I let my Wire obsession get the better of me last Friday. In addition to buying the double LP of their rarities compilation Turns and Strokes (which has excellent Wire versions of the later Colin Newman tracks “Safe,” “Lorries,” and a few others) and the Kidney Bongos LP, I found something that was filed next to a copy of Colin Newman’s Not To LP called C. Newman and Janet Smith. I’d never heard of it before, but the timeframe seemed right; Colin Newman was in Germany in the mid-1980s recording with his future wife’s band. C. Newman is credited with vocals and arrangement, which seems about right. So instead of thinking critically about the situation—“Sebastian, you have a limited record buying budget right now. Why take a chance on this when you could buy a Roxy Music LP and an XTC LP for the same price? Those are known quantities.”—I plopped it down with my other Wire-related pick-ups and an LP of Charles Mingus’s Mingus Ah Um. On the drive back from RRRecords in Lowell I started getting the sinking suspicion that this C. Newman was not in fact Colin, and when I got home I let a Google search inform me of my mistake.

Initially I wasn’t going to listen to the record out of spite, but when I saw this listing describe it as art-rock/jazz, I figured I’d give it a shot. Additionally, Janet Smith turned out to be Robert Smith’s sister. (Requisite Achewood quote: “It is silly to like The Cure!”) Halfway through the first song, I’ve learned that Chris Newman has an obnoxious baritone and worse lyrics, although those may very well be taking the piss. I wanted to listen to the whole thing, but could only make it through two-and-a-half songs. I may suffer through iPod Chicanery (some of the time), but this record was torture, especially since I paid full price for it. If you are a Cure super-completist, check eBay in the next few weeks.

With regard to my history of record-buying mistakes, I remember being completely ashamed when I purchased a second copy of Idlewild’s Hope Is Important from Reckless in Chicago under the false impression that I didn’t own it. For me, record buying mistakes are an issue of memory, not taste. Finding out that a new record doesn’t meet my expectations has largely disappeared in the age of file-sharing, but even before that era I viewed that experience as a learning process. My biggest concern is my capacity to bring whatever knowledge I have from reading reviews, listening to records, getting recommendations, etc. into the record store. As my record collection has ballooned to almost 1700 items, my ability to remember which Elvis Costello LPs I already own has diminished. Given that I’ve been reading a biography of Wire, I probably should have thought a bit more critically about the suspect origins of this LP. If nothing else, I should be proud of the fact that I can only think of a couple of similar errors in my history of record buying.

My friend and former Signal Drench cohort Mark T.R. Donohue (Western Homes) asked me to do the layout for his NATN feature on the Monolith festival. Here is is. If you've ever wondered about how I design web sites, here's the gist: I come up with a good idea and figure out the least efficient way possible to execute it. Framing those photographs took much, much too long before I figured out how to accomplish it with less aggravation. I'm still happy with this design, though, since it's the best looking thing I've done since my 40 of 2000s feature. It's somewhat amazing how long it'll take me to get back into the swing of graphic design, but now that my muscles are loose I'm off to tackle the Juno Documentary site.

My apologies about being MIA. Without a steady flow of leaked records to fall back on, my go-to topic for regular updates has deserted me. Here’s a rundown of notable recent events, purchases, and developments.

1. Finding the double LP of Dirty Three’s Ocean Songs at Rrrecords in Lowell, MA. As much as I enjoy paying exorbitant prices for out-of-print vinyl on eBay, it’s a much bigger thrill finding a sealed copy in a physical record store for a reasonable price. I've given up on "finds" in Boston record stores, but Rrrecords seemed promising from my one visit.

2. Seeing a free screener of The Darjeeling Limited. I’m not sure how it ranks among Wes Anderson’s films at the moment, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it fares like The Life Aquatic; somewhat disappointing on first viewing, while growing steadily upon further consideration. I am a bit concerned about the difference between thematic consistency and treading water and where Anderson falls within that divide, but I think Darjeeling is different enough from his prior works (particularly in setting) to avoid being seen as a suspect. This all seems like faint praise, if praise at all, but I should reiterate that I did enjoy the film and will snap up the DVD whenever it hits shelves.

3. Buying the Folio Society edition of Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman from eBay. My affections for first-edition hardcover copies of my favorite books simply won’t work with his novel, since I do not have a grand to drop, but this copy has some amazing illustrations and a much better cover design than the current Dalkey Archive paperback. As much as I like this copy, I’m glad that I didn't have to buy three more at full price within a month.

