6.1.09
Finally done with the CD library digitization. The only CD I was completely unable to get into iTunes was Wir's The First Letter, the first disc from Wire after founding member Robert Gotobed left the band (the dropping of the "e" from the band name was a tribute to him). Not only would iTunes not read any of the songs on the disc, I couldn't find any torrent copies to download.

Surprisingly, it is available on iTunes for $9.99, and the obsessive compulsive part of me thinks it's a small price to pay to complete my digital collection. But the practical side of me doesn't remember any of the songs on the disc, and knows that if it had converted successfully, it might have been many months (or years) before I listened to it.

But the OCD side usually wins out, so I'll likely end up downloading it at some point. Just not today.

6.2.09
I know that I didn't buy U2's Achtung Baby when it came out, and I'm pretty sure I haven't actually listened to it as a whole album before, so I must have acquired it from the used bin some time ago, many years after it was released. A lot of people have been comparing their most recent release, No Line On the Horizon, to Achtung Baby, which critics are now saying is one of U2's best releases, and this prompted me to give Achtung Baby a listen (I've also never heard Zooropa and Pop, the two records that followed Achtung Baby, all the way through before, although I don't own those and I'm in no hurry to experience them).

And it's really not too bad. It's still got a little bit of bloat, a trait that all of their albums since the ultra-bloated Rattle and Hum share, but there are some good songs here, and the overall tone is a good transition of their sound away from the then-career-defining Joshua Tree. It hints at some of the nonsense that was to come with Zooropa and Pop, but the recoil reaction is only triggered because I know how over the top they'll get on those records; the electronic instruments on Achtung Baby are actually pretty minimal and they are generally used with a light touch ("Zoo Station" is the worst offender, which makes sense given the obvious ties to the Zoo TV tour and the Zooropa album that grew out of it). Plus the record features the track "Until the End of the World", which I know from the soundtrack for the movie of the same name and which is one of my favorite U2 tracks.

So I think instead of convincing myself to learn to love the latest record with its many obvious flaws, I'm going to spend some time getting to know this album better.

6.3.09
I thought I'd really like Boy Least Likely To, but so far it's coming off as a weaker version of Bishop Allen (and my enthusiam for that group waned quite a bit after my initial infatuation). I do, however, really like "Monsters":

And the thing that really frightens me
Is that all my friends from school
Are turning into monsters
Picking patterns out for curtains
Making friends with all the other monsters
Pushing little baby monsters
Around the shops in prams

Seeing it written out like that, I can see it reading as a too-cute commentary on watching your friends all getting married and having kids while you're still trying to figure out your life, but man, the way he sings it is just great. Plus, I really like the word "pram". Any song with "pram" in it automatically gets a couple of bonus points.

6.4.09
I'm trying a new playlist experiment: putting a word in the comment field in the iTunes metadata for all four and five star songs that I think I would enjoy listening to in the car. That's where I end up listening to music a lot of the time, and my current lineup of playlists has been a little dissatisfying recently because when I randomly select a few hundred tracks rated four and five stars, I seem to invariably end up with too many songs that don't suit my mood when I'm driving.

I don't want to downrank slower, more contemplative songs that I really do like simply to get them out of the playlist, so I figure if I go through everything that I consider four stars or better and attach this keyword to all the ones I consider car-worthy, I'll eventually have a playlist of several hundred songs which I can then pare down to smaller random chunks based on date of release, etc., to keep my car playlist varied.

6.5.09
I knew Conor Oberst had a new record coming out soon, but when I was poking around for a specific release date, I discovered that it has already been in stores for a month. I think this alone tells me how much I've fallen out of love with his move towards relatively straight ahead folk rock on his last few albums.

I hate to wish someone ill on a spiritual journey that seems to be paying big dividends for them on a personal level, but I really miss the fucked up, narcissistic, adventurous youth from the early Bright Eyes days. His self-righteousness is tolerable and even occasionally glamorous when filtered through that character, but when you take all of that away and replace it with earnestness, it kind of leaves me cold.

6.8.09
We're going to spend this evening at Merriweather Post Pavillion seeing Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 (dare we hope that Peter Buck will be in attendance?) opening for the Decemberists, who will play their latest album The Hazards of Love in its entirety for the first half of their set before playing some of their standards. Should be a great night.

6.9.09
Picked up a few new discs over the weekend: Phoenix's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Eels' Hombre Loco, and Wavves' Wavvves. I've listened to each once or twice: the Phoenix record starts really strong, but I'm undecided about the middle; the Eels disc feels very average, especially after the stellar Blinking Lights and Other Revelations; and I think the Wavves album has serious potential to grow on me.

6.10.09
So while we're all waiting for the official follow up to The Bake Sale EP, the Cool Kids have decided to release a free mixtape with prodcuer Don Cannon called Gone Fishing (you can download it from their web site). If you like their style, it's worth the download, but it's pretty bloated, and it gets a little old hearing the same "the cannon" sample on all but a couple of tracks. Still, given how unpredictable hip hop release dates tend to be (their debut album was initially slated to be released last year), it's nice to have some new material to tide us over.

6.11.09
Given their recent epic meltdown which may have also seen the dissolution of the band, I probably shouldn't say this, but I think I might like Wavves more than similar noise pop auteurs (and critical darlings) No Age and the Black Lips. I mean, I like No Age and everything, and the Black Lips have their moments and could still grow on me, but Wavves appropriates just enough of the Jesus and Mary Chain surf vibe in there to edge them out, at least for the moment.

