I’ve been swamped. I love duck­ing in here like I’m try­ing to get out of the rain…which is a nice segue [cough] into:

1. Rihan­na — ‘Umbrel­la’ [I’m inter­view­ing her lat­er this week. It’s about that time for R&B pro­tec­tion bal­lads. There’s a war on, after all.]
2. Mutant Sounds. I was a lit­tle tired of Chocoreve [even though that blog has some amaz­ing moments] so I threw this in the blogroll in its place. Brace your­self for tons of weird music, post­ed faster that you can reload your rapid­share account.
3. The new, yet not so new House is a Feel­ing. The team blog con­cept is great, except that undoubt­ed­ly every­one’s already over­com­mit­ted else­where [Back and Forth, RIP] and the blog just dies alone [though some a great repos­i­to­ries that should­n’t be delet­ed.] Ronan’s picked up the torch quite admirably here, with nice new mix­es appar­ent­ly almost daily.
4. Try­ing to under­stand why the newest New Pornog­ra­phers song just isn’t that good, yet is still being post­ed every­where on the inter­net with an OMG tag. Just anoth­er instance of all your blogs are belong to us, I guess.
5. Net­flix. Dream­girls and Kies­lows­ki. Where the hel­l’s the Waj­da war tril­o­gy though? Hav­ing been a ded­i­cat­ed employ­ee and devo­tee of brick and mor­tar rental since for­ev­er, this was a major step for me. It already makes a hell of a lot more sense than leav­ing the house to find titles that every oth­er nerd in town wants too. And new releas­es? Sweet. I can’t wait for the Ray­mond Bernard box to come out!

Liars announce their fourth album. I had always hoped that they’d alter­nate releas­es with Elec­tre­lane so I could always have a clear cut num­ber one album of the year. If my Jackin’ Pop bal­lot had actu­al­ly pub­lished, you would’ve seen that I’ve devel­oped a pat­tern in my vot­ing. On the oth­er hand, maybe it will suck and I’ll get a reprieve, but that’s doubtful.

Pitch­fork cel­e­brates Miles Davis’ birth­day, Obtusi­ty-style. Is Pitch­fork becom­ing the Urban Out­fit­ters of music crit­i­cism? Or did that hap­pen a long time ago and I nev­er noticed?

If you haven’t heard that new Smash­ing Pump­kins song that ‘MMR is play­ing like it’s 1995, wait about ten min­utes. It’ll hap­pen. I’m gonzo for it, but I spent most of my ado­les­cence rid­ing around in my Volk­swag­on blast­ing my radio-record­ed “Dis­arm” on my crap car stereo for the bet­ter part of two years I think. [Why did I tape over that mix­tape? The reck­less­ness of youth! There were Repo Records com­mer­cials on it that were like inci­den­tal music.]

I’d almost for­got­ten how absolute­ly awk­ward Bil­ly Cor­gan is onstage; then again, ten years ago in the fren­zied atmos­phere of the Spec­trum, Smash­ing Pump­kins put on one of the bitchi­est shows I’ve ever seen. [Rumor had it they’d been asked to play a longer encore to accom­mo­date the park­ing dis­as­ter that was about to unfold anyway.]

[Did you know that “Cherub Rock” is going to be Gui­tar Hero III?]

Why is it that when­ev­er No Fun Fest hap­pens, I’m at a grad­u­a­tion par­ty? And seri­ous­ly, No Fun bands should, ahem, band togeth­er and tour after the fes­ti­val, or before it. I’d go, even if it meant head­ing to West Philly, pro­vid­ed I was­n’t at a grad­u­a­tion par­ty that night.