Marc you radical hard rocking sonofabitch. Yeah. I'm going to stop listening to anything with a violin in it from now on. (looking up Ladytron on allmusic....)

(OK, I was going to comment on the Okkervil River CD which I finally got around to listening to, but it has some (shudder) violins, and even a couple of cellos I think in the (grimace) emotive sections. Still, I'm (I mean, I was) liking it a lot. Pretty great songwriting and big space-filled (read: major pansy territory) sounds. Also really loving the Dianne Reeves songs from Good Night Good Luck, outstanding vocals and sympathetic (damn it! sorry Marc) backing band. Also really liking the Antipop Consortium vs. Matthew Shipp record from 2003....did one of you bring this to a CD club and I completely missed it, or did we just stop talking about Matthew Shipp, other than to mention him playing the night of the last CD club...he is consistently interesting and experimental, and incredibly prolific, maybe the best guy to point to when someone asks about the current direction of jazz).

(Enough with the brackets). I am formally putting forward those three decidely un-rocking disks as my early picks for March.

Aside: It occurs to me that often at CD club we play everything other than the disks we are currently listening to / obsessing over. Am I right? I, for example, didn't bring Animal Collective or Deerhof to Stuart's, despite them being two of my January faves.....no doubt subconsciously because I know many if not all of the group has heard the music already, but as a result we're often not group-listening (I didn't use the word "sharing" as it felt a little homo, but is "group-listening" really any better?) to the music we think is the best, and getting everyone's viewpoints. Maybe I'm the only one guilty of this.