Two years ago today I launched this domain as a music blog where I'd post a song every weekday for a year straight. I didn't make it to a song a day for a year, but it is somewhat surprising to me that I'm still doing anything at all with it today.

Sure, there's been a bit of a dry spell these last two or three months, but this tends to happen every winter. The music business dies off a bit in the cold months: people aren't touring (and those who are pretty much suck) and new albums aren't really coming out lest they miss year end lists (and the albums that do come out pretty much suck), so I'm just full of good excuses as to why I don't tend to update.

Like I said in my last post, I'm not particularly happy with the direction I've taken the site in the last year. I have been over-enthusiastic over bands that deserved, at most, to be damned with faint praise (something I'll delicately cover in my Best of 2010 post), and dismissive of bands that didn't immediately satiate my most pompous of desires. I'm not even really satisfied with the "re-design" that you see before you now---good ideas I wasn't willing to let go of when I saw they weren't functionally feasible. (And then there's the whole "sometimes the site freezes Chrome solid and crashes" problem.)

I have, in some ways, let myself down.

So here's to the third year being a better year. Thanks for reading, subscribing, whatever and ever amen.

I'm breaking my repeat rules to do what I said I'd do yesterday, so here's another Andrew Bird song, and what I'll consider my review of Noble Beast and his live show! You get a two for one.

Yesterday I talked about how Noble Beast's linear sections are basically the death of the album, and that while all the songs are uniquely beautiful in their own Andrew Bird-y way, there's no rhythm to the album, there's almost no flow to it. You can't rock out, except maybe for a split second at the beginning of Fitz & Dizzyspells, and maybe when Anonanimal (this song) gets going at 2:52, but like everything else on the album, the song-y part is short-lived and veers off in some other direction far too soon. (I should make special mention of Not a Robot, But a Ghost, which is pretty song-like but so fucking weird and long that it's almost uncomfortable to listen to.)

I enjoy Noble Beast, and don't get me wrong, you probably will, too, but don't take it in the car with you, and don't expect to score any sort of party with it. This is an album to be listened to while you're lounging in your favorite chair, in front of a fire, with a glass of wine (or a joint), and maybe (maybe) with a group of similarly minded people (silent people! there will be NO TALKING during this album, you must announce). Sadly, I don't really have a lot of space in my listening habits for a good album. I need good songs. I need something that grabs at my soul for three to four minutes, and not slowly over the course of an hour.

However.

Andrew Bird needs to be seen live. There's a quality in him, live, that isn't there on his albums. His voice is absolutely unbelievable, smooth, even in a full wail. I had warned my girlfriend that "you are going to witness some pretty extreme virtuoso whistling," she didn't believe me, laughed it off, but two songs in she was, quite loudly, proclaiming his proficiency at whistling. He took off his shoes after the first song (to expose pink and brown striped socks, which totally set off my hipster jealousy alarm), which he played on his own using only his violin, his looping pedals, and this weird speaker box with two Yellow Submarine-styled cones on it that spun past a microphone. It was utterly beautiful. I have no idea what song it was.

The pure skill Andrew Bird displays almost makes the long linear sections of Noble Beast worth it. The guy is composing beautiful music, and admittedly it doesn't adhere to any sort of conventional verse-chorus-verse songwriting, but to sit in an audience full of people (and we were all sitting the whole time, which was nice) and watch him (and three others) perform these complex and beautiful songs in a live setting is something to be witnessed.

Thankfully he played a few older album tracks (not much older, though) and the four-piece version of Fake Palindromes was completely unbelievably awesome, it rocked, far harder than any allusions to rocking that are in the album version, it was hard and fast and totally sublime. Tables and Chairs has certainly gotten a lot better, especially with Bird's stage antics / theatrics / nervous tics.

