friend Theon, which he's posted here; even if you don't know him, though, it's a great paper (Jeff Weiss and Tal Rosenberg were the other friends of mine who presented, and their Wu-Tang paper was great as well, although as far as I know not posted online right now).

There's even photographic proof of my presence; I'm directly behind a guy in a light grey hoodie, talking to Theon who's in a red shirt and brown jacket. One doesn't want to drop names, both because it's gauche and because it's not like anyone not already a music criticism wonk is going to care, but I got to meet and hang out with a couple of heroes of mine, and it was lovely. Ridiculously good food, too, especially here and here (the latter might be the single best place I've ever eaten in my life, and I will be forever greatful to my friend John Cunningham for taking me there).

And that of course leads nicely into this post, which I found fascinating. The gist? "When music writers grow up, they become food writers." God knows I'm almost more interested in dropping a significant amount of money into a really sublime meal than a collector's edition CD these days (a big part of the shift, which Tewksbury doesn't really cover, is that collecting physical things wears on most of us as our collection swells; the memory of a great meal doesn't take up any space, though, except maybe a bit of waistline).

I can't be the only one who finds these movie barcodes fascinating, can I? I mean, it's no Sheen and Swanson, but what is?

Futility Closet is, if not quite my new favourite blog, my favourite new blog; and I was introduced to it via this post, which is pretty much amazing. Especially when you go here for more context. Tell me you don't find telegraphs and the word "hooray" a little creepy now...

I'm sure you've all read it already, so this link is more for discussion: Wasn't that marathon New Yorker article about Paul Haggis and Scientology awesome? It's almost enough for me to forgive him for Crash.

Lastly, a while back I called Emily Carroll's His Face All Red "one of the absolute best web comics I've seen recently." So you can imagine that I was enthused to stumble on her blog, especially when she posts stuff like this.

Show your work

2011-02-22T16:11:00.002-05:00

Last week saw my review of the very fine indeed new Fujiya & Miyagi record go up at PopMatters.

Also, I finally got off my ass and wrote up something for my beloved International Mixtape Project. The results are here.

"You can't look on that as a lost sale."

2011-02-22T11:00:00.004-05:00

Neil Gaiman is a pretty wonderful writer, but this short video might be my favourite thing he's done. The model he talks about applies slightly more directly to books than to music, but I think it holds. Look at a band like Across Tundras and ask them whether they think offering up their albums has reduced sales.

Yes, there are kids who will download every album that comes out in a year, and yes there is a small minority who will never buy anything ever again (because they're assholes), but in general humans want to support the things they love. I am firmly, 100% in favour of artists getting paid for what they do (and as Warren Ellis says, you don't go and steal a house a builder bought), but I have never understood how passing things around before you buy them threatens that.

I went insane

2011-02-18T21:38:00.003-05:00

I haven't had anything harder than spicy chicken vindaloo tonight, but this video makes me feel like I've tripped a couple of balls. Like I said in the last post, this is a very strong contender for my favourite albums of 2011, even in February.

The people in the know are just people in the know

2011-02-18T17:07:00.002-05:00

This week I had CSSLP training all week, which I meant I was at a computer listening to music much, much less than normal. Today's feel good hits, then, is every single song that popped unbidden into my head during this week's training.

Clinic - Mr. Moonlight¹
Barenaked Ladies - Brian Wilson²
Noxagt - Mek It Burn³
Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Engineers - What Pushed Us Together⁴
Triángulo de Amor Bizarro - De la Monarquía a la Criptocracia⁵
Guided By Voices - Little Whirl
The Magnetic Fields - From a Sinking Boat
Oasis - Little By Little⁶
Bloc Party - Waiting for the 7.18
The Gritty MIDI Gang - Valentine's Day⁷
Jens Lekman - Rocky Dennis' Farewell Song⁸
Death Cab for Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart⁹
The Beach Boys - Wouldn't It Be Nice
Tommy James and the Shondells - Crimson & Clover¹⁰
Mogwai - How to be a Werewolf¹¹
Sleater-Kinney - Hollywood Ending
The Shins - Mine's Not a High Horse¹²

¹ Prompted by, of all things, Grant Morrison's old Doom Patrol run.
² Yes, this, but also I grew up listening to these guys and still like a surprising number of their songs.
³ Oh thank god this was on YouTube.
⁴ This is just such a perfect fucking album.
⁵ I would like to issue a public, full, and embarrassed apology to my friend Andrew Casillas for not listening to this album earlier. Not only would it have made my 2010 list easily (in the right mood, it might have been #1!), but this song in particular is my favourite new song is a really long time. Video is briefly NSFW.
⁶ There's a lot that's risible about this song, and Oasis in general, but I still have a soft spot for a surprising amount of their work. Blame my age when "Wonderwall" was released, I guess.
⁷ I am AMAZED that this is on YouTube. Amazing song, little-known band, already broken up. So if anyone wants the MP3, email me, I guess. I was really looking forward to an album, but this is the only song I ever heard. Also, this popped into my head completely separate from any thoughts about Monday.
⁸ Jens Lekman gets tagged as folk a lot, but listen to the production on this song; I think he's a secret influence on a whole ton of this chillwave/hypnogogic pop/whatever stuff that's been around recently (anything from Twin Shadow to Memoryhouse, really)
⁹ I don't think much of Death Cab in general, but that bassline is what I hear when I'm not thinking of anything. I think the decision to go creepy might have been a good one for them.
¹⁰ Legitimately one of the greatest songs ever, the full five-minute "drowning in acid" version.
¹¹ I haven't listened to the new Radiohead yet, and Low have a new one in April, but this is a really strong album of the year candidate for me.
¹² I don't listen to Chutes Too Narrow that often, but when I do I pretty much just sit back and marvel at the craftsmanship of the songs. That's not something I do very often.

Most days you're lazy

2011-02-15T22:38:00.002-05:00

Feel good hits of the 15th of February, 2011:

U2 - Some Days Are Better Than Others
Phoenix - Consolation Prizes
Spacemen 3 - Amen
Engineers - Clean Coloured Wire
Blue Rodeo - What Am I Doing Here
Radiohead - A Wolf at the Door
Iron & Wine - Radio War
The Mountain Goats - Southwood Plantation Road
Thom Yorke - Black Swan
Mogwai - Burn Girl Prom Queen

Your speech is so free of life

2011-02-03T15:25:00.002-05:00

PopMatters has my review of the new Engineers album up today. For the first time I wasn't that impressed, although hopefully the review lays out what I think the mitigating factors are. If anything, you should all check out their previous record, Three Fact Fader, which I gave 8/10 at the time and now suspect I underrated. Easily one of the best shoegaze (or whatever) records of the last decade or so.

The fourth Yardbird

2011-02-02T21:23:00.002-05:00

Oh, so the White Stripes broke up. The only person I've seen with the same reaction as me to the news is the ever-wonderful Tal Rosenberg. I like "Seven Nation Army" and a few others just fine, thanks, but my prime concern is that this gives Jack White more free time to continue distracting Alison Mossheart from the Kills (whose Midnight Boom is better than any album White's ever put out).

The treasure deep inside us

2011-01-31T23:04:00.002-05:00

I'm more than a little late, I know, but this essay on Joan of Arc is easily the best thing I've read that was written in response (in some sense, at least) to the shooting in Tucson (although if you want something more direct...).

I am unabashedly a cat person (not that I mind dogs or dog people, that would be stupid), so I definitely wish that this, as excellent as it is, had a more general form.

I think I probably blogged it when someone posted a Justin Bieber song slowed down 800% or whatever it was, but clearly that had nothing on the same trick done to the Jurassic Park theme.

And you used to love me that way

2011-01-16T12:30:00.002-05:00

Feel good hits of, uh, jeeze, it's been a while...

01. The Magnetic Fields - Grand Canyon
02. The Thermals - An Ear for Baby
03. Perfume Genius - Lookout, Lookout
04. Belle & Sebastian - The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner
05. Liars - Broken Witch
06. R.E.M. - Walk Unafraid
07. The Tragically Hip - So Hard Done By
08. Guided By Voices - The Best of Jill Hives
09. David Bowie - Modern Love
10. Two Lone Swordsmen - Get Out of My Kingdom

Notes:
02: I want to karaoke this song so bad.
05: There's a little tiny bit of nudity in this one, so NSFW I guess.
06: Coupled, in this video, with maybe my favourite R.E.M. song.
10: You have no idea how glad I am that this is on YouTube. From the best vinyl-only album of the last decade or so.

None of us have anything

2011-01-14T11:05:00.003-05:00

I don't necessarily talk about them much (then again, these days do I talk about anything much?), but Broadcast are one of those bands, you know, the ones that are secretly your favourites and you listen to all the time but never tell people about. They made a few really excellent albums, and inspired in my opinion one of the best pieces I ever wrote at Stylus. Today I hear that the wonderful Trish Keenan, the band's frontwoman, has died of pneumonia-related complications after contracting H1N1. As Ellis says, I'm shocked and more than a little horrified to hear the news. My condolences go to her family and friends, and also to everyone else out there who's realizing that they'll never hear her voice on a new song again.

Years ago I was going to go to Toronto and see Broadcast open for Ladytron; for some reason I either couldn't or didn't go. Even at the time I knew I'd regret it.

"I cannot answer you, because it’s totally unknown to me what you just asked me, and also very boring."

2011-01-04T17:25:00.002-05:00

Two great things on the internet today: an amazing Wall Street Journal article about some new developments at PepsiCo, which features the words "snackify" and "drinkify" liberally. It includes what was absolutely the best quotation in any newspaper story from 2010:

Mehmood Khan, a former Mayo Clinic endocrinologist who heads PepsiCo's nutrition group, said in an interview that it's outdated to think that snacks are dry and beverages are wet.

I'm going to say it again: it's outdated to think that snacks are dry and beverages are wet. Make sure you're not behind the times!

And yet, despite the utter glory of that quotation, the AV Club's interview with famous professional weird guy Udo Kier might actually be better. Just read the whole thing, and rejoice in the fact that you live in a world where, one day, Udo Kier might snackify his drinks and drinkify his snacks.

"That brings up a lot of horrible memories."

2010-12-28T21:00:00.002-05:00

If you can watch the first episode of The Maria Bamford Show without wanting to watch more, and if you then don't find yourself wanting to watch all twenty of them, I'm not sure we can be friends. I've rewatched half the series just while making this post. It's caused Bamford to go from a comedian I like to someone who's work I'm planning to follow. I would buy this twice on DVD.

