And Now for Something Completely Different

In January 2012, Craig Finn - lead singer of The Hold Steady - released a solo album, Clear Heart Full Eyes. I was listening to it just now. But, as enjoyable as that album is, I wonder why Finn decided to go solo in the first instance? It wasn't like he'd quit his day job; The Hold Steady are still alive and well here in 2014. In fact, they've got a new album out later this month.

Things Found in Liner Notes, Volume 2

More treasures that make it worth buying the CD. Volume 1 is here.

• The booklet that accompanies Low's Drums and Guns album is, appropriately enough, filled with pictures of drums and guns:

A Crack in Everything: The Queen is Dead

It's A Crack in Everything, where good albums get scrutinised to within an inch of their lives! If you're not quite sure what's happening, go to the main A Crack in Everything page first.

Of the four studio albums that The Smiths released in their short time together, The Queen is Dead is actually the only one I've heard. Still, I have it on good authority that this is their masterpiece; the NME, for example, ranked TQiD as The Greatest Album of All Time last year, so I think I was putting my chips on the right square when I bought this one over, say, Meat is Murder.

Music to Play Risk By

Image stolen from John Rostron because I couldn't bothered to take a photo of my own.

I've always enjoyed the occasional game of Risk but it seems like I'm playing it an awful lot recently. This is largely down to Risk Legacy, a sort of epic, serialised version of Risk in which each game affects the next. I've played several games with the same group of people, and it's sort of addictive - it's like someone took this already-moreish world domination game and turned it into the board game equivalent of a Dexter boxset.

Love and Other Hideous Accidents

I have mixed feelings about iTunes, but I must admit that the store came in handy this weekend. Love and Other Hideous Accidents is an album - although, at just 21 minutes long, it's probably more of an EP - that I've wanted for a while, but unfortunately, the CD seems to be out of print. Fortunately, 'out of print' means very little when you're on the internet, and so I'm now the proud owner of a digital copy of ...Hideous Accidents.