Lis­ten: Björk — Earth Intrud­ers [via Idolator]

It’s been twelve years since I first heard her and I still can’t get over her voice. [Longer than that maybe? Did I catch a Sug­ar­cubes video at a friend’s house as a kid? Was it dur­ing a hos­pi­tal vis­it as a teenag­er? That might’ve been it: I was lying in a bed, more or less total­ly still, eyes wide open, enraptured…with an IV jammed deep into my arm.] There’s some­thing so mag­i­cal about her vocal range and her will­ing­ness to try dif­fer­ent things, or maybe more dar­ing, the same thing she did years ago, the fer­al cat or del­i­cate wood­nymph come out to play.

With “Earth Intrud­ers” I feel like she’s doing laps on a fig­ure eight track, criss-cross­ing ter­ri­to­ry she cov­ered some time ago. Char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, old­er ele­ments sur­face, hel­ter skel­ter: snip­pets of “Human Behav­ior” emerge for a moment before sink­ing into the spas­tic col­lage and the mil­i­tan­cy she exhib­it­ed on Post is there too! Then again, these, plus the con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of celebri­ty guest spots, could be the hall­marks of her midlife cri­sis record.

Don’t take my word for it. Trust Mike Pow­ell at The Agen­da. It’s not a con­dem­na­tion of Vol­ta, by the way, just a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism. After Ves­per­tine and Medul­la, Vol­ta seems a lit­tle hard to believe, much less take seriously.

As far as folk met­al goes I think Grails are it. [Full dis­clo­sure: I still haven’t heard that Asun­der record that came out last year.] I was a big­ger fan of the Black Tar Prophe­cies comp art­work, but it goes with­out say­ing that Burn­ing Off Impu­ri­ties puts the impro­vi­sa­tion­al instincts and impuls­es they honed record­ing the EPs to good use. You can find my review of “Dead Vine Blues” at Paper Thin Walls here, accom­pa­nied by a short inter­view with drum­mer Emil Amos.

The Fad­er is a more or less use­less publication/viral mar­ket­ing rag, but they take nice pho­tos. Here are some of No Age at SXSW.

I hard­ly ever watch TV. I’m either woe­ful­ly late to watch shows [see Steve Car­rel­l’s The Office, which I thought I was the imi­ta­tion crab meat of com­e­dy. I was wrong.] Or I nev­er tune in at all [Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment. I’m still sor­ry. I bought and did­n’t Net­flix the DVDs but that’s no con­so­la­tion.] I almost com­mit­ted the same par­ty foul with Tina Fey’s near­ly can­celed 30 Rock, but I’ve been saved, spe­cial thanks to NBC’s prof­li­gate use of the inter­net. Phew!

Lis­ten: Dinosaur Jr. — Almost Ready

At the time fad­ing into his­to­ry seemed the prop­er thing to do. Dinosaur Jr. had lost the oomph that made those first three records dis­tinc­tive and vital touch­stones to any­one grow­ing up in the Nineties. After that, it was Mas­cis’ nasal drawl and gui­tar lead­ing the way to occa­sion­al moments of bril­liance. But it just was­n’t good enough.

Beyond, their first record since reunit­ing, isn’t all that great either yet some­how in hind­sight it makes me wish that they would’ve labored on regard­less, nos­tal­gia be damned, mak­ing one bad record after anoth­er, min­ing the same sound, the same mate­r­i­al, for­ev­er and ever, amen.

So what if that would’ve made J Mas­cis indie rock­’s Peter Framp­ton? Isn’t he any­way? Con­sid­er the alter­na­tive. Integri­ty isn’t a word that comes to mind when I think of Nickelback.