Inca Ore Nightmare Before Christmas ATP dec 06

Here's Inca Ore and her collaborator Michael "Lemon Bear," at All Tomorrow's Parties in England last December. I think she and Michael got married pretty recently! For more on Inca, check my earlier blog item.

Home Town Boy Makes Good

So another half-psycho folk singer in the tradition of John Darnielle and Deer Tick, Paul Baribeau, is from my home town, and just released this CD as an ode to Grand Ledge. You can order it from Plan-It-X.

Mistrial for St. Patrick's Day Seven

Of course it was ludicrous that charges were even brought against the St. Patrick's Day Seven. It was ludicrous that an acquittal was not reached in 35 nanoseconds. As defense attorney Greg Walta said in the Colorado Springs Gazette article, if safety from bottle throwers was an issue, in any other town, police would arrest the bottle thrower. Only in Colorado Springs would police arrest the marcher. And in an ignorant, bigoted town like Colorado Springs, we'll take a mistrial as the best we can get for now.

Battle of the Redheads: The New Pornographers - My Rights Versus Yours

Aug. 21 represented a direct facedown of two red-headed chanteuses: Neko Case and New Pornographers (with fellow male redhead A.C. Newman) released a new CD the same day as Jenny Lewis and her band Rilo Kiley. NPs gets bonus points for this Letterman appearance Aug. 20, and the new "Challengers" album has lots of luscious high harmonies. Jenny, meanwhile, has filled RK's new "Black Light" CD with references to porn, maybe a bow to New Pornographers? Haven't heard her new Rilo Kiley outing, though it will be hard to beat 2005's stunning "More Adventurous" CD. All right, Neko and Jenny, come out of your respective corners, but watch out for that veteran red-head chanteuse -- Tori Amos may take you both on. Great times for a lover of glamorous redheads, in any event.

AUG. 22 CONCLUSION

Memo: New Pornographers w/Neko Case competes in Aug. 21 CD release date for BestBuy display space with Rilo Kiley w/Jenny Lewis. New Porns gets the best TV attention with a Letterman appearance, Rilo Kiley gets best photo spread in Blender and Filter. But Jenny Lewis may be disqualified for appearing as a brunette. Meanwhile, Architecture in Helsinki wishes they could exploit the redhead trump card.

TAKEAWAY: OK, New Porns takes the award for most advances, with some careful caveats. In particular, Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley gets points for sheer audacity of style.

NEW PORNS - HEAVY THUMBS UP. I don't downgrade NPs' "Challengers" for being softer and folkier than "Twin Cinema," nor do I think it's a Carl Newman showcase. Hooks seem to be as plentiful in the new one as in the first three NP albums, and there's definitely some heavy Neko Case and Dan Bejar influence, and even some Kathryn Calder influence. Still, Carl is front and center on the vocals. It will take a couple more listens to decide my favorites, but it doesn't seem like the CD has any throwaway cuts. Now, I got the "Executive Edition" with B-sides, and the first two B-sides online sound a little throwaway, so maybe that's where the less-impressive songs ended up.

RILO KILEY -- THUMBS UP WITH AN ACQUIRED TASTE. Now, for Rilo Kiley's "Under the Black Light": Folks that don't like this CD were probably expecting a follow-on to 2005's "More Adventurous." Let's face it, that album had such complexity of lyrics and song arrangements, trying to outdo it directly would sound forced and strange. So Jenny and Blake didn't even try. Instead, this album sounds like an adoption of a variety of late-1970s styles, particularly disco and Fleetwood Mac, for a 21st century consciousness. Lyrics are not multi-dimensional ponderous in the "More Adventurous" style, if anything they're direct and simple and repetitive in classic 3-minute radio hooks. But this album is more adventurous in experimenting with styles, including vocal styles. Jenny tries these octave jumps in "Close Call," for example, that sound almost like yodeling. The song "15" sounds like country with Memphis horns thrown in, "Moneymaker" and a couple others are classic disco and funk, while the title track sounds like Aimee Mann or Susan Cowsill doing a Beatles-esque ballad. And as you've probably heard, Blake tries for a Fleetwood Mac sound in "Dream World." The end result is like a mini-version of "69 Love Songs", song styles are tried on like clothing. Some Rilo Kiley fans may rebel, but I think Jenny Lewis gets to become the female equivalent of Neil Young or David Bowie - shocking fans with conceptual style albums that sound nothing like the classic style.

And as far as 70s retro sounds go, Rilo Kiley is a lot more adventurous than Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

Enhancing JTTF and Domestic Intelligence from Space

OK, I'll just cite the original Wall Street Journal article here on Department of Homeland Security getting access to spy-satellite intelligence, and refer you to my EE Times blog as to what this means re: different intelligence agencies have different rules for sharing info, they all operate from space, and who keeps Michael Chertoff's mitts off stuff he shouldn't have? Certainly not Alberto Gonzales -- or our president for that matter!

Here's why you should care: the Denver Police Intelligence Bureau's scandal in the late 1990s and early 2000s for reviving Red Squad-era dissident intelligence files, actually constituted precisely what former Attorney General John Ashcroft wanted local intelligence bureaus to do. And since Ashcroft asked the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to serve as liaisons for putting intelligence of questionable veracity into law-enforcement files, well, we can be sure this will escalate by a factor of ten now that Department of Homeland Security can gain access to intelligence from space. Don't look for FISA restrictions -- Congress has given Bush everything he wanted in FISA bypass, and then some. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Gin and Chris Hitchens: Trotsky to George Bush to Harry Potter

Gin can make you do strange things, as elaborated in Stephen Merritt's wonderful song, 'Love is like a bottle of gin.' (69 Love Songs, Magnetic Fields). Ask Christopher Hitchens. He used to be the drunkard's favorite Trotskyist. In 2002, he suddenly decided he loved George Bush and neoconservatism, and became a leading spokeswhore for the Iraq invasion, still imbibing just as freely. Neocons did not return the favor, since his latest book says mean things about God. Anyway, the New York Times in its infinite wisdom (or maybe irony) chose Hitchens to review the last Harry Potter book, and the results are on the cover of the Aug. 12 New York Times Book Review.

Stay away from that Tanqueray 'n' Tonic, it'll kill ya.

Facebook's CIA Connections

Since conspiracy theorists are having such fun with this, it's important to stress that Facebook is neither a CIA project, nor even an In-Q-Tel project. Nevertheless, the reported links between Facebook, Peter Thiel, Anita Jones, Accel Partners, and In-Q-Tel are interesting, though it reveals more about the nature of venture capital sleeping with the intelligence community and arch-conservatives in general, than it does about Facebook in particular.