This week, I have a bunch of new stuff (for once):

• Katy Bowser’s Laryngitis. [Yes, this is where I admit that I'd seen Katy play live but hadn't owned any of her stuff until the last six weeks.]
• Katy Bowser’s Longing. [And now my collection is complete.]
• Kate York’s Sadly Love.
• Manchester Orchestra’s You Brainstorm, I Brainstorm, But Brilliance Needs a Good Editor.
• People You Meet’s eponymous album. I picked this up on the advice of Jeffrey Overstreet, who was the reason I picked up Sufjan’s Illinois in the first place. So far this morning, I’m really liking it.

Last week saw me with a couple bootlegs and a couple of Sufjan Stevens’s earlier albums:

• 20 Jun 2006 [Nashville, TN, USA] concert bootleg of Andrew Osenga. I give the recording three-and-a-half stars: it could sound better, but generally I’ve been loathe to give anything new a 5-star rating of late. I would have loved to have had better mics for this show; that said, it still sounds pretty good.
• 24 Feb 2006 [Lancashire, UK] concert bootleg of Pierce Pettis. Three-and-a-half stars: Pierce playing to a bunch of Brits kinda amuses me.
• Sufjan Stevens’s A Sun Came. Strange. Decent. Three stars. Sufjan’s early stuff seems very Mellow Gold-era Beck-influenced. It’s definitely the sound of a young artist finding himself, and he does. Eventually.
• Sufjan Stevens’s Enjoy Your Rabbit. Strange. Good. Three stars. It’s very much programmed and … well, noisy. Someone who listens to more Radiohead than I do would have to tell me whether it’s more that or Beck [or perhaps something else entirely]. I bought this because I’m a completionist [much to the chagrin of the old budget].