short blog: blood on the highway + currently listening

Minneapolis just had its first thunder storm since last fall (at least as far as I can remember). I'm a big fan of the natural world (via the City Life, of course) and rain storms are among my favorite things ever. The first one is always memorable for me and, although I'm far from some dirty hippie running around dancing in this stuff, I love it; re-remembering the smell of rain, the first sight of lightning and that satisfying crack of thunder. It reminds me that I'm ultimately not in control of anything (not in a theistic way or anything...just in a regular way) and it's probably just best to calm down.

Also, on the way to work this morning, I saw a police officer fire a few slugs into a dying deer on the side of the road.

So that was fun. How do you suppose he called that one in?














I've been listening to two incredible albums this week that you have to go out and get. First up we have Sam Amidon's I See the Sign.






What he does is complicated but, if you had to boil it down to an easily-consumed soundbite, you would probably say that he sings old, old folk tunes dressed up in a modern way. That terrible watering down of what he does aside, it is incredibly moving. "Pretty Fair Damsel" gets me weepy and introspective every time I listen to it and "Way Go, Lily" is a study in singing beautifully and delicately about some really violent shit ("Gonna rule with a shotgun...").

The song that critics will often mention in their reviews is "Relief" because, mysteriously, it's a cover of an R. Kelly song amongst all these old lyrics about horses and soldiers and blood and brothers. What they miss, however, is that Amidon combined it with a beautiful Sacred Harp piece to form a gorgeously-made, Frankenstein's monster of a song.

I'm going to see him play a show with Nico Muhly at the Southern tomorrow and I'm ridiculously excited.

The other album I'm on about is Jónsi's Go. He's the lead singer of Sigur Rós just putting out his first solo album and, boy howdy, it's amazing. I trend toward singers who have a style of delivery that is unique (i.e. Colin Meloy, Rufus Wainwright and, my god, Joanna Newsom) and Jónsi's high, spinning falsetto is right up there with things you're not going to hear on anything considered "mainstream" by the mainstream people who like mainstream things in a mainstream way.

The word I've seen most often used to describe this thing is "ecstatic" and it's not hard to see why. Nico Muhly added some frenetic, whirling orchestrations to a few of the tunes (most of which are sung in English as opposed to Jónsi's native Icelandic) that are the perfect garnish. "Go Do" and "Boy Lilikoi" feel like flying to me and are easily worth the price of admission.