"The way I used to love you that's the way I hate you now." - Replacements.

It seems odd that we are first hearing about the latest Via Tania single from Splendid, which is typically weeks behind the release curve by dint of its policy of reviewing every submission. When did Via Tania stop being cool? Or maybe Splendid's Chicago location gives them the inside track on the release? Well, maybe not, The Beat Surrender based out of the U.K. has a review here.

OK, so we found a stream of the new Sigur Ros at Scenestars today and had the same reaction to it as we have had to their earlier records. It is musically really great (especially the huge, soaring parts of "Glsli" and "Saeglopur"), but we can never get past the lyrics, which are apparently in a made-up language. A very pleasant record to listen to, absolutely. But it took us most of the afternoon to not get irked by the vocals to a certain extent. With the vocals stripped out someone could make a pretty good case for the music being very close to the stuff on Kompakt's Pop Ambient comp series. And that's pretty good.

Stypod today has a great bit devoted to Big Youth, a reggae artist whose influence permeated a lot of British punk (The Clash) and post-punk (PIL). Worth reading.

Finally, a list of hot upcoming rock shows. We'll definitely see Mobius Band and Mendoza Line. Everything else is on the bubble, although we'd really like to see Colleen and The Hold Steady, too.

8/10 Voxtrot
8/12 Colleen
8/14 Texas Governor

9/6 Mobius Band
9/8 Mendoza Line
9/8 Bloc Party
9/11 Hold Steady
9/14 Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah
9/19 Hockey Night
9/22 The Teeth
9/22 Royskopp

That is all.