jfb | (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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I can't wait to see what's going to be on the orange vinyl membership gift, the cover alone is a reason to pledge.

Yeah!

Of course, getting records I can't play is a conflict with my pre-move stuff reduction campaign, so when I signed up I gave them my sister's address. So I won't actually hear the record until August.

I think it is way classy of them to include a cd of the music, for people like me who buy records without owning a record player.

I am pretty much really loving Nashville. I've given it a few spins and I'm almost ready to declare it his best record. I was curious to see where he'd go after 1972; this is pretty much the most logical extension of that record. I think it's the perfect synthesis of his entire catalog thus far.