I hope I didn’t rant for too long. I’m with Josh on Veckatimest. I actually downloaded it, but I couldn’t bring myself to listen to it. These ideas are probably not coherent at all. . . Oh well.

It’s been long enough that every kid and his brother has had a computer and an electric guitar for us to have nigh explored the absolute outer limits of what may be called music. So much of what is considered ground-breaking, I find provokes little more than tedium and ennui.

I hardly think that a meaningful musical review could be produced by critics who treat their job like they were testing toilet paper. I fell in love with Sky Blue Sky in the first listen, but I find that most albums need at least five or six plays before I can really appreciate the music and discover what depth may be there. In my opinion Wilco and M. Ward gave the world something much more valuable than Rainbows, so what gives?

Really, I believe, it is a lot more difficult to produce, and a lot more satisfying to hear, good, well-written music in the traditional formulae, than something that is always striving to push the envelope. I look forward to true ground being broken by talented and dedicated classically and folk-trained musicians who unearth old material to plant new seeds in.