mesclun thoughts

I can move in one month!  As in, my "financial backers" will allow me to overlap my lease starting June 1st (who needs a real job? oh wait, that's me...)!

And now for the debate: where to live? do I value space or awesome location more?  and, exactly how much of my stuff am I willing to toss in order to fit into a new apartment???

To help answer these questions, I began packing today.  This may seem extreme, unless you've ever seen me try to pack and leave a place, in which case you realize that this is oddly sensible.  I already have many things I am willing to part with, many of which are clothing (some come take them away if you want!)  Whenever I start to pack I always think that things are going well and that I don't have as many things as I had thought.  This is ALWAYS wrong, yet I am kindofsortofmaybe falling for the lie yet again.

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I regret to say that in my music reassessment, nothing has been as striking as my discovery about Crane Wife.  Some Loud Thunder: still not very good!  Sky Blue Sky: pleasant, but still makes me want to take a nap.

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This past weekend was Ana's birthday, and we went to botanica, where I spotted this pair of guys:

I don't know when this blog became about facial hair, really.  But just look at that beard!  And the funny moustache on the guy with the sweater!  Cracks me up everytime...

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On a parting note, I am newly loving Discovery...I attribute 90% of this love to it being a side project of Ra Ra Riot, and only 10% to it having something to do with Vampire Weekend.  I've really been in a RRR mood a lot recently.  Check them out if you haven't already!

and i will hang my head, hang my head low

After a few different conversations with Ana about "least favorite" albums of artists that we generally like, I proclaimed that the Crane Wife was my least favorite Decemberists album, and she agreed with me.  Granted, I had listened to it maybe two times when it first came out, was not instantly in love, and pretty much wrote off the entire thing.  I've been thinking about this a lot recently, as many subsequent people who heard about this have given passionate arguments as to why the Crane Wife might actually be their best album.  And so, I'm going back and re-listening and re-considering all of the "bad" albums of some of my favorite bands.  Albums that I had highly anticipated and did not love when they were first released.  I'm hoping to walk away with new revelations (and favorites?)

First up: The Crane Wife, The Decemberists (2006)

I've listened to it twice this week, all the way through.  And I must say off the bat that I was wrong.  It's really quite beautiful, both musically and as a cohesive unit of story-telling.  The opening to "Crane Wife 3" is fantastic, making me sad that I've been missing this for years now...