JUNE 2024 - LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING

I'm always in a John Fahey sort of mood, but I do think it hits me harder in the Spring and early Summer. America makes me feel "proud to be an American" in the best possible sense, just overflowing with gratitude for the robust immensity of the sonic landscape that we have inherited. This might be why I most love Fahey. His indebtedness, his leaning on others, is always evident even when (maybe especially when) he is most innovative and original.

I'm exercising again. That almost always means more Black Sabbath in my life.

I've finally come to the limits of Album Whale. I listened to the soundtrack to The Drifting Classroom on YouTube because I couldn't find it on Spotify or anywhere else. So, according to AW, the album doesn't exist. I've linked to the wrong album just to be able to list something here. The correct album I found at: https://youtu.be/hO7hCXKX3oA The soundtrack is quite good, oozing 80s adventure vibes.

I think this is the most fun I've had listening to a new album all year. Highly recommended. It's really nice to see the reciprocal respect so obviously present between the older "living legends" and the younger "rising stars" of bluegrass/newgrass.

Listened to this twice and that's enough. If I'm being generous, I'll say that the lullaby-as-drone-song is at least an interesting idea. If I'm not being generous, I'll say that this is a self-indulgent failure.

Meh.

An old favorite unearthed for a warm summer morning of cleaning house.

One of the greatest soundtracks of all time to one of the greatest movies of all time. I can't stop listening to this.

I wish the album cover wasn't a teenage girl's Instagram profile pic, but otherwise this album is completely satisfying, winning me over immediately despite my grumpy skepticism based on that cover photo. Keith-Hynes can put whatever photo she wants on her albums as long as she keeps playing and singing like this.

The playing is good, but the best part of this live album is the chatting about The Exorcist in between songs.

And the end of all wanting / Is all I've been wanting

Keep giving me second-rate Johnny Cash leftovers from the dustbins, please.

An old favorite unearthed for a warm summer morning of cleaning house.

Some days, I think this is Fahey's most impressive album. It seems like his most expansive album, a sort of American Epic in Miniature, allowing for a multiplicity of "voices"/styles that remain cohesive in their diversity. This is such a lovely and optimistic album. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.