(NB. Some of Bamford's work here strikes me as the closest thing you're going to find to the genius of Allie Brosh, albeit using acting and tone of voice rather than crudely drawn body language.)

Those poor kids

2010-12-21T21:05:00.002-05:00

So I finally caught five minutes of Glee, a show I had avoided because I find the whole concept and everything else I've seen or heard about it unappealing. I still think the idea is, well, not necessarily awful, but something I'm never going to be interested in. But what I never imagined is that the singing in the wholly unecessary musical sequences (which are, of course, the show's appeal) would be so totally fucking awful. Maybe I caught an especially bad example of the show's weird midpoint between vocal processing and Broadway musical-style singing, but I doubt you could come up with a style that I'd hate more. Every syllable felt like someone was taking a cheese grater made of pure sugar to my eardrums.

And that it's coming at a bad time

2010-12-21T00:01:00.004-05:00

I've previously mentioned the wonderful It Gets Better project, and now the New Pornographers have recorded a version of one of my favourite songs of theirs for it. "Adventures in Solitude" means a lot to me, although my relationship to it isn't quite the same as Zach Rosen's. For one thing, being 26 when the song came out means that, while it resonates for me, any really dramatic personal strife is, if not vanished, at least firmly comprehended and under relative control; for another, until stumbling onto this version, it never occurred to me that the song might be referring to suicide. In any case, it's a fantastic version, one that makes clear again just how awesome the band is (especially Kathryn Calder, who, no disrespect to Case and Newman, owns this song). Challengers is still my favourite record by the New Pornographers, by a fair margin, and this song is a significant part of why.

Checking in

2010-12-17T16:24:00.003-05:00

Man, it has been ridiculously busy here recently. I haven't listened to nearly enough music from 2010 to put together a good, thorough list, but I did whip something up for PopMatters anyway, because a lot of what I did hear this year was great. I did two short blurbs for their year-end extravaganza; you can see my #1 single at #52 here and my #1 album at #45 here. Also, while procrastinating at the end of November (although I did write 50,000 words before the deadline, I'm not sure how), I wrote up a few reviews, both of which are now up; a short review of the really excellent new DeepChord Presents Echospace record, and a longer one of the always great Sam Amidon. I'm working on a few other things, but I don't know if I'll get anything up in time for the end of the year. Here's hoping everyone is having or will have good holidays...

Oh, and also, while I don't like casting aspersions on anyone else's list, and of course consensus works the way it works, but any group that relegates Sam Amidon, Perfume Genius, and Swans to its Honorable Mentions page is one I can't really see eye to eye with.

Sometimes I hate nerds

2010-12-09T12:57:00.001-05:00

I just heard someone comment approvingly, "Pizza Pockets. Old school."

Presents in the den

2010-11-30T10:42:00.002-05:00

Possibly I am experiencing a bit of lack-of-sleep psychosis as I round the bend on the last day of my NaNoWriMo marathon, but right now I find this (brought to my attention by Jonathan) insanely hilarious:

Procrastinate now!

2010-11-28T11:11:00.002-05:00

I'm hard at work on something (and have been trying to be hard at work at it all month, hence the lack of content here), but I've amassed enough links I want to share that it's probably just going to be easier to write a post than to keep track of them. Plus, you know, see the title of this post.

- I don't know if everyone saw the extremely wince-inducing video of Henry Rollins unloading on some 'hipsters' in New York, but Vulture's extremely on-point analysis of the whole thing ably shows why I couldn't make it all the way through. Leaving aside for a second how badly Rollins clearly misreads the whole situation, I thought people mellowed as they aged and started caring less about what other people think (I know I have, and I'm not nearly Rollins' age yet).

- I have loved Dinosaur Comics and Ryan North's other work for years, but recently he posted a strip (and accompanying newspost) that is actually relevant to my job! I had never heard of the Eggcorn Database or eggcorns in general, and obviously my colleagues loved it too. We don't encounter eggcorns at work too often, but it's nice to have a resource for when we do. And the strip is friggin' hilarious, of course.

- I've almost posted about Dan Savage's awesome It Gets Better project multiple times; I didn't because, well, it's already getting far more exposure than this piddly little blog could give, and also it's so obviously on the side of what's good and true and right that I can't imagine any thinking, feeling human being reacting to it with anything other than joy and humility. I still can't (and links to counterexamples are not necessary, thanks), but it's interesting to note that the most watched video so far is the incredible Pixar one. Guess what, families of (North) America? An awful lot of the people who make your most univerally-beloved movies are LGBT or otherwise 'different'! I hope that's hard for some of the people out there to wrap their heads around, and I hope that makes some of them begin to change. Sarah Silverman, meanwhile, may be (extremely) blunt about it, but she does an excellent job at pointing out that you can't be against gay (or gay-perceived) teenagers being bullied to death and for something like Don't Ask Don't Tell or civil unions instead of marriage without being a massive fucking hypocrite. Also, Joe Biden is awesome. I'm going to stop posting links now because there's too many good ones. I will say this: I'm a straight, white male (the least oppressed combination of orientation/race/gender possible in North America), I had a perfectly fine, enjoyable time in high school (except for one bully in grade 9 who was a little upsetting, but was also about 3/4 my size and never really impacted my life), and even I can say that if you're at all interestng or worthwhile as a person, it can and does get better after high school.

- On a much, much lighter note, the Globe and Mail did a hilarious interview with Forrest Griffin (easily one of my favourite UFC fighters) about his car. This is a guy who included the fact that he is the Dayman in his author bio.

- This guy David Milano read a bunch of kids some H.P. Lovecraft stories and then got them to draw the creatures in the stories. Sometimes I just love the world.

- Spiked, quite frankly, goes off the edge sometimes, but this article about free speech and academia is flat-out excellent. As someone who worked for a student newspaper in a year where we hired left-wing fascists and censors for the most important positions, I can assure you that the attitude these days is often one where one cannot write about, for example, Mein Kampf (as one of my columnists wanted to), even if one is clearly condemning the work and its heritage, because it is possible someone might read the column, read the book, and decide they liked what it says. That is asinine as well as dangerous; you have to drag bad ideas into the light and talk about them, or they don't go away (I guess I haven't stopped talking about the It Gets Better project, eh?). The best part of the article:

‘I always like to put the Buddhist argument for freedom of speech’, says Lukianoff. ‘Buddhists believe life is pain and they have a point. You do someone a tremendous disservice if you teach them that pain in life is a distortion of life. Because as soon as you start seeing hurtful things as being aberrations rather than part of normal human existence, then you start to see robust debate and disagreement as a distortion of the human experience rather than a part of the human experience. When you have students graduating from college believing that it is really, really bad if they have their feelings hurt, you are crippling them, you are preventing them from being able to deal with everyday life and debate.’

In short, you’re creating shrinking violets rather than thinking individuals, a generation of young adults going out into the world with their offensiveness antennae permanently switched on – more likely to say ‘You can’t say that’ than ‘Why do you say that? Let’s have a debate…’. Lukianoff says we have to move away from the idea that ‘words are like bullets’, that speech is a form of physical assault, and recognise that being argued with, even vociferously, is not the same as being beaten up. However, he says, ‘maybe words should wound. What’s so bad about that? The fact that words can hurt feelings, the fact that they carry emotional charges, is all the more reason for protecting them from censorship. Because the whole point of free speech is to have deep, meaningful, robust debates. We have to have deadly serious discussions about deadly serious things – and we can’t do that if everyone is listening out for potentially offensive words rather than thinking about and responding to the ideas being expressed.’

- As someone who unabashedly enjoys both the original and Susan Boyle's version of "Wild Horses" (seriously), I found Nitsuh Abebe's fine review of Boyle's Christmas album more than a little fascinating. I'm always up for someone writing intelligently on the appeal of sad/downcast music:

Which means that Boyle is not only offering something to those who find modern popular music a bit much, but also to those who find modern Christmas a bit much, and maybe even those who find modern life a bit much... I suspect that the people who assemble Boyle’s records get that, too, and that’s exactly why we’re listening to her sing a song like "Perfect Day" — a song that sounds peaceful, but makes very clear that it’s coming from a place that’s not peaceful at all.

- Last, but certainly not least, and most science-fictional, New Printable Armor is Hardest Organic Substance Ever Designed. It gets weirder - the armor material is "based on the plaque found in Alzheimer’s patients’ brains." And by printable we mean that 3D printers can make it. 3D printers, of course, are machines that can build their own upgrades. As I believe I said above: sometimes I just love the world.

Coming down like love

2010-11-17T13:20:00.002-05:00

The rain today is very cold indeed, but for the last couple of years whenever I'm out in the rain I invariably have this song pop into my head.* Kind of the same way that our screensavers at work always make me think of "Love What You Do" (which is slightly ironic).

*In looking for "Spring Rain," I stumbled onto this video, for an equally great Go-Betweens song, but also just an excellent video; a pretty damning satire of late 80s video cliches.

Good news/bad news

2010-11-11T14:59:00.002-05:00

- I've always wanted to see Battle Royale, and I might wind up seeing it the way God intended: in theatres, and in 3D (I know, it's a conversion, but still...)

- AMC cancelled my beloved Rubicon. GodDAMNit. Definitely picking the series up on DVD when it comes out (and if some other network wanted to pick up the thread, I'd be very happy indeed). Rubicon started off slow, and the ending practically begs for some more expansion, but it was one of my favourite shows of the year. How do you cancel Kale Ingram, I ask you?

Bullet points

2010-11-05T16:04:00.004-04:00

- I'm not actually a big fan of Hallowe'en (or at least of the parts that require me to dress up), but in the spirit of the season, here's one of the absolute best web comics I've seen recently: His Face All Red. Last night I said to a friend that my favourite thing about comics in general is the way the medium uses pacing, and this is a stellar example.

- With the caveat that David Nutt clearly has an axe or two to grind, it was with some amusement that I noted that, in his study, mushrooms are easily the best drug - for you and society both! (Although I'd love to know why marijuana is worse for other than amphetamines, for pete's sake.)

- Want to read absolutely the worst thing I've read about music recently? Go here (and feel free to check out the rest of the blog for more equally fatuous writing from the poster boy for people who genuinely don't get that real, smart, passionate people could possibly ever disagree with their opinions), read lines like "Mumford & Sons’ music sounds authentic. There are no synths, no manufactured beats. It sounds like life. And last time I checked, we’re all human." and feel sorry for Mumford & Sons, because it's genuinely not their fault. I might not like the band all that much, but no-one deserves that kind of shit slung their way by ostensible supporters.

