This week, I step out of my comfort zone and into a classic progressive rock album:

• Rush’s 2112.
  
• 26 Mar 2000 [New Haven, CT, USA] concert bootleg of Feist.
• 5 Oct 2000 [London, England] concert bootleg of Elliott Smith.
• 5 Dec 2001 [Los Angeles, CA, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco.
  
• 8 Feb 2006 [San Francisco, CA, USA] concert bootleg of Jeff Tweedy.
  
• 18 Oct 2006 [Portland, OR, USA] concert bootleg of The Decemberists.
• 20 Apr 2007 [Louisville, KY, USA] concert bootleg of Son Volt.

Last week was very good to my ears:

• Feist’s The Reminder. Another solid effort from Leslie Feist. Four stars.
  
• Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. Now, I am not your typical R&B / soul music listener, but I bought this on a lark and am relatively pleased. Three stars.
  
• 28 Sep 2000 [Nantes, France] concert bootleg of Elliott Smith. I didn’t know that recordings this awesome of Elliott with a full band existed. I think it’s the best recording of Elliott I’ve heard. Four-and-a-half stars.
• 5 Dec 2001 [Detroit, MI, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco. Ahhh, persic, how I love your recordings. This is not my favorite era of Wilco by far, and yet I give this four stars. It just sparkles.
  
• 1 Oct 2006 [St. Louis, MO, USA] concert bootleg of Son Volt. Yes, this struggles from being an outdoor recording—not only from the taping environment but from the general poor quality of outdoor event sound systems. Despite that, the taper does a good job getting sound balanced appropriately, and the band does a good job with playing outdoors. Three-and-a-half stars.
• 17 Oct 2006 [Portland, OR, USA] concert bootleg of The Decemberists. The recording sounds distant and indistinct, which certainly does a band as layered and engaging as The Decemberists an injustice, and the crowd is surprisingly chatty for a hometown show. It comes in overall just a bit above average, so I give it three stars.
  
• 22 Oct 2006 [New York, NY, USA] concert bootleg of Beck. This is a crisp, effervescent bootleg—kinda summery, like that Shiner Hefeweizen I had earlier. The crowd is audible, but in all the right ways. There probably isn’t enough bass roll-off, but then Beck his the low frequencies heavily, so it has to be authentic. This taper knew what the heck he was doing, and the sound guy clearly was on the ball, too. Four stars; would probably be higher if I were fully up on all of Beck’s newer releases.