New Music That I've Been Too Lazy to Write About

Since its release date in May I've been trying to put into words my love for Spoon's newest album, Gimme Fiction. Allmusic has a very good review. And by "very good" I mean that it mostly agrees with mine. She gives it four out of five stars, but I give it six out of five, so together we average five of five.

One of my favorite songs is My Mathematical Mind, in which Britt Daniel repeatedly sings:

My mathematical mind can see the breaks
I'm gonna stop riding the brakes

But the song has a steady six-eight time signature. As layer upon layer of instruments, driven by chainsaw guitars and crashing cymbals, raise the tension, the beat stays rock-solid. It reaches near-cacaphony when horns enter the mix and bring order to the sound, until it plays out to a calm piano. The song literally "rides the brakes," mirroring the lyrics. To me, that's beautiful and witty.

I want to believe that Gimme Fiction will be this year's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and this underrated band will finally get the attention it deserves. Maybe it will when Spoon returns from Europe to begin their North American tour.

I like the latest from the White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan, although I wish there were more guitar than piano. (Only three songs feature Jack's amazing guitar.) And Blue Orchid, the first single, reminds me a lot of his work with Electric Six. (While you're at their website, check out the beautiful, disturbing, thrilling video, too.)

I find there's a lot to chew on in Satan. As with Elephant, its complexity belies the White Stripes' primitivist persona. Little Ghost is a fun, footstomping bluegrass lovesong to a specter. Take, Take, Take is a rocker about the greed of fans. Instinct Blues satisfies my lust for Jack's blues chops, like Ball and Biscuit did on Elephant. The album ends with a laugh in the country ballad I'm Lonely (But I Ain't That Lonely Yet).

Anyway, I like the album a lot. Funksoulbruvva Pat and I have tickets to see Jack and Meg perform it at the Masonic in Detroit in October. By the way, is it just me or does the title sound Spinal Tap-ish?

I'm a sucker for power pop, so I bought Ex-Girlfriends, the debut cd from Low Millions. Unfortunately, there's too little power in this pop. The band was manufactured to support Adam Cohen, the gifted singer-songwriter who happens to be the son of Leonard Cohen. Frankly, I hear the ghost of Donny Iris on this album. I like Eleanor and Low Millions (song title = band name), but Cohen probably needs to go out on his own.

Woman King, the EP from Iron & Wine (a.k.a. Samuel Bean) is purely gorgeous acoustic folk rock. His voice reminds me of Dan Fogleburg's in its subdued intensity. His lyrics are romantic, with lots of references to "my lady." It could be cheesy, but it's surrounded by lilting melody, hand-held percussion and soaring harmonies. Works for me, anyway.

My neighbor Jamie, a cofounder of Great Lakes Myth Society, hooked me up with a promo of their first (self-titled) cd. GLMS does for Michigan what Fairport Convention did for England: their folk-based pop tells romantic tales of Michigan's past. Railroads, lumbering, shipping, the Upper Peninsula and the Great Lakes themselves infuse every track, whether they're the actual subject or not. The gorgeous Across the Bridge is my favorite on the album. The bridge is the Mackinac Bridge, of course, and the song is a joyful ode to the Upper Peninsula, about the warmth that comes from belonging to place. And when they sing, "If you don't know where we are/We'll light a lantern at the bar," they want you to belong, too.

I'm hoping that GLMS will move beyond explicitly historical songs, like No. VI, where we learn that Novi, Michigan was originally just a Roman-numeraled railroad stop. It subsitutes an interesting historical tidbit for the romance and myths that they evoke elsewhere.

It's my personal loss that I haven't gone to their local shows at the Blind Pig and the Elbow Room; they're taking August off to work on their next album.

I never thought Coldplay could be boring. Then I listened to X & Y. In fact, I keep trying to listen to it but I can't keep it in the cdplayer long enough.

Okay -- enough with my amateur record reviews. Go get Gimme Fiction and let's rave about Spoon.

