Sufjan show should be a good one and all should join us at this glorious event.

I thoroughly enjoy "Illinois", particularly 'Casimir Pulaski Day', which has a very Iron & Wine feel to it; perhaps Sam Beam could be considered one of Sufjan's peers, and Belle and Sebastian’s ‘Legal Man’ seems like a recent touchstone. Also digging 'Chicago', 'Come on! Feel the Illinoise!' and many others. In adding my two cents to the ongoing 'is the album too long?' debate, I'll try to avoid the fence-straddling, namby-pamby 'you both have a point' line that inevitably follows the articulation of opposing perspectives.

With my often hectic travel schedule, I tend to listen to a lot of my music on my ipod, the features of which allow for some interesting playback options. I have a 'smart' playlist, which is an ongoing compilation of all the songs I have added to the player in 2005, ordered by that which was most recently added. This means that I can quickly find and hear some of the new music I've downloaded/ripped and it also means that I listen to a lot of albums in reverse. While this can definitely disrupt the 'flow' of a lot of albums, it does shine a brighter light on tracks that appear at the end of a disc. Consequently, a song like ‘Out of Egypt…’, the last piece on the album, which is a pretty, xylophone progression paired with what sounds like a choral exercise or the background vocals from a particularly long Stereolab track, is far more impressive when heard before the rest of the album.

When I listen to ‘Illinoise’ from start to finish on my stereo at home, I do find that I’m starting to crave a different sound after the 45-50 minute mark. It’s not that the last 4-5 tracks aren’t quite good, it’s that I feel I’ve already heard several more interesting variations on the album earlier on. To riff on Derek’s Pot of Gold metaphor, it’s like, I’ve enjoyed the 15 chocolate caramels but I don’t feel I need another 5 right not (but get back to me in say, an hour).

As for losing posts, I've found that opening up a Word document and then copying and pasting (Control-C, Control-V) is a great way of avoiding blog-text loss, which has happened to me in the past, though I've never lost two days worth of writing. There, nice to end a long post on a glib note.

Hope you've picked out some good music for this coming Monday, Bri. I found that pumping thrash metal through the house really increased the speed of the movers.