AMG is no stranger to glittering prizes and endless compromises, but believes that all this machinery in making modern snark can be open-hearted and not so coldly charted. After all, all the world’s indeed a post and we are merely bloggers.

I think UC is K-Stew and Pitchfork is a hollow-cheeked sparkly undead dude.

Pinko: You have to consider the idea that I might be better for you than UC is.
UC: Pitchfork, I promise to love you every moment of forever.
Pitchfork: You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.
Pinko: I know the consequences of the choices you’re making. After a few decades, everyone you know will be dead. of IMS.
UC: You wouldn’t have to change for me Pitchfork. I’m in love with you, and I want you to pick me instead of him.
Pitchfork: Pinko, would you please stop trying to take your clothes off?
UC: Doesn’t he own a shirt?

But one July day, the duo ascended to the top of the Three Bulls Building in Cloverhill Big Texas Honeybun, plugged in their computers, and ripped off a 20-song set of ranting like they had never left. Picking up where Parts 39-20 left off, the two trade dual barbs like leads from legendary group Thin Tizzy, shooting down forgetable tunes and fellatious hipster prose with furious runs of sixteenth-note harmonies. With UC providing his patented Wall of Meh sound, Pinko Punko composes his trademark double-neck ghost melon slide solos (played with an emu feather), creating an Iron Maiden Snuggie that’s as warm and soft as it is piercing and evicerating.

Exhausted at the end of their performance to the point of complaining about songs they actually like–with UC’s “this video makes me want to puke” sounding like a Tweet for help–they end with one furious chord that gives the listener 100 percent full, undistorted, unbridled ass, before an open mic captures Pinko saying, “I hope we passed the audition.” More against all odds than Phil Collins, more unable to fight this feeling than REO Speedwagon, and more hot blooded than Foreigner, this is the sound of two masters making the miraculous look mehndane. Essential.

I also really love The xx. Again, not terribly original, but the overall sound of that album makes me want to play it again and again. I would have made out to it when I was 17, yet unlike many albums I did make out to when I was 17, I don’t find it horribly embarassing.

As good as you think they’d be? EVEN BETTER.

I suspect we will enter Thunderdome later this year because of my insane love for Fang Island, which is approaching Hold Steady territory.

Exile to a place like Big Texas Cinnamon Roll is one of the reasons why I fear the upcoming couple of years.

DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH WORK I HAVE TO DO TODAY?!

Highlights were Black Angels and Pink Mountaintops. I was the dork whose screams for the last song, when PMs were deciding what to play, won out (“Tourist in your Town”).

The two biggest concerts in my town for the last year were Pitbull and now Chamillionaire is coming in two weeks. This is it. When you have a Goobie it doesn’t sound that exciting to drive 2.5 hours for a show and then think about the drive back home late at night.

Btw, I’m at 20 concerts so far this year, with six more on the horizon (Islands is next on Monday night), plus the P4k fest.

Possible the NP problem is a dearth of Neko?

It was the fact that he introduced himself as a musical genre polymath and wrote an extensive disclaimer why he, being gifted enough to devour vast swaths of musical styles LIKE JOHN PEEL, might present a list where you mere mortals might find something to quibble. Hey you, Nate Patrin, if you admit that you were wrong we’ll admit that we’re right. Don’t try to butter us with Sloan. I am not crazy of you.

NP album makes me sad because I don’t love it. I think Challengers better even though the style of the new one I like more. Challengers had 4-5 As and a bunch of B-, while the new one is more like B, B+, A- across the board. Lower deviation due to smaller range. Sighwagons.

Free Energy? check
Besnard Lakes? check
Apples in Stereo? check
Broken Social Scene? check
Ted Leo? check
New Pornographers? check
Sleigh Bells? check
Titus Andronicus? check

Things I don’t like:
No Black Keys
No Beach House

Things that surprise me, but about which I’m abivalent:
No Surfer Blood
No Local Natives

it is.

…it is probably a pass.

It is.

Also, I hate when an album I really like gets attention for a song that’s just kinda meh. I know that the Yalie does R&B makes “Stillnesss is the Move” a game changer for some, but it’s maybe the fifth or sixth best song on the album for my money (though it was my album of the year).

I also think it’s kinda weird that four bands are doubled up in the top 20. Like there was a general consensus on what bands needed to be in the top 20, but multiple songs were splitting the vote, which allowed Dirty Projectors to jump into the #2 spot.

It is SO ON.