it's been one week, vol. 5

Happy longest day of the year! Last year it was sweltering, but this week has been beautiful and mild. I took a little coffee break in Madison Square park the other day on my way back down from midtown. Pretty perfect, I must say.

Aside from listening to Yeezus, and being inadvertently sucked into having an interest in the Stanley Cup Finals, this week brought us:

- There's now a super awesome mosaic of David Bowie outside of the Rag & Bone store on Elizabeth St. It's made up of the lyrics to Heroes and Fashion.

- CHVRCHES played The Mother We Share, which is my favorite song of theirs, live on Jimmy Fallon the other night. Maybe they've just been playing She's All That too much on tv lately, but she reminds me of a (doe-eyed elf version of) Rachel Leigh Cook.

- How did I not know about MØ before? I was catching up on some of my music blog reading, and I had skipped over all the coverage on them previously. For shame, because now I'm obsessed. Their first album will be out this fall! Check out their Yours Truly performance:

and, their new video for "Waste of Time" (which I enjoy, minus the snake...) :
- Pitchfork finally released the set times for the festival which is now less than a month away!! Of course, the things my friends and I want to see overlap and we'll have to make some annoying choices. The biggest being, do we want to have an R. Kelly dance party, or a crazy TNGHT dance party on Sunday night? Choices, gah! At least I'll be free to watch Foxygen...if I get there at the stupidly early time they're on.

- Finally, I'm a bit surprised by how sad I was about James Gandolfini's death. Not that it is unwarranted, but my connection to him was not even so deep -- I wasn't a big watcher of The Sopranos (though my dad was and would talk about it all the time), but it was very sudden and untimely.

just let me hear your voice, just let me listen

All sorts of great, non-internet/ real life things have filled my time this week. And since I'm currently on the bus headed up to reunion for the weekend, my "week" is officially over. By far the greatest part of my week was last night's The National concert at Barclays which I attended with Ana. We got there a bit before doors opened, and despite being in a line stretching down Atlantic, found ourselves in the 2nd row. While it was my third time seeing them live, and the biggest venue, it was by far the closest I've ever been. The dude standing in front of me even got a high-five from Matt at the end (and declared he was never washing his hand again...)

Their stage presence is as captivating as ever. The projections and lighting they have for this tour is impressive and beautifully done. The new material sounded great, but I'm a sucker mostly for their tendency to freak the fuck out on the older stuff (I'm looking at you, Mr. November and Squalor Victoria). They did a great version of Apartment Story (one of my favorites), plus all the songs from the new album which I've been drawn to (Graceless, I Should Live in Salt, etc). And, as a surprise, Annie Clark showed up fresh off a plane to join them for This Is The Last Time. As a footnote to the encore, they came back out to do their acoustic version of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks. It was a perfect closing which made an arena-sized show seem small and intimate.