I live with an awesome and rare jungle animal

Hippie elf-chick with a can of Bud: Does it get any hotter?

The pressure is mounting, yes. I'm getting really excited to start this damn favorites of 2005 list. But as one half of me is cracking while considering what makes the list, the other half still gets to enjoy shit while the process is being completed. Thanks to "Panther", my folk-centric flatmate, I've been blessed with a baker's dozen of Joanna Newsom bootleg tracks, all unreleased songs. Many of them are lose-your-shit fantastic as the one which I remembered from her live performance. Tentatively entitled "Emily", here's a sample of the lyrics:

the meteorite is the source of the light
and the meteor's just what we see
and the meteroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

the meteorite's just what causes the light
and the meteor's how it's perceived
and the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet and offering to thee

Zoiks! I 'sploded when I heard this the first time. I was full-blown obsessed. Let me say it was much easier transcribing this from the mp3 than asking D-Wayne to write down lyrics in the dark when she went to see her the next night (if I'm correct, Joanna didn't even play it the next show).

I'm a n00b when it comes to stuff like this but I made a yousendit link, knock yourself out during the very short time it's available:

Joanna Newsom - Emily (live) (yousendit link)

I don't really know how this all connects but right now I'm listening to the new Fiona Apple album. I know, ewww gross. But the blogisphere has been buzzing about this for what seems to be about 2 years, ever since the "uncommercial" Jon Brion-produced album leaked, leading to the bigwigs shutting that shit down. Apple gets Mike Elizondo to re-produce the record, and bam, on the shelves and on my laptop.


Poor, poor Jon Brion. You just got served.

Sure, there are annoying parts and it is Fiona Apple, but goshdarnit, I'd be a damn liar if I didn't say it wasn't half bad. I was fooled a bit though. The first song, the title track "Extraordinary Machine" is crazy good. Apple's smoky croon bounces through a quirky-as-hump chamber arrangement as the plucky jazziness floors any unsuspecting humps, ie me. Then the album goes on being what I thought it would be.

You might have noticed I used the word "hump" in place of "fuck". I was reading my good friend, Jessica Crase's myspace blog about Apple's live show, where Apple "plays the piano like she's fucking it!!!" And for some reason though in plain sight it says the f-word, I read it as "hump" and laughed out loud that someone would use such an archaic euphemism. Imagine yelling "Hump you!" and meaning it. What world that would be. A great, great, hilarious world.

Next time: The Pre-Show!