- In much happier news, here's a show review of Perfume Genius I wrote for PopMatters. You should go see him/them if you can.

- I love Community, but I also love Joel McHale (and wish I had the kind of free time needed to keep up with The Soup). This is an excellent example why.

- If I was rich, I would probably buy this. Best to-do list ever?

- I agree with my buddy Erik, this is the best "Keep Calm and..." remix I've seen yet.

- NASA has put together an excellent page on climate change. Nice to see the information presented clearly and concisely, for once.

I know you, hope I do now

2010-11-05T09:43:00.002-04:00

Everyone I know completely ignored their last album (9 years ago now!), but some small part of me has been holding out for another Rival Schools record ever since. Fittingly enough for an album called Pedals, "Shot After Shot" actually has a slight shoegaze tinge to it, which I didn't expect. But more importantly, it's great; even if all the band's resurgence does it get more people to check out United By Fate, it's worth it. Although based on "Shot After Shot," I'm pretty excited about this one too.

A brand you can trust

2010-10-28T10:07:00.002-04:00

As just announced on their site, Mogwai have a new album coming out next February. The album, which features songs like "Death Rays," "How to Be a Werewolf," and "You're Lionel Ritchie," is titled Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will.

I love this band so much.

At least the rain has stopped.

2010-10-26T17:18:00.003-04:00

Aaron Gouveia and his wife were having an incredibly bad day. Some underinformed anti-abortion demonstrators (if that's not a tautology) made it worse. Gouveia's reaction doesn't lessen the horribleness of his situation, but it is both courageous and extremely useful, I think.

In less serious news: If you can honestly say you don't want to try any of these, I guess you're a better person than I am. But also maybe a little boring; who among us would avoid the Tender Beef Pentagon?

Over at PopMatters, we're currently doing a big tenth anniversary Kid A think. There's lots of good stuff, but what you really want (meaning "the only thing I did") is here, and it's a particularly scintillating writeup of "How to Disappear Completely" if I do say so myself.

I feel a little bad for anyone who didn't make it to gonzo Japanese horror classic Hausu when it played at the Bookshelf. But at least you can see some examples of what you missed in this slideshow.

2010-10-20T14:31:00.002-04:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks at work, and September/early October was insane for me in terms of travelling, concerts, and so on. There's catching up to do:

- My review of the fantastic Sam Amidon show I saw in Toronto is up now; if Sam comes anywhere near where you are, you ought to go see him.

- I've heard the argument that what Christine O'Donnell is doing here isn't so much ignorance as a covert argument (that the establishment clause doesn't say what it says), which even if true is idiotic and poorly expressed to boot. Can we please stop talking about this woman now? Canadian politics are depressing enough without having to worry that our southern neighbours are at least theoretically able to elect her to high office. (And why did this all have to happen after I fell in love with The West Wing, so that I both care and understand more than I did before?)

- A study isn't the kind of ironclad proof the press sometimes treats it as, but I find it interesting that this one suggests that, as far as actual happiness goes, getting paid anything more than $75,000 a year doesn't help. Which sounds about right to me. (Also, first world problems!)

- Jonathan Bradley has been absolutely killing it at the mighty Screw Rock and Roll for a minute now, and here are just three examples: One of the most cogent descriptions of good criticism I've read in a while ("Music criticism needs good listeners, not objective standards. We need to listen well and report our responses accurately and honestly, not to try to implement standards that circumvent our instincts in pursuit of an unachievable and undesirable objectivity.), an excellent comparison between conservatism and liberalism ("Conservatism is an ideology interested in preserving prevailing social structures — that is, prevailing power structures... And sure, I understand why folks might find such an ideology appealing: After all, it’s got us this far, and we’re doing OK. (It’s an even better argument if you are doing OK.) But I’m a liberal; I care about the individual."), and a sharp takedown of one of the more pernicious arguments against pop culture ("Culture, 'mass culture' included, is something people do. This quote understands culture only as something that is done to people. It distinguishes correct art from incorrect art, and then dehumanizes people who do not have the correct art done to them. It must, otherwise Marcus would recognize that people can respond to mass culture as strongly, as emotionally, and as authentically as she does to whichever niche interest she prefers.").

- To end, two interesting quotations that stand out rather sharply from their (perfectly fine) environs: Warren Ellis on RFID, AR, wearable computing, and so on: "We are growing more comfortable with doing business with invisible things. There’s something almost primeval about it. A sense that we’re relearning to interact with the presence of the powerful and numinous. Working with the ancestors." And Todd VanDerWerff, on one of the good bits of the deeply flawed new show Mike & Molly: "What's interesting about Mike & Molly isn't that it's a show about two fat people; it's that it's a show about two people who find love when they were pretty sure they'd never be worthy of it. It's about the weird intersection between kind of hating yourself and then realizing someone else thinks you're pretty great the way you are."

Admit to yourself that everything's the problem

2010-10-13T23:06:00.003-04:00

Feel good hits of the 13th of October, 2010:

Sloan - Losing California
Frank Black - Out of State
Queens of the Stone Age - In the Fade
The Cure - Fascination Street
Guided By Voices - Back to the Lake
Jimi Hendrix - Crosstown Traffic
Pet Shop Boys - You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk
Radiohead - Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box
Prolapse - A Day At Death Seaside
Spoon - Finer Feelings

So it turns out I love The West Wing

2010-10-04T22:09:00.003-04:00

And while I'm Canadian (and thus saddled with a venal and borderline incompentent (at anything but skullduggery) Prime Minister, and naturally resistent to the siren song of US politics), this interview with Barack Obama is incredibly impressive. His presidency hasn't been error-free or perfect, but considering the circumstance I think he's still doing an awfully admirable job. My two favourite parts:

"I could have had a knock-down, drag-out fight on the public option that might have energized you and The Huffington Post, and we would not have health care legislation now. I could have taken certain positions on aspects of the financial regulatory bill, where we got 90 percent of what we set out to get, and I could have held out for that last 10 percent, and we wouldn't have a bill. You've got to make a set of decisions in terms of 'What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to just keep everybody ginned up for the next election, or at some point do you try to win elections because you're actually trying to govern?' I made a decision early on in my presidency that if I had an opportunity to do things that would make a difference for years to come, I'm going to go ahead and take it."

"One of the things that you realize when you're in my seat is that, typically, the issues that come to my desk — there are no simple answers to them. Usually what I'm doing is operating on the basis of a bunch of probabilities: I'm looking at the best options available based on the fact that there are no easy choices. If there were easy choices, somebody else would have solved it, and it wouldn't have come to my desk."

This is a great, detailed, fairly in-depth interview, and while it won't make certain factions in America shut up (nor is it trying to shut them up), it's a pretty stirring one to boot.

Might be tricky to pull off

2010-09-21T21:39:00.002-04:00

Some sort of sweatily paranoid assassin thriller with a cast almost entirely made up of comedic actors, that appears (at least according to the trailer) to be serious + jokes, rather than a spoof? If Operation: Endgame pulls it off, I'll buy a copy. But if I ever manage to see it, I'm half expecting a trainwreck.

Titling these things is hard

2010-09-21T14:04:00.002-04:00

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggh it's been so looooooooooooonnnngg

Review round up: I covered Loscil and Mogwai for PopMatters, and the really excellent new Underworld for Resident Advisor.

Back in August (arrrrggh) the New York Times had a really excellent article on language and the brain, which points out that even though the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been pretty well discredited, there is plenty of interesting ramifications to our languages. The part about people who think of directions without personal orientation (so no "behind" or "in front," et al) is fascinating.

I'd never heard of Kathryn Schulz or her book, but her blog of interviews with people on the subject of being wrong is great stuff. My two favourites so far are the Innocence Project's Peter Neufeld (because being able to admit you are wrong is so, so crucial to our legal system) and Anthony Bourdain (who I am seeing in Toronto tomorrow night!), because he's awesome.

People who know me know that I loathe artists who not only can't take crticism, but who respond by trying to "prove" (or just outright assume) that criticism as a whole is worthless/pointless/what have you. But that doesn't mean I dislike artists having problems with critics, or even lambasting critics, I just want it done intelligently (i.e. without throwing the baby out with the bathwater). Sons of Anarchy's Kurt Sutter shows us how it's done:

"I came away from that meeting with the realization that a critic's review is ultimately about that individual's taste. No matter how good or bad something is conceived and produced, the decision about its worth is always decided in the moment, by the watcher. That is not bullshit. Beauty and every other opinion, is truly in the eye of the beholder.

In the past, I've read some scathing reviews about Sons that were thoughtful, well-constructed and very accurate... in the mind of that watcher. Although they can be difficult to read, I appreciate and respect folks who put the time and energy into their negative analysis. That's what a good critic does. Critical analysis. That is their art-form, that is their craft."

When things are working correctly, this description is right on the money. Sutter goes on to chastise, profanely and at great length, critics that he doesn't feel are doing the job properly, but I have no beef with that. I just figure if I can be venomous towards an artist or their work without trying to say art is pointless, they can do critics the same honour.

Chris Cooper could be a shitty actor and I'd still come away from this wonderful interview with a lot of affection for him; he just seems like such a swell guy. That he's one of the best actors of his generation just makes the whole thing that much sweeter - especially if you read the first few comment threads and witness the lack of spite and malice (a true internet rarity).

Lastly, I've been rereading a lot of my old Warren Ellis comics recently (Transmetropolitan, Planetary, et al), and really just appreciating how good his work has been. But I think sometimes his internet presence/fans make him out to be just the harder, more extreme/cynical parts of his persona (sort of an extra-crotchety Spider Jerusalem, really). But he's a human being, and just because he can write beautifully about a pain most of us will experience doesn't mean he's immune to it himself. Like a lot of other random people on the internet, I'm sorry for his family's loss.

Stuck in some bardo

2010-08-26T13:41:00.004-04:00

IMPORTANT INFORMATION INSIDE

Seriously, though. I know I don't use this blog much (if ever?) to point out upcoming events, but if you're in/near Toronto for the fourth of September you could do a lot worse than head over to the Drake Underground to see Sam Amidon, who regular readers may recall made my favourite album of the last decade (his new one is excellent too, if on my short but distressingly old list of things I need to find time to review). He's quite good live, and I believe this is his first solo Canadian show.

