"I've fallen into a state of grace that I can't get out of..." - Silkworm.

...and we're back.

Congratulations to Tina and Nito, who got engaged last week while we were all minding our own business at the beach.

Jeez, you go offline for a week and all sorts of stuff happens…

Holy crap, the drummer from Silkworm died in a car crash. Coverage here. More info here. Sad and pointless. In The West and Libertine are two of our favorite records (the latter has one of the best album covers in indie rock). If you don't have them you are missing parts insi-i-i-i-i-eeed.

And The Brain is going the way of the dodo bird after eight big, big years. What with the explosion of music journalism online, we guess this isn't that much of a surprise. But the site's importance can't be overstated.

Didn't Les Savy Fav break up? We thought we heard that when Inches came out. Well, apparently they were the best act at Pfork's Intonation Festival, at least according to Fluxblog's Matthew Perpetua. And who's gonna argue with that guy?

Speaking of Pfork, this feature gives props to some very deserving and overlooked records, but is ultimately short-sighted in mostly ignoring records released before 1995. We'd argue that the premise of the article could be sharpened up and it would make a more forceful point if it asserted that it was important records released between 1990 and 1994 that actually defined the '90s. We're talking records like the aforementioned Silkworm titles, as well as the first three Lilys CDs, Superchunk's On The Mouth, Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary, and on and on and on

Speaking of the Lilys, Plain Parader Maria T. (who also blogs it out at HerJazz) gives in to an impulse to blog about the Lilys and two bands that are carrying on with the Lilys sound: The A-Sides and Hi-Soft. In bigger and better news, gears seem to be grinding behind the Hi-Soft machine -- they've got a MySpace page and a web site in the works. Definitely check out the tunes at the MySpace page. Hotness.

Splendid's stalwart reviewer Jennifer Kelly gives Mazarin's latest release, which we've already hyped here, the feature review treatment. A copy of the record is on its way to our doorstep for review in Junkmedia. No surprise, the Lilys' Kurt Heasley puts in an appearance on the record, which streets Tuesday.

Bradley's Almanac has a full run-down of the Boston Dinosaur Jr. show we all missed, with MP3s to boot. His MP3s typically aren't the greatest quality (no fault of his own, natch, such is the nature of audience recordings) but we'll probably check out a few to see if anything sounds worth having. "In A Jar" sounds pretty hollow on first inspection. The posting also notes that a remaster and reissue of Sebadoh III is currently in the works. We've never owned the record, though we've heard it dozens of times, so we'll be pleased to get our hot little hands on it. Anyway, you practically can't surf anywhere without hitting any Dino Jr. coverage, but if you don't know where to start, why not start at Chromewaves? CRM also had some nice things to say about the D.C. show.

That is all.