I still have a few more wrap-up posts due over at Blind­ed by the Hype, but then I’ll be back here post­ing about how few bands I actu­al­ly saw in Austin. I feel like the only sou­venirs I picked up in Texas were stress, exhaus­tion and a ter­ri­ble sunburn.

And I’m twit­ter­ing. Check it out, if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s like a writer­ly safe­ty valve thus far.

Why is it that now that I own an iPhone, I sud­den­ly think the iPhone com­mer­cial theme is the same as Motel 6? Have these awful, painful Apple ear­buds dri­ven me to mad­ness? I think that’s entire­ly possible.

So a lit­tle while ago I splurged and bought a pair of Ety­mot­ic Research 6i Iso­la­tor ear­phones. They’re excel­lent. But I’m not writ­ing to extoll their virtue on the basis of per­for­mance alone. No, I’m writ­ing this morn­ing because I ran them through the laun­dry — washed and dried — like an absolute dunce. I was sure they were fin­ished, but lo and behold they remain in per­fect work­ing order.

I am grate­ful to Ety­mot­ic Research’s team of engi­neers and the man­u­fac­tur­ers who ensured that they were water­tight. Thanks.

I’m lit­er­al­ly drown­ing in new music, no thanks to the pub­li­cists who send me count­less emails to at least three email address­es and rarely deliv­er any actu­al music. I know that it’s passe to com­plain about pub­li­cists and that most peo­ple find ways around them any­way, but I feel that if bands knew how mis­man­aged their pub­lic­i­ty game is, they’d be outraged.

Yes­ter­day I enjoyed Fleet Fox­es’ Ragged Road and MGMT’s Orac­u­lar Spec­tac­u­lar very much, though both made me won­der whether dance rock was mak­ing its long-await­ed return, or if this is just ‘folk­tron­i­ca’ hap­pen­ing all over again. In any case, Orac­u­lar Spec­tac­u­lar remind­ed me just how long it’s been since the Flam­ing Lips burst back onto the scene with The Soft Bul­letin. It also taught me again that I real­ly need to lis­ten to these insane­ly hyped albums main­ly because the blogs describ­ing them tend to miss what makes them so hyped in the first place.