self-titled: ^_^

listening to the new iron and wine currently, as it magically appeared on the internet recently. gone is the muffled, murky, but oh so comforting production of the creek drank the cradle and the recent ep. the production is very very clean, and there's even percussion or another guitar on occassion. i'm not sure how i feel about this transition... the songs still do great things, but something's just off. the songs remain gorgeous, but i just listened to bits of "upward over the mountain" and "the sea and the rhythm" off the previous efforts and they give me chills. i can't say that for the latest. it's like the mountain goats switch from all hail west texas to tallahassee, but that worked for them. cleanly picked guitar and crisp vocals sounds off for iron and wine. but i guess this is what it's going to be. iron and wine is dead, hail to iron and wine.

i didn't make it out to see the dresden dolls on sunday, because i committed myself to playing poker at tony's and also i listened to the other bands on the bill and they were really really terrible. but i stand my my previous assertion that the dresden dolls are freaking unbelievable.

lots of concerts coming up over the next couple months, and by lots i mean 3 or 4. i've got the notwist on 2/5, the shins the next friday, then somewhere along the line comes someone i wrote in my pocketpc but can't remember now. ah, the mountain goats, then john vanderslice & sufjan stevens on april 1, and who knows what'll pop up between now and then.

the other night, we'll call it sunday, was a bit of a debacle. my computer had frozen up or something, but i didn't want to ruin some downloads i had going, so i just left it in an unresponsive state. but then i was faced with the sad problem of not having mr. sleepy time mix to listen to. so i tried improvising with the rachel's cd and the playstation. unfortunately, i could get the psx to play a cd with the tv off (makes sense, i suppose) so i eventually had to go with the ipod, but i didn't want to run it's batteries out, so i just set it to play one album and turn off. but then whenever i woke up i'd be without music and would have to get up and start it over, because being alone in a quiet room was weird. moral to this story is, i played the rachel's cd a few times that night, and never made it very far, but at one point woke up and 'last things last' was playing, oddly enough a rachel's song with vocals, and it was damn pretty. too short though.