Oh, the things I've heard!

In updating your music collection I would have you take under consideration two albums in particular. Well, one EP and an album. It's nothing to experimental, nothing to "out there". In fact its Florida swamp by way of Arizona desert folk and some Brooklyn by way of Minneapolis and Boston College bar rock. The first is the new collaboration between Iron & Wine and Calexico: a 7 song EP called In the Reins. And it is glorious. Iron and wine seems to take the lead here, there are none of Calexico's trademarks: dub electronica and mariachi. But the sweeping gradiosity of Calexico, the vision is there as a perfect compliment to whispering intimate folk that Iron & Wine is known for. They should do this again. And again. I'd be like a music nerd neo-folk supergroup the likes of which no man has dared to dream before. You shall no there evocative power and your dreams will be haunted with muted sunsets and rain on windows and shit like that.
The Second is from The Hold Steady. Called "Separation Sunday", it's shambling bar rock for the Williamsburg set. It has the sort of guitar riffs that music reviews inevitable describe as muscular; and yet, there's a little punk attitude, a little snottiness. But it's odd in the strange rambling lyrics about--I don't know, but one of the songs is called Charlemagne In Sweatpants and I don't know if he is a Frankish King or a neighborhood pimp. It's great. The lead singer apparently got a good Jesuit education at BC and Catholic imagery pops up everywhere, as in song titles like "How a Resurection Really Feels". But it seems that The Hold Steady, or at least Finn, the lead singer, is a member in good standing to that most august of groups whose society is comprised of the finest artists, poets, and thinkers of the modern age (to which I myself belong): the lapsed Catholic. (Alright, agnostic Jews and devout Catholics might be giving us a run for our money--but come on: Picasso, Fitzgerald, Scorcese). So don't worry about this being, y'know, Jesus Rock. If it were Jesus Rock I would not recommend it. I hold no truck with Jesus Rock because Jesus doesn't rock--never has--and to represent otherwise is just totally bogus (and, let's face it, a little creepy). But The Hold Steady does rock. And the weird urban shuffle that dominates the rhythm section is a welcome respite from the country-fried Allman Bros./Lynyrd Skynyrd thing that dominates today in the realm of real rockin' (such as it is). Not to dis' Skynyrd--just saying. The Hold Steady is, I guess the best way I can put it is: a punk band that stop taking drugs and started drinking.