Annan Water

In the video, The Decemberists are playing our very own Stubb’s here in Austin, in March of this very year. It was a show I badly wanted to go to, but at that time I had too much other shit on my plate. Here’s hoping for another chance next year. The sound seems quite good. I’ve had people tell me the acoustics at Stubb’s aren’t all that. I can’t judge from my own experience; when I saw Gogol Bordello there last month I was directly in front of a bank of speakers and my hearing was gone before even the opening band.

This track is from The Hazards Of Love, which is going to be (SPOILER!) my album of the year when I do my top ten. I work very hard to the best little pretentious elitist I can be, and it warms my heart to find myself in someone’s target audience. There are very few things, musical or otherwise, on the market that aren’t aimed at an audience of the functionally illiterate. If a band with a name like The Decemberists can become successful, it’s a sign that our culture still hasn’t fully disappeared down the crapper. That makes me optimistic.

Brrrlak!

Finally found a good early Zap Mama video. The first album remains the best. I guess there’s only so far you can go with African a cappella, but I still wish they didn’t go to instruments. This song is an incredible aural collage of vocal styles.