Speaking of music (don't expect me to keep making transitions, though), I've been listening to the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs a little obsessively lately. I still think the run on the second disc from "Very Funny" to "World Love" is the best sustained section of the album ("All My Little Words" is my sentimental pick for favourite song, which might be perverse; "Busby Berkeley Dreams" into "I'm Sorry I Love You" my favourite transition), but listening to the whole shebang two or three times a day really clarifies how many hidden gems the whole thing has. The exercise has sent me back to glenn mcdonald's wonderful summation on The War Against Silence, which includes this immortal litany:

"My attempts to summarize what I think it is this album achieves read like acrostic clues, like I can't possibly mean them as single thoughts: Three minutes each of any style that can be played sober; the Yellow Pages for a quarantined city of derelict clowns; a West Side Story for the doomed courtship between anoraks and apartment radiators; every introvert's heroes sitting quietly in one junkstruck room; a shut-in's extrapolation of the Anthology of American Folk Music from catalog blurbs; proof that all cynicism is heartbreak under its make-up; an unlabeled cassette library of PixelVision sunsets; the picket line demanding that the Island of Lost Toys also admit metaphors; Leonard Cohen's eulogy for Dr. Seuss."

Someone took a Justin Bieber song (not even a big hit, as far as I know), and slowed it down eight times over. The result is about half an hour, and in the words of a commenter "It's what vuvuzelas sound like in the stadiums of heaven." Pretty great, even if it makes me wonder what more music sounds like given the Inception treatment.

If you only follow one link in this post and read everything there, please make it this one. Barring one misplaced possible dig at Darwin near the end, Akst really nails something here. I'm not a loner, I certainly have plenty of friends, but an awful lot of my really close friends of the type he describes don't live in town any more, and as you get older it's harder to replace that kind of friendship. There are people I miss terribly, and you can't really asuage that with a phone call or an online chat, and it's difficult to make more of that kind of friend (and sometimes hard to feel like you want to).

I don't really write fiction (yet?), but Tim O'Brien's wonderful essay on telling tales is solid advice nonetheless, and very enjoyable (and not just for the nods to my beloved Borges). I highly recommend it to anyone who is writing fiction.

A little while back (not enough time to blog in a timely fashion, sorry), Matthew Perpetua of Fluxblog posted an interview with Rob Sheffield over the course of a week. It's a very good interview, even when I don't agree with them, but this (from the fifth part) was probably my favourite bit (and another reason to like Lady Gaga):

"Something fascinating about Lady Gaga is how little she cares about straight men. She concedes absolutely nothing to the straight-boy gaze, and that’s part of what makes her so badass. When you see Madonna live, you have this sense that being watched by straight men is somewhere in the Top 20 of things she cares about, if only because she wants that to impress the gay men watching (who might be #1 on that list), but Gaga doesn’t care whether the straight boys in the house come, stay, lay or pray. I’ve never seen an arena show where straight men were more beside the point. And I’ve seen a Debbie Gibson arena show."

One of the many things to love about the AV Club is the quality of their interviews, and for anyone who grew up watching The Kids in the Hall like we did, this one with the great Kevin McDonald (always my favourite of the Kids, and based on this interview a really sweet guy to boot), studded with clips of the sketches under discussion, hits a very sweet spot.

I'm a fan of getting food from places around where you live; it just seems sensible. But so does this, a welcome dose of common sense for times when you're falling too far into the trap of thinking there's a simple solution to the problems local food sourcing is supposed to solve.

If all I did here was repost things from Slacktivist that I love and support, this blog would probably be more active than it actually is; as it is, I can't resist mentioning this post, which is truly lovely and important. I may not be a Christian, but Fred is one of the best writers on current social and political issues of any faith or party.

Lastly, because I enjoy making people cry, watch this video. Just incredibly moving.

It's been a long one

2010-08-16T23:53:00.003-04:00

After a day that began in vomiting and ended with me trying to salvage a working day out of the evening (mostly successfully!), I'm in a perfect mood to appreciate the funny translator, which plays a game of secret whispers with up to 56 languages. You put in something like "I wish to change my order" - which makes perfect sense to native English speakers but is actually quite ambiguous - and you get back "The situation might change." Even just putting in "I am happy" gets you "I am so glad I found you, not me."

Misreading

2010-08-12T14:57:00.001-04:00

I was already a fan of Michael Emerson, but I really like what he has to say here:

"What did you think of the negative reactions to the finale?
It surprised me a bit because a lot of people who were unhappy had been misunderstanding the show for a long time, so why were they still watching it if they’d mixed up what they were seeing? But I guess that’s the deal: It works magically for all sorts of people at all different levels of understanding."

(Within you)

2010-08-09T11:47:00.002-04:00

By happy coincidence, I've been listening to a lot of Clinic recently, and then Matthew Perpetua posts this compilation. Clinic are one of my favourite bands and Matthew is dead-on in terms of how underrated they are (and why); if you haven't heard them, I urge you to download the compilation and start getting caught up on one of the great unheralded bands of the last decade.

Weirdly enough, the last thing to put some Clinic songs in my head was last night's second viewing of Inception (which holds together beautifully; some elements that seemed baffling or undercooked made perfect sense the second time around); I wouldn't say Clinic are dreamlike, but they can be a little nightmarish (and to be fair, it's probably Marion Cotillard's magnificently creepy performance that made me think of the songs).

Maybe I should get a Tumblr instead

2010-08-06T10:20:00.004-04:00

- Not only does k-punk make me wish that there was a North American release of Artemis 81, he provides an excellent succinct explanation of the force of a lot of things he and I both like (Sapphire and Steel chief among them):

As all the kids who watched Artemis 81 and who have never forgotten it will attest, there's an enjoyment to be had from being thrown into the middle of things which you cannot understand and being forced to make a kind of sense out of them.
...
I agree absolutely with Phillip Challinor when he writes that "Artemis 81 stands as a brilliant example of the way in which interesting pretentiousness can be a good deal more satisfactory than solid professionalism and good old-fashioned storytelling."

- Obligatory (and semi-related) Grant Morrison link. Best part? "We've already got the real world. Why would you want fiction to be like the real world? Fiction can do anything, so why do people always want to say, 'Let's ground this' or 'Let's make this realistic.' You can't make it realistic because it's not. So basically Batman is 75 years old, and Robin is 74 years old. They don't grow old because they're different from us. They're paper people."

- Todd VanDerWerff's excellent takedown of the really odious-sounding Plain Jane is well worth reading, and is both deeply laudable and awfully funny. If not for the damage to Todd's psyche, I'd hope that they cover it every week until they run it off the air.

- I haven't seen much of Gaspar Noe's work, and what I have seen I haven't always found easy to stomach, but this sounds incredible. The moral of the story: mushrooms for everybody!

- Killing the Buddha is basically the best web site about religion right now, and has been for a while. There's tons of good stuff over there, but I want to link to an essay that's slightly older, because it's so excellent. Whatever you think about the Five Percenters in general (and I have to admit, finding out a bit more gives me a whole new respect for the Wu-Tang Clan), Knight's point near the end about the proper use and function of religion in a person's life is a very crucial and well-stated one.

- This dude apparently ran the San Francisco half-marathon while drinking a beer a mile. His disregard for his own health is your entertainment!

- When I was reading Rolling Stone in high school, I didn't always like Rob Sheffield; sometimes he could be too jokey. But this interview is lovely (and hopefully not too inside baseball for non-critics), and it reminds me why I got into the form in the first place, and why I'd like to make more time for it again. I really need to read the copy of Love Is a Mix Tape I'm borrowing from a friend.

- Los Campesinos! have a new acoustic(ish?) EP out. If it sounds like this, then I'm happy.

- I think this is a really good/interesting idea on a couple of levels, although I don't care one way or another about Dear's music. If CDs and physical media in general are/are becoming obsolete, why not have your music collection, the parts you really care about, instantiated around your house as unique physical objects?

- My friend Erik pointed me towards this fairly amazing article. Multiple dinosaur species were actually different stages of one species! That's very cool, and 10-year-old-me is really excited right now.

You got to know your place on the food chain

2010-08-05T11:27:00.002-04:00

Feel good hits of... well, the last couple of months, really.

Fujiya & Miyagi - In One Ear & Out the Other
Cocteau Twins - Iceblink Luck
Neil Young - Don't Be Denied
Smog - Dress Sexy At My Funeral¹
New Order - Love Vigilantes

The Grapes of Wrath - All the Things I Wasn't²
The Antlers - Bear³
The National - Lucky You
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Little Shadow
Stars - Elevator Love Letter⁴

Electric Six - I Buy the Drugs⁵
Sparklehorse - King of Nails⁶
The Killers - Smile Like You Mean It
Maximo Park - The Coast Is Always Changing
Blur - Trimm Trabb

¹Sadly, this one came to mind during the funeral of an old friend. He would have appreciated the sentiment, I think.
²For a song I loved when it was a single (I was 8), this sure has held up well. In fact, listening to it now I'm only beginning to realize that there's a whole strain of my favourite music that's descended from this song (in terms of my personal chronology, anyway; we're talking anything from Nick Drake to Horse Feathers in terms of actual chronology). I still love that cello.
³So far this is the only part of Hospice that I love rather than respect; they were good live, though.
⁴Seeing them play this live at Hillside was definitely a highlight of the weekend.
⁵I know some (most?) people will always resist their brilliance, but Electric Six are a truly great band. This is because Dick Valentine lives in and writes about a world that is simultaneously incredibly awesome and incredibly horrible. That world is called America, and Valentine refuses to give either side of it short shrift.
⁶I'm not a massive Sparklehorse fan (just this album, really), but "King of Nails" is one of my favourite songs by anyone ever.

We die only once (and for such a long time)

2010-07-29T11:53:00.002-04:00

Should I ever develop a cancer or other serious fatal illness, I am going to force my family and friends to read this. Actually, they should probably read it now. You probably should too, unless you're planning not to die (even then, you probably should read it, just to be safe).

I teared up a few times reading it, not necessarily because of the content of the article so much as the thought of conversations I might have to have someday. But I'm inexpressibly grateful to Dr. Gawande and others like him that I'm more aware of those conversations, and that I feel unafraid to have them, if that's my lot in life.

On a much more minor note, I can't help but point out that Gawande manages in a mere aside to point out how bitter and grotqesque the whole "death panels" thing was. Just one more thing about the article that broke my heart.

