I'll take "Canadian Supergroups Without Bryan Adams" for $800, Alex

So Pitchfork comes bearing great news that two of Frog Eyes' early albums are being re-released with additional bonus tracks. This is a great time to remind ourselves of several things:

1) Frog Eyes sounded a lot like Wolf Parade before Wolf Parade did.

2) Casey Mercer (Frog Eyes), Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade) and Dan Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers) are making an album under the name Swan Lake and will be releasing it by the end of the year.

I, for one, think there is enough talent involved here to make a better album than the New Pornographers ever did, but that's only because they didn't let Neko sing enough. Only time will tell.


Sigur Ros at Benaroya Hall was very similar to the last time I saw the band, last fall. Definitely an experience any fan of the band needs to have. The light show is quite incredible. Pink Floyd-ish, almost. The sound was awesome, with the exception of the light fixture that buzzed annoyingly right above my head whenever the bass hit, most likely the only one of its kind in the entire place. But it's not our Icelandic friends' fault I got the only bad seat in an otherwise incredible venue. The band performed well and even changed up their setlist a decent amount from the last time they were in town, playing excellent versions of "Heysatan" (with the cool effect of three small lights around the band members that ebbed in and out of the darkness along with the music) and "Olsen Olsen" (probably my favorite Sigur Ros track). They also closed their main set with what I believe was "Hafsol", a bombastic 10-minute-ish number off of the recent "Hoppipola" single. "Glosoli" opened and the last track off of () closed, just like last time.

I remember feeling irrationally let-down when I saw a picture of the band members of Sigur Ros and finding that they were actually human beings and not some ragtag team of pixies and goblins and fairies in a cave somewhere. I don't know how that relates to my reservations about the band's live show, but I think it somehow does. However great the concert was, I left the evening with the same feeling I left with last fall - that the music is beautiful, the band does in impeccable job of translating it to a live setting, but to a certain extent, a majority of the band's music is not meant for a huge concert hall. It is organic-sounding, yet oddly inhuman music. It is meant to be listened to alone, on headphones, in the dark, late at night, perhaps in nature somewhere, not in some large venue where people outside are trying to sell you beers for $6 a pop. This may only make sense in my head, but that's the beauty of music, isn't it?

My apologies for the lack of MP3s on my MP3 blog. I'll make it up to you later, I swear.