Just as a note: if you wanted to buy me music for birthday, I have a whole wishlist set up for that, and you have eight days until my birthday. Here’s the new stuff I’ve got lined up for this week:

• Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.
  
• 23 Nov 1998 [College Station, TX, USA] concert bootleg of Caedmon’s Call.
• 18 Dec 2001 [Indianapolis, IN, USA] concert bootleg of Over the Rhine.
• 12 Sep 2002 [San Diego, CA, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco.
  
• 27 Mar 2007 [Upper Darby, PA, USA] concert bootleg of The Decemberists.
  
• 5 May 2007 [Madison, AL, USA] concert bootleg of Eric Peters, and …
  
• 5 May 2007 [Madison, AL, USA] concert bootleg of Randall Goodgame. As both happened on the same night, I’m listening to them together.
  
• 14 Sep 2007 [Dallas, TX, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco.
  

Last week was pretty darn good:

• Arms and Legs’s eponymous album. Okay, so Elliott Smith’s influence is all over Scott Daly’s music, but there are other things going on here. The banjo provides an interesting counterpoint to the early ES lyricism/sensibility. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for lo-fi indie stuff, but I really liked this one. Four stars.
  
• The Decemberists’s Picaresque. Obviously, I’ve heard a fair number of these songs, having been going through recent bootlegs of late. The studio version is solid, but call me weird … I’m not as beholden to this indie-label release as I am The Crane Wife. Three-and-a-half stars.
  
• 3 Apr 2001 [Seattle, WA, USA] concert bootleg of Over the Rhine. The crowd’s a little chatty, and it’s a stealth recording [done from headworn mics on the glasses---kudos, taper!]—and I’m pleased enough with it. Three-and-a-half stars.
• 31 Aug 2002 [Vancouver, BC, Canada] concert bootleg of Wilco. Solid show from the era. Three-and-a-half stars.
• 3 Jun 2003 [San Diego, CA, USA] concert bootleg of Coldplay. Flat. Two-and-a-half stars.
• 21 Mar 2007 [Jersey City, NJ, USA] concert bootleg of The Decemberists. Sounds kinda thin and treble-y, like it’d be easily pushed over on the playground. Good performances from the band, though. Three stars.
• 6 May 2007 [Nashville, TN, USA] concert bootlegs of Derek Webb, Andrew Osenga, and Sandra McCracken. It was all one show, so I’ll listen to it all in one week. The recording suffers for what it is—inexpensive omnidirectional microphones used in a large room—but it’s pretty decent. I was hoping for a soundboard patch, so I didn’t drop any cash on some condensers pre-show. Alas. Three stars for all three recordings.