A relatively short list this week. I also do not have Friday teach as an excuse for being late this week— the class is done, and I was out taking pictures. You can see one of them here, and there will be more up in the next few days. Anyway:
Video: Tiny Desk Concert by The National and NPR
The Tiny Desk Concerts are a series that NPR does in which musicians come in and play about three songs in the NPS offices, at the desk of Bob Boilen. They are, generally, fairly stripped down, mostly acoustic sets, usually quite intimate. The National don’t peel things back as much as they might, what with seven people, but it’s a nice set.
Album Stream: Olympia by Austra at NPR First Listen
I can’t embed this, so you’ll have to go listen to it on their website, but here’s another excellent NPR Music feature: First Listen, in which they make full albums available to stream before their official release— usually by about a week. This will probably only work until Tuesday, when Austra’s album will be for sale. Predictably, I like it a lot; a bit less of the 80s/Siouxsie Sioux influence that their first record, and more live instrumentation, but Katie Stelmanis’s voice is still front and center, which is really all I need to know.
List: “60 Comics Everyone Should Read” by Summer Anne Burton
Canonization is always a fraught exercise, but it would be hard to argue with most of these. Though I have not read close to all of them, pretty much everything on that mental “oh yeah, I should read that one” list is here.
