Hey! Did you hear Interpol on the OC last night!?

They just kind of slipped it in there...you had to have been really listening closely to have heard it.

Ok, I feel bad ragging on the show this week cause, despite the Evil overkill, it was a pretty great episode, with a good handful of music favs from 2004 thrown in there. (Portions for Foxes, Pretty (Ugly Before)). Most importantly, there were some semblances of a plot developing out of this near waste of a season. Every episode so far felt like it was wrapped up into a little package by the end of the hour, with no real interesting plot arches reaching across multiple episodes. Now we've got Sandy with the ex-love, Marissa and Alex exploring possibilities, and something finally interesting is going on between Seth and Summer that actually makes sense and advances their relationship. (When was the last time you actually cared about these guys till last night?) Yeah, there are still some quirks, like the whole Caleb thinking Ryan is only out for his money thing that came out of nowhere, and that they still don't know what to do with the Ryan and Lindsay relationship, but at least the show is finally moving along. I haven't looked forward to the next episode this much since the end of the last season. Hopefully this is a permanent change for the better.

For more analysis, check out Spinach Dip's weekly reviews.

Naturally the blogs were all over this article in the Post yesterday. I thought the best part was Jason from The Dark Room admitting he can't even stand going to his own bar on weekends because the Bridge and Tunnel take over. That's rough. But then we here about a murder on Rivington St., and everybody starts to think that maybe more rich people isn't the worst thing after all...

Spencer over at Golden Fiddle has a fantastic photo essay of a night at an Arcade Fire show...which barely consisted of any Arcade Fire at all. Brilliant.


So...Somehow I turned this crazy, show-every-night week into a pretty laid back stay-at-homefest. I've got a bit of downtime for the next few days, but then February 1st the city is back under the Arcade Fire's spell for two nights. After that there's Low, then Rouge Wave, then MIA, then the Superbowl, them much much much much more throughout the month. All in all, I've got plans so far to hit up a show at least 17 nights out of the 28 days of February. And I know I prolly seem crazy, but there is A LOT of really good shit coming to town next month. So what else is there to do but go see as much as you can?

March I guess isn't gonna be much quieter, and now I see that The Doves are playing Bowery Ballroom on the 15th! Holy moly. I would have expected them to be hitting up a much much bigger joint in NYC. They seemed like a "two nights at Irving" type of band to me. Anyway, Tickets go on sale today at Noon for a well worth it $25. What great news to start the weekend!