It's been a long time since I've done this kind of post... many new things, so I'll be brief.

• Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood. This is good stuff. It has a slight bit of anachronistic old-time country vibe, but not enough to say that it is country. Nice voice.
• Brandi Carlisle - Brandi Carlisle. Kinda folky, singer-songwritery. I like it, even though I get the feeling this is probably a huge hit with the teenage girl demographic. She has a good voice and the melodies are often very nice - i keep hearing echoes of early 70's power pop, not sure why.
• Modern Jazz Quartet - Django. A delicious serving of mid 50's jazz - big on melody, big on tone, big on improv - with vibraphone!
• King Crimson - Discipline. I've had the LP since the mid 80's, but I never got around to getting the CD. Since most of the songs are on whatever King Crimson "Best Of" CD I have, it never seemed important. But, my completist urge finally got the best of me and I decide to get the CD (and the CD has an alternate take of Matte Kudasai, bonus). Side note: I put together a DVD slide show of our Japan pictures and used Matte Kudasai (means "Please Wait" in Japanese) as part of the soundtrack. Every time we've shown the slideshow, someone has asked me "what is this song? who is this?" - they love it.
• Robyn Hitchcock - A Star For Bram. This is just another of his outtakes and remixes collections. There are some interesting things, and a lot of so-so things. But, I'm a Hitchcock addict, so I gotsta have it.
• Calexico - Feast Of Wire / Garden Ruin . This is a great band. They are all over the place stylistically: straightforward rock, jazz, Mexican, country, stuff that sounds like a spaghetti western soundtrack, etc., but it all comes out sounding like Calexico.
• Love and Rockets - Love and Rockets. These guys were pretty big in my college dorm room; my roommate was a big fan. It's a pretty dark record, even for these guys; and there are some good songs, mixed in with a lot of nonsense. But it's all quite dated, now - that semi-goth industrial-ish Euro-pop thing didn't last much past the late 80s. In my defense, I was pretty drunk when I clicked "Buy This".
• Gillian Welch - Black Star / Relevator Collection. iTunes has two live Gillian EP's, both of which I think are made from songs off the Relevator Collection DVD. I bought them both and interleaved the songs onto a single CD for my car. All good stuff - David Rawlings even gets to sing one.
• Marah - If You Didn't Laugh... . Stones-ish roots rock. Pretty good.
• Jurassic 5 - Power In Numbers. I don't like rap in general, but once in a while I find something that I can kindof get into. It helps that this isn't strictly thumping bass and cock-grabbing.