Friend and avant-garde folkster Normanuniform (some 12apostrophes readers may know him as Eric Nolan) has released his new album, Woodways, on a Website I built for his music.

Check it out: www.normanuniform.net.

A couple of weeks ago certain planets aligned and I went to two, count them, two concerts, Regina Spektor and Spoon. This is high living for me, since that comes to about 17% of the concerts I have attended in my life so far.

They were both amazing shows. But the venues were like apples and oranges, (literally) like downtowns and suburban malls. Specifically, like First Avenue and Myth the Nightclub. Going with the food simile again, more like apples (if you like apples) and something bad; let’s say spoiled milk.

Regina Spektor played at Myth, in Maplewood (a suburb . . .

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Because the best time to make a list of your favorite albums of the year is less than three hours after you’ve had two teeth yanked from your lower jaw, with the dentist breaking one in the process and having to poke around in the hole to tweeze out all the root fragments—right?

10.  Mission of Burma, The Obliterati, 2006
It has its flaws, like the too-sludgy sound throughout and the fact that they let their drummer, Peter Prescott, write a few of the songs when they shouldn’t.  But I’ve been missing guitar breaks for a while, . . .

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This is the kind of album that isn’t bad on its own terms. Mono plays moody, atmospheric instrumental rock that would have made a good soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings if Peter Jackson were as innovative as everyone says he is and didn’t bow to convention with a full-blown orchestra and choir. Several of the six songs stretch into the ten-minute range, the better to incorporate thrilling sequences of crescendos, climaxes, and decrescendos. The shorter, quieter songs are welcome interludes between the epic-battle, tragic-death compositions that dominate the album. And the art is great—the blue booklet imitates the . . .

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Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (2005)

Talkdemonic, Beat Romantic (2006)

Victory at Sea, All Your Things Are Gone (2005)

Young People, All at Once (2006)

First off, I should say that this post is several years past its expiration date. It’s like I see a requiem for indie rock in some magazine or another every year, so I shouldn’t annoy anyone by adding my voice to the chorus now. But the sheer mediocrity of three of my recent CD orders left me with no other way to review them than by clustering them into a . . .

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