Click above to watch "Wanderlust" from Bjork's album Volta, out now on Atlantic Records.

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ACL 2007: Bjork Quick Hit

I am slowly, very slowly, making my way through Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It’s a daunting task, one I’ve started before, but this time I’m determined to make it. Still, several factors make this difficult.

 

First, the names. There are more than 500 characters in War and Peace, most of them bearing names like Anya Dmitriovronsky Putinsvetlanaskayaverarovich (who should not be confused with Anya Dmitriovronsky Rasputinsputnikskaya) and, well, the head hurts within a remarkably short period of time.

Click above to watch "Petrula the Destroyer" from Love in October's new album Pontus, The Devil, and Me, out now from The Musik Group.

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Video of the Day - Love in October - "An Average Idea"

Nothing in God’s Universe is more depressing than Vegas in the daytime. We crossed the Mojave desert and I saw the huge Louie Anderson and Carrot Top billboards and I quaked and wondered things. What else was there to do but bust out Woven Hand on the iPod and try to take it head-on, like I was cavalry-charging Vegas, the Great Beast. I’ll lose to you, probably, but only a little.

Click above to watch "Okay" from KaiserCartel's new record Okay...and other things we feel, out now on Bluhammock Music.

Former Mott the Hoople singer/songwriter Ian Hunter once released an album called You’re Never Alone with a Schizophrenic. It’s an aphorism that Will Johnson has taken to heart. Johnson is the leader of two bands, South San Gabriel and Centro-Matic. Although the bands are (mostly) comprised of the same members, they could not be more different. South San Gabriel plays sprawling, ruminative folk and alt-country; music dominated by acoustic guitars, cellos, and atmospheric pedal steel. Centro-Matic plays loud, distorted, lo-fi rock ‘n roll, a sort of Guided by Voices meets Modest Mouse mashup. And, just to keep things interesting, Johnson also occasionally records under his own name.

The appeal of superheroes and superhero movies basically escapes me. I never wanted to fly or leap tall buildings in a single bound. Belch and talk at the same time, sure, at least when I was 11. But I've honestly never given much thought to what the world might be like if I had superpowers. Hence I probably have little interest in watching guys in capes defeat nefarious criminals. In general, guys in capes scare me. I remember Genesis and Yes from the early '70s.

Click above to watch "Fake Girlfriend" from Mixel Pixel's new album Let's Be Friends.

I am looking down at a passing train on a Sunday morning from a bridge in Nashville.

Trains were once the new imagery of a powerful, new world. A force of progress cutting across countrysides bringing new cultures together and opening a route of escape for those unsatisfied with their lives. Song imagery using trains was representative of that force. Now trains have taken a new roll in our collective consciousness. Somehow they still evoke escape or power but, as the information age whirs up around them, they more often represent imminence or memory and the fading of all temporal things. The sound of change on the backside of the moment. Distance. From the past and from our dreams.