I can’t help myself, I love The Raconteurs (even if they do force a goddamn browser re-size on their homepage – ed.). I stand by my claim of Jack White being one of the finest lyricists of this generation and I think he and Brendan Benson just write great songs. “Consolers of the Lonely” is their second album and, of course, I have enjoyed it immensely.

“Salute Your Solution” is, for all intents and purposes, a Police song that was never released. B Benson even channels Sting’s vocals a bit in the 2nd verse. Check it out. It’s excellent.

Watch You Bleed

My lovely Mrs. will be pleased.

I wonder how it will hold up against other classic in the genre: The Dirt, Please Kill Me, and Live From New York

[got the heads up from Rex]

He has got to be insane.

Aaron Horkey describes the print:

“Embellished with 5 colors – acrylics, gouache and colored pencil. Each individual piece includes it’s unique print number hand rendered in paint, cradled inside the Detritus emblem at the bottom of the print. Surrounding flourishes on each number have been added using metallic gold colored pencil, also unique to each print. 12 egg cases within the illustration have also been rendered and the print number for each print has been painted into the key face, upper right corner of the image.”

Image and info grabbed from OMGposters.com where all of the good Horkey news breaks. Go there to see some excellent detail images. I’m blown away.

Shadow and Cut Chemist (careful, browser re-size there- ed.) are two of my favorite DJs, so when they come together to do their sets of all 45rpm record mixes I am glued. I was actually lucky enough to get to see them on their most recent tour where they performed The Hard Sell. I have the Product Placement DVD so I knew what to expect visually but I was still floored by how slick those two guys were in person. The setup was ridiculous.

Here’s a photo of the live setup nicked from Shadow’s site:

Since the cd is just 2 really long untitled tracks I pulled out a 6-minutes-and-change minute chunk to give you a taste. This was the part of the set where they did a little Prince Paul/De La Soul tribute. I almost jumped out of my socks when I heard it. “3 Feet High and Rising” is in my Top 10 All Time. Enjoy.

This is out of left field.

Elbow (check out that splash page, sharp!- ed.) is a band that should definitely get more propers than it does here in the U.S. The Seldom Seen Kid is the good Britpop that I love so damn much. Dude sounds like he’s smoked about 200 cigarettes and the band mixes up the sound enough to reward repeated listens.

“Grounds for Divorce” is the grinding single from this album and you can hear it featured in the trailer to ‘Burn After Reading’, the new Cohen Bros. movie.. Since that one has gotten around a bit I thought I would share something from the other end of their musical range, “Starlings“. Love love love those blasts of brass.

Like some folks have Jesus, I have John Reis (aka Speedo from RFTC) as my co-pilot and my homeboy. The guy makes great music and I search it out at every turn. The Night Marchers is his latest and greatest endeavor. It’s the good rock and roll.

“I Wanna Deadbeat You” is a snappy little number with a terrific title. You’ll be humming it for the rest of your afternoon. Enjoy.

I just didn’t make enough time to do a lot of it this weekend. I knocked out a quick loop down to Arthur Ashe and back on Saturday morning before I left town for the day (for my fantasy football auction) and then I rode to the pool yesterday. I can’t really count that as “a ride” since it almost takes longer to drive there than to ride there, but I will score the points for not firing up the old Mercury.

I’m trying to get a ride plan for next Saturday morning. I’d like to do something in the 20-30 mile range. Ronan and I are looking at riding from Short Pump Town Center to the George Washington statue at Capital Square. It’s 13.5 miles and completely do-able. I’ve also heard that there is nice road heading East from downtown into Varina. It will be cool to either see all of Broad Street from a bike or ride off along the banks of the James River. Win-win, right?

Svn Fngrs is the latest Frank Black album (released under the Black Francis) but at only seven tracks (get it?) it falls between proper album length and a standard 5-track ep. If you’re into this guy then you will like it. He’s not the ‘Beach Boy from the Future” of ‘Teenager of the Year‘ anymore but his songs are still strong.

“Seven Fingers” is the kind of Western-flavored straight-up rocker that is the foundation of his post-Pixies catalog. It’s a good one.

I really, really like the look of these little guys. Kidrobot has them for sale here. The only bummer for me is that they’re sold in blind-boxes so you don’t know what you’re getting until you open the box. That means I probably won’t buy them online. I hope World of Mirth has them for sale. They have an cool deal on the blind-boxes where they have a couple already opened behind the counter so if you get a dupe (or a dud) you can swap it out.