4. Seeing Bill Callahan at the Museum of Fine Arts. I may review this concert in full at a later date, but my pictures from the show are posted. If you have a chance to see him on this tour, definitely go.

5. Seeing The Narrator and Monotonix at Great Scott. The Narrator didn’t have quite as much energy as they did the last time I saw them (I have a feeling the previous night's show in Vermont was the one to attend), but "SurfJew," "All the Tired Horses," and "Breaking the Turtle" were all excellent. No "Son of Son of the Kiss of Death," but this acoustic performance makes up for it. I finally grabbed their debut seven-inch and "The Cavaliers" is a solid jam. Would you like to see some pictures of their performance? Sure, sure you would. As for Monotonix, they did not lack energy. The Israeli garage-rock band avoided the stage at all costs, opting to run around the whole of Great Scott, jumping on the bar with their highly mobile drum kit, leaping from table to table, and stretching their instrument cables to their limits. If that wasn’t enough, the singer also swung a garbage bag around and then put it on his head, drank beer out of his shoe, and seduced his guitar player. I can’t remember much about their music, but the spectacle is still fresh.

6. Hearing the Acorn’s Glory Hope Mountain. I admit to having a bit of a head start at this one since I share a fantasy hockey league with their bassist, but this Ottawa band deserves your full attention. I can’t think of any other indie folk records that have made an impression on me, but Glory Hope Mountain strikes the perfect balance between the personal and the timeless. The double vinyl is import-only at the moment, which makes it about $30 including shipping, but it’ll be hard to justify not picking up this album. They’ll tour Canada in the coming months, but a US tour should follow in early 2008.

7. Setting up the Juno documentary message board. Yeah, it is operational. I still need to apply an actual color scheme to it (and redesign the main site to match), but if you have any questions or comments about the project or just want to shoot the shit with Jon or me (since we’re the only two members at the moment), join up.

Les Savy Fav - Let’s Stay Friends: Besides having one of the best one-two combinations in the “Yes, we’re still a band” lilt of “Pots & Pans” and “Fuck yes, we’re still a band” throttle of “The Equestrian,” Let’s Stay Friends is a solid follow-up to the singles compilation Inches. If “party like it’s 1999” is in reference to repping a solid year in non-trendy indie rock, they are certainly partying in said fashion. Please book US dates in the current calendar year, however.

Port-Royal - Afraid to Dance: Port-Royal made the logical, if instrumental follow-up to the electronic-oriented post-rock of Lights Out Asia’s Garmonia. I’ll take a shorter album comprised of the longer tracks, since “Deca-Dance,” “Anya: Sehnsucht,” and “Leitmotiv | Glasnost” are more memorable than their shorter brethren.

Epic45 - May Your Heart Be the Map: Sometimes I think of records in terms of what format would better suit them. Marnie Stern’s debut would be better suited as a five-song EP, for example. Epic45 would be better off taking a cue from their name and trimming their layered acoustic-meets-IDM melancholy down to the gorgeous, outstanding “The Stars in Spring” and the graceful “We Grew Up Playing in the Fields of England.” Malcolm Middleton released a 2005 single for “Loneliness Shines” b/w “No Modest Bear,” so the precedent has been set. (Album cut “Solemn Thirsty” was equally worthy of inclusion, but it sounds enough like Arab Strap that I don’t need to worry.)

Jesu / Eluvium - Split LP: Jesu’s songs sound like the melancholic cousins of the tracks that made it to Conqueror. Though that may seem like faint praise, I’ve already listened to these three songs more than that album, so perhaps Jesu is better consumed in EP format. (See also: the new-ish "Sun Down" / "Sun Rise" LP.) As for the Eluvium song, it’s long and very ambient, but it is on vinyl, which is more than I can say for the rest of his catalog, cough cough.

Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight: Halfway through this record, I picked up on its repeating subliminal message: “I am a big turd.” “Silver Lining,” the opening track, reminds me enough of Jenny Lewis’s solid solo album to get a free pass, but everything else seemed like a perverse game of “spot our 70s rock influence.” It’s amazing that Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky mines 70s AOR with such success and Under the Blacklight fails mightily in a similar pursuit. Note to all bands: if you sound like Heart, I will turn you off.

