Musical Christmas for Andrew

New albums come out this week by both T-Bone Burnett and Sam Phillips, probably my two favorite songwriters not named Joe Jackson. I'm headed out to Plan 9 to get both Burnett's The Tooth of Crime and Phillips' Don't Do Anything today. Reviews soon.

On the subject of music, Karen and I went to the Progressive Nation 2008 show at the National last Tuesday. Dang, is that a great place to see a concert! Dream Theater headlined and were amazing, and Between the Buried and Me and Opeth were big hits (though I didn't much care for them), but the discovery of the night was Three, the band that started the whole shebang. Prog music fans should look them up; they are something special.

QUICK EDIT: The new Sam is magnificent. She just gets better and better.

I'm having a harder time getting into T-Bone's new joint; there's a lot of spoken-word, which I like from him, but I like his melodies a lot too. After one spin, I found myself digging out The Talking Animals for a listen. Theatre fans: you may recognize Tooth of Crime as the title of a Sam Shepard play. This album is indeed the score from a 1996 production of the play, and Shepard co-writes the album's final track.

Bigger reviews soon.