A fellow Mainer! I was in Portland for the whole Rustic Overtones explosion. (If you're from there, you may remember Face Magazine - I ran it for a while.) Not sure why they didn't hit big either, but I have to say, their reunion albums are excellent. New Way Out especially. 

Richard Thompson is one of the finest guitarists alive, and an amazing songwriter to boot. I sort of think of him as beyond fame, though - he's like this treasure waiting for people to discover, and I kind of think his music works very well in that context. 

Hell yes. Plumb was great, but 10 Cent Wings is a pop masterpiece. Check that out if you haven't. 

The first check I ever bounced was to buy Spilt Milk. I simply had to have that album right away, the day it came out. Never regretted it for a second. Still one of the best records I've ever heard. 

100% agree. Laughing Stock is 20 years old this year, and I still haven't grown tired of it.

The Origin! Great call. Bend is an incredible album. 

American Horror Story looks interesting to me. Unfortunately, they hired Tim Minear, which means the show is doomed. Minear is awesome, but cursed. 

Huh.
No love for the Sixth and Seventh Doctors? They have some cracking stories between them, and really should be part of this rotation. I'd love to see an analysis of The Curse of Fenric, for example, or Revelation of the Daleks. Or hell, of the whole underrated mess that is Trial of a Time Lord.

Not the first cash-grab reunion…
Won't be the last.

Kicking and Screaming
I saw Noah Baumbach's first feature at exactly the time in my life it depicts: the fumbling first year after college, when all of the structure you've clung to for years is gone, and you have to figure out what the hell to do now. When Max talks to himself in the mirror ("Oh, Max, what do you do?…

I had the first six Hornsby albums on cassette. (I stubbornly stuck to cassettes as a format for much longer than any rational person should have.) As a piano player myself, I have to say, Hornsby's pretty amazing. Once he dumped the Range and started making jazz-pop records like Spirit Trail, he really showed off…

How does…
…the phrase "M. Night Shyamalan's next movie" still even make sense? When will people stop giving this guy money?

Hell, if we're gonna go that route, how about Iron Maiden?

Oh god, Wishville. That was… wow. Bad.

It probably does, yes. I thought Ferment was by-the-books shoegaze, while Chrome expanded on that template with some impressive melodies and structures, and Adam and Eve expanded on it even more. "Future Boy," "Thunderbird," "Goodbye," "For Dreaming" - these are some of my favorite Catherine Wheel songs. Your mileage…

Adam and Eve is Catherine Wheel's best album. Bar none. Chrome is in second place, but doesn't quite have the songs and the scope of Adam and Eve. Try it.