Musical Re-Education

I'll be fourteen months into this motherhood gig tomorrow, and I finally feel like I'm getting my sea legs. I find my thoughts turning to things I haven't even really considered since finding out I was pregnant in March 2007-- namely, music and creative pursuits.

Since losing the dining table to make more available living space in our downstairs, I've been lacking a space to do my thing-- the collage-making, journal-writing, archiving (I REFUSE to call it scrapbooking, because I'm not down with ribbony pastel die-cuts and sheets of adhesive-backed words like "SWEET" and "FAMILY" and "I <3 WALMART") and general mess-making that makes me happy. For nearly two years I haven't even wanted that space back, but all of a sudden last week the need to spread out all my things again was overwhelming. One trip to Target later, I was the proud owner of a little black card table that I set up in the guest room. It's already a holy-terror mess, or I'd post a little picture of how cute it was when I got it set up. It makes me happy just to sit in there, let alone throw some paper and tape around.

It only follows that I'd need something to listen to while working on all my projects. One of the best things about the end of the year are all the "best of" CD lists that crop up online like so many mushrooms. Being the rabid NPR / PRI addict that I am, I scoured the lists put out by David Dye and others and now have quite a few gems on my library hold list. I'm clearing out my iTunes in anticipation already-- here's what I reserved:

1) Acid Tongue/Jenny Lewis
2)A Larum / Johnny Flynn
3)Armchair Apocrypha / Andrew Bird
4)Carried to Dust / Calexico
5)Consolers of the Lonely / The Raconteurs
6)Evil Urges / My Morning Jacket
7)Fleet Foxes (eponymous)
8)For Emma, Forever Ago / Bon Iver
9)Furr / Blitzen Trapper
10)Hideaway / The Weepies
11)Oracular Spectacular / MGMT
12)The Bairns / Rachel Unthank
13)The Stand Ins (and The Stage Names) / Okkervil River
14)The Way I See It / Raphael Saadiq
15)Third / Portishead
16)Vampire Weekend (eponymous)
17)Volume One / She & Him

I already know and love a couple of these artists, and I've heard songs by many of the others throughout the year and meant to check out the album, but never got around to it. I'm especially psyched about the Fleet Foxes and Okkervil River. God bless my employing library and its consortium for owning all of these; there are definite advantages to Ohio libraries! If you have any others to suggest, by all means, hit me up in comments (or just tell me). I'm in sore need of re-hipping vis-a-vis my musical library-- there's a limit to how many times I can listen to some old Pavement album from high school (or even The Crane Wife) before my head explodes.