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• More P4k list commentary

  Bummed that on a list of a lot of only semi-obvious picks from artists with bigger, even better songs, Elliott Smith got stuck with “Needle in the Hay,” the song that most plays into the Elliott Smith Was Sad And Took Drugs And Sang About Himself Narrative, when, like Joni Mitchell or Neil Young or his heroes in Big Star and the Beatles, his “confessionalism” was as much storytelling and character study as it ever was diary-page. 

  Despite “Miss Misery,” it is admittedly the song I think he’s best known for; it is a great and powerful song, but he was and remains so much more than that. 

  Also, this: “Posthumously parsing Elliott Smith songs— for foreshadowing, for anything— feels like something of a fool’s errand in 2010.”

  I don’t know, Amanda, does that mean David Foster Wallace’s books have no meaning now? Or the poems of, like, Samuel Coleridge? What an awfully slippery slope to look for an angle on.

  Also really glad “1979” charted so high, song rules, the Pumpkins rule(d), suck it, cred.

  09/03/10

• The guitars on the No Age album

  They sound like volcanoes erupting or meteors killing dinosaurs

  It’s amazing that there are songs here at all

  09/03/10

• The Drums' Arcade Fire cover

  I’m not going to dignify it by listening to it, but Jesus, has there ever been a more desperate PR stunt by a band still in their U.S. album pre-release cycle who 1) had buzz 2) totally lost it 3) asked who they needed to blow to get it back before their album dropped? (They needed to blow Win Butler. And that probably still won’t sell them more than 5,000 copies.)

  09/02/10