Lots of great releases in October (Ray LaMontagne, Ingrid Michaelson, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, etc.) and plenty of reason to be listening to calm music, even when life isn’t always so calm (and maybe especially so in that case). Seeing Sigur Rós was a great way to start things off, and seeing Death Cab for Cutie last week was a great way to end it.

And, just for the record, “Swagga Like Us” may be the best hip hop song ever recorded. M.I.A., Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne and T.I. all on one track. My mind is blown.

1. Earth - “Omens and Portents 1: The Driver” (The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull)
2. TV on the Radio - “Halfway Home” (Dear Science)
3. T.I. - “Swagga Like Us” (Paper Trail)
4. Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - “Thou Shalt Always Kill” (Angles)
5. Ray LaMontagne - “Meg White” (Gossip in the Grain)
6. Ryan Adams & the Cardinals - “My Love for You is Real” (Follow the Lights)
7. Ray LaMontagne - “You Are the Best Thing” (Gossip in the Grain)
8. Ingrid Michaelson - “Can’t Help Falling In Love” (Be OK)
9. Todd Snider - “Is This Thing Working?” (Peace Queer)
10. Brett Dennen - “Make You Crazy” (Hope for the Hopeless)
11. Ryan Adams & the Cardinals - “Magick” (Cardinology)
12. TV on the Radio - “DLZ” (Dear Science)
13. Bloc Party - “Ares” (Intimacy)
14. mewithoutYou - “Son of a Window” (Catch for Us the Foxes)
15. Death Cab for Cutie - “Transatlanticism” (Transatlanticism)
16. Marnie Stern - “Clone Cycle” (This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That)

A few years ago when I started to work out a Christian epistemology and a Christian concept of culture, many people considered what I was doing suspect. They felt that because I was interested in intellectual answers I must not be biblical. But this attitude represents a real poverty. It fails to understand that if Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just “dogmatically” true or “doctrinally” true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.

The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment — the infinite, personal God who is really there — then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth. Such an attitude will give our Christianity a strength that it often does not seem to have at the present time.

Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible

A very short book that has done more to help me get perspective on faith, art and life in general than almost anything else in recent memory.

Has the Church — or more specifically, evangelical Christian culture — perpetuated the idea that challenging norms and asking “dangerous” questions is a bad thing? To me that’s what it feels like, but I could be wrong.

On Friday night, Craig and I got to see Sigur Rós at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater. It’s an outdoor venue and rain was in the forecast. I hoped it would hold off, but I never could have expected what actually happened.

We stayed dry for the entire show and were thankful, and the band came out to do a final song for the encore: Untitled 8 (aka Popplagið). One of their most popular songs, and definitely one of the grandest and most epic songs I’ve ever heard. As the song started to build to its climax, a mist started to form over the crowd, and as the song progressed the rain began to pour harder and harder.

Watch this video that someone got of the song. It’s hard to see the rain in the video, but when the crowd starts to cheer a couple minutes in, that’s when it started to come down.

Craig said I looked happier than I’ve been in a long time in those few minutes. It’s true. I might sound like a complete sap, but it was one of the most worshipful, beautiful moments in my life thus far. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.

I love Lykke Li and I love Bon Iver. This video only increases that love. So good.

Yep. Fall is here. Gone are the sunny pop songs of spring and summer. In come the introspective, calm-but-questioning sounds of autumn.

Change is afoot.

1. Jakob - “Pneumonic” (Solace)
2. The Velvet Underground - “Who Loves the Sun” (Loaded)
3. Radiohead - “There There” (Hail to the Thief)
4. M83 - “Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun” (Before the Dawn Heals Us)
5. The New Pornographers - “These Are the Fables” (Twin Cinema)
6. Joshua James - “Today” (The Sun Is Always Brighter)
7. dan le sac vs. Scroobius Pip - “Letter from God to Man” (Angles)
8. Neko Case - “Look For Me (I’ll Be Around)” (Blacklisted)
9. Joshua James - “Winter Storm” (The Sun Is Always Brighter)
10. Neko Case - “I Wish I Was the Moon” (Blacklisted)
11. mewithoutYou - “Carousels” (Catch For Us the Foxes)
12. TV On the Radio - “Crying” (Dear Science)
13. Jay-Z - “Renegade” (The Blueprint)
14. Hammock - “We Will Say Goodbye to Everyone” (Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow)
15. Ingrid Michaelson - “The Way I Am” (Girls and Boys)
16. Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile - “The Farmer and the Duck” (Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile)