6.12.09
Phoenix's "Lisztomania" almost instantly became my favorite single so far this year. The Decemberists' "The Rake's Song" is a close second, but there are a lot more layers here.

6.15.09
Okay, before I write about the Decemberists show, I think I should post a more in-depth review of the Shins show we saw back in May. I was hoping to locate a Shins setlist online, but no luck so far. So here's what I remember: they played "One By One All Day" from Oh, Inverted World (still my favorite song of theirs), along with "Know Your Onion", "Girl Inform Me", "Caring Is Creepy", "Girl on the Wing", and "New Slang". From Chutes Too Narrow there was "Saint Simon", "Those To Come", and "Mine's Not a High Horse", and from Wincing the Night Away they played "Red Rabbits", "Phantom Limb", "Australia", "Sleeping Lessons", and impressive rendition of "Sea Legs". There were also covers of the Beach Boys' "Girl Don't Tell Me" and the Beta Band's "Dry the Rain".

There's still a lack of stage presence in this band, but the more intimate setting worked a lot better for them than the larger outdoor stage that they've played on the last couple times they been through this region. There was a new lineup this time, too——a different keyboardist and drummer than they've had in the past——but this didn't seem to help or hurt their connection to the audience much (and the new keyboardist was way less annoying than the previous one, who spent the majority of the show goofing around and drawing attention to his own antics rather than letting the music take center stage).

Sometimes their recorded tracks feel too fragile and crystalline to me, but for this show, most of the songs were a lot more brawny, particularly the ones from the most recent record. You could really feel the groove in some of the live performances (especially "Sea Legs"), which can pretty tough to find on the album versions of many of their songs.

They also knew how to end the show really well, something that even some terrific live bands sometimes have trouble doing. For the finale of the initial set, the segued from an abstract, drawn out version of "Those To Come" into a more aggressive track (I'm blanking on it right now), which was a great way to cap off an impressive set. Then for the encore, the started with a nice cover of the Beta Band's "Dry the Rain" (probably the best song the Beta Band ever wrote), which then moved into two Shins tracks that I can't remember. But the whole thing was seemless, it was brilliant, it was beautiful, and it was a perfect way to end the show.

6.16.09
Taking a vacation for a few days. The beach doesn't really need a soundtrack, but I'll likely get in several hours of music on the way down.

6.23.09
I upgraded my iPhone to the new 3.0 software when I got back from vacation, and even though I synced it before I installed the new software, it seems to have lost all my plays from vacation. That makes me more than a little crazy.

6.24.09
In one of those strange coincidences, I had just received the Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart from Netflix when the news broke of former member Jay Bennett's death (his escalating ego, conflict with Jeff Tweedy, and eventual expulsion from the band are central to the narrative of the film, which tells the story of the making of the group's seminal album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot).

It wasn't quite as interesting as I'd hoped——much less band conflict than I'd been led to believe, and almost no performances featuring material from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot——but it was illuminating to see some intimate moments with the very guarded Jeff Tweedy. Unfortunately for Bennett, he comes off as kind of an asshole in the film, even before the tension between him and his bandmates became a central focus of the story.

Still a worthwhile use of an hour and a half for Wilco fans. I'm not sure that I'll ever feel the need to watch it again, but I'm glad I finally saw it.

6.25.09
So this is interesting: Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of the Virgin brand, has decided to host a free one-day music festival in Maryland this year. In previous years, the Virgin Festival has been a two-day event held at Pimlico, the horsetrack where the Preakness takes place (we went two years ago when the Police were headlining), and typically the lineup was announced in mid spring. This year, however, there was no announcement at all, and the rumors around town were that the festival was canceled – that is, until earlier this week when Branson announced that it was now going to be a free one-day event relocated to Columbia's Merriweather Post Pavillion.

And it really is free. There's a "presale" (which isn't technically a sale because the tickets are free) that starts today for Virgin Mobile customers and people who purchased tickets online for previous Virgin Festivals before ticket "sales" open to everyone on Saturday, but even Ticketmaster has agreed to waive their convenience fees. They are requesting that everyone donate $5 to charity for each ticket, but this donation is not required——aside from food, drink, and souvenirs at the festival, it looks like it really will be free to attend.

The lineup isn't spectacular, but there are enough decent bands——the Hold Steady, the National, Franz Ferdinand, and a couple others——to make it worth attending (I'm actually hoping these groups will be bunched up in the middle of the day so we can go late and leave early). I'm not sure exactly what Branson gets out of this, other than tons of free publicity (which might be exactly what he wanted to get out of this), but it's a pretty cool thing to do.

6.26.09
I'm a little surprised at how few albums I've bought so far this year given that we're halfway through the year: 17. I've pretty consistently purchased 50-60 albums each year for the past 20 or so years of my life, and while there are a few new and upcoming releases that I'll add (Wilco, the Gossip, Dinosaur Jr., Sunset Rubdown), I'm wondering if this will be my first sub-50 year in a long, long time. Favorite record so far: the Yeah Yeah Yeah's It's Blitz!, which grows on my a little bit more each time I hear it.

6.29.09
Pre-ordered Wilco (the album) over the weekend. I probably submitted my order too late for it to get to me by tomorrow, but because I pre-ordered it from Wilco's site, they'll send me a link to download the album while I wait for the physical release to arrive.

I'm willing to forgive the relative weakness of Sky Blue Sky as long as they can rebound. I'm not expecting another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or even another A Ghost Is Born (an album that has really grown on me over the years), but another Summerteeth-type release would be great.

6.30.09
Frank Black's "Thalassocracy" is one of the best songs I've ever heard. It saddens me that it has been missing from my life for the past five or so years.