Sometimes immersion therapy is the only answer. Been feeling much malaise about the glut of product to wade through of late (I'm not the only one--it's a critblog theme of late), but after a pretty thorough clean-out two weekends ago, I've been making my way through a lot of new stuff, some of it better than other (duh), but more of it interesting if not good than I'd expected. After months of lousy records that taught me nothing, decent-to-excellent ones with lessons embedded are a gift. Even better, I've been keeping track of stuff I'm not necessarily supposed to write about right away, which sweetens the deal for me considerably--roaming is a hefty part of the pleasure of the job, or should be. Much of it I don't even have an opinion about yet: A.C. Newman, Automato, the Thermals, Phoenix, M83, Arvane, these three Brazilian comps Universal sent (w/more to come), Harkonen/These Arms Are Snakes split, Pan Sonic 4CD monster, Cachao, all those Sublime Frequencies "field recordings." But I'm really enjoying swimming around in all of it, figuring out where it all fits.