Watch Robert Citino on the History Channel

Neighbor, friend, and EMU history professor Rob Citino will be on the History Channel's HistoryCENTER Sunday, 7/31 @ 8 :30 a.m. Rob specializes in Germany's interwar military, but he'll be discussing the fall of Japan in the last eight months of WWII. I guarantee he will be entertaining as well as knowledgeable.

Photos

I have years' worth of photographs in piles of envelopes stored in boxes around my house. We never do anything with them. It seems a shame, but I steadfastly refuse to become a scrapbooking geek at this age. There's time enough for that when I'm old and dottering -- or older and more dottering, anyway.

The digital camera seemed to be the answer to my problems. No envelopes, no boxes, no duplicates or lousy shots! Make infinite copies of the good ones and delete the baddies! Uh-huh. On my various hard drives I have -- you guessed it -- folders upon folders of digital images that I don't use but can't delete. Obviously, the photographic media isn't the problem. Someday I'll burn all the images to CDs which I'll store, uncatalogued, in envelopes and boxes.

Please allow me to share a few pics from this year.



Jackson after his first communion.



La Familia: Aunt Patti, Andrew, Jackson, Julie, Grandma and Grandpa



Catalpa blossoms. Sadly, they don't last long. After only a few days they fall and cover my lawn with white-and-yellow-ness, as if spilled from a giant bag of popcorn.



The tree, abloom.



Tiger lily.



Jackson and classmates upon a pile of dragon's gold at the Toledo Zoo.



Andrew at the West Middle School honors assembly. The medal is for his gpa; the trophy is for being one of the "Top Twenty Scholars" throughout his middle school career. The slouching posture is for being cool.



Christian Nationalists whooping it up in the Independence Day parade.





A couple of Elvii from this summer's Elvisfest. {Note: These pictures are not explicitly authorized by the promoters of Elvisfest or by%

Trust, but Verify.

While waiting in the checkout line at the Dollar Tree ("Everything's a dollar!") we noticed a rack of pregnancy tests smack dab in the middle of your garden variety impulse items. I'm thinking you'd want to buy a few for greater confidence.

"But honey, I won best out of three! Anyway, what do you say we call him Buck? Honey?"

On the other hand, maybe this isn't the time to bargain hunt.

More on Karl Rove, Traitor and Perjurer

Okay, okay, we don't know that for sure yet. But it has a nice ring to it, yes?

David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, has two nice pieces, here and here. In the second piece, Corn guesses why Robert Novak isn't in jail with Judith Miller. (The unspoken answer is that Novak is a weasel.) And truthout.org likes to bundle several articles at once, with articles from Joe Conason, Salon.com and Editor & Publisher and Editor & Publisher, the AP, and American Progress. Lastly, there's a piece by Bill Israel in E&P regarding his personal experience with Rove, and why no journalist should cover for his actions.

It seems that speculating on Rove has become a cottage industry. I wonder what the oddsmakers in Vegas are saying?

The Fab Five Marches On!

Trustees Amy Doyle and Tom Reiber




(L - R) VP Floyd Brumfield, Pres. Andy Fanta, Hannah Getto, Esme Getto, Trustee Cameron Getto.

Not Pictured: Trustee Kim Hoppe, Trustee Jeff Fulton.


Next "Important" Meeting:

Monday, July 11: Ms. Doyle takes her seat; elections for board officers will be held. Please try to attend this meeting. I plan to start a standing ovation for Ms. Doyle to welcome her to the Board, and I would like to have your help.

Karl Rove Is the Antichrist.

If you need any more evidence of his evil, Matthew Cooper's notes will reveal him to be the one who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. That's according to an MSNBC analyst as reported by Editor & Publisher magazine. Apparently, Rove told the grand jury something different. Don't you just love the smell of perjury in the morning?

If Rove is even humiliated or forced to resign over this, I will dance the macarena all night long. Of course, if he's indicted and found guilty of perjury or the actual outing of Ms. Plame, then I'll be running naked through the streets. Such will be my joy at seeing good win over evil.