At only ten songs and barely thirty-three minutes, Mt. St. Helens’ self-proclaimed “magnum opus” values economy over accumulation, a rare and admirable aim amidst far too many bloated track listings. Of Others is an enormous step up from their prior attempts at combining Chicago punk aggression with mid ’90s D.C. complexity, gearing more toward the latter without losing the bite of the former. I usually call out bands for the hubris of tags like magnum opus, but I’ll be damned if Mt. St. Helens didn’t shame their past work on Of Others.

The band’s improved across the board. The balance between dynamic, mid-tempo tracks (“The Time of Low Volume,” “Seething Is Believing”) and muscular rockers (“City Of” and “Massive Dosage”) is spot-on, giving Of Others more range and than its predecessors. Quinn Goodwillie’s vocals no longer relapse into yelping/bellowing after finding a solid melody, suggesting that his work in the poppier Sleep Out has bled over. Ben Geier’s drumming trades flash for purpose, earning the long-awaited improvement in drum production. The guitar lines are tighter, complementing rather than crowding each other. Even the slight missteps are forgivable: the devil-horn evocation of “Centicorn” doesn’t fit into the album’s nervous energy, but at only a minute long, the ode to a hundred-horned unicorn is an intriguing departure before the closing slow burn of “Interruption.”

Of Others will be officially released on August 31 on Two Thumbs Down Records, the band’s new home after Divot closed shop. No word on a national tour or a vinyl pressing, but those in the Chicago-land area should hit up the record release show at the Beat Kitchen.

I hadn't heard of Prints, but seeing Temporary Residence in the leak title made me curious. Sure enough, it's another Howard Hello / Pinback / Tarentel offshoot from Kenseth Thibideau, focusing on the layered pop that made Howard Hello's "More of the Same" such a great song. While "Easy Magic" takes the cue of that song's wordless vocals, it also incorporates real lyrics, or close approximations thereof. There's a verse, but most of the song revolves around the lines "Is it magic? If it's easy / If it's easy," which seem ridiculous taken out of context. Trust me. It works.

Temporary Residence doesn't hold back any names in the press release—"Merging the eclectic instrumentation of Talking Heads with the ethereal vocals of Peter Gabriel, the two mingle the precision of Brian Eno and the jubilance of Brian Wilson"—but I'd make a closer comparison to the poppier moments on Jim O'Rourke's Eureka.

In lieu of my monstrous “I’m back from Europe and lord am I behind on my iPod Chicanery” update, here are my thoughts on some recent music.

Feedle - Leave Now for Adventure: A former member of 65daysofstatic provides this solid album as evidence of what his former mates’ newest album is missing: nostalgia mixed in between fuzzed-out electronic loops and thumping beats. It’s not quite the long-awaited sequel to Accelera Deck’s Narcotic Beats, but it’s certainly held up well to a near continuous stay on my laptop for the last week and a half. Start with “Go Home Revolving,” “Man vs. the Hallucinations,” “Song for Dogs,” and “The Way Things Turned Out” and it’s not long before the rest of the album falls in line.

Minus the Bear - Planet of Ice: Sounding like early ’80s Yes and Genesis now counts as creative development, since the vaguely progressive half of Planet of Ice is more intriguing than the echoes of Menos el Oso’s serious party music. I’ll take “Knights,” “Dr. L’ling,” “When We Escape,” and “Lotus” and imagine some sleight of hand that would bridge the enormous gap between Jake Snider’s lyrical inspiration (“Here’s my progressive rock concept album!”) and execution (“So there’s this chick…”).

Lights Out Asia - Tanks and Recognizers: This album is quite a departure from the balance of power between electronica and post-rock displayed on their debut Garmonia. The mix is fuller and more instrumentally varied, but at times—the lunging “Four Square” in particular—Lights Out Asia sound more like Aurore Rien and less like Garmonia’s compelling mix of electronica and Talk Talk–esque vocals. Not feeling it yet.

Lindsay Anderson - If: One half of my beloved L’altra finally has a solo album to supplement the live set from 2005 that I downloaded from eMusic. I’m only one listen in, but it hasn’t quite grabbed me in the same way as Different Days, and not for lack of trying. Most of these songs are fleshed-out, full-band editions with the unfortunate tendency of overwhelming the headliner’s voice. Here’s hoping that If is a grower.

Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist: I made it through almost half of this album, which I felt was some kind of accomplishment given the ear-splitting vocal mix. The sledgehammer combination of the ultra-compressed riffs and Jimmy Chamberlain’s drumming occasionally hits the spot, but more often it just makes me long for spacious mix of Siamese Dream. Oh, “Soma.” At the very least, I can finally agree with my best friend from eighth grade, who insisted that Billy Corgan’s voice cripples the band.

