by request of my sister i am going to link my daily music blog addictions, then i will get into the stuff i have been digging lately.

Are You Familiar?
Pretty Pony
Sixeyes
Daughters of Invention
Palms Out
Disco not Disco

the last place that i check is the Hype Machine which is essentially a search engine for music blogs.

after that roundup i should probably actually talk about music.

this week i have really been getting into the rapper Lupe Fiasco, he first popped up on a Kanye track off the last album and totally killed it, completely stole the track away from 'Ye. his record comes out early this summer, but the video for the song "Kick, Push" is already on MTV2 and FUSE (which i totally love right now). not only is he a rapper that skates, but he has an amazing flow and he wears glasses. i am really curious to hear the rest of the album.

the new Islands track "rough gem" sounds almost exactly like the best songs off the first Unicorns album, which in my mind is a good thing.

i heard The Cardigans "love fool" at lipstick for the first time in a long time. i had never really considered it for a dance night before then, but it totally killed the audience there and at Rock It! this past sunday, shout out to Romeo & Juliet!

i am also getting really hooked on the new Phoenix single also thanks to lipstick, as well as the dudes in Brilliant Red Lights.

that's all for now, nothing really new to report on the movie front, been watching a lot of buffy/angel. i am going to start watching empire, which is all about ancient rome, in a bit so i will report on that later.

i really love it when something that i have been waiting/looking for comes into the store as a promo. this has only happened with the John Vanderslice record, and now with the new album by the Presets. i had heard a few tracks from the Presets from various online blogs and was intrigued to hear more, so i was very pleasantly surprised to see it in the promo bin the other day when i arrived for work.

overall the album is good, not amazing, because it fails to deliver on the potential of its best tracks. "the girl and the sea" is my current addiction and will most likely feature prominently in the Rock It! playlist this coming sunday. another track that might see the light of day (or night?) at Rock It! is the newest song by the band Pony Up!, the song is called "the truth about cats and dogs (is that they die)" and aptly demonstrates their talent for writing the cutest pop songs about disturbing subjects. Pony Up! is an all-female band that writes cute, but oftimes sexually provocative songs with simple beats and nice harmonies. i actually worked their first album during the summer i spent in LA working at Dim Mak and they were one of the only bands outside of Bloc Party that i thought had a legitimate chance at blowing up. i think this new album might be their ticket if this first song is any indication, that song plus the fact that steve aoki is currently some sort of indie-hipster demigod is certainly a good starting point.

i watched the Goblet of Fire the other day, and thought it did a decent job of re-telling the book, but it has been awhile since i read it, so i don't know for sure. i also think that the Harry Potter books have kinda been written like movie scripts since the beginning, sure they were books first but they were books that were written for a market.

i was going to update this blog more frequently, but i guess i got distracted for awhile. here's hoping i can do a bit better in the future.

i wanna try something new at this point, i think i want to segue this blog into something more than just a place for random rants. i am going to start writing about the music, movies and books that i consume as part of my daily life.

this week's music:
the new matt bauer ep: i saw this guy twice in the last week and both times he was performing material from his new album. the new songs all have that same hauntingly beautiful feel that has made "window hill" off his previous album one of my favorite songs of this winter.
paul davis's podcast: this can be found on his blog which is located at: http://anginamonologues.blogspot.com/ and it is full of folky goodness.
murder by death - until morale improves, the beatings will continue: i am listening to this song as i write this and i felt i had to include it, even though it is not particularly new. it has a really fantastic sound that i wish the band replicated in their other tracks. plus, the line "i'll drink whiskey instead of water 'cause i can't stand to be sober in this place" really appeals to me.

this week's movies:
v for vendetta: i really liked this film, but the group of people that i went with came out of the movie as a mixed bag. i think part of the problem was that all of the advertising for the movie made it seem very action-oriented when in reality it was much more psychological. i would have known that the story was not particularly action-packed if i had read the graphic novel first. but, in hindsight i am actually glad that i did it in this order with this particular film. i am not sure that i would have enjoyed the movie as much if i had seen it first because it takes several departures from the story that helped with the pacing and tone of the movie but might have upset me if i had known about them at the time.
9 songs: i put this movie in my netflix queue because i was curious to see what it was all about, pitchfork made a pretty big deal about it a few months ago because it featured all of these indie bands performing live as well as on the soundtrack. i made it about 9 minutes into the movie before i started fast forwarding to the live performances. from what i could tell, the movie is essentially a concert DVD interspersed with sex scenes and really boring pseudo-poetic rants about antarctica.

this week's books:
slow river - nicola griffith: this book took me a lot longer than normal to finish, which is strange, because normally if i like a book i will have it done in a day or two. this one took me more like two weeks, it wasn't a particularly dense read and i actually liked it for the most part. i liked her other book stay a lot more. that book felt like it was a woman writing andrew vachss, whereas the characters in slow river were just not as compelling.
the summer country - james a. hetley: i just finished this book earlier this evening, i found it at the library while looking for something by an author with a similar name. the jacket blurb was fairly interesting even though i don't usually like books that mix fantasy and modern times. however, this book also had a positive review from lynn flewelling (author of luck in the shadows, one of my favorite books of all time) and that is enough for me to give any book a chance. i am going to let her words speak for me in this case; "a wonderful debut, by turns beautiful and utterly brutal."