Best...Record...Ever

[Swish]

Yea, yea, yea, it changes a lot for all of us, silly to even pick one, even sillier to tell anyone, but who knows why, sometimes it just gets all cherry oak and tears ...

Devotion + Doubt by Richard Buckner. 1997, the first of his short two record trip to the major labels, but sounds great, nice recording by Craig Schumacker down at Wavelab with lots of dynamics, mastered quiet by Greg Calbi so you have to turn it way up, but then comes a headful of rewards, you get to hear all the little details that give the music texture and color, and a set of top notch players in your room with backup by the Calexico / Giant Sand guys, and the always amazing talents of JD Foster, Lloyd Maines and Marc Ribot.

But this goes way beyond the players and the sound, it's the chronicle of romantic disintegration, the times you aren't yet high enough to forget, dark and painful, but still, hard to resist. Words strung together in ways you may never forget...in every song. And music woven like a tapestry around each word. Over 10 years down the road now and it hasn't aged a day. And always that voice. Brilliant record. Might be one of the ...best ...ever.

I like Bloomed and Meadow quite a bit, so I'm not sure why I never bought it. I think I tried on DeepDiscount.com and was all set, then they told me it was out of stock and finally canceled my order when they were unable to fill it. Then again, I could be wrong as my mind is chock full 'o stuff right now. If you look up 'busy' in the dictionary, my picture should be there.

Saw that line in your sig and have to pull out that Magnolia Electric Factory cd. Great stuff.

[Monkey Bones]

I like Bloomed and Meadow quite a bit, so I'm not sure why I never bought it.

Yea baby, Bloomed is the beginning of an amazing trilogy, great music, performance, musicians, recording, mastering, one of my favorites of the 90s (but as I've mentioned before, for sound quality I'm talking about the great sounding original, not the later loud and compressed Ryko remaster with the bonus tracks).

And then the best...record...ever in Devotion + Doubt. Then to complete the trilogy, Since. More of a rocker, a little louder mastering so not quite up there with the first two for great sound quality, but he might've even made a bit of money off it later from the VW commercial a few years ago during the Olympics that used the sad lullaby "Ariel Ramirez". Caused quite a few music lovin' people to jump on the internet to search for who it was. They changed it a bit for the ad, edited it to make it less about the pain, and the loss, and the drugs, but it's still a beautiful song in any form.

But back to Devotion + Doubt right now. Nice stuff ... Well, you can take your friend along, and say you'll be back later tonight, oh, but if I had your lil two-time figure, close just one last time...

[Slosh]

Now I'm spinning Fruit Bats - Mouthfuls. Echolocation and Spelled In Bones are both good but Mouthfuls is on another level. Sadly The Ruminant Band isn't anywhere near as catchy as I hoped it'd be. Only one spin but nothing jumped out at me so I'll probably give this one a pass when it gets officially released in a few weeks.

Hmmm . . . . I have several gift certificates to three different indie-rec-stores but nothing to buy Speaking of Chicago based bands, I know I'll be getting the new Califone in the fall. I'm still waiting to pre-order the new Hellsayers and Davies albums but my 'certs don't do me any good there.