Interpol - Our Love to Admire: The amazing thing about the initial hype about Interpol was that it wasn’t just centered on Turn on the Bright Lights, but salivated equally over their potential as a band. I don’t think there’s much talk of that nowadays. “Pioneer to the Falls” begins the album with a delayed guitar lead that sounds like it’s been Xeroxed twice already, and aside from more Paul Banks lyrical buffoonery, the record holds few surprises and little of my interest.

I had a conversation with Jon Mount a few nights ago about how I’m far more inclined than he is to return to mid ’90s records (or fill in the gaps from records we respectively missed). Well, there are some exceptions. One of our big talking points was the first album on this list, which got me thinking about other indie or alternative albums that I’ll likely never listen from start to finish again. Sure, I may hear a song or two, but this list is about dedicated listens. Most of these albums are from bands I even enjoy or enjoyed in the past. This list could be much, much longer, but these were the albums that stood out upon first glance at my record collection Excel database.

Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness: Every now and then my mom brings up how I got my dad to drive me to Circuit City/Media Play/etc. to pick up this album on the night of its release. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I sold the album off at some point—likely between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college—or that this record taught me a considerable amount about how artists turn away from their strengths. Jon mentioned how he sold it off within a few days, but it was a far more gradual process of acceptance for me. I think I like some of these songs. Right? That process was helped by Billy Corgan’s radical change in appearance, in which his shaved head and increased heft encouraged me to compare him to a bloated tick in the videos and live appearances. Mirroring your supposed magnum opus’s greatest weakness in your physical appearance is an awfully noticeable tell, Billy.

In terms of the actual album, I could probably make a reasonable single disc from the era, containing the album tracks I wouldn’t mind hearing again (“Bodies,” “Stumbeleine,” “Jellybelly,” “Muzzle”) and maybe a few of the b-sides (“Set the Ray to Jerry”) from the array of singles that accompanied the album. (I officially stopped buying them after 1979 and was rather ticked about that box set.) I could complete this task so long as I never again have to hear one of Corgan’s overblown attempts to grasp at teenage angst or one of James Iha’s horribly bland vocal tracks. Part of me wonders if the switch of the dominant genre tags from “alternative” to “indie” that accompanied my casting aside of my favorite band circa age fourteen might have caused me to be a bit too rough on the Smashing Pumpkins’ later works, but remembering how bland the Zwan record was, even with Pajo and Sweeney in tow, prevents me from worrying too much.

Hum - Fillet Show: If anything, Hum replaced Smashing Pumpkins as my favorite band (admittedly remaining within “alternative”), but my later burn-out on their material had far more to do with the logistics of my fandom, like running a fan site and answering daily questions about their vague demise. Lately I’ve returned to their three main albums and found that my old stances have held up: Electra 2000 is a bit too rough in parts, but has some of their finest moments; You’d Prefer an Astronaut is thematically and musically their best album; and the over-thought gloss of Downward Is Heavenward betrays some of their better instincts (the original edge of “Comin’ Home,” the delay-heavy live intro for “Afternoon with the Axolotls,” the space of the demo version of “Ms. Lazarus”), even if the album stands up fairly well. Their debut, however, is not a record I intend to check up on. I own Fillet Show on cassette, since the CD was out of print by 1996, but I don’t think I made it through the album as a whole more than once. It’s essentially a different band: one that lacks Tim Lash’s focused leads and Matt Talbott’s introspective lyrics. And hey, those are the main things I like about Hum.

New Wet Kojak - New Wet Kojak: Competing with Hum for my favorite band status circa 1997 was Girls Against Boys, which meant that I indulged Scott McCloud and Johnny Temple’s late night jazz-ish project for a few albums. Their self-titled debut established the aesthetic (whispered Beat gibberish, dirty grooves, horns) but I don’t recall more than two actual songs on the album and I don’t want to confirm that assumption. I’m writing this at 1:30pm, which means that any New Wet Kojak material will sound downright hilarious when accompanied with the clarity of daylight. I’ll indulge the better moments of Nasty International or Do Things if I’m driving around late at night, but the self-titled will continue to collect dust on my shelf.

