Stuff i've been listening to

Dark times lately. Been meaning to put something up here for a while, but my brain has turned this project into buillding the Cistine Chapel, like everything has to be 'inspired' or 'good' or 'legit'. Well, fuck it, i need to keep pushing the rock uphill, Sisyphus style. Here's some shit that i've been listening to lately, that is helping me to maintain my sanity. I've been nursing a broken heart, and have chosen to deluge myself in falling arpeggios of guitar chords. Losing myself in technicality, in one of the only damn things on this earth that has any prayer of making me feel any better. So here we go:

John Fahey. The man's influence is impossible to calculate. Patron saint of the American Primitive. Guardian of the curmudgeonly record-collectors. I have been losing myself in 'When the Spring Time Comes Again.' Almost everything he ever did is indispensable, so i have chosen The Legend of Blind Joe Death arbitrarily, maybe a good place to jump in, if you don't know 'im. get it pw: levente

Probably my favorite of those that have come in the wake of Saint Fahey, Jack Rose has mastered the Primitive styles, blues ragtime country etc., and runs it through an opium-hued lens, similar to Sir Richard Bishop. I had the good fortune to see him play in Louisville, KY last summer, his mastery of the six-string is jaw-dropping. His work with Pelt is bestial, as well. I love his guitar ragas, his rags are no slouch either. This is Kensington Blues. hear it

Chris Brokaw was the drummer for Codeine and guitar player for Boston-based Come. This is his second solo record, an all instrumental guitar album, mainly acoustic. It is more Celtic oriented than the previous two, but it shares their virtuosity and imagination. He strays from the pack with the title track 'Canaris', which is behemoth! Colossal feedback sculpture, clocking in at almost 18 minutes. Who needs drugs? check it

Weepy music, to rock yrself to sleep by. Hushed; intimate and immediate, velvet whispering in yr ear like the ghosts of lovers past. 'Ghosts and Lovers' is my favorite track, no pun intended, but its really a mood piece, an album's album, not really top-40 material, but it IS probably Marissa Nadler's best album, to date. feel it

When i can't handle being curled up in a little ball any longer, only pure undiluted rage will do! Get you off of the couch and out into the streets, throwing bricks and hurling invectives! This is probably my favorite Stoner record ever, but its so hard to pick just one! Hard hitting, hard drinking, hard riffing, rock yr fucking socks off, sometimes nothing else will do. Burn it

I can't stop listening to Tom Waits, i mean obsessively, all day every day. It is almost frightening. He makes me feel that it is okay to be a lovable misanthropic loser, to take comfort in my persona like a woolen sweater, or a beat up old fedora. This is one of his more recent joints, and has some of my favorites: the mysterious 'Alice', the maudlin 'Flower's Grave', the decadent Weimar cabaret of 'Kommienezuspadt', the burlesque of 'Table Top Joe', and the genuinely unsettling 'We're All Mad Here'. As i get older, i am learning to appreciate so many aspects and nuances of Mr. Wait's music, a discography that just keeps unfolding like a hallucinatory lotus, or a pack of Camel's. This music, and others like it, are showing me what it is to be Grown Up. Which is fucked, but unavoidable. Nursing a grown-up broken heart. Joy. Nurse It pw: www.pebl.pl
None of this music will probably make you feel any better, and most of it may be an out and out bummer, like many of my recent posts. And there's probably lots more what that comes from, as i peel back my skin to fill the void. So happy listening, hopefully i'll see you around.