Wednesday, December 14, 2005

She Used to Have a Carefree Mind of Her Own

Oh my God, my heart almost seized up this morning in a contraction of pure delight when I read this: Britt Daniel will cover Elvis Costello's "Veronica" on an upcoming episode of Veronica Mars. It's a real Christmas miracle! (I love saying that anytime something even mildly pleasant happens during December. The cuffs of my pants didn't get soaked in the snow and slush? It's a real Christmas miracle! My tom yum soup came to the table spiced just right? It's a real Christmas miracle!) Somebody better rip an MP3 off their TiVo and make it available online after it airs.

I guess this is as good a time as any to announce that Gimme Fiction is the number one album on my personal top ten list this year. How'd it sneak past Sufjan and Laura Veirs and the Decemberists? Hell if I know. But, as much as I've tried to look at it from every possible angle, there's no denying it at this point. It's just the right length, it's creepy and cryptic and somehow optimistic (the Addams fam-i-ly ::snap, snap::), it's an incredibly earnest meditation on the role of artiface artifice in our lives, and, of course, it's a magnificent vehicle for Daniel's voice. I would probably love any band that featured a vocalist as charismatic and precisely balanced on the edge of chaos and razor-sharp control as he is, so it's just a massive, massive bonus that Spoon is also so interesting musically. Gimme Fiction, ladies and germs, Gimme Fiction. Me and Steven King, man, we're riding this one into the sunset. (Ed. note: ::gag::)

Speaking of top ten lists, the Onion A.V. Club covers the year in music in this week's issue. Essential reading, as always.

Has anybody else been watching House on Tuesday nights? It doesn't really have any of the traits that are usually prerequisites for me to get into a television show (cumulative emotional attachment to richly drawn characters, intricately layered storylines that build on each other over weeks and months and years, supernatural events and/or sports writers), but I nonetheless have come to genuinely look forward to flipping over to Fox after Gilmore Girls is over. Oh, how I do love Hugh Laurie, and it's always good to see the once and future Bobbi Bernstein getting steady work. A killer Cynthia Nixon guest spot last night, too.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

*artifice

I wouldn't ever post in someone's blog just to correct a misspelling/typo, but I think it's midly ironic in this case.

Anonymous said...

Is Stephen King's list for real, or did I mis some kind of Cosmic joke?

allison said...

Would that King's list were a joke, my good man, would that it were.... Isn't it kind of weirdly, horribly, annoyingly, randomly awesome in a way that makes you want to stick your finger down your throat?

Anonymous said...

is that Cujo Steven King?

Anonymous said...

okayokayokay, i'll just need to step up for my man stephen king, here, for a brief moment. i have read most of his books, finding them variously bland, schlocky, brilliant, terrifying, poignant, and captivating. he's like that. aaaaand, maybe his music taste doesn't really matter to me. but don't write him off because he's so very steeped in the pulp and schlock of the checkout-line horror genre! see, please, the Dark Tower series, some of the finest examples of the kind of "cumulative emotional attachment to richly drawn characters, intricately layered storylines that build on each other over weeks and months and years, [and] supernatural events and/or sports writers" that i know you dig! *nora.rocket*

Anonymous said...

Midly?

Funny (or maybe you were attempting to be ironic) that someone pointing out a typo would commit such an error in their own insensitive comment. Glass houses...

-bak

Anonymous said...

Speaking of glass houses, why is it that the pot can't call the kettle black? Wouldn't the pot be the resident expert in blackness?

I apologize if my first comment was insensitive, Allison.

Anonymous said...

Another misspelling. "resident expert" is actually spelled L-A-M-E.