THE END

I'm lazy and it's late and all I want to say now to finish what was kind of a weak year-in-review:

- get Lykke Li's debut, it's the best happy-sad music in the world; great when you're lonely and even better when you're not
- get Sun Kil Moon's new album, even though it's no Ghosts of the Great Highway
- Damien Jurado inspires me, confounds me, mesmerizes me, I hope he does the same for you and frankly I wouldn't be one bit surprized
- it's tasking to post mp3s when yr laptop is broken, but I'm working on it
- I can't wait for the new J. Tillman record
- music is good for living things

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It was a good year, a lot changed for me. I'm hoping the wheels keep turning. Good night. See you next year.

HOW THINGS CHANGE, THEY CHANGE US

Sun Kil Moon - "Glenn Tipton"

Mark Kozelek sings I CAPitalized, an upright word, a word that matters - matters because I meant something to someone, now she's gone and "place ain't the same" and he's back in memory, he's singing for intimates past and (therefore) present - donut shops, cops at the table; the fighters, the guitar-flashers; the unsent letters & the heart-soft hours of the night. And these scenes just pass by, the hurts and the mends all know their time is coming and really, what can you do, what are love and sorrow anyway but lights and shadows, colors off the leaves, never remaining for long. Refusing to just repeat. The foggy-eyed awe of what next together, hand-in-hand, with the delirious stillness of what was.

Bowerbirds - "Bur Oak"

Remember those kids in grade school and the nicknames we came up with? Nick drank Sunkist, we called him Orange. Alex was a rascal, we called him Spanky. (Nobody remembers how Zack became Stella.) But we all know that these kids are grown, that they are trying to grow now - next time you see them, call them by the names we gave 'em. Maybe they'll say "no one's called me that in years" and maybe also swell a little and maybe, but only just barely-maybe, pine too for that shared impulse we had when we didn't need to search to impress or amaze: that stupid sudden spark that sticks and sticks and sticks.

OCEANS AND GHOSTS

Sun Kil Moon - “Lost Verses”

When a song nails the trick silence loves to pull: nothing but a dark calm, the kind you can swim, dive beneath the waves or float on your back with the sun, the clouds crossing the sky like a ritual -

I wish the ocean really was that way, like I always imagine it, moving through the air, above my ears, and I have Kitty Pryde’s superpower, Mark Kozelek’s guitars, and those voices to listen to.

What if your breath could be that steady? Does love swallow you up the way it swallows me, does it rescue you from doubt, from trouble, from fate? Or does love deliver you, and all that you carry, right back to what you ran from, whispering: Find that calm; where the stillness of the moon turns the silent tide, floating lightly to the song, into the sea.

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I haven’t heard the new REM album yet, but their Take Away Show is fucking great; so, you know, if that’s any indication.

Watching Norah Jones right now on Letterman, she looks and sounds divine. Think I’ll write about her next time.