I have a mandolin

2010-07-27T17:13:00.002-04:00

As previously mentioned, I've been following the Undercover series at the AV Club pretty avidly, and the one song I'd been most eager to hear (barring maybe "Game of Pricks," which Owen Pallett did a fine version of) is the Cure's "Inbetween Days." I'm not a big Cure fan except for the pop singles (basically, and minus "The Lovecats" and a few others); I'm one of those people who prefer their second-best of to their first. Given some of the other choices in the series I was a bit worried it'd be done by a band I dislike or don't care about (and thus become the opposite of the Retribution Gospel Choir covering "Kokomo," which was actually pretty good but I still don't like the original). Thankfully it turns out that we got Superchunk instead, which makes me very happy. This is a band, after all, whose version of the Magnetic Fields' "100,000 Fireflies" might be my favourite cover (if it's not, it's close; My Bloody Valentine's cover of "Map Ref. 41°N 93°W" and Ben Folds' "Bitches Ain't Shit" are the only competition I can think of right now).

"I want to kick over the whole fucking chessboard"

2010-07-23T12:38:00.002-04:00

Speak of the devil... I first heard about David Eagleman (and his book Sum, which is also on my to-read list) on the truly great Radiolab. This article on the also reliably great Killing the Buddha not only gets deeper into what Eagleman's doing and striving for, it gives me a label for my beliefs that I just might want to use:

Eagleman rejects not only conventional religion but also the labels of agnostic and atheist. In their place, he has coined the term possibilian: a word to describe those who "celebrate the vastness of our ignorance, are unwilling to commit to any particular made-up story, and take pleasure in entertaining multiple hypotheses."

I think "made-up story" is a bit glib, but basically this is an idea I can get behind.

"as many possible points of scrutiny"

2010-07-23T10:59:00.002-04:00

Ugh, I've had stuff I've wanted to post for weeks and weeks now, somehow just never found my computer for long enough. Work has been busy, the usual type of thing. Also we went to Philadelphia and now I hate Philly fans like everyone else does (a cheesesteak with blue cheese and hot peppers is incredible, though; tater tots on the side). In no particular order:

- David Byrne is a pretty weird guy, or at least that's the impression I get from both David Bowman's pretty risible This Must Be The Place: The Adventures of the Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century and this. But weird in a neat way.

- I'm sure these pieces of furniture are just crazily expensive. But as someone who likes living in small spaces and longs for organization, I want a set of them terribly anyway.

- I neither hate nor love Robert Christgau, but I do respect him and his work. Overall, my friend Alfred Soto sums up best what we'll miss now that his astoundingly long-running Consumer's Guide column is going away.

- Another friend of mine from Stylus days, Justin Cober-Lake, sent me this pretty good article on agnosticism. Ron Rosenbaum is, to put it gently, not someone I always agree with, but it's nice to see someone rejecting the rather tepid idea that agnostics are just some form of atheist.

- Speaking of old colleagues, Peter Parrish and Theon Weber have both done really excellent work recently; Peter on videogame reviewing and George Orwell (making some points that hold, albeit not quite as strongly, for all criticism) for the Escapist, and Theon with the best article ever written about Miley Cyrus, for the Village Voice.

- The ever-esteemable Carl Wilson is part of a new groupblog called Back to the World that's quite good; I recommend Carl's post on song titles, which is really excellent in that how'd-you-know-I-thought-that-way? kind of way.

- I like Scott Pilgrim (not as much as the song and the band who did it, nor as much as some of my friends do, but I like it) and I'm looking forward to the movie. But I don't know if I would have bothered creating an avatar using the movie's site. Luckily(?) my housemate saved me the trouble. My one regret about missing the launch party for the last Scott Pilgrim book is that Carla and Lynette Gillis' new band Sisters (or SISTERS, I guess?) was playing, and I still adore Plumtree's three records more than enough to be rabidly enthusiastic about anything they do in the future (I guess Amanda Braden is pursuing a PhD in Boston, at least according to Wikipedia, which is a shame because her "The Game's Over" is still one of my favourite songs in the world; Catriona Sturton playd Guelph years ago with the Japanese band The Secret and I got to talk with her a bit, which was cool).

- The Beat Goes On uses one of these (specifically the second one in the last row, made by the Canadian Automatic Plastics Company) as its logo on the t-shirt I got when I worked there. We all knew what it was, but none of us had a name for it. Apparently "45 adapter" is the best we're going to get; I was hoping for a cooler name. Like "dongle."

- Let's get all of my writing (for PopMatters, in this case) out of the way at once; I did a capsule review of the really really really good and kind of overlooked record Pyramids did with Nadja, a show review for MONO and the Twilight Sad (I wrote another one for the Eluvium/Julianna Barwick show I saw, but it's not up yet), and a full review of the fine new Max Richter album. That's it since the middle of June. I need to find/make more time for writing, and soon.

- I'm not very good at the, shall we say, mechanical aspects of either, but this sort of thing is why I love probability and statistics. It's counter-intuitive and a little headspinning, but ultimately it makes sense; very neat stuff.

- I have deeply mixed feelings about Malcolm Gladwell, but this essay, on the reasons we give for things and how our minds deal with them, is really fantastic. John Tilly's Why? is on my increasingly large to-read list. My friend Aaron pointed out this essay to me, and asked me what I thought the possible ramifications were for criticism; it's an interesting question I haven't had the time or space to properly grapple with yet.

- I've loved Louis C.K. as a comedian and actor for years, but even if you don't find him funny there's a lot to admire in this fantastic AV Club interview. The best part: "And sometimes when I’ve been onstage, people would yell out 'Suck a bag of dicks!' from my special, and I would just say, 'No, that’s old material. I want to give you new material.' And every time I said that, I would get applause. I got the sense through this kind of ad hoc polling that 95 percent of the audience would really like to see new stuff. So if you’re always working on material that is new to you and new to your audience, and because it’s new to both of you, there’s a precarious feeling like maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, that keeps it exciting also."

- Speaking of the AV Club, one of my favourite websites, their Undercover series has been really good. I don't think much of Fall Out Boy, but their (ex?)singer Patrick Stump's cover of "My Favourite Dress" (originally by the Wedding Present) is really quite good, and he comes across well in the interview. I might actually be interested in his solo albuum; here's hoping he stays far away from Pete Wentz in the future.

- Snoop Dogg tried to rent Lichtenstein (all of it) and now wants to be on Coronation Street. This is what I want from my celebrities.

- It's entirely predictable that I would love Inception, and I did; there are certainly wrinkles to the whole thing, but on the whole I'd say my opinions on the ending and the themes of the movie as a whole are pretty well reflected in Dileep Rao's take on things. More than that, the linked interview confirms that Rao (whom I really liked in Inception and Drag Me to Hell) is a pretty sharp guy himself (dude uses "heuristic" properly!); someone get him some more, and more significant, work fast.

Okay, that's everything for now; I really am going to try and post more regularly and avoid these kinds of marathons in the future.

A little heartbroken

2010-07-07T16:20:00.003-04:00

Goddamnit, Germany.

Guessing I'm rooting for the Dutch now.

(kind of cute to see Klose and Villa on the pitch after the match ended, seemingly deciding to trade jerseys inside instead, not to mention Schweinsteiger/Iniesta - two very fitting pairs, I think)

I've never read Proust

2010-06-27T14:35:00.002-04:00

Someday, I'm sure. Anyways, I've always loved the Proust Questionnaire when it shows up somewhere, and recently some friends have taken really good runs at it. So here is mine, with a sincere attempt not to duplicate the answers Alfred and Hans gave that resonated with me.

1. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
This. There are situations where I have inadvertantly raised self-defeatingly suffering in silence to an art form. My friends and loved ones would probably tell you all of my feelings are right out there in the open, which kind of proves my point.

2. Where would you like to live?
In the city. It's where the parts of human existence I care the most about come into full bloom. I love to visit the small town where I grew up, I love the country; but only as a change. Some small part of me will probably always wish I grew up in Toronto, or New York, or London.

3. What is your idea of earthly happiness?
Freedom from worry. A lack of urgency. Affection.

4. To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
In myself: Laziness, overenthusiasm, cynicism about everyone but myself's sentimental gestures.
In others: Social awkwardness, mispronouncing my name, good intentions.

5. Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Samuel Vimes, Bob Arctor, young Stencil, Hector of Troy, (John Gardner's) Grendel.

6. Who are your favorite heroes of history?
Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Oscar Wilde, Bill Watterson. (I fully admit to distorting the intent of the question here)

7. Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Oedipa Maas, Blue Van Der Meer, Cordelia, Beverly O'Meara.

8. Your favorite painters?
Duchamp (circa Nude Descending a Staircase), Braque, Rembrandt, and a ton of ones I've seen in museums and elsewhere whose names I don't recall.

9. Your favorite musicians?
This question might as well be meaningless (the following often show up near the top: Low, Readymade, Talking Heads, Joy Division/New Order, Tindersticks).

10. The qualities you most admire in a man?
The kind of quiet dignity and reserve that I absolutely lack the capacity for. An inquisitive mind. The ability to discern the difference between debate and hostility. A tendency to laugh at my jokes.

11. The qualities you most admire in a woman?
The kind of quiet dignity and reserve that I absolutely lack the capacity for. An inquisitive mind. The ability to discern the difference between debate and hostility. A tendency to laugh at my jokes.

12. Your favorite virtue?
Mercy.

13. Your favorite occupation?
Anything I can do at my own, often digressive, pace.

14. Your most marked characteristics?
Cheerful nosiness, quantity of speech, a certain relentless sardonicism.

15. Your main defects?
Perfectionism, the unavoidable feeling that I am putting others out, and a shameful need for external validation.

16. What natural gift would you most like to possess?
A ridiculously efficient metabolism, or a facility for languages, or the ability to play musical instruments well.

17. What historical and contemporary figures do you most despise?
Descartes, Heidegger, L. Ron Hubbard, Hugo Chavez.

18. What are your favorite names?
Semi-coincidentially, most of them are also the names of people I know; naming them here would make me feel uncomfortable (see also question 15).

19. What is your present state of mind?
Content but naggingly disappointed in my lack of productivity and girlfriend. The usual.

20. What is your motto?
Nobody deserves anything, but it happens anyways.

21. How would you like to die?
With a feeling of accomplishment.

iPod + work day = this kind of thing

2010-06-24T16:07:00.003-04:00

One of my favourite bits in the live version* of the immortal "Life During Wartime" is when David Byrne starts whooping "burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks? / they won't help me survive!" Hefner's "Junk," from the underrated (and yes, a little odd) Dead Media, is just about the last song I would think about in comparison with "Life During Wartime." But what's that after the first chorus? "Don't need notebooks, what good are notebooks / they won't help me survive." I only hope that it's a deliberate, left-field homage.

