A few pass­ing thoughts while I try to fin­ish up this over­due Andrew Bird review.

Things I’ve heard late­ly and liked:

• Boris with Michio Kuri­hara — Rain­bow
• Gui Borat­to — Chro­mo­pho­bia
• Elec­tre­lane — No Shouts, No Calls
• LCD Soundsys­tem — Sound of Silver

A few records I’m on the fence about:

• Low — Drums and Guns [pret­ty, but too almost too friend­ly. I’m still com­plete­ly per­plexed by Low.]
• The Ponys — Turn the Lights Out [pro: recent Son­ic Youth jam-ori­ent­ed indie rock; con: recent Son­ic Youth jam-ori­ent­ed indie rock]

Total­ly not mak­ing the cut:

• Aere­ogramme — My Heart Has a Wish that You Would Not Go

Two artists that I’ve cho­sen as what to look out for post SXSW hoopla, more or less arbitrarily:

• No Age
• Blitzen Trap­per

Apart from the occa­sion­al laugh at cor­po­rate machi­na­tions, straw hench­men and those who pay for their ser­vices, Col­son White­head­’s uni­ver­sal­ly acclaimed book Apex Hides the Hurt comes off as bland as the cul­ture he indicts, and worse, lacks gris­tle to gnaw on. When White­head osten­si­bly takes on the Great Amer­i­can Cer­berus, a three head­ed mon­ster named Race, Busi­ness and Lan­guage, you might expect a play­ful­ly cyn­i­cal, but thorny tale of strug­gle in the bru­tal Amer­i­can wilder­ness, writ­ten in lan­guage that toys with main­stream notions of being “post-race” in a con­sumer-dom­i­nat­ed monoculture.

Fact is, that nev­er hap­pens. You might expect to find the traces of Elli­son crit­ics told you to look for, but you won’t. Then again, you may find E. Franklin Fra­zier, if you were look­ing for him at all, and if you did, it would­n’t be in the man­ner you might expect. Apex Hides the Hurt makes a crude attempt at plac­ing its unnamed, nar­cis­sis­tic nar­ra­tor out­side of his­to­ry, result­ing in the all too pre­dictable “we’re-all-in-this-togeth­er” epiphany after about 150 pages of half-assed, half-as-clever-as-he-thinks-it-is mar­ket­ing prat­tle, with a bit of muti­la­tion to chron­i­cle our hero’s fall from grace. Literally.

Turns out Jes­sa Crispin’s delight­ful­ly dis­mis­sive take was spot on.

I’m a lit­tle late to this, but check your sched­ule and The Agen­da while you’re at it.

Com­plete­ly awe­some guy Todd Burns and I had been talk­ing late­ly about how his­to­ry seem­ing­ly left inter­net dailies behind and spawned a mil­lion shit­ty up-to-the-moment after-mar­ket echo cham­bers. It’s fit­ting that Sty­lus could take the best of its deep-seat­ed weirdo spir­it [and esprit de corps] and put it to good use.

Is it me, or will SXSW birth about zero buzz acts this year? Am I get­ting this sense because I’m read­ing the most bor­ing indus­try blogs around [read: all of them?] Most read as though they’re not only writ­ten in a haze of exhaus­tion [under­stand­able, all things con­sid­ered], but also out of a basic sense of oblig­a­tion [read: self-preser­va­tion] more than effer­ves­cent enjoy­ment, much less crit­i­cal thought.

The over­all mood is rem­i­nis­cent of David Cross’ Bhopal char­ac­ter from Mr. Show, a sal­low Asian child chained to a type­writer in a murky base­ment, writ­ing scripts in sweat­shop con­di­tions. SXSW seems to have brought that free­wheel­ing spir­it of cap­i­tal­ism and bad mar­ket­ing to repro­duce SPIN’s loathe­some “jour­nal­is­tic” mod­el of pic­tures and cap­tions. Are we hav­ing fun yet?

And can we cool it with all the pic­tures and men­tions of bar­be­cue? We get it: the food is good. There’s lots of traf­fic. It’s hec­tic and sweaty and crowd­ed. A con­ven­tion is a con­ven­tion is a con­ven­tion. Tell me more about the music!

[Last­ly, who does­n’t have a par­ty at this thing these days? Has every­one become a B2B [blog to blog] salesman?]

If you had­n’t checked it recent­ly, Alt-Week­ly Death­watch is pick­ing up steam. They point out David Car­r’s recent arti­cle cel­e­brat­ing a year’s worth of chaos at the Vil­lage Voice and its fam­i­ly of publications.

How long before there’s a death­watch on first gen­er­a­tion mp3 blogs? Or all the web­sites that emu­lat­ed Pitch­fork and did­n’t get on the adver­tis­ing gravy train ear­ly enough, at least not before those first gen­er­a­tion mp3 blogs snagged that cash [or payola?]

UPDATE: Some­one at the New Times home office total­ly checks all blogs that men­tion Alt-Week­ly Death­watch! This is me say­ing hul­lo dere read­er 66.235.245.2!