when i bought mark eitzel's the ugly american i really did believe that it was out of sheer loyalty, perhaps some curiosity, but definitely very little expectation. as an album, though, it is more consistently listenable than anything else he's released without american music club. the songs are some of his best from over his whole run of albums, and it sounds remarkably unassuming. the invisible man sounds largely desperate and overwrought in comparison.

they've made meat in a vat now. wow. this is the company: new harvest: advancing meat substitutes.

tales from turnpike house hasn't crossed the ocean yet, it seems, so i bought sebastian tellier, politics, and josh rouse, 1972, instead. i'm losing faith in the bruce cockburn reissue schedule. salt, sun, and time, joy will find a way, and night vision are still unavaliable, but fucking big circumstance is out? that's frustrating. i've held back on picking those three albums up for several years now, waiting for the reissues, so that i wouldn't end up with two copies, as i did with humans, dancing in the dragon's jaws, and in the falling dark. i still like that last title a lot. it's a good album.

further adventures of..., the only reissue that i picked up new, was always phrased to me as an interim album, a stopgap between much more notable releases. the pick for compilations has always been the relatively insipid laughter. the album is a precursor, i think, to my very favourite of them all, 1996's the charity of night. the comparison comes first from the similarity of the instrumental pieces, but second from the variety and explorations of the albums. i got to know further adventures... well while staying at the delta hotel downtown through last year, which gave me a lot of time to focus on the albums i had around. also notable from that time is damon and naomi's with ghost and phoenix's alphabetical. that was an odd year. listening to damon and naomi and reading george melnyk at 1 am, 18 stories above downtown. still haven't found a way to recapture that sense.