Video of the Week: Black Dice -- "Kokomo"

Album of the Week

If you like guitars, pianos, and the human voice, check this out. Amazing. I also really love the album cover. Give it a listen at the band's myspace page.

My Man

OK all. Don't know what I was expecting to find in Pitchfork's Guest List Best Albums of 2007...I probably should have expected to find a few reasons why I hardly read this website anymore. Actually, the website's not all bad--they often do great interviews. I think that what I'm expressing is more along the lines of boredom and frustration with "indie" rock. Also, Pitchfork has a tendency to hype mediocrity and that kinda thing, so reader beware is what I'm saying. Anyway, I'd just like to say that there were three highlights, so check 'em out if you're innarested.

First, Marissa Nadler's picks. She's beautiful, she makes beautiful music. She's got good taste. What else can I say? Seriously, listen to this woman's music.

Second, John Darnielle, of Mountain Goats fame--motherfucker repreSENTS. His was the only list that contained CocoRosie's new album, The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn. These two women make fucking incredible, beautiful music that alternates between shocking and hypnotic. The album didn't even get on Pitchfork's list, which featured Lil' Wayne's new album at #14 or something. Whatever, they can do what they want--but again, just so you know. John D: you're a soldier. For more on what John Darnielle thinks about CocoRosie, see his blog entry on the new album. And just generally read his blog.

Third, Noah Lennox, of Panda Bear/Animal Collective fame, only included three actual albums in his list. Otherwise, it was just a list of his ten favorite things that happened this year. What a goof!!

Other than that, Pitchfork is seriously slacking on modeling itself after my specific tastes. Is that so much to ask? In an act of open rebellion, I'm going to ignore every person who says the word "hipster" from now on.

In other news, I just finished a two-disc WINTRY MIX CD...if you want it, lemme know and it's yours. I'm listening to it now. It sounds like...oranges, melanomas, places, seconds, canaries, relativity, Africa, poodles, and, let's say, teenagers.

Amanda Hess - Rod Smith: The Interview

Here's the interview with Rod that Greg Campanielle and I boisterously interrupted (or preempted). Fortunately, the awkward social climate we immediately generated managed not to leak into the interview itself. Enjoy!

P.S. Greg--whose interview shall we disturb this week?

Check

His map was newly framed, he
was a puzzle full of means
from the pulmonary deep.
Home, or so he said. Thought I heard
a sudden sacrament from
the first note of my name, but no:
the clapping moon faced you,
just a screen door and instinct.
What's the weather like in Nashville?
The breeze a false glow
in the brain of your knees.
Then it gets me. The knot recurs
as its molecules part. Then is it less.
Outside, the landfill blooms
and I mistake it for my mind.

Round Two

Who's a winter, or whose canter
reflects my cold. In my head now,
move the bed there, and the couch
here, and now we've got lids,
now we're not losing. Right? The troll,
I don't mean a little scary thing, I mean
a pulling net in sea, the way the shrimp
swim still in the pull, the troll,
get it? Whose falter, who's caught
in a diamond shiver. The breath of
at odds, of ma cherie. Whose bar
could I leave at last, when it's nine
o'clock, my least favorite hour?
When you could work for a car,
or a press, or a sea, when you could
do that, what then? What happened back
in that winter? Whose
reflection gave my clock
a wallop in the wrong direction?

Function Creep

So what if I need to read something new
every twenty-four seconds? That means
by the time I die (kerplunk!)
I'll have read an unacceptable number
of books, incompletely. One thousand.
One thousand books. In my dead brain
one thousand books will strike their matches
all at the same time.

WOW!

Why am I so short? Gee, I don't know
It had everything to do with my face, I think,
but I can't answer.

Yes, here I am, under a lamp,
boiling my notebooks, waiting for someone to come and
photograph me.

And here comes my adolescence
in a huge steaming tureen,
a hairy shocking palm!
He pulls it back just in time.

Dreams bristling with ornaments, they splash
on my morning's doormat. "Sorry," they say,
"mandatory."

I'm stretching out all my parentheses.
They go to church unmussed and come
back with fogged glasses.

If it's true that my eyes
have a history, it's somewhere else,
staring out the window, or maybe
lying to the principal, wringing the red
from a Fruit Roll-Up.

Every day, no matter where I am, I go
back to his yard, the trading post we made there,
when I hit him accidentally with
my green plastic sword.

One reason I creep is because
people tell me not to.

And the reason I am not a reptile
is that my scales are too small.