v.o.r.t.e.x.05.06

Rise up and dance! Cleanse your soul of the world that threatens to crush the spirit out of you! Wake up little machine, and meet your fate, the long strange trip is done and soon you will be deposited in a dark corner, never to be turned on again. The days feel longer, the beats go faster, the rhythm drives you to a dry well and so you decide to drill down to the next level of the water table, hoping for something pure to spring from your efforts. And we who have fought the good fight never sleep, really; we are the ghost machines, constantly calculating, taking measure of the world and trying to make it feel like a time and place we would like to live in.

wolf parade video

Check out this Wolf Parade video for "Modern World" (thanks 3hive).

v.o.r.t.e.x.04.06

the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck the long weekend mindfuck

v.o.r.t.e.x.03.06

And they cut open my head.
Scooped out my brain.
Put it in a fancy bowl.
Chocolate syrup on top.
I was a child, then.

Touch and Go 25

A concert to keep an eye on...

So far:

The Black Heart Procession
Calexico
CocoRosie
Didjits
(all original members)
Enon
Ted Leo + Pharmacists
Pinback
Scratch Acid
(all original members)
Shellac

Erasure - Union Street

Erasure - Union Street (2006). Imagine that you have gone to an Erasure concert. The boys walk onstage, and immediately you get the sense that something is amiss. Where are the synthesizers? And then they start to play...wait, is that a guitar? They have gone...acoustic?
Stop imagining now, because on their latest album they have done just that. Composed mostly of stripped down treatments of past work, Union Street is an interesting experiment, which in theory should lay the songs bare and expose their soul. And occasionally, it works, but for the most part I found it to be treacly and meandering. Perhaps if I didn't have the context, the internal radio memory of how the original songs sounded, I could hear this album with less bias. I don't know. A few tracks do work well in this context, most notably "Boy", Piano Song", and "Home". And I found myself curious about other tracks that do not appear here; I actually think that the entire Chorus album is one of their most consistently well written all the way through and wouldn't have minded a "Chorus Acoustic" release. As it is, overall this is a spotty effort, which will appeal to the most die-hard fans and perhaps be interesting to non-Erasure devotees if they should somehow chance upon it.
Rating: one pair.