John Convertino - "When Mass Was Said In Latin". Everything, when rung, resounds. Some things resound longer than others (piano-strings, alarm clocks, heartbreaks). But all things do resound for a time. And so listening to this track, an instrumental by the man who usually plays drums in Calexico (and at one time for Giant Sand), I must ask: these are bells, right? They're not rib-bones, or river-stones? They're not regrets, or wants, or lost homes? Occam's Razor says bells but I have to ask, I have to ask. There's definitely something with the piano here, making those wide choral sounds - a track as fine as any Rachel's have recently recorded. There's definitely something with the piano here; bells, maybe. Or years. Years, rung.

[buy Ragland]

Buck 65 - "Centaur (Acoustic Version)". Buck 65 steps to the plate. He don't pull no punches. He looks the subject-matter square in the midsection and then does what needs to be done. He takes the voice of the Centaur, that mythical man-horse; he struts through the city; and he notes what you're all lookin' at. Yes the centaur is "drastically endowed", "crotchety in more ways than one". He won't pretend he's not. Over day-in-the-life acoustic guitar, wheezy organ and a little thumb-piano, he admits it, he admits everything. He doesn't ask for sympathy but just for people to maybe get over it. "Way out of proportion / My heart is the warmest / unfortunately for me my private part is enormous."

[buy This Right Here Is]

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Still thinking of going to the Dirty Three-curated ATP? Three of us need a fourth person to fill out our chalet. Email me!

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Elsewhere:

Caketrain Press is publishing Dolls, a chapbook of prose poetry by Todd Whalen. It looks like something special - and has cover art by our friend Matthew Feyld.

And the inimitable, remarkable mp3blog Moistworks is once again holding a Writers Week, with words-on-music by the authors Dana Spiotta, Jenny Offill, Rick Moody, Christopher Sorrentino and Susan Choi.