P.S. If you get a chance to, go see Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile live. I saw them last weekend in Irvine and was thoroughly impressed. It’s a beautiful thing to see modern legends collaborate so well with each other. And if you don’t get a chance, at least pick up a copy of the album.

I completely blame this on my friends that work at the Mac Superstore. After a lifetime of using Windows, they finally convinced me to get a MacBook Pro.

What it came down to was a combination of curiosity about unknown territory and a realization that if I’m going to explore it, now is probably the best time to do it given that I’m at the age with the highest amount of expendable income. (Also, I have to admit that the musician/writer/web addict/hipster in me would get a little ego boost from all this. Sad, I know.)

I originally intended to wait for the soon-coming announcement of the next line of MacBooks, but Josh and Andy, my friends at the Mac Superstore, told me the other day that they had a couple top-end models of the last line on major sale. So yesterday I went in on my lunch break and picked up the last one they had.

(For the nerds: 17″ hi-def 1920×1200 display, Intel Dual Core 2.6GHz processor, 200GB 7200 rpm hard drive, 4 GB RAM, 256 MB video.)

So far I’m still figuring things out. Though I’ve used Macs before, it’s an adjustment to use one for more than a few minutes because I’m used to being able to zip around in Windows. This is The Great Experiment, after all. I do have to say that it’s a lot easier to figure out from the get-go. I’m not really used to that so it’s a little unsettling for some reason.

I’ve got Firefox running with most of my plugins, I’m running Adium for chat, Twhirl for Twitter. I still need to import all my music and pictures.

Things I love? Multi-touch mouse, the speed improvement, way more screen space, pretty looks and the kind of highly intuitive interface I always aim to create when making websites. I’m also looking forward to using GarageBand.

My two unsolved problems: I can’t get the hot keys working for Spaces and I can’t figure out how to keep the computer from sleeping when I close the lid. Relatively small issues.

Oh, and I miss my Home, End and Delete keys. Fn+Backspace doesn’t quite cut it.

Ryan Catbird of Catbird Records wins the award today:

Q: Are you posing for the cover of Italian Vogue?

If the answer is “no,” then you can probably stop this whole “pursing-your-lips-whenever-someone-takes-your-photo” thing, I think.

The curse of the Myspace/digital camera age. Even I did this occasionally for a while, and I hated myself for it. Somehow I broke the habit. It just goes to show how we are so easily and subliminally influenced by the most trivial of things.

Tim Blair, my former boss’s boss (er… something like that), puts it quite eloquently:

Inexperience in Washington politics is a lot like recruiting a rookie to play on a last place team. They certainly won’t make things worse and might just make things better.

Sample of Radiohead’s Planet Telex? Check.
Catchy glitch-pop melody? Check.
Social/religious commentary? Check.
Cute kid in a dinosaur costume? Check.

I think we’ve got all the bases covered.

I had my first experience with podcasting over the weekend. Dan, Ben and I are starting the Buzzgrinder podcast back up after a couple years of silence. We posted our first attempt yesterday evening. (Yeah, yeah, shameless self-promotion.)

It was a bit rocky at first while we were figuring out how to get three guys to banter with an Internet delay between each of us. After a little while it picked up, though, and I’d say we were fairly successful at what we were trying to do.

I know that “podcast” link up at the top of the page doesn’t go anywhere yet, but now that I have a better idea of how it might work, I think I’m going to get started on a monthly music podcast here, at least as an experiment at first. To keep things simple, it will probably be based off of my monthly playlists. Stay tuned.