In this time of excess and recess

Everybody everwhere needs to listen to Kaki King. Last November, I left a friend waiting in a park for several hours. I also ignored a hangover and braved expensive cabfares. All just to see her with The Mountain Goats in Manhattan, at Webster Hall. John Darnielle started out Way Back When by repping her on his own blog when people hated on her whispery singing style. Her singing has since improved. And at this concert, it became clear that John and his bandmates had been doing their best to emulate her stringed-instrument technique. I'm glad he knows when to stand down.

Listen to Kaki King's new album, Dreaming of Revenge, while avoiding painting an oil portrait of your father. Kaki King. I would in all likelihood be willing to have a few of her children. I would also, for the first time (that's a lie), be interested in purchasing the ipod vibrator in order to listen to her. She is one of the best guitarists around, period. She is a gorgeous person. And, she has good taste in art (above by Marcel Dzama).


Consolidate your student loans, people.

They're perfect.

Some fifteen-year-old somewhere in the world.

All I can bring myself to talk about is art.

1. At the end of this video there is a performance of "Baboon," from JD's The Coroner's Gambit, that everyone everywhere should see.



2. It is my contention that John's song "Wild Sage" (from newest album Get Lonely; lyrics here ) is narrated by an anonymous one of the mental patients he worked with as a psychiatric nurse in California. The "wild sage growing in the weeds" is a metaphoric reference to the population of the insane, entangled in the panopticon beneath the grit of its institutional power, and despite their status as self-aware individuals capable of complicated thought and emotion, etc etc etc. In other news, I hate interpretation of art.

3. It seems that this is the state of things.