and suddenly it lifts the roof off the place

a playlist:

1.clem snide's me no: from their new album, and objectively one of the best opening tracks i've ever heard.
2.andrew bird's effigy: this new album, 'noble beast', is actually quite good.
3. the weepies' orbiting: deb talan's voice really gets me, and this song actually makes sense
4.ben kweller's hurting you: ben kweller, with a touch of badly drawn boy methinks, all with a country-esque twang. you've gotta hear it.
5.golden smog's ill-fated: i can't even tell who's doing what on this track, but it's great
6.snow patrol's disaster button: more of the same from them, but i sort of like it
7.travis' j. smith: the title track of sorts, not bad from an album i don't quite like. am seeing them live soon, so hopefully i will get to listening more.
8.scott weiland's killing me sweetly: this song is just strange, but sort of nice.
9. sufjan stevens' holland: i had overlooked 'michigan' owing to my love for 'illinoise', but this track is actually very good
10.mark olson & gary louris' bicycle: a very strong track from a beautify album.
bonus track. bob dylan's the times they are a-changin': from the stellar, and very period-appropriate soundtrack of 'watchmen'

on that last note: i saw the movie yesterday. it's a valiant effort, and the action is great. it's just too bad that the graphic novel just isn't translatable into film. i'm going to make a comparison that sounds crazy: it felt like 'zodiac', only because it has a coherant overall plot, but somehow felt like 3 separate movies at once. i think zack synder did the right thing, not trying to play around with narrative structure, but having it play out linearly, but because of that, there was definitely points where you felt like the film ended, only for the next section to start up again.

'watchmen' was a 12 issue limited series, so in itself, the narrative has 12 openings and endings. the fact that it was made into a movie that only felt like it started and ended 3 times is actually pretty good, since they were trying to make a close approximation.

oh and finally, a poem