I'm still alive. I'm trying to be good and, you know, resist the tide of consumerism, but here's a few things I picked up in recent weeks that seemed worth mentioning :

• Yo La Tengo - Summer Sun : Certain tracks on here really catch the sound of love - take Little Eyes' warm fuzzy bass line, for instance. I wish that song went on forever.

• Smog - Supper : This seems like a calmer, more relaxed Bill Callahan at the wheel. Our Anniversary's got a simply gorgeous feel to it - wordmusic at its finest, perhaps.

• Richard Buckner - Impasse : I bought it just in time to miss out on his sold-out gig, but it's been steadily growing on me, even though I'm having trouble making out much of the lyrics. It doesn't seem to matter, though.

• Steve Earle - I Feel Alright : Bought a little while back, and it was sitting on one of the many piles of CDs in my room at just the right time when I reached for something to listen to. And yeah, I do feel alright when I listen to this. I would've sung along as I walked toward Northcote this morning, though I don't reckon the residents would've appreciated it.

• Low - Things we lost in the fire : After listening to this a few times I realised I haven't listened to Trust a whole lot just yet. But I will. I always liked Sunflower, ever since I picked it up from Epitonic ages ago - it fits that middle ground between their achingly quiet tracks like Over the ocean (from the curtain hits the cast) and Trust's All Rock All The Time Canada.

• Royalchord - I gave you a mountain : a local act my housemate knows somehow or other, and he handed me their CD the other week. Nice, quiet, country-tinged in places, but hopefully not enough to annoy the I Don't Like Country crowd. The standout track's called Notion of Invisibility, with a great guitar bit. In places, the song almost reminds me of the Go-Betweens.

• Stereolab - Sound-Dust : ...so I fell off the whole Stereolab thing for a few years, ok ? But there I was a few weeks ago in a clothes shop in Fitzroy, feeling pretty down about things, and I had one of those experiences where everything's suddenly good in the world. The shop attendant's nice to you, and hey, what's that in the background - it sounds like Stereolab only there's pedal steel in there ? Woah. I've gotta get this. So I did. It's certainly music for travelling the spaceways by, but I had to settle for walking around Kensington with it instead, a few days later.

On the in-tray :

• The Monks - Black Monk Time : This has probably eaten my serendipity quota for the month, but I'm not complaining. I'd been looking out for this one for a while now, thinking about ordering it from faraway places, and then one day my housemate says "hey, I just got this from a friend, have you heard The Monks?" I heard of them via The Fall (see Extricate's Black Monk Theme, parts 1 and 2), if you were wondering. Mid-60's pre-punk, yeah !

Poking around again, it's good to see I'm not the only Wedding Present fan left in town.

Also, I've got about 260 photos to sort through and put up. Soon, soon. I'm getting real close to packing it in and doing one of those site reorganization things. Just thinking about backwards compatibility for incoming links is giving me a headache.