That's the best thing, clearly, about seeing Bird live: he doesn't seem to be afraid to change or improve his songs. He didn't have to reinvent Fake Palindromes for the four-piece, he didn't have to do that utterly adorable nuanced way he sang "there will be snacks!" at the end of Tables and Chairs, but he did and by doing so he probably ruined the album versions for me forever.

I was hoping that seeing Andrew Bird live would open a door for me, a door to loving Andrew Bird's full discography, even the weird stuff that I can't listen to while I'm driving, but what I really came away with was an appreciation for Bird's live show. (The albums almost seem superfluous now, although Noble Beast does accurately capture the beauty of Bird's live vocal, whistling, and violin playing.) These were the most expensive tickets I've purchased, I think, for an artist I wasn't sure I would totally enjoy, and it was totally worth it and I totally enjoyed it and then some (yeah, I jizzed in my pants, what of it?).

I'll definitely go see him in the future.

If his next album is less like Noble Beast, anyway.

I'll be seeing Andrew Bird tonight at the Orpheum Theatre here in LA. (I saw The Dresden Dolls there and it's a nice venue, but it's Ticketmaster only which makes the tickets ridiculously expensive, I paid nearly the full price of the ticket itself in service charges, effectively doubling the cost of the ticket.) If you're there and want to give me any candy or cookies or drugs or something, just say hello.

The other day I mentioned thinking it's necessary to go back through albums you have previously enjoyed years ago looking for songs that you enjoy more now that your taste has developed in other directions. (I assume, I guess, that most people who would read staires_!_ are people who (like me) feverishly seek out new music constantly and consider their library and taste to be continuously developing.)

Although this album, Armchair Apocrypha, didn't come out that long ago (a month short of two years ago), somehow I totally overlooked this song on my repeated listens. The trio of Imitosis / Plasticities / Heretics got into my rotation but nothing else from the album. I don't know how, I guess I just wasn't that into the album at the time.

Perhaps it's the oddness of Bird's new album, Noble Beast, that makes me appreciate his previous album that much more. Noble Beast is largely devoid of songs that fall anywhere within the realm of traditional pop songwriting. Fitz & Dizzyspells comes as close as anything, but then immediately splits off into a bunch of linear sections that, despite being absolutely beautiful, completely ruin any sweet groove you were feeling. (This makes Noble Beast a particularly lousy driving album.)

Darkmatter's rather traditional sweeping epic indie pop song sound is a nice contrast to Noble Beast's peculiarities. But, maybe I'm doing the same thing with Noble Beast that I did with Armchair Apocrypha? Perhaps I am not listening to it right, and will, in a year or two, discover it anew and be amazed with it.

I'm hoping to expedite this process by seeing Bird live tonight. Generally seeing an artist live gives me an appreciation for material of theirs that I didn't like previously. It gives me a new angle in, like when I saw Rilo Kiley live years ago before they started to suck (this is a theme, you see) and suddenly More Adventurous made so much more sense. I guess we'll see. I suppose if I fall in love with Andrew Bird tonight, as in love as I am with other artists (Amanda Palmer, Eels, The Polyphonic Spree), I'll just post a song off Noble Beast tomorrow as well.

Twitter Note: Welcome new followers! If I followed you randomly, it's because I'm using Twollo to find people, like you, who are talking about "indie music". If you don't follow me back, I'll eventually unfollow you, so don't worry about it if you're not interested in my daily ramblings and music. I'm not selling anything but new experiences (oh lord) so you should hang around.

Site Note: I managed, finally, to add proper archive links since we're on Day 72 at this point. (Oh my god, I have to change the archive pages so they give a Day ## instead of the date! That'd be so awesome!) Let me know what you think, would it be better for archive pages just to be a list of all the posts in the month so you can pick and choose? Also, who here votes for a search box over in the sidebar somewhere?

Update: I did the whole "day ##" thing, you'll see it on single posts and archive pages. Pretty cool. I'll be adding a search box at some point today, I'll announce it on Twitter later when it's done.