From iTunes, as of today:

Needless to say, I attempt to get through a ton of music on any given week, month, or year. And while stuff accumulates in my collection regardless, individual lasting powers vary considerably. Then every once in a while when I scan over something I have found for god knows what reason….  something really REALLY stands out.

Today it’s the self titled debut album from “Halloween, Alaska” which I’m not even half way through yet as I write this and I’m just amazed and overjoyed. (Listen to “Call it Clear”) They are from Minnesota. They share a band member with The Bad Plus, who fucking rule. (how I found) (btw The Bad Plus are in Boston 2/25 and you’ll find me there)

Weird pretty and spaced out, interesting lyrics, with a little death cabishness to the vocals but not in an annoying way. Production quality is insanely good. If the Twin Peaks Soundtrack married an Indie band, this would be its love child.

Rock on MN

(edit: Jury is still out on follow up album)

I seem to recall liking this movie, but I was an adolescent…

“Dead Poets Society” is not the worst of the countless recent movies about good kids and hidebound, authoritatian older people. It may, however, be the most shameless in its attempt to pander to an adolescent audience. The movie pays lip service to qualities and values that, on the evidence of the screenplay itself, it is cheerfully willing to abandon. If you are going to evoke Henry David Thoreau as the patron saint of your movie, then you had better make a movie he would have admired. Here is one of my favorite sentences from Thoreau’s Walden, which I recommend for serious study by the authors of this film: ” . . . instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.” Think about it.