Writing a blog post while hovering somewhere over the Pacific northwest. As i can’t access the web (thanks a lot, FAA), i’m typing it temporarily in my brand spanking new Mac Word 2008, which i picked up only hours before flying off to my meeting. I haven't used it enough yet to formulate an opinion. It's odd that in the few short months i've been a Mac convert, i've bought both Leopard and Office 2008 on the days of their respective release. How's that for diving in head first?

I'm going to see Editors in a few weeks, and i'm really looking forward to it. The more i listen to An End Has A Start, the more i'm impressed with their subtle evolution from the Back Room. Despite my fondness for the record, i'm thinking they're going to have to evolve in a more obvious fashion on their next album. Another record of staccato hooks and they may begin sinking into familiarity and subsequently, boredom. I can't listen to the album's title track any more without visualizing a recent AMC commercial in which the song provides a soundtrack to a montage of old movies. For some unfathomable reason, the line "someone hit the lights, 'cause there's more here to be seen" plays as Kris f'ing Kringle looks out beneath his hood, in a scene from the god awful 80's Christmas flick Santa Claus: The Movie. How did that become an American movie classic? By the way, i haven't changed my opinion of the video for the song. Lively dancers clad in primary color spandex surrounding the band as they perform the emotional track? This dog won't hunt.

As 2007 wound to a close, i took the somewhat blind follower approach of downloading all the albums on Pitchfork's top 50 of the year that i didn't already own. One of these has surged into the lead of my 2008 listening. Strangely, it's a band i've seen live several times and even described as "Jello Biafra fronting Fugazi ... two great tastes that most definitely do not taste great together". Yet their latest effort Let's Stay Friends i find brilliant. Yes, i've finally realized the greatness of NYC's Les Savy Fav. Now i'll have to dig backwards and see if this goodness is a new thing or if i shortchanged them from the beginning.

Other new discoveries ... i love the Bat for Lashes album, it's like a cross between Björk and Lilly Allen. I just listened to my first track off the critically acclaimed Deerhunter record Cryptograms and think it's the best indie electronica i've encountered in a while. Also, while never having been a huge Radiohead fan, i'm pretty into their latest offering In Rainbows. And you have to give them props for blazing a long overdue trail for music distribution by making the record freely downloadable online weeks before it popped up in the stores. Studio are another band Pitchfork has introduced me to, one they quite accurately describe as "Can making a Happy Mondays tribute album". Beyond recent music, additional exploration of the A Frames influences and followers has led me to "no wave", the short-lived NYC art movement. Finally, i have to plug a quite interesting musical experiment being conducted by one of the Onion AV Club reviewers, in which he is spending the first ten months of 2008 shutting himself off from new music and reexamining the contents of his music collection. I'd love to embark on a similar adventure, if i was able to do nothing but study my iTunes library all year.