i hate the sound of guitars

Back in April, I wrote this about Big Dipper:
But if they pull a “Mission of Burma”-style return to active duty (and I hope they do), I would love to see/hear them again when they have another few shows under their belt, hopefully in a better-sounding room, and when I’ve had a chance to rein in [...]

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Just for the heck of it, I decided that this week I’m only going to listen to albums the way I used to before CD changers with shuffle play and iTunes — from beginning to end. I’m interested in how tempted I am to cue up individual tracks, in just how much my listening [...]

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Crass
Marc Riley & The Creepers
I expected to like this ex-Fall project a lot when I finally got around to hearing it, but it reminds me of the short set I saw the Fall do when Mark Smith stumbled off the stage in the middle of a gig — not bad exactly, but without M.E.S. spewing [...]

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John Vanderslice
Jonathan Coulton
In Coulton’s “Thing a Week” project, he recorded and released a song every week for a year, which sounds really impressive until you learn about…

Songstowearpants.com/Andrew is Music
…which includes a song a day project. Some are surprisingly good.

Crass
Bewildering that I didn’t spend more [...]

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Transistor Transistor
Perhaps Obama’s campaign of hope and change is to blame, perhaps not. But fior whatever reason the harsh intersection of thrash/metal/hardcore isn’t speaking to me now as much as it has in the past few years. Transistor Transistor is an exception. Their new one, Ruined Lives, is aces with me. It’s also less monolithic [...]

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Shannon McArdle
ex-Mendoza Line singer’s solo debut did not wow me quite as much as ex Delgado’s solo debut last year, but a pleasant listen and deserving of more time to sink in for sure.

The Fall
Stereo Total
Sarah Dougher
Plushgun
The Magnetic Fields
Shepherdess
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
The dB’s
Tie: The Clash, Echo & the Bunnymen, Fugazi, Fuzzy, Giant Sand, Goodnight [...]

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Listening this week was largely courtesy of the bulit-in iPod jacks in the Scion Zipcars I rented surrounding my move. Yay built-in iPod jacks!

Laura Veirs
I had heard that Saltbreakers (the only Veirs album I’d previously heard, and a 2007 best-of shortlist) was more rock/less folk than Veirs’ previous work, which put me off exploring further [...]

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