Jawbox - Grippe: I returned to Jawbox’s second album, Novelty, in this round of iPod Chicanery, but that does not mean I’ll be digging their debut out of my CD cabinet anytime soon. Fillet Show is an interesting point of comparison, since debut albums show the respective bands in their infancy, but whereas Fillet Show shows a different band with two different members playing essentially disparate material from the follow-up, Grippe only lacks Bill Barbot’s second guitar position, which filled out Jawbox’s sound. It’s a dry run for the considerably better Novelty, which I even assert pales in comparison to the Zach Barocas–enabled complexity of For Your Own Special Sweetheart. I won’t rule out listening to a track down the road (the Joy Division cover, “Bullet Park”), but the whole thing? No thanks.

Wolfie - Where’s Wolfie: It’s rather unfortunate that Signal Drench’s legacy is essentially a footnote in a Brent DiCrescenzo review of this album on Pitchfork, which calls out one of my contributors’ (Ty Haas) review of the record and then implies that writing Wolfie-esque music would impress “the guy who runs Signal Drench,” or, you know, me. In comparison to the bands I’d actually stake that magazine’s legacy (and the four years of my life that it involved) upon—Durian, Shiner, Rectangle, Bald Rapunzel, Tungsten74, etc.—Wolfie is an outlier. Their youthful, technically deficient indie pop does not hold up well. Whereas Awful Mess Mystery had a few passable songs for the Rentals-obsessed Kick Bright crowd (“Subroutine the Reward,” “Mockhouse”), Where’s Wolfie played up almost all of the band’s embarrassing traits—the nasal vocals, the cutesy lyrics, the fuzzy production as a vague attempt to move forward. The band themselves moved away from this approach with their later records (and the post-Wolfie band The Like Young). I can’t imagine listening to a single song from this record again, except for penance. Oh: I even own a Wolfie side project, Busytoby’s It’s Good to Be Alive, that I picked up for no more than a dollar. That record doesn’t apply to this list since I never listened to it in the first place, but maybe its memory will merit a different list.

Weezer - The Green Album: I bought this disc the week it came out, despite having heard the lead single (“Hash Pipe”) and presumably knowing better, since I had seen the band phone in a performance back in March of that year. Like the Smashing Pumpkins, it took a bit more time to recognize that Weezer had completely lost my interest, but The Green Album certainly confirmed that feeling. This album is one of the laziest displays of songwriting I can fathom. I’d sell it off, but I’m fairly sure that a million smarter people beat me to it.

Centaur - In Streams: Centaur may be the single biggest disappointment in my years of listening to music. Given the combination of the singer from Hum, the bassist from Castor, and a Champaign-Urbana scene drummer who works at Parasol, I figured that getting in on the ground floor of Centaur’s existence by attending their first ever show at a VFW in Danville, Illinois would be a rewarding experience. Most of what I remember from that show is how loose, how seemingly lazy the band’s performance was. They numbered their songs, but debated about which songs those numbers applied to. Every song boiled down to this blueprint: take a heavy riff, repeat it, sing a verse, apply wah and distortion to the riff for a solo, play another verse, sing what may be a chorus, do another solo. It was heavy and sad like early Codeine, but all too repetitive. The skeletal structures of the songs meant that those riffs became tiresome by the end of each song. Little did I know that those songs were much closer to finished than I could have imagined.

The disappointment comes from what Centaur could have been. In Streams is a profoundly sad album about some of Talbott’s personal tragedies, but making through it from start to finish is a nearly impossible task. “Wait for the Sun” is a bit lighter and fleshed out, but it’s still too long. “The Same Place” takes a solid riff and embraces its title far too much. Talbott’s meditations on life and death are intriguing, but there’s so little energy propelling them. I don’t know if adding Tim Lash’s leads would corrupt the album’s topical focus, but it’s so remarkably telling that Lash’s album as Glifted is interesting aesthetically without containing any actual songs, while Centaur’s lone effort has interesting lyrics languishing in a lack of aesthetic. I saw at least six Centaur shows without seeing much improvement from the first. I may pull out a song from time to time, but In Streams as a whole is marked with a profound sadness beyond its thematic ruminations.

Pavement - Terror Twilight: If there’s an album that I might reconsider, it’s this one. I certainly tried to like Terror Twilight, but it just encapsulates too many of late Pavement’s bad tendencies for me to sit through it as a whole ever again. The overdone production values are somewhat understandable, but the forced attempts at spontaneity are downright insulting, the “quirky” tracks like “Carrot Rope” make me shudder, and it’s a precursor to Malkmus’s underwhelming solo career. I’ll willingly listen to the following songs: “Spit on a Stranger,” “Cream of Gold,” “Major Leagues,” “Speak See Remember,” and “The Hexx,” even though the two singles are unsuitably melodramatic and “And Then…” overshadows the “The Hexx.” The middle stretch of the record is something I’d prefer to block from my memory. If I have to choose between the mixed bag swan songs of big 1990s indie rock bands, Archers of Loaf’s White Trash Heroes and Polvo’s Shapes come long before Terror Twilight.

