Rant: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

After buying a new guitar and playing it like mad for the past few days I found a very helpful site on the internets. Chances are if you play guitar (or like to think you do) then you may need some help figuring out how to play diffrent chords (I'm far too lazy to list examples).

Enter Chordbook!




This site has a flash application where you select what chord you want to play and it shows you where to put your fingers, how it should sound (on electric and acoustic) and you even can add a capo (the guitar tool thing, not the mafia type) onto the e-guitar.

We'll return to our regularly scheduled snob related news shortly.

Rant: Art Brut in 20 years?

While this isn't a shot at Eddie and the boys (and girl) in Art Brut, you've got to admit that they have something in common. In the bizarro world way...



Now then Eddie, where the hell is that new album I keep hearing about?

Admit One: Of Montreal + Special Rant Bonus

Last week I caught Of Montreal in...Montreal, of course! Their live show was a fun as last time I saw them and I was dancing it up the only way I know how. Even though I listen to their albums pretty often and have (obvs) noticed a stylist change between Cherry Peel and their latest release Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer?, the enormity of the change hadn't really dawned on me until seeing them live. How could the band playing "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal" at a near deafening volume be the same that wrote "Don't Ask Me To Explain" (which verges on twee) all those years ago. While I am a self professed snob I'm not crotchety - so don't think that by saying that their new material is diffrent I'm condemning it. Far from it, I think that Hissing Fauna is one of the best releases of 2007 so far (more on that later). But seeing the huge divide in their work does make you wonder how so many other bands stay together and never change their sound.

That said you have to wonder if there was an actual lightbulb over Kevin Barnes' head when he tried a casio for the first time.


Whew, with that tidbit of concert reviewing out of the way I can point out the thing that I saw at Of Montreal that absolutely drove me nuts. What the hell is it with people buying band t-shirts, then putting it on over what they have on? And why do people seem to be doing this more often? Of course as a long time show goer I've seen this happen at nearly every show I've been to...but it seems to be getting worse. I mean why would you:

a) choose to do this
b) choose to do this in the sweltering heat of La Tulipe?

Comfort aside, it just looks really really silly.

Of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse (Mp3)