*(from the Special New Edition of Stop Making Sense, of course; I don't hate The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads, but I will never ever understand people who claim it is somehow better)

So what about Tune-Yards?

2010-06-22T18:07:00.003-04:00

I respect the hell out of the effort Brandon Stosuy and others put into this, and can absolutely sympathize with the desire to get people to take a clear-eyed look and a band that you really love who don't get a fair shake. I also have no aesthetic dog on either side of his fight. I have heard exactly one CocoRosie song, "Noah's Ark," and I liked it just fine, but not enough to seek out their other work, and nothing I've read (including that post) has made me feel like I'm missing out; at the same time, none of the things I've read accusing the band of being awful seem very compelling either. I may wind up listening to Grey Gardens at some point; I am currently behind on writing and have a backlog of 40-some records from this year I'd like to hear at least once, so it's not likely to be soon.

That being said, why on earth does anyone ever get Antony Hegarty (another artist whose work I respect but have little personal interest in) to write about art? I realize he's not trying to be a critic or anything, but on a page filled with mostly wonderful examples of artists writing movingly and perceptively about CocoRosie (personal favourite: Jamie Stewart, even with the pointless Vampire Weekend dig), he's the only one who accomplishes the exact opposite of what Stosuy intends. He's in turns hectoring and pretentious, disingenuous and elitist. I'm not saying the problems he points out aren't real (and look how wonderfully Annie Clark tackles many of the same issues, albeit with an extended quotation); but as always when you're dealing with someone who assumes that everyone who disdains an artist is acting from prejudice or bad faith, he succumbs to those faults himself. And ultimately, saying that everyone is deliberately forcing themselves to dislike CocoRosie is just as stupid as saying that anyone who likes pop music is faking it.

Has there been some stupid, vicious shit written about this band? Yes, and I applaud people who challenge that. But not every negative review falls into that purview, and I would defend someone's right to dislike CocoRosie's music just as feverently as I would defend Antony's right to think it's great, socially relevent art. I think Stosuy's roundtable is ultimately a good thing; I just wish it didn't lead off with the one piece that doesn't make me want to give Grey Oceans a shot.

You can get rid of the blues this way

2010-06-20T10:51:00.000-04:00

Walking across about 900 numbers worth of College Street in Toronto on a gorgeously warm and sunny Friday night on my way to a bar to meet up with friends, very few records make me feel as good about myself and my place in the world as Joe Strummer and the Merceleros' Global a Go-Go.

Total romance forever is boring

2010-06-18T12:57:00.003-04:00

Two reviews of mine, of two very good albums, have gone up recent: Los Campesinos! at Blurt (which I expected to adore), and Foals at PopMatters (which I didn't; it's the pleasant surprise of the year for me so far, and an album more people on this side of the ocean should be paying attention to).

Because I have been sleeping badly lately

2010-06-17T07:55:00.004-04:00

I feel like being at work before 8 am is kind of a sign that you've made some pretty horrible life choices. Ah well.

- This might be old news to you at this point, but I don't care: The reformed Godspeed You! Black Emperor (oh guys, why did you move the exclamation point?) are curating the All Tomorrow's Parties festival (well, the Nightmare Before Christmas branch of it) and they've invited Weird Al to play. It's his first European date ever. The rest of the festival sounds equally incredible if a bit more predictable, but the Weird Al thing just makes me feel good about the world. If I could afford to make it over there...

- I'm a heterosexual male, and so have never been through a lot of the stuff that this article describes. In fact, I have no idea how universal the writer's experience is. But I do know that I felt the queasy ring of truth reading it, and that it puts its finger on something that's been bugging me about Weezer (and Pinkerton) since... well, since I stopped being a teenager, basically. I'll still argue for a certain segment of their work (yeah, really just the green album and Maladroit at this point), but what a difficult band to love.

- I've never read J.D. Salinger. With this essay, Kevin Stephens manages to make me think I should get around to it for the first time.

- I'm not an American and I've never been in the armed forces, but if I ever met Philip Spooner you bet your ass I would stand and salute. That's the kind of video that makes you wonder if you've been doing enough with your life.

- Wondering how the US managed to tie England? The real answer is a split between the increasing failure of the traditional narrative of "soccer powers" and the fact that England's national football team is the World Cup equivalent of the Maple Leafs, but I prefer to believe this.

- My friend Mark is getting more attention for his upside-down tomatoes (although the article also has some interesting stuff on the Ward, where Mark lives and which I used to live on the edge of). I think he's ready for it to die down now (the attention, not his garden).

- Fred Smith, aka Slacktivist, is one of my favourite writers on religion and politics right now. He also happens to be an evangelical Christian, which surprises enough people I know that it surprises me. He's just done a series of posts that sum up perfectly why he's so good, and worth reading whatever your own personal religious convictions are.

- I love the Wedding Present and respect the hell out of David Gedge, but I adore the now-departed Hefner and their still-active frontman Darren Hayman (if he ever makes it to Ontario, I will be there with bells on). So it's nice to hear that the former likes the latter too.

"They’re all pretty literal these days."

2010-06-10T08:33:00.001-04:00

Today sees my interview with Gareth Campesinos! up at PopMatters. I think it went pretty well; if I have any reservations, it's that there's too much me in it, but hopefully that's just me being self-conscious. It's the first interview I've conducted over gmail chat, and if I could do more interviews that way, I would.

And it's okay

2010-06-05T13:21:00.001-04:00

At this point, years past the peak of their fame and influence, I can't imagine there's that many people waiting for the new Underworld album with bated breath. But I'm one of them.

Even more delayed than normal

2010-05-31T22:11:00.002-04:00

I mean, I have very good reasons for not being able to update here, the death of an old friend (and going home for the funeral and to reconnect with other old friends) being chief among them. Rest assured, if I'm still clutching these names after toting them around in my email after a week or too, there's good stuff inside:

- I'm an Asker, and column explains a hell of a lot. I, too, am skeptical of anything that goes "there are two kinds of people..." but this one seems very on point.

- I desperately need to find the time to write up two shows I saw recently, but PopMatters has my report on the excellent Horse Feathers show I caught a few weeks ago.

- I fucking love Grant Morrison and will continue to link any and all good interviews with him.

- Adam Gopnik's "What Did Jesus Do?" starts off like it's going to be another tedious "see, religious people are gullible!" exercise (I'm not religious, and I still can't stand that stuff), but it's a hell of a lot more balanced and interesting than that. The subtitle puts it fairly well: "Reading and unreading the Gospels."

- Pronouns; they're kind of weird, if you think about it. I read this for work and loved it.

- My buddy Mark got interviewed by the friggin' New York Times for their story on growing tomatoes and other plants upside-down. Pretty cool; my housemate is trying it and swears she already sees results.

- Like the anti-Grant Morrison, I will happily post whenever someone takes a good solid shot at the odious Ayn Rand, and this is a prime example. A very good overview, although it never gets quite as justly scathing as the opening: "St. Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both."

- The ever-brilliant Andrew Unterberger has been taking requests, and he took mine. Insightful, throught provoking and funny in equal measure, as always.

- Next time you're bored, take a beer mug with walls kind of like this (but no middle lamp thingy), a darkened room, and a tea light. Put the tealight in the beer mug, make sure it's flickering, and stare at the wall for a while.

Whatever happened, happened

2010-05-24T01:15:00.000-04:00

Dear anyone who found the finale of Lost somehow unsatisfactory and would like to bitch about the finale, the show, unanswered questions, and so on: Please take it elsewhere. As far as I'm concerned that was a thing of uncommon beauty first and anything else second.

Drink your souvenirs and go your way

2010-05-20T10:21:00.004-04:00

Feel good hits of the 20th of May, 2010 (special Timbaland edition):

The Delgados - Pull the Wires From the Wall
Caribou - Odessa
Sparklehorse - King of Nails
The Mountain Goats - Blues in Dallas
Kitchens of Distinction - What Happens Now?

The Radio Dept. - Liebling
Iron & Wine - Free Until They Cut Me Down
The Stars - Ageless Beauty
Hefner - I Stole a Bride
Underworld - Mo Move

Vampire Weekend - Taxi Cab
Low - Sunflower
Rival Schools - Used for Glue
Pyramids with Nadja - Another War
Radiohead - Lift

Guided By Voices - Drinker's Peace
Neil Finn - Sinner
The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno
Andrew Bird - Darkmatter
Primal Scream - Rise

I'm actually really impressed that I could find the album versions of 19 of these songs. Thank all the people putting homemade videos, or even just still images plus music, up on YouTube.

"Some dreams are bad dreams"

2010-05-18T11:14:00.003-04:00

Not only is Rachel Maddow's address to Smith College one of the very best commencement speeches I have ever heard, it's also one of the best concise arguments for why one might want to be a "liberal" (and a stinging rebuke to the excessive end of traditional American rugged individualism to boot).

Weirdly admirable

2010-05-17T23:31:00.002-04:00

I haven't heard a ton of Amanda Palmer's music, but I've read chunks of her blog and I like her, especially after this post. Perversely enough, it makes me want to be either a touring musician or just someone who works on the equivalent of Team Chaos. I don't know if I can articulate what's oddly appealing about what she talks about, but maybe (given the disasterous state of my personal inbox) it's just having your email be part of your job, instead of something you have to deal with outside of it.

You wanna know why I'm not in grad school right now?

2010-05-14T16:21:00.002-04:00

Caveat: I'm in a foul mood today, having pulled something in my back and being quite restricted in my mobility and in an a fair amount of pain.

But I think even if I were having a great day, this article would bug the shit out of me. Sometimes when people ask me about philosophy, to explain what I studied I have to get into the difference between continental and analytic philosophy, which most people aren't aware of (I know I wasn't when I got to university). And when I'd say I tended to gravitate to the continental side, people would ask why. This kind of language is probably a good snappy answer:

"The soul has been a dead end in philosophy ever since the positivists unmasked its empty referential center. Scientific philosophy has shown us that there's no there there."

Leaving aside the extremely fucking aggravating fact that claiming that the soul is a dead end in "philosophy" is a bit like the Left Behind douchebags claiming their source is the "Bible" (they certainly think it's true, but it's very misleading at best), the very idea of "scientific philosophy" ought to set any self-respecting philosopher's teeth to grinding (much the same way I would expect scientists to get upset if I suggested that they start doing "philosophical science"). I like interdisciplinary stuff, I think it's tremendously important, but I also think that all disciplines involved should retain what makes them important and valuable. To engage in what Asma calls "scientific philosophy" is to give up on the project of philosophy.

