Bjork, Live at the Auditorium Theatre

Nice Village Voice write-up on the National's recent stint opening for Arcade Fire in New York (via). I'm just bouncing off the walls with anticipation for Boxer next week and the show at the Metro next month. (Also, LOL: "grandma-throttling enthusiasm". This reminds me of J. Rod's classic line in his report from last year's Bonnaroo about his previous perception of Cat Power's music: "[this girl I was dating] would play Cat Power on her car stereo at a really low volume whenever I was in the car, so that it sounded to me like a field recording of the rape of a thousand grandmas. Bleah.")

OMG, even as a non-Pumpkins fan, I am totally in love with the blinding brilliance of these LOLCorgs (via) and I CAN HAS CORGAN?. "Mah cred, i mournz it!"

I was planning on reading the 33 1/3 book on Steely Dan's Aja anyway, but if we're getting (according to this excerpt, at least) witty wordsmith Donald Fagen dropping Don Ellis references 'n shit, I may have to bump it a little further up the queue.

Um, yeeeah, and I also saw Bjork live for the first time at the Auditorium Theatre on Saturday. Best concert ever? Pretty close to it. I have never heard a group of people cheer that loud, outside of a sporting event perhaps. Everyone in the place was freaking out left and right, and she was just shockingly good. (Or perhaps unshockingly, depending on how you want to look at it.) If I were going to make a mix-CD sampler of her stuff for the uninitiated, I could do worse than copping from that night's set list. It was a nearly perfect representation from all her previous full-lengths. The stuff from Vespertine (one of my top-five all-time-fave albums) brought the tears to the eyes. The only technical difficulty of the entire night was, unfortunately, some feedback at the beginning of "Unison," which did ruin the mood a bit, though. The most impressive technical achievement of the night, on the other hand, would have to be the GREEN LASERS OF DOOM that shot across the hall like lightning bolts during those awesome horn stabs in "Army of Me" ("and if you complain"--wham!--"once more..."). Obvy, I'm sure rigging all that electro-stuff up takes great skills, but the effect was staggeringly perfect in its simplicity. I'm not sure how else I can gush creatively or interestingly about the show other than to say that, aside from every minute of music that filled the theater, perhaps the best thing I heard on Saturday night was a little girl, probably about nine or ten, walking into the lobby behind me with her parents, saying "Mommy, I've got butterflies!" because she was so excited to be there. Me too, kid. Me too.