And what does he hear ?

• Twin A - Disappear . My wife and I saw them in Rochester, NY a few weeks back, at a club called Milestones (where, back in the day, many of my old bands played). I assume they're still a local band, because I haven't seen much about them on the net. They were loud, the sound was crap, but we could make out enough of it to know we liked it - so we bought their CD. And, it is good. They sound like a band that could get a lot of college/alternative radio play these days - emotional guitar pop.
• Madeleine Peyroux - Careless Love. ... ... BILLIE HOLIDAY!! Ok. There's no getting around it, the woman sounds like the reincarnation of Billie Holiday. She does very approachable blues/jazz versions of standards new and old (including, to my surprise, Elliot Smith's Between The Bars). The whole thing has a nice, slow relaxed vibe - with the vocals up front and clean. I like it, but I just can't shake the feeling that I'm listening to Billie Holiday - which is a compliment, of course.
• Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed. What's to be said... it's everything you'd expect from a record that starts with Gimme Shelter and ends with You Can't Always Get What You Want. Well, there is a problem... the problem with buying Rolling Stones records these days is that all of them have two or three songs that you've already heard a skrillion times - why would I want to pay for a copy of You Can't Always Get What You Want ? Especially since I already have it, and all the others, on Hot Rocks. Luckily, iTunes lets you buy tracks individually, so I just bought everything but the first and last songs, then told iTunes that the Hot Rocks versions are actually from Let It Bleed (can't have a song on more than two albums ? WTF ?). Problem solved.
• Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs. An great blend of styles (folk, rock, swing, jazz, etc) with intelligent, oblique, and often dark lyrics that are delivered in a voice that reminds me a lot of Beck's quieter moments - or maybe John Mayer (gasp).
  Overprescribed
  Under the mister
  We had survived to
  Turn on the History Channel
  And asked our esteemed panel
  `Why are we alive?'
  And here's how they replied:
  `You're what happened when two substances collide
  And by all accounts you really should've died.'

  I like it quite a lot.