In addition to Nicole Atkins...

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  Distortion

  Magnetic Fields
  The Magnetic Fields' Distortion is, as advertised, full of lovely, noisy distortion. Aside from that, it's a nice set of pop songs, as usual; my favorites are "California Girls" and "The Nun's Litany."
• Now that I've had more time to digest 8 Diagrams, I've settled on "Stick Me For My Riches" as my favorite track on the album. A great intro, and another amazing verse from Method Man.
• I've loved Maxi Geil! & Playcolt for a couple of years, and I bought their Strange Sensation album sometime last November--but I hadn't really listened to it until this week, when I ran across this post on Fluxblog. And indeed, "Your Best Won't Be Enough" is a killer song.

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Campfire

And, as a final something for 2007: Wu-Tang Clan's "Campfire" (listen), track one from 8 Diagrams.

A very sobering and (dare-I-say) mature kung-fu sample; an incredibly spooky sample of the Persuasions' cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Gypsy Woman"; and an absolutely killer verse from Method Man to get it started.

Not a bad start to an album that's growing on me very quickly.

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I have a file of things to post to my blog about, and it's become clear to me that I'm not going to have the time/inclination/desire to write full posts about each of them. Some of these are old, so you may have read or seen them already.

So:

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  Lady's Bridge
  Wu Tang Clan, "The Heart Gently Weeps". I love this in concept; in reality, it's just okay for me, though Method Man's bit towards the end redeems it quite a bit.
• Richard Hawley's new album, Lady's Bridge, is gorgeous fall music. My favorite so far is "The Sea Calls".
• I'm enjoying Blake Lewis's "Break Another" way too much.
• A combination of a dead hard drive and annoyance at having something like 5 (all different!) iPhoto and iTunes libraries inspired me to do a little cleanup. Applications used both to combine the libraries and keep them in sync, all highly recommended: iPhoto Library Manager, Senuti, and Martian Slingshot.

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