Lately I haven't actually been listening to much. That is, I'm listening to a lot of music, but it's basically been the same handful of records: Susanna & the Magical Orchestra (bjork meets julie doiron, not really that good), the new Bonnie Prince Billy, King Creosote's "Lavender Moon" (available at badger minor... whinsome acoustic folk that reminds me of Dick Gaughn; I downloaded the record, which is good, but this is definitely the best song), and Sufjan Stevens' Seven Swans. Seven Swans has grown on me a lot: Stevens' incessant repetition becomes much more of a strength with Michigan's prog-folk arrangements stripped away. The key to loving the album, I've found, is to play it loud.

I overplayed G Unit in my Norah Jones/G Unit playlist, so now I'm tired of that, and although the Kanye album continues to be great, I get a little annoyed whenever I think about it (ie, the anti-college schtick gets me down), so it's been off the turntable.

Consequently, a couple of old, very disparate tracks for your consumption:

Bert Jansch and John Renbourne - "East Wind". I realize these fellows are very well known, but for the uninitiated-- Bert Jansch was an acoustic guitar marvel, amazingly skillful but never showy; always sincere. He and Renbourne were the twin princes of acoustic folk in the mid 60s, mostly due to their instrumental prowess. This short track is like a brief sparkling demo of what they have to offer, taken from the 1966 Bert and John LP. Like John Fahey's British uncles. (John Renbourne went on to do some much more boring neo-folk stuff with Pentangle, which you should avoid, but almost all of Jasnch's stuff is worthy.)

Lit - "My Own Worse Enemy". A complete change of pace from the instrumental track above; I have no idea if Lit blazed US radio like it did the rock radio in Canada circa 1999, but if they didn't - they should have. A dark green pop-punk melody, gleeful but serious, guitars that stomp through bracken, stride through flaming brown carpet. I love so much about this song - the queasy vocoder/pitch-correction before the chorus, the brazen and proud teenage lyrics, the self-conscious self-loathing, the final chorus with "aah-oohs" and an epic arena feel (even though it's not an epic, arena song). This was one of my biggest "guilty pleasures" in the 90s, and one of the breakthrough tracks that got me to reevaluate how I thought about (ie, dismissed) pop music. The pleasure's not guilty any more.