LATEST ADDITIONS

The July issue of <i>Stereophile</i> (which you should totally get a hold of; steal it, if you have to) includes <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/musicroom/robertbaird/">Robert Baird's</a> interview with Sonic Youth. Robert visited the band at their studio, Echo Canyon West, in Hoboken, NJ. I wish I could have been there. I would've laