The US has some important elections looming this week, but the month's biggest decision is whether to buy the new Godspeed album on vinyl or CD. Obviously the vinyl will be better sound quality, but due the large amount of music per side (~20 min) the groove widths are narrower and the loudness suffers. Sure, you can just crank up the amp to compensate, but then you're dealing with amp or speaker distortion, plus the music doesn't seem to jump out at you (as much as it does when the record is loud to begin with). I found this a bit disconcerting with the last Godspeed record, it would come off a bit flat unless the volume was high enough, and then I'd be amplifying more hiss and unwanted noise. All this was passing through my mind after I bought a 12" original pressing of Jesus and Mary Chain's "You Trip Me Up". On one side, you have the Phil Spector-tastic single, with two supporting tracks on the b-side. There was clearly something very deliberate being done. First of all, there's maybe seven minutes of total music here, which means it's overkill to use a 12" format. Second of all, the grooves are significantly tighter on the b-side, meaning it's literally a third as loud as the a-side. Third, and most importantly, "You Trip Me Up" was cut with huge groove widths, we're talking two and a half minutes stretched out over half the area of the record, so the song EXPLODES off the record to the point that any CD version that you might have is rendered more useless than eating soup with a fork. It can be no accident that JAMC were hoping that some unwitting Radio Two DJ would throw this record on the stereo without testing the levels first, stomping a giant bruise on the toes of the A-Ha and Arcadia records that they'd have been playing immediately before, melting an country's hair gel to boot. You know, there's a book that's just DYING to be written that explains in non-technical terms why vinyl sounds better than CD, why music companies and retailers screwed over consumers by force-feeding them convenience in favour of sound fidelity (even though it's not true), and the sociology/underground cult of vinyl lovers who keep vinyl alive and flourishing even though 99% of casual music fans believe the medium is dead. I would love to be the guy to write this book, but it'd involve taking off time from my regular life for a few months.

Something has possessed Sigur Ros' American distributors because they're heavily pushing an album with no title and no song titles. My guess is they're hoping to capture lightning in a bottle twice -- call it Radiohead in a bottle -- and they believe the album can get by on a second round of word-of-mouth buzz, critical jism, and general curiosity. I have no idea if they're hallucinating or if this maniacal plan will work. My gut feeling, given the "Step 1: pop, Step 2: trash" attitude of the entire industry over the last few years, is that the long-term financial prospects for a band like Sigur Ros are practically zilch. In the meantime, they've turned out a fine bit of dreamy grunge (the soft-loud-soft formula is worked to the bone). It reminds me a lot of the first Verve album. That is, Sigur Ros are either delusional noodlers in love with Kid A, or a "white-knuckled, intense experience". The defense calls the final track to the witness stand, a track I instantly recognized as the final track they played in concert a year and a half ago. Such was the impression it left me with even though it was six seasons in the past. I was all giddy, and then I remembered that as good as it is, the final five minutes of the Godspeed record blow it away like yesterdays garbage, which made me calm down somewhat.