trevor

Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen. Heck yes.

oh okay, cool. thanks. never really given him much of a chance, to be honest, so i'm not that familiar with his work...didn't realize that he was stadium-calibre.

hey solace, any idea who will be opening for them on the UK leg of the tour? just bought my tickets this morning for the second show at the O2. so pumped.

this came as a total surprise. did anyone even know that he was recording a new disc, let alone releasing it this year--and so soon?!! glad to hear it's all original music and not a collection of covers, too.

a music reviewer who posts on At Ease posted a glowing review of it the other day after he was privileged enough to have two listens in-studio, but he said it's under lockdown and impossible to take home, let alone leak. I don't think this bad boy will leak until right before the release date...I think the label realizes they have a masterpiece on their hands and don't wanna let sneak out. (Maybe that's wishful thinking, using words like "masterpiece." But, from everything I've read so far, I think we're assured a damn good record.)

So I'd heard about this guy a while back, around the time his debut disc Shallow Graves came out, but the immediate Dylan comparisons were a bit of a turn-off (that makes it sound like I don't like Dylan--not the case)...anyway, it was a while before I eventually checked the album out, and I didn't give it much of a chance at first. I think partly this was because the tracklisting was all messed up when I originally downloaded it, and there wasn't much flow to the album. I eventually got the tracklisting figured out and started really getting into it, but this wasn't until this past December o

god i'm so excited. haven't been this excited for a release since...eh, dunno. In Rainbows? heh.

Listened to their first album a bunch of times, it never really grabbed me outside of one or two tracks (I think "Devastation" was the one I liked, although I'm not even sure that's the right name). Anyway. Is this one just more of the same? If I wasn't sold on the Dark Horse, is this new one worth my time??

i hadn't been this excited for a late night performance in probably years, and my god did it deliver. the sound quality isn't great, but, i mean, if this is the lead-off track on the new album like fallon indeed says it its, then this is going to be a HELL of an album. which is good, because my expectations for this thing are beyond massive. on the highviolet website, they've got a couple whiteboards with a couple different tracklists. so maybe they haven't decided yet?

I've read some speculation that the flashsideways are not actually a result of the bomb being detonated, but instead showing what would happen if the Man in Black/Flocke is successful. Which kinda makes sense...the characters who have been promised things by the MiB more or less have received them in the alternate timelines. Again, gonna have to see a lot more evidence of this before I completely get onboard with this theory...it also makes it difficult to understand Juliet's "It worked" comment in the premiere, right before she died. I dunno. Also was wondering last night the significance of

"Lost Verses" by Sun Kil Moon. /end thread.

I work for the organizing committee, and Vancouver is my hometown, so it goes without saying that I'm excited. Although, at this point, I just really want the planning phase to be over and for the Games to just start already. Let's roll on Feb. 12 please.

Okay, I can say that this will definitely change between now and the end of the year...I'm also working on a list and I'm going to write up little blurbs on each album, and the order will probably shift around a bit...there's 10-15 albums that I haven't listed here that could all easily make it on in the next little bit. Also, there's a bunch of albums that I've only just heard in the past month or two--Gillian Welch's Time (the Revelator being one of them--that easily would've made it onto this list if I'd had more chance to listen to them. Same goes for all 09 releases. That being said: 30

Yeah, that's definitely not a complete setlist. For starters, it doesn't include Conor's semi-solo run of songs near the start. I'd say there were probably anywhere from 6-8 songs before M. Ward took over with 100 Million. And yeah, saying that the room was "empty" is a major exaggeration...tickets said 7, we showed up at 7.30, the bouncers said the show would start at 8, and the band took the stage at 8.30. Granted, the crowd was thin enough that I was able to edge my way up to almost the very front, but there was a good crowd of people from the very get-go and everyone was very into it (one

Okay, real fast, cause I really need to get to bed, but the quick lowdown on the show: they played every song off the album (I'm pretty sure of this, at least...haven't looked at the tracklisting, but off the top of my head I can't really think of a song they didn't play), plus 5-7 from each of their band's catalogues. It was these reworkings, some solo and some full-band, that generated most of the highlights. Never been a huge fan of Oberst and don't really know much of his material beyond Cassadaga, and off that they played Soul Singer and Limetree, plus a few other songs that I recognized