Autolux, Future Perfect. I don’t get the current fawning top-10 craze over The Arcade Fire (I’d say it’s in the top 50, but not a number 1) so the comparison is pretty flawed, in my opinion, but this is good stuff. To quote one Amazon reviewer, think of a quieter, more pleasant mixture of My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. (For the record, I dug on Daydream Nation, but SY’s later catalog made me yawn.) Thanks, Nate.

Life in Catonsville is pretty quiet this week; it’s cold and very windy out there (apparently the artists’ space below us here at work is extremely cold while they work out some HVAC issues) and they’re calling for some snow this week. Valium apparently has absolutely no effect on Penn the cat. Prozac made him a sullen, morose teenager, prone to quick outbursts of anger and long mellow periods. Valium, for him, is like a four-day crystal meth binge: if he could find a way to crawl up inside my skin for MORE PETS RIGHT NOW, I think he’d do it. Thursday we’ll up the dose to Bring Down An Elephant and see if he doesn’t burn through that in fifteen minutes. After half a year of being cooped up in that room, it would be nice to let him out into the house again and reclaim our office.