Goose him!

Jack White, from here.

Tuesday:
Devendra Banhart, Cripple Crow
Andrew Bird, Break it Yourself
Arthur Russell, World of Echo
T. Rex, A Beard of Stars and The Slider
Jack White, Blunderbuss

Man, a decade ago, I had an unhealthy love of Devendra Banhart. I still think Oh Me Oh My is whatever the word for transparently influenced sui generis is, and Rejoicing in the Hands/Nino Rojo (recording in successive morning and evenings) is a paper lantern of song. I don't think I've listened to Cripple Crow since I wrote this (over) enthusiastic review, which is always a gamble with putting a pin on the cultural timeline. It's a good record, but not quite the classic I painted it to be, something I address in my review of his subsequent largely terrible record Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon . "We wanted him to be The New Weird, and weird he became without the legs to stand tall above that weirdness."


"I Feel Just Like a Child" was stuck in my head this morning, in case you are wondering why I care why I cared about Devendra Banhart. I was starting to wonder.

While I'm taking myself on a date to a revue of what I once thought about things, I stumbled across this one review where I described a Magnetic Fields song as being "like a tape in the jambox of a bored desk worker at the Guggenheim Bilbao on a rainy Tuesday in the off-season." Good one, me.


This wash of a song by Arthur Russell is so beautiful. Whenever I get to the edge with Andrew Bird and likewise pale masters of song, I want to go over that edge with Arthur Russell.

Or just crash into the wall with T. Rex. I've always wondered how T. Rex maintained his/their allure. I love Marc Bolan's quizzical excess, but I'm like that. I just always figure that he had to be a bit much for the tastes of the average mortal. Is there a good book on T. Rex? If I ran the world, I'd do a 33 1/3 book on his best record A Beard of Stars, which no one has heard, Not even Spotify.



A few months back, Jack White held the door open for a friend of mine at a ritzy boot store in Nashville, and now, my former upstairs neighbor Brooke Waggoner is playing all over his new solo record. "Brooke Waggoner’s virtuosic piano is easily the best thing on most tracks, and regularly gives White the sort of goose his usual band mates seldom provide," says the Globe and Mail.  Go on, Brooke! Goose him!


Jack White, "Love Interruption"

Check my math, but I think all this means Jack White and I are total buds now. Third Man Records has probably released a limited edition 7" of this blog post even before I hit the publish button.