I'm not a big proponent of the soul or anything; honestly, part of the reason the article irks me so much is that it's clear that Asma extends this kind of thinking to, well, just about anything that can't be measured. Somehow he manages to reconcile this:

"But more important, [expressions about the soul] are not really propositions about the world."

With this:

"'This song has soul' means: This music restores us, this music has integrity, there's something authentic and natural in its style, this music contains strong emotion, the repetition is hypnotic or ecstatic, there are elements of the African-American experience in this music and these lyrics, this song draws on gospel and R&B genres, this song is so funky you can smell it, and so on."

I am aware that "propositions about the world" is being used in a technical sense, but if the latter statements are not as real and true and meaningful, if they do not refer to things that exist in as real a fashion as the referents of Asma's example of "the cat is on the mat," then the world is a sad and impoverished place.

Honestly, I don't even really have a problem with what this kind of philosophy does. What I have a problem with is the people who assume that philosophy of language or epistemology somehow does away with metaphysics, which makes about as much sense as claiming that religion precludes science (or vice versa). Showing that something like the soul (which, again, I'm not that interested in defending; like Asma and Spinoza, I certainly don't think that anything approaching personality or memory lives on after death) does not exist in a scientifically relevent way is interesting and useful, but it is not the end of the conversation, and I feel sorry for people who think it is.

Bonus round: what's worse about the following quotation, Asma's lukewarm, "everyone has something right!" stance, or his condescension?

"Many atheists, like Richard Dawkins, will criticize soul believers as dimwits. And that is not my position. Everybody makes category mistakes, and everybody confuses subjective yearning and hope with objective matters of fact. Even the phrase 'He is a dimwit' is just an expressive claim masquerading as a descriptive claim."

Take it too far

2010-05-11T16:56:00.003-04:00

You know, for a cultishly adored indie sensation, the National are pretty fucking unfashionable right now. The video for "Bloodbuzz Ohio," which is very funny and at times oddly touching (as opposed to the band's music, which is oddly touching and at times very funny) ought to have plenty of ammunition for, basically, people like this. In any case, I recommend watching it in full screen mode, it's a pretty nice looking video.

I also remember there being some angry words thrown around when Boxer came out accusing the band and it's fans of white privilege or something. Which in one sense is fair enough, I doubt the National are going to deny that they lead privileged lives any more than I would; but surely we get to write songs about our experiences too? I mean, if it's problematic for me to love the National AND it's problematic (in entirely different ways) for me to love Ghostface Killah, what am I left with?

(NB. of course, the title and sentiments of this post do not refer to people like my friend Jenny; I always have time for intelligent, passionate dissent, as opposed to people going "boring white dudes" or "lol old" or "you're racist for listening to that")

The Manhatten valleys of the dead

2010-05-10T10:55:00.002-04:00

My lengthy review of the very fine (in my opinion) new record by the National is up today at PopMatters. But while I'm happy with it, I have to admit that I think the review that went up today at Pitchfork, by the always-sharp Andrew Gaerig, is slightly better.

The land of pleasant living

2010-05-08T10:36:00.002-04:00

On the one hand, after listening to it again last night I'm ready to say that Clutch's Robot Hive/Exodus is one of the best records I've ever heard, truly muscular and propulsive hard rock (or whatever you want to call it) with surprisingly deep reserves of humour and wisdom; but on the other, the version I listen to on my iPod is minus "Small Upsetters," "Tripping the Alarm" and "Gravel Road" (it does include "Slow Hole to China," though). Normally when I alter stuff for my own consumption (like, say, taking "Crew Filth" off of the end of the otherwise stellar Code: Selfish) it's to remove stuff I don't really consider essential and I still feel comfortable talking about the album, but do I really love Robot Hive/Exodus if I only love it with a little of the fat trimmed off?

Some good advice

2010-05-08T10:35:00.002-04:00

I don't know Geeta Dayal, haven't even read her much (although I do want to check out her Brian Eno book), but I suddenly feel a lot of affection for her anyways. Why? This post.

Omnibus

2010-05-06T17:40:00.002-04:00

Oh god, why can I not find time to write anything anymore?

- Review roundup: I've got a hopefully pretty interesting interview with Sam Amidon up at PopMatters, as well as a review of the Wedding Present in concert.

- I was already pretty sure that The Human Centipede tripped too many of my body horror triggers for me to ever see it (I say that as a guy who doesn't regret seeing Cannibal Holocaust, mind you), and this (safe for work) only confirms my suspicions. And yet, I still feel like Ebert is going a bit overboard here.

- The always-reliable Tom Ewing wrote a really interesting column about the second series of Phonogram; although I think he miscontrues the series slightly (the fact that we never see any techno or rap phonomancers never suggested to me that they don't exist in the world of the books, for example), he's very sharp on why it's both a good and important series.

- I'm just going to go ahead and quote the same bit of this that everyone is: "But this is just a thing, a tickle in my throat that I have when I watch people turn up their nose at paying for things, period, just: paying for things. It’s not so bad to pay for things, if these things are good, and if these things are valuable; even if these things are available to me at no cost up front. For instance, I pay for: collections of stories that are available in other forms, podcasts, radio, service in eating establishments.

I mean here is the hell of it, here is the real fucker of the deal, the thing that in these modern markets I guess is going to separate us from the crayfish or whatever. DO YOU WANT SMART PEOPLE TO CONTINUE TO DO UNUSUAL AND INTERESTING THINGS, OR DO YOU WANT US ALL TO GIVE UP ON THAT? The fricking truth of it is that if you want the former, if you want smart people to do unusual and interesting things, you are maybe going to have to pay for it, so that these people do not lose their minds. No one is forcing you, it turns out."

- Here's a pretty incredible interview from the late 70s with Borges about philosophy and art. Included at the link is the MP3 of the interview. Well worth your 15 minutes.

- And while this review is well worth reading, I'm just going to quote the part that I agree with most strongly: "Struwwelpeter stands or falls on the credo that children can bear to be scared by art and thereby grow.

Tremendous destruction

2010-05-02T22:59:00.001-04:00

PopMatters: I want to go back to a review you wrote with Lester Bangs about Moondance for Rolling Stone in 1970, and a phrase that stuck out to me: Van Morrison’s "authenticity of spirit." I always get a little suspicious of that kind of talk, but this book seems to elaborate better on that idea.

Greil Marcus: Well, that was Lester’s line. I remember very clearly how that review came about and who wrote what. And over the years, I’ve not just become dubious about the notion of authenticity, I’ve become really angry about it. It’s caused tremendous destruction with people believing that once they were authentic and now they’re not, that there’s some grail you find that’s going to bring back your true spirit, that it’s something objective you can hold in your hand, or that some people are born authentic because of their racial or cultural or class background, and that some people are born to be inauthentic because they’re just walking commodities. It’s not a useful idea, and so I always try to find different words when I’m drawn to the concept that lies behind the word.

Quiet and aggressive

2010-04-27T09:29:00.002-04:00

A few things of mine have gone up in the past few days on PopMatters: a really good interview with Liz Hysen of Picastro (whose new-ish album Become Secret I continue to insist you really should hear), and a piece on "Shelter From the Storm" for our coverage of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks.

Don't misunderstand me

2010-04-18T23:14:00.002-04:00

When you're walking through the dark and the unexpected mid-April hail, on your way to the bar nursing some serious Doubts About Your Life (looking, in other words, at the sky more than anything else), and you get to the train tracks and - for once - there's a train crossing them, and you stand there for a few minutes and are struck for the first time in years at how big the train is at it grumbles past, how tall, how looming, and the world is just put on hold for a moment - is there a more perfect song to have come up on your iPod than "Tom the Model"?

The train got out of the way just as "Teenage Wristband" kicked in (which is not the same thing as saying that the track started). Perfect.

Remember when I had time to actually write posts?

2010-04-12T22:27:00.004-04:00

- This is about the best "1901" cover you're going to find, and it's by one of my favourite Youtube acts. The Voluptuous are two kids who usually do two-piano covers of indie rock tunes. But it's actually great, and this cover, while completely different from their normal thing, is also great (and not just because I listened to Souvlaki today).

- Meanwhile, Zack Handlen has done a painful, excellent job explaining why both of us have trouble watching things like the UK Office. Awkwardness ahoy!

- I think Morgan Murphy is really fucking funny. Continue with your lives.

- It's lookng likely that I will never buy Kerrang!, Mojo, or Q ever again.

- Would Alex Chilton have lived if he was Canadian? Possibly.

- Here's a good review of the new Flannery O'Connor biography. But while I respect and take seriously O'Connor's beliefs and the beliefs of her characters, I have to say that as someone raised without religion (someone whose life, for better or for worse, has never been and never will be "Christ-haunted"), I don't find Wise Blood very funny. To me, it feels apocalyptic instead. It's also one of my favourite novels and has been since I read it in high school.

A fresh coat of paint

2010-04-12T10:03:00.002-04:00

Spent all weekend driving to, watching a soccer game in, and driving back from the Boston area (we lost, badly), so I'm very behind. But I should quickly mention that I have short review of the really good new My Majestic Star album and the intense, accomplished Former Ghosts record up at PopMatters, and that PM has undergone a bit of a renovation. These things always take a bit of getting used to, but I like it; it seems to have a bit more functionality than the old one.

god's pee

2010-04-09T11:31:00.003-04:00

So Godspeed You! Black Emperor (I prefer the original punctuation) are going to be touring again. I still have the (quite nice) poster from the last time I saw them live, and I would love to do it again. That announcement, however, only mentions ATP, "a handful of british and european shows, and then 9 american towns." Really? One of the most significant Canadian bands of the last 20 years is reforming, and they're not playing Canada? I mean, yes, most "American tours" by American bands have a few dates up here, but from these guys I expect if they say American dates they mean American dates.

A series of unfortunate events

2010-04-08T21:42:00.002-04:00

My housemate Julia loves Xiu Xiu. Fucking adores them. How do I know that? Because she took today and half of tomorrow off of work so that she could take the Greyhound down to Buffalo to see them live. She did this despite a nasty bout of stomach flu that hit her about 2 am this morning, getting on the bus via sheer force of will and unwillingness to miss the show.

She got to Buffalo to discover the show is cancelled. I'm not calling shenanigans or anything - from what she could figure out, someone in the band is very sick. But c'mon, universe - you could at least have given her a bus to take back home once she gets to Toronto at 1 tomorrow morning.

"You can quote me on that."

