I never blog about music

b/c basically I'm incredibly lazy and hew to my preferences of the distant past (will reserve this for some future post, but think Velvet Underground--wholesale Lou Reed obsession, then and now--Big Star, Camper Van Beethoven, Pixies--typical late-80s fare, I'm afraid--that's just the short version, but I don't know that further listing will fill out the picture). However I do have a few recent favorites. Thea Gilmore kicks ass: Avalanche and Rules for Jokers are both ridiculously good. (Thanks to Neil Gaiman's blog for this excellent recommendation.) I am embarrassingly and ridiculously in love with the songs of Elliott Smith. Yes, the first album (just titled "Elliott Smith") is the one that kills me--it's amazing--all the others are great too, but the combination of tunes & sparse instrumentation & lyrics of the first album really can't be surpassed. And another relatively recent album I'm totally in love with is Gillian Welch's "Time (The Revelator). Background listening, of a particularly satisfactory kind: Manu Chao's Esperanza and Clandestino. And a gym favorite (insofar as I ever get any exercise--this album is great, though, and is about the most likely thing to get me out late-nite to the Columbia underground inferno of a gym--MOST AMAZING LYRICS AND WORDPLAY HERE): Mos Def, Black on Both Sides. One more shout-out: the best alt-country plus academic job market combo, Florence Dore's Perfect City.