Geof’s New Music: 28 May-3 Jun 2006

I really didn’t intend to have this much new music, but:

1. I had some Cardigan bootlegs I wanted to get to Andy, and I saw him in concert with Caedmon’s yesterday.
2. I had a backlog of BMG orders in that I had alread planned to move through.
3. I got Andy’s two new records yesterday.

That explains the massive glut of new stuff:

• The Cardigans on KCRW, 18 Jun 1996.
• The Cardigans in Malmö, Sweden, 19 Mar 2006.
• R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People
• R.E.M.’s Monster
• Green
• Ryan Adams’s 29
• Ryan Adams’s Rock N Roll
• Andrew Osenga’s The Morning
• Andrew Osenga’s Photographs, remastered by Jars of Clay’s Matt Odmark.

Told you that was a lot of music. I’ve even given all of it a good, strong listen already.

Back to last week, which proved to be a downer:

• Beck Interview/Concert at WXRK-FM [New York, NY, USA] on 28 Aug 1996. As I noted, it’s just a decade old. Three stars.
• Mindy Smith at the Paste Festival [Atlanta, GA, USA] on 23 Oct 2005. Meh. Three stars.
• Over the Rhine at the Paste Festival [Atlanta, GA, USA] on 22 Oct 2005. Not a great recording, really. “Crazy”, “Looking Forward”, and “Spark” are good despite the three-and-a-half star recording.
• The Bedhead Compilation of Ryan Adams live bootlegs, Volumes 1-3. I was meh on it, but it’s grown on me. I’m calling it four stars on the whole at the end of the day.
• Sufjan Stevens [Los Angeles, CA, USA] on 16 Jul 2005. :yawn: For every awesome Sufjan bootleg I get, I get a crappy one. The sound isn’t good, and that’s not just the bootleg—the venue’s sound seemed sub-standard, as normally-good harmonies weren’t. Disappointing. Three stars.