I seem to be in another of my bi-monthly musical renaissances. In addition to the run-of-the-mill culling of my CD collection ... picking up the wonderful live Two Tone compilation Dance Craze that had eluded me for some reason, and reacquainting myself with Slowdive and the Catherine Wheel, i've also been downloading some unfamiliar music as advised by music lists and Allmusic.com. I really like the new Pernice Brothers album, it's a great collection of twangy pop songs. Also, i checked out a split album between Sianspheric, a shoegazing outfit that i had previously given little attention to, and Toshack Highway, featuring former members of Swervedriver who apparently are enamored of 1970's Liverpool great John Toshack. It's a departure from distortion-laden soundscapes to somber twelve string pieces, but with no loss in quality. The Longwave album is great, much better than i expected given my lukewarm reaction to "Everywhere You Turn". The volume of music coming into my computer is so great that i've barely gotten a chance to listen to the new Cat Power album (not soooooo new, but i didn't pick up on it until seeing the video for "He War"), the Dubstar stuff i got from Veronica, or the debut record from British Sea Power. My dearth of concerts has continued however. Veronica and i missed what was probably our last chance to see Frank Black in his hometown two weekends ago, as he played at the Middle East We toyed with the idea of going to the Field Day Festival on Long Island, featuring Radiohead and others, but my take was that as i'm reluctant to go see three bands at a show, going to see twenty bands at a festival was out of the question. Luckily our hesitance paid off, as complications surrounding the festival swirled and it was shortened from two days to one and moved to Giants Stadium in New Jersey at the last minute.

Some people think Björk is the chanteuse to trump all others, but my money's on Tracey Thorn.

In reference to my previous post, Genius + Love really does equal Yo La Tengo.

we'll take our hearts outside, leave our lives behind and watch the stars go out