Sometimes I'll hear an album that just slides off of me, leaving little or no impression. I have the faintest glimmer that it's important somehow, but I can't hear it. Two (or ten) years later I'll hear it again and be crushed by the weight of it, and when that happens I can usually trace back through the albums I'd absorbed in the intervening years that prepared me to hear what I'd been unworthy of before.
Here are two such albums. They may just test your worthiness.
The first is the 1991 My Bloody Valentine album
Loveless. This is the album that ended Kevin Shields pursuit of the perfect guitar noise (and ended My Bloody Valentine along with it). It is hard to describe how perfect a sound this pink mohair sofa of an album really is. When I heard it in high school I stared at the speakers like they were counting down from a billion in French. I made the face my mother would make if I played
Metal Machine Music for her. But now...imagine Sonic Youth doing an album of Cocteau Twins covers. It's a noise you can sink down into and sleep in. It's accessible, sweet, and honest. The vocals float in and out of the sound keeping the guitars aloft and supporting the whole whirling structure. It's a masterpiece, and when you're ready it will reward you.
The second album is Yo La Tengo's stunning 2000 release
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. 2000 was a pretty good year, relatively speaking. Radiohead hit a new high with
Kid A, and Lou Reed released his wonderful album
Ecstacy, to name only two, but, Yo La Tengo had the best album of the new century with 'Nothing'. I sat in my chair between my speakers and listened to this disc night after night. The music is very still and quite challenging. I'll admit readily that my first listen was one of those experiences. I knew it was
something, but I wasn't sure if I was willing to dive in and find it, it seemed so vast and quiet, I was afraid of suffocating. I did eventually return to the disc and what I discovered was the last thing I expected--charm. Listening to this album is like eavesdropping on a conversation between two people who have loved each other for a long time as they retrace the steps of their lives together. It is so intimate and honest, so private. It remains one of my all time favorite records to really listen to.
Neither of these albums sit in small collections. They are not one of the twelve albums that anyone owns, there is simply no way to understand them without an education. And like any real education, it is worth the price.
What happens when Lou Reed, Belle and Sebastian, and They Might Be Giants meet at a crossroads? 3 hours of The Magnetic Fields. 3 discs containing 69 love songs that you can listen to more than once. The question is whether or not this $35 set is a novelty or a wonder. Certainly 2004's I feels more than a bit tighter and less thrown together, but not necessarily better. I'm thinking there's more to 69 Love Songs than sideshow, and I've listened to it twice in two days... 
I'm a Sufjan Stevens fan. Everyone is. I've been listening to his two recent 'all 50 states' project discs Michigan and Illinois for several months now and can't speak highly enough of them. If you don't own them, buy them now.
So it's Thanksgiving and you'll be travelling this week. You need an album that can not only get you there, but help you harness your chi in preparation for the bone grinding depression that awaits you when your 23 year old cousin (the surgeon) shows you his new BMW.
I finally got around to seeing Sideways last night and I was so moved by the film I sat in my bed afterward listening to the brilliant Metric's song Calculation Theme and thinking about the characters and their individual plights. Yeah, it was that kind of night.
This post was going to be an in-depth discussion of the homoerotic subtext of the A-Team, but fall is fully upon us now and we need to take a moment. The soundtrack to our moment will be Hanz Zimmer's smashing score to The Thin Red Line, and our beverage will be spiced cocoa.
Not only are Interpol impossibly photogenic onstage, but musically they absolutely tore the place down. If you don't listen to Interpol you are less fun than drowning. Buy the albums and get with the program, you could be dead tomorrow. 
We got a few of the better looking Thompsons together (as well as Jed's eyebrows and a Sandgren) and took some snaps at the lake tonight. Note how serious and important we are. 
Most people, if they could go back in time, would solve some problems. Reverse some major injustice or warn a population of impending natural disaster. Some would by a few thousand shares of Yahoo. I would go to this Galaxie 500 concert. Maybe go back a little further and catch The Velvet Underground at Max's Kansas City or watch Hendrix open for The Monkeys (because, it's funny, that's why)...I don't know, the point is I would have "been there" instead of being here. 
Today I stumbled into a sort of nest of great bands. A whole great band village. I'll keep this short....buy these albums:
How many movies are actually perfect? I mean you wouldn't change a single minute detail...perfect. Well, Casablanca, certainly. 84 Charing Cross Road. I think Moonstruck, Tootsie and Some Like It Hot are perfect comedies. Sabrina is a perfect chick flick. Ikiru is, to me, what film is for. But it's a short list. I love a lot of films but most of them are far from perfect...which is fine.
Mike sent me this article on Peter Gabriel and I think it's worth a read. When I was a kid I overheard some big smart kids in the neighborhood talking about how Peter Gabriel had left Genisis and come out with a solo album. They all agreed that Genisis was cool but Peter Gabriel was being held back. I didn't really know what any of that meant and I was a teenager before I ever got a hold of a Gabriel album.
You see, I think I'm lucky in a way. Some men require Harley Davidsons and Hemi's to make them feel like they're in touch with their inner caveman. My needs are, in comparison, very humble. I need a D200. I WANT a D2X, but I NEED a D200.
For those few of us who so straddle the pop culture world as to have both read the wonderful Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris AND watched Allan Ball's movie American Beauty and his HBO series Six Feet Under will be shocked to discover Mr. Ball will be producing a series for HBO based very closely on the Sookie books.
Read Nick Hornby. If you need a reason, start with The Polysyllabic Spree. This collection of essays on books and reading not only artfully reminds us why we read but leaves you craving more (or in my case, leaves you wanting to run to Borders and purchase armfuls of expensive books I'll never read.)
Well William has done the complete Halloween routine now and the official verdict is "more, more."
It deserves more than a passing mention...
Being straight (and over 30) I really get nothing out of Halloween, so it's nice to have a family to make it into something more innocent and real.
I'm not going to write a review of Serenity. It's the most entertaining movie I've seen in a long time, but every intelligent critic has raved about it so there's little point in adding more to what's been said. However the fact that Serenity has made far less money in 4 weeks than Saw II made this weekend is an appropriate post script to my Ashlee Simpson soap box.
We have to talk about this.
