so Empire it's in ruins

"The Tony" at Marcello's deli

Research Turtles, Research Turtles
Joe Adranga, Fall Back
The Mountain Goats, All Eternals Deck

Media: My trip through an eight-course French meal at Madidi's and the complex relationinship between then and now that is Clarksdale, MS appears in the April issue of Country Roads.

I started out pure with Morton Feldman but was led astray into power pop territory and lo, it served me well, for the new Mountain Goats is a thing of beauty. I think I really love their (his) every other record and this is markedly in the Tallahassee/Sunset Tree/Heretic Pride upswing part of the pendulum. Then I was led further stray into pastrami and dijon dressing at my friend Gene's new deli and then good news about a new book project thing came through the wires offering a momentary distraction from the existing one and I've been going on with everyone who will listen about Bret Easton Ellis Empire vs post-Empire thing and my buddy Lance made a good point that Ellis is about as Empire as it gets and the Newsweek in which the story appeared is so Empire it's in ruins.

I thought about that and my Clarksdale article linked above and this new Mountain Goats which infuses Mr. Darnielle's formidable death metal interests, to the point of being produced by a death metal guy I think, yet sounding anything but. The Mountain Goats Sound is a perpetual issue, that jambox informality that established the nascent group as anything but, the fact that the Mountain Goats was just one dude (Darnielle was a pioneer in the fields of the one-guy band) when for at least half a decade, Mountain Goats has been a band that did pretty clean studio records. There is the idea of the thing that attracts us; attraction is after all, an idea itself so it is natural that it gravitates to other ideas - and then there is the messy matter of the reality of that to which the idea leads us, and the best way to address a mess is order. These tidy Mountain Goats albums remind me of going to someone's crappy apartment and yet finding it much better kept than the nicer place you came from, like they have cute curtains and flowers in a vase on the table. As Moe observed when trying to move in on Homer's territory that one time, Hmm... no silverfish.

All I do know is that the sandwich was good and All I Want is a good sandwich place nearby and this album is on its third listen, and All I Want is a good record to listen to and the love of a good woman and good firends and nice weather and a paycheck with some regularity and today I Have It All. Which is how I understand Empire operates.