Rex - Rex: Though Rex’s debut contains their finest song (the impossibly melancholic “Nothing Is Most Honorable Than You”), I could never make it past the album’s mid point without a concerted effort. I could probably include Rex’s overlong follow-up, C, on this list as well, and throw in their finale, 3, given its somewhat bland character in comparison to the high points of its predecessors. Rex is by no means a singles band, but they certainly aren’t a band I enjoy enough to stomach an entire album from in one sitting.

Ghost Wars posted a new song on their MySpace page tonight. I've upped the song, "Virginia ,Long Exhale," as well. Put on some headphones so those clarinets don't get lost in the hum of the window fan.

There's also an update about the recording on the page (the short: the computer holding the ProTools sessions was stolen, the back-up hard drive is nearly unsalvageable, now the debate is between re-recording or slowly recovering past sessions), which may reconvene in August or September. Again, if Ghost Wars release an album in the next seven months, all of the other records are jockeying for second on my year-end list.

The NHL season is over with a bit of a collective sigh, since for the third straight season an American team from a traditionally non-hockey market has hoisted the Cup over a Canadian opponent. Given that I cheered for the Lightning and the Hurricanes over the Flames and Oilers respectively, I hardly maintain the hard line stance of wanting the Stanley Cup to go “where it belongs,” but this year some of my more strident reasons for choosing teams swung away from the American city, even if they didn’t necessarily swing toward the Canadian city. First, like Calgary and Edmonton before them, Anaheim defeated my Detroit Red Wings on the strength of spectacular goaltending and timely scoring. I’ve rarely been able to cheer for the team that downs the Wings, but this year in particular was rough. I genuinely believe that if the Wings had Schneider and Kronwall manning the blue line, they would have won the series. The Ducks had only one injury to speak of—Chris Kunitz’s bum hand—and received an astonishing amount of lucky bounces during the series (game four had two key trickle-in goals for the Ducks). Sour grapes? Sure, but the Ducks were dominated in several of their wins.

Second, if I don’t have any particular affinity for the teams involved, I usually go to which players I like the most. In 2004, the Lightning were led by Martin St.-Louis, one of my favorite players since back in his days at Vermont. In 2006, I enjoyed Erik Cole’s comeback from his frightening back injury. It also didn’t hurt that each of the opposing teams had one of my least favorite players: the Flames had spear-happy pest Ville Nieminen and the Oilers had mammoth cheater/crybaby Chris Pronger. Lo and behold, Pronger leaves Edmonton under a cloud of suspicion during the off-season to end up with the Ducks. While I don’t have much against many of the other Ducks players (except for goaltender-magnet Corey Perry, who got away with interference infractions that would have sent Tomas Holmstrom to a secret prison for a decade), the thought of Pronger pumping the Stanley Cup over his head was enough to make me vaguely side with the Ottawa Senators. My Canadian friends either followed Ottawa or banded together in national pride, which is usually something I’d enjoy cheering against, but pugilistic netminder Ray Emery is a more palatable evil than Pronger. Yet I could never find myself cheering for the Sens, only hoping they’d prevent a Ducks victory.

My overall malaise about the finals—hoping for a tight, entertaining series rather than cheering for one particular team—was certainly mirrored in how I watched the games. I caught parts of the first two games and game four on muted bar televisions, missing some key moments as they happened live but getting the overall tenor of the games. I saw all of game three and all but the final few minutes of game five, though. It shocked me how lifeless Ottawa could be in the first period of game five. Heatley and Spezza were completely absent and Emery proved that he’s not on the same level as most of the other playoff goalies, but the team as a whole seemed unfocused. If they had won the Cup with this level of effort, it would have been a damn shame.

I hand it to the Ducks—there’s no debate about who deserved to win the series—but it’s a bummer that the series is over with such consensus. Whereas the Flames could have easily won if the goal judge had been a bit more lenient and the Oilers could have won if Roloson hadn’t been hurt, the Senators were simply outclassed. I have to hope that next year provides my Sabres–Wings final.