(no subject)

Okay, the new Josh Rouse CD showed up this week, and I like it (although I'm beginning to suspect that albums called Nashville are never as good as the artists' previous work would lead you to expect). But it's already lost the battle for my attention to the other CD I ordered with it, Sylvie Lewis's Tangos & Tantrums. I've seen a couple of comparisons to Nellie McKay, and I suppose I could see it, if you replace McKay's pep with languor, and her self-conscious eclecticism with a simpler fondness for uncurrent styles. To me her album is one of those, like Hem's first CD and some of M. Ward's work, that seems to have floated in from some unspecified part of the last century. You can hear long stretches of it on her site.

Really, though, her victory over Rouse is somewhat moot, because any and all of my CDs right now are taking a back seat to radio. Listening to The Current is like hanging out with that friend you have who's always finding music that you'd never have heard of, but it turns out you really like. Only minus the hanging out part. I can't get it in my car, because it broadcasts from Minnesota, but I listen to it all afternoon at work. And it's listener-supported radio, which means (a) no ads and (b) on Friday I gave them money.

(no subject)

See also this testimonial from the Current's forums.

(no subject)

One day in September in need of some time to not think, I set out on an undirected walk. I ended up on the Midtown Greenway, a bike and pedestrian path on a former railroad track in a trench through Minneapolis. When I hit the end of that, I kept walking for a while. When my legs stopped working, I took public transit home.

Nine new photos from that walk; they're also in the MN 2004-09 photoset.