The Best Thing I Heard This Week-Feist

I picked up the new Feist record with some trepidation. While I'd always enjoyed a few singles ("Mushaboom", for sure), she'd never been able to hold my attention for a full album. Worse, her new record, Metals, was being given the dreaded "pretty ok, but not great" review by pretty much every outlet, ensuring a decent but sleepy record by a respected artist. So I was happily surprised when I found Metals to be not only engaging, but my favorite Feist record yet.

Staples-The Harlem Shakes' Technicolor Dreamcoat

Sometimes, you get lucky, truly and strangely lucky, and you listen to the right record at the right moment and it'll be with you forever. Granted, some records are so great that they're going to do that anyway, but not every record is Let It Bleed or Abbey Road or Blonde on Blonde, so you gotta appreciate that shit when it happens. I heard the Harlem Shakes' Technicolor Health at the best time possible. The record is hopelessly positive and forward-looking, so much so that it caused critics to wince, yet it was the best thing for me to hear at that moment. I listened to this record on repeat during a six hour drive from the Appalachians to Chapel Hill, and it became a staple of my music collection.

Volume 5: Too Much, Too Soon

I recently read Lewis Lapham's sometimes intriguing