Sowas

hässliches habe ich ja schon lange nicht mehr gesehen...

Streetscapes

Fast sowas wie Blogger, eigentlich. Oder... ich weiß nicht... sowas in der Art. Streetscapes halt.
Eine sehr hübsche Seite haben die nebenbei auch, finde ich.

Das neue Sacherkochbuch

gibt es hier. Und noch viele andere leckere Bücher.

Seeed monks!

Super CD! Da kriegt man doch gleich doppelt Lust da hinzugehen.
In Budapest freut man sich anscheinend auch schon...

Nada Surf - The Weight Is A Gift

Gehört mit Sicherheit zu ihren schönsten Alben - Musik zum hineinfallenlassen, obenrein noch weich wie Watte :-)

"On fourth album The Weight Is a Gift, Nada Surf amble into impending senescence with hope, poise, and a similarly complex relationship toward the prosaic. The New York trio's 30-something members now bear dual millstones around their necks: Not just 1996 MTV Buzz Clip "Popular", but also the spacious, Death Cab for Cutie-influenced indie-pop of 2003 Barsuk debut Let Go. While The Weight Is a Gift lacks its predecessor's bird's-eye introspection and moments of near-sublimity, it's another often-compelling set of melancholic post-Coldplay guitar-pop, made grittily optimistic by the tribulations of post-hipster existence.
It's these burdens that have set Nada Surf free. The band will never be accused of defying clichés, but it has survived on an ability to subtly add color to them. Where "Popular" was itself a bratty string of high-school stereotypes, the more modest success of Let Go served, if not to erase the truism "one-hit wonder," at least to add a middle option. Yeah, "Blonde on Blonde" absconded with a better songwriter's poetry, but singer Matthew Caws' forlorn falsetto and graceful scene-setting made the loving theft believable; "Inside of Love" was pretty much what you'd expect, done better than we had any right to expect.
The Weight Is a Gift is a sad album that acknowledges that, hey, maybe the bourgeois solecisms that flow so cheaply from others' lips really do have meaning-- and that gives it hope. Upbeat opener "Concrete Bed" tosses out itchy acoustic guitars and clunky rhymes like "ossified"/"fried" before building into a potentially laughable chorus, "To find someone you love/ You gotta be someone you love." Yet Caws' subject already knows this, he says, concluding, "You've gotta call your own bluff." Third track "Always Love" offers a similarly simple sentiment and acoustic guitars that unsurprisingly build into chunky power-pop. Here, too, however, Caws isn't just childishly mouthing something he's overheard; he's coming to terms with a voice he's ignored.
The album's Northwest sheen also exists under shadow of the humdrum-- and serves as another proving ground for the underrated production of Death Cab guitarist Chris Walla, who helps give the straightforward tunes added scope and depth. His presence is particularly felt on the slowly humming, orchestral "Your Legs Grow", which appeared in different form on the Future Soundtrack for America comp. A track that could have been maudlin instead attains a simple beauty.
Suffering is essential to The Weight Is a Gift, but mostly as a turning point in the rearview mirror of redemption. The album's essence is encapsulated on its best song, "Do It Again", which starts with funky (well, you know, for Nada Surf) bass and spiderwebs of distorted guitar. "I spend all my energy staying upright," Caws sighs, begging for another go amid the "azalea air" and finally coming to the album's title revelation as cymbals crash and background vocals swell.
Follow-ups have, to put it mildly, never been Nada Surf's forte. On The Weight Is a Gift, the band bears its cross and settles for a few quiet victories rather than a spectacular failure. Maybe I'm still young enough to hope that adulthood can be more surprising than this; "All Is a Game" never brushes aside the well-worn sentiment of its title or its adult-alternative environs, breakup song "What Is Your Secret" suffers from a lame movie metaphor, and dreamy "Comes a Time" fails to live up to its nods to Neil Young and Paris, Texas.
Time has allowed Nada Surf to uncover the truth in the trite, but it has also eroded some of the band's personality. As much as I'd like to rep for the preeminence of song and restraint over typical indie look-at-me pseudo-avant-gardism, this isn't the occasion."
[Quelle]

Shure E5C geräuschabschirmender Ohrhörer

Ich bin zwar auch ein Genießer, gerade was gute Musik angeht. Und natürlich mag ich es auch, wenn es aus dem Pod so klingt wie ich es gewohnt bin, aber ob man dafür gleich 529,95 € zahlen muß....
Ich weiß ja nicht.

Erstling

Gar nicht so schlecht geworden.

So gespannt...

... darf man schon sein wenn man aus fernen Landen heim kommt.

Das Jahr ist gut, Braunbier zu gerathen,
Drum wünsch' ich mir nichts als dreitausend Dukaten,
Damit ich kann schütten Braunbier in mein Loch!
Und je mehr ich davon trinke,
Desto besser schmeckt es noch.
Groß von Trockau

Schlenkerla
Hier und hier gibt es dann noch mehr davon.

BlueVib

Das Register mal wieder.