Port St. Willow...god-damned beautiful

I missed this the first time, looks like around the middle of 2012, but now Downtown is re-releasing Port St. Willow's Holiday and all of us slacking, not-paying-attention, anti-hipsters get a second crack at gorgeous "Amawalk." I'm hearing Jeff Buckley...your mileage may vary.



By the way, we are bracing for one to three feet of snow tonight and tomorrow, so bear with me if I disappear for a while.

Also, not sure why this is happening, but a ton of people have been lately checking out my defensive, ridiculous reaction to an ILX lambasting a couple of years back. (Even now, every time I like a record that I'm pretty sure won't make a ripple, I hear a shrill, male voice saying "The Soft Pack? The Soft Pack?" indignantly. Kent Lambert told me the best thing is to hear these criticisms in the voice of the comics book guy on the Simpsons.) So, anyway, glad people are enjoying (and re-enjoying) my trauma...I was so shell-shocked that I named the post "Also some reactions to my mid-year" when it was clearly my year-end. Oh well.

Jeff Buckley

I've been listening to Grace for a few different reasons lately. I started because I was reviewing the new Gary Lucas disc, The Ordeal of Civility, and I wanted to hear him play with Buckley again. And then I was reviewing Wild Beasts' Smother, and I wanted to see if their voices were really similar or just both high and full of vibrato. (I think there's more to it, actually.) And then once I started listening to it, it became not about those reasons and more about the fact that this is a wonderful, wonderful album and it's been way too long since I spent time with it.

So, happy Friday, and let's not be maudlin about it. (Personally, all I ever had access to was the records, and they're still here...) Here he is performing "Mojo Pin" in Chicago in 1995.