Against the wishes of my team of advisers, I’ve decided to start a record-reviewing Twitter account. Given that this site has become ridiculously verbose—my Record Store Day post for The Haul is nearly 3000 words and I still need to finish discussing a few records before posting it—limiting myself to 140 characters (including artist name, album name, and release year) should be a nice change of pace. Its updates soon be crammed into the sidebar, but feel free to follow me and talk trash about the twenty words I use per album.

As penance for joining Twitter at this stage of its life cycle, here is the first shots from Polvo’s upcoming In Prism album, set for release in September on Merge. “Beggar’s Banquet” juxtaposes a dreamy guitar loop with some unusually upfront, fierce riffage, suggesting that Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski have been taking the cream and the clear since 1997’s Shapes. Those riffs might be a holdover from Brylawski’s Black Taj albums, but the song’s polish is strangely unfamiliar to the creaky, mid-fi confines of Today’s Active Lifestyles. Bowie must’ve been saving up this ballsy vocal performance for years. Its ultimate build-up doesn't sound like Polvo, but I'd listen to whatever band it does sound like. (Edit: the other site switched over to "Beggar's Banquet.") The jury’s still out on this song, but I’m still looking forward reviewing In Prism on Twitter.

You may have noticed that I’ve been busy lately catching up on some months-old record shopping tales in The Haul. I’m still behind in that department, having gone to town on Record Store Day, but I’d like to map out a terrifying agenda for the next few months.

The Haul: No record shopping until I’ve caught up. (My wife rejoices.) Maybe a trip to the dollar bin if I’m going through withdrawal. This process slowed down after realizing that it’s a lot easier to write about these albums after listening to them, which, amazingly enough, takes time. Unfortunately, I realized that after missing a few big entries, meaning that I have a handful of completed posts waiting for chronological order.

Record Collection Reconciliation: I’ve selected 45 LPs and ten bonus seven-inch singles to tackle this summer. Expect new entries soon.

Compulsive List Making: I have about 30 unfinished top ten lists (J. Robbins songs, songs that sound like J Robbins songs, Rodan family tree songs, etc.) and I may very well finish a few of them.

Reading List: I’m formulating my summer reading list at the moment and hope to tackle at least ten novels this summer, several of the “it’s completely embarrassing that you’ve never read this book before” variety.

Feel free to encourage one meme over another.

From the three weeks of a temporary TextPattern design, you’ve probably guessed that my host transfer wasn’t entirely successful. Short version: be very, very thorough extracting your database before changing hosts. The new site design is now up—hopefully it’s an improvement—but much of the work has yet to be done. Over the next week or two I’ll be tweaking the new design, adding functionality (RSS feed), fixing the site’s infrastructure by setting clear sections and categories, adding images (album covers, book covers, etc.) to existing posts, and streamlining the site’s navigation. Once I resume posting, I’ll introduce a number of new memes that I’ve been working on. I’m excited about moving forward with what will essentially be New Artillery 2.0.

Please excuse any hiccups you may encounter during this process. I’d put up an animated gif of a construction worker, but it would go against my overall goal of modernizing this site.

In case you were wondering, the new header graphic features, from left to right, the hands of my friends Rick and Jackie, leaves from Sixth Street in Champaign (across from the parking garage on Daniel), the ghostly visage of Matt Mitchell of Rectangle, a view of a Hawaii sunset, bricks from one of the engineering buildings at the University of Illinois, the headstock of Shiner singist/guitarist Allen Epley's yellow Telecaster, the drumkit of Trans Am's Sebastian Thomson, some Urbana shrubbery, the blonde mane of Milemarker's Roby Newton, the fretboard of Allen Epley's yellow Tele, and finally, Allen Epley's Chavez shirt turned into a pink blaze during a Life and Times show at the Cowboy Monkey in Champaign. I thought about cutting down on the Epley, but seeing how I have both taken more pictures of Shiner/The Life and Times than almost any other band and how more of those have turned out well, it was hard to say no.

I'm considering eliminating this blog and switching over to a purely feature-based site. This move would mean the revival of the 1000 Songs project (and possibly a parallel 500 Albums project), the gradual reincorporation of my photography tree (an overdue endeavor by any means), and the elimination of the commentary for my summer reading list. Why? The typical topics of discussion—current records, recent shows, recent purchases—have been remarkably dry of late, and I enjoy reading books far more than summarizing the experience in a few trite sentences. I don’t remember intentionally shelving the 1000 Songs feature, rather, I wasn’t sure how to fit it into the new Textpattern arrangement. I’m far more comfortable writing about music I genuinely care about instead of records that might possibly hit my year-end list.

Of course, this diary-styled blog is far, far easier than actual content.

If you have any preference on this matter, if you happen to read this site at all, please comment so I can get some level of audience input.