Woe­bot’s lat­est install­ment may be a bit ten­den­tious in favor of Amer­i­can folk tra­di­tion over the UK’s, but it’s still very inter­est­ing to see the Cecil Sharp House.

[In my unsci­en­tif­ic opin­ion, there’s a cer­tain amount of valence exoti­cism that par­tial­ly explains why Woe­bot might favor Amer­i­can over UK folk. I think the shoe’s on the oth­er foot for Amer­i­can artists in the neo-folk tra­di­tion who tend to lion­ize Eng­land’s late ’60’s output.]

This is the first Richard Gere movie I’ve ever want­ed to see, and I’m not F for Fak­ing it.

[Apolo­gies for the trail­er — it is hope­less­ly lame and direct­ed at an audi­ence who is not you, dear reader.]

Hate to burst the Mir­a­cle Fortress bub­ble, but when all the usu­al sus­pects start shout­ing in the echo cham­ber, mak­ing com­par­isons to oth­er bands float­ing in the same End­less Sum­mer hype cycle [Pan­da Bear (love!) and Besnard Lakes (meh!)], it can all be a bit much. And a bit samey, don’t you think? I don’t mind the Jason Lytle vocals, but then they’re just Jason Lytle vocals in the end.

As an aside does any­one else remem­ber how embar­rass­ing Mag­net Mag­a­zine was when it came to a pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion of Beach Boys-esque bands on the run? You know, like how Apples in Stereo and Ele­phant 6 were going to take over the world? We’re still waiting.

In Silence, Shusaku Endo’s nov­el about the Jesuit­i­cal inva­sion, you’re sup­posed to feel com­pas­sion for the mis­sion­ar­ies. I did­n’t. But today I have a review of Andrew Bird’s “Heretics” up at Paper Thin Walls where­in I wax pop the­o­log­i­cal, talk tor­ture and quote from The Mer­chant of Venice…with­out a 200 word pre­am­ble com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed to the music!

[“Heretics” was the okayed track. I like “Dark Mat­ter” and “Scythi­an Empire” best.]