While in blogger, I see that I never posted this draft, from May 12.

We saw Shearwater play their new album at the French Institute last week. Shearwater will now forever be auditorium-rock for me. The show was similarly impressive to last year's show at Pace. I think that the Palo Santo songs stood out to me as they were more familiar, but they seemed a bit more immediate than the new songs except for the almost title song, Rooks. Happily, I now have the new album a bit early.

Michael Gira opened and was kind of scary but not as scary as he once was.

Photo from Forklift Flickr

We also saw She and Him at Webster Hall. M. Ward played nice guitar and Zooey had apparently lost her voice, so they played one big show instead of two smaller shows. It was a short but pleasant show, pretty similar to the album. Opening band was forgettable.

(Jolie Holland is also doing some recording with M. Ward)

Saw the "Paul Simon American Songs" tribute at BAM. I think it was probably a lot more interesting to me than a regular Paul Simon concert would be at this point. A weird variety of performers. Predictably, I wished Grizzly Bear had played more (Graceland cover mp3) and thought that Gillian Welch was probably the highlight. Other people were a lot more impressed by Josh Groban. Roaches, Olu Dara, and Amos Lee also played. It was rotating sets between the tribute making bands and Paul Simon with band.

Saw Iron Man, and it was good.

(Here's an article on the superhero costume thing at MOMA)


Saw I'm Not There on DVD, and will need to see it a few more times before I come close to understaning it. But I already appreciate it more than I could ever appreciate the possibly similar but how could it be as interesting Across the Universe.

Saw the "lots of things like this" exhibit at Apex Art on its last day. Beware of the embedded audio on the site.


Paul Auster remembers 1968, and a bunch of people take offense.
Silver Jews cover art. the Pitchfork interview makes the artist sound sort of Steve Keene esque
"he's painted it 27 times", which is like 81 Babars.

Apparently Craig Finn started taking singing lessons.

Sad Kermit singing Elliott Smith is depressing-funny-depressing

I'm not sure that the Criterion release of Bottle Rocket on bluray is reason enough to upgrade dvd players, but it's a more likely excuse for me than one of those super hi-tech movies

An interesting article on Adem Ilhan (fridge) and his 90s cover album.

BigUniverse is pretty similar to Looky Book, except for the quality of titles (minus) and the ability to create and publish books on the site (plus)