2010-04-04T10:52:00.002-04:00

I've never really watched late night TV, and if not for my PVR I still wouldn't. But (as my housemate could tell you) I've gotten pretty addicted to The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Plenty of other people online have written about why the show is brilliant (personally, the feeling that anything can happen every night is enough to have me watch them all by itself - and I've missed a lot of the really big shows, like the ones about his parents and the Desmond Tutu one), but this interview sums up really nicely why I like Ferguson.

O=0

2010-03-30T09:57:00.002-04:00

My review of the good-but-frustratingly-not-great Autechre album is up at Resident Advisor today. There are parts - big chunks, actually - of the album that I love, and I kind of adore the way it's almost the equivalent of a back-to-basics kind of record, but those guys need to get over the idea that CD albums need to take up most of a CD. I suspect they would have done very well working under the temporal restraints of vinyl.

"an act firmly grounded in pleasure"

2010-03-25T23:43:00.002-04:00

If you're not a maker/consumer of criticism, then this post by Glenn Kenny on Scott Eaton's 33 1/3 book on Big Star and this post by Keith Phipps on Kevin Smith being a jerk might not seem to be about the same thing. But they really are. And wonderfully, because both Kenny and Phipps are good critics as well as good writers, they're not only a spirited defense against people who don't "get" the critical impulse - they're good evocations of why people would want to engage in the stuff (by either writing or reading it), both in terms of personal pleasure (the title of this post comes from one of the comments on Kenny's post) and artistic merit.

Which is to say that while they share some of the same insights, those posts are the polar opposite of Armond White's typically sour-minded, high-toned speech on a similar subject. The problem with White, always, is that while he may say true and wise things some of the time, he says them in such an aggrieved, superior way that it's hard to want to listen to him. I'm sure he takes the "stony silence" he received as proof that he is espousing hard, unpopular truths. But the truth is, people hate White not because he upsets their comfortable truths and mores, but because he writes like an hectoring asshole.

I don't care what films he likes or dislikes, or what sort of moral or political stance he adduces from them; like the serious critic that he is, he's always able to back up his contrarianism. And I certainly don't care whether he's a jerk in person or not - I've never met him and probably won't, and I'm a firm believer than you can't judge art by judging artists. What I care about is the way White writes as if it's a moral failing to have tastes that differ from his. Sure, White engages, deeply and perceptively, with the movies, but he never does so with the people he's writing at (and it always seems like at, never to or for). He does, in fact, write like he's trying to kill our buzz, and that's fatal for a critic.

Because I have been sleeping badly lately

2010-03-24T00:05:00.003-04:00

Between my twin brother getting married (it was great) and getting sick afterwards (it was not, unless you're a big fan of fevers) I'm even more behind on things than usual, and it's already too late in the night for my own good, so you get a bunch of things that deserve full posts with good writing about them thrown into one post. With shitty writing. But mark my words, everything I mention in this post I highly, highly recommend to you and urge you to take the time to read/watch them.

Well, except for the first thing, I guess. Since the actual thing is my review of the great new Silent League record. What you should take as highly recommended is the album itself, which is amazing. Many thanks to my friend Shannon Fields from the League (and the immortally great Stars Like Fleas) who didn't hold my past work against me and passed me this one.

Speaking of friends, here's my good friend Rachel playing in a band called Semi-Formal on St. Patrick's Day down in North Carolina:

The song is Rachel's own, and one I've loved for years. That show looks like it was a hell of a lot of fun. The band's MySpace is here.

Speaking of videos, this makes four songs from the new National record that I've heard (the other three I heard live in Toronto). Am I very excited for the new album and for the excellent seats I have to see them in Toronto in June? Yes, yes I am.

I may or may not like Los Campesinos! incredibly good Romance Is Boring more than this guy. But I will be hard pressed to write a review half as good as he did - this is seriously the best/most personally inspiring (in the sense of not wanting to embarrass myself) album review I've read in a long time. Lots of stuff to respond to, to think about, there.

Phonogram was the best comic book I've ever read. There, I said it. Better than Planetary, better than... okay, maybe it was tied with The Invisibles. In any case, there almost certainly won't be a third series. And here's why. Again, lots to chew on here. I can't and don't blame Kieron and Jamie in the slightest. Remember folks, for now if you like comic books you have to keep buying them physically. Or they go away. Were I to, say, win a truly obscene amount of money in one of the lotteries I don't play, I'd have to seriously considering funding another series all on my own.

And last but far from least, there's a ton I want to say about this, but the boiler plate is: Science confirms what I've been saying about music (or rather what Jeff Mitscherling taught me about music, or rather what Ingarden taught Jeff about music) since my undergrad days. It's not a new idea - it wasn't when Ingarden was writing - but this is some further proof and some elegant writing on the subject.

I only want one night

2010-03-17T16:11:00.004-04:00

I try not to post a bunch of videos in a row, but this cheerfully insane Hot Chip video (for one of my favourite songs from the new album!) really has to be seen. I've liked Look Around You and the other stuff I've seen from Peter Serafinowicz (you might know him as Shaun's housemate in Shaun of the Dead, if nothing else), but he clearly needs to direct more music videos.

I'm aware everyone from Fluxblog to Popjustice is posting this video, and that's fine. I'm not trying to give you an exclusive, I just want to make sure you watch it.

(Edit, since I just noticed the video above might not be viewable in Canada: Serafinowicz has the video on YouTube here.)

You've done hell for me

2010-03-17T12:21:00.003-04:00

My review of the really, really, really good "new" Picastro album is up today at PopMatters. I say "new" because it came out digitally and on vinyl last year, but didn't hit CD until now. I'm happy to have the excuse to put it on my best of 2010 list, in any case.

The Neil Young approach

2010-03-17T00:06:00.002-04:00

I'm always going to have time for Chris Olley. He'll probably never quite top the first four Six By Seven records for me (for reasons that have more to do with me than his music), but I'm glad he's still out there, and this interview has some interestin stuff to say about bands, their life spans, and their fans.

I'm losing your train of thought

2010-03-11T11:15:00.003-05:00

My review of the new, very good Eluvium album is up at Resident Advisor. I was a bit worried when I heard that Matthew Cooper was including vocals in his music for the first time, but it wound up working for me.

You might call it the aesthetic object

2010-03-09T13:40:00.002-05:00

John Darnielle's latest post over at Last Plane to Jakarta is a very interesting beginning; I hope he expands on what he's talking about there with regards to what an artifact is and the issues surrounding that. The really important bit:

We think artifacts aren't necessarily physical-world things, but that physical-world things are still the most convenient way of asserting that there's an artifact somewhere. Above all, we're more convinced than ever that good music is the substance of: its content, its image (I'd prefer "spectre," but sometimes you just have to give yourself a break), and the things people remember collectively about these two: and importantly, the struggle that takes place -- that always takes place -- in reconciling these.

This is making me hope I can find the time to re-read Ingarden's book about music in the near future, and maybe Davies' Art As Performance as well.

Eat it, Cameron

2010-03-08T00:23:00.002-05:00

Every year I say I'm not going to watch the Oscars, and every year like a good little pop culture junkie I get sucked in. This year was fine - I was happy with most of the major awards (and while like a lot of people online I'm a little dubious about Bullock winning, she at least had a nice speech!), and Martin and Baldwin were entertaining. Personally my favourite three things were the speeches for best score and costuming (both of which did a bit more good than most Oscar speeches), Kathryn Bigelow getting long-overdue acknowledgment for Point Break, and Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. presenting (someone get them a movie or something).

"that capturing of the body by the pulse"

2010-03-07T09:38:00.003-05:00

This is the worst, most contemptibly stupid and patronizingly wrong-headed thing I've seen written about music in a long time. Roger Scruton is absolutely the worst caricature of an academic; all that erudition squandered on a man who refuses to actually engage with the things he wants to demonize; demonizing them because he doesn't understand. It's a pathetic vicious circle, made worse because he does (for example) do an awfully good job of explaining why one particular type of beauty is valuable and how it works; like all aesthetic demagogues, however, he then makes the critical error of assuming that his preferred type of beauty and art is the ONLY valid kind.

To take just one minor example, how dare Scruton try to make phenomenological points about dancing when he's clearly never danced to modern music? At one point, yes, he does point out that it's pathetic for an older person to join, say, a mosh pit; but to claim the modern dance floor is full of people dancing alone, dancing "at" other people rather than "with" them, is to display a deep, profound ignorance of how a modern dance floor actually works for the people on it. Scruton's writing about music, and about art in general, never gets any better than that; it's a sad example of why expressivism is bad philosophy. Scruton dresses up his opinions with, again, erudition and a laudably clear and precise writing style, but his actual argument can be summed up as "I don't like it, I don't understand it, and you shouldn't like it."

You got to give an account at the judgment

2010-03-04T21:06:00.003-05:00

Feel good hits of... I don't know, the last few weeks. Special "I moved for the first time in five years, and it nearly killed me" edition. Still unpacking. Will be for at least a few weeks. I'm feeling rather overwhelmed these days.

Sam Amidon & Beth Orton - You Better Mind (not up on YouTube, so here they are doing "Sugar Baby")
Retribution Gospel Choir - Hide It Away
Spoon - Believing Is Art
The New Pornographers - The Body Says No
Electric Six - Jimmy Carter
Digitalism - Pogo
The Ronettes - I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine
The Magnetic Fields - I Don't Know What to Say
Roxy Music - 2HB
Los Campesinos! - Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1

Hot Chip - I Feel Better
Low - Swingin' (if you only watch one of these videos...)
Crowded House - Love This Life
Apostle of Hustle - Xerses
The Specials - Friday Night, Saturday Morning
Superchunk - Watery Hands (if you watch two...)
The Dears - Warm and Sunny Days
The Afghan Whigs - Crime Scene Part One
The Pet Shop Boys - What Have I Done to Deserve This?
Butthole Surfers - TV Star

Seven Soldiers of Scotland?

2010-02-23T21:17:00.002-05:00

I am waist-deep in moving, and it's a busy week at work to boot, so I don't/won't have time to blog much for a bit; let me just say that this is something I'm very excited about. It brings together several things I like - Stephen Fry, Grant Morrison, Scotland, even Paul McGuigan (Gangster No. 1 and Lucky Number Slevin are good enough that he goes in the plus column).

Don't corner me with that poetry thing

2010-02-18T16:30:00.004-05:00

Yesterday my review of the oddball but high quality Athens mix Underworld did went up at Blurt. I'll keep my review copy on my iPod, but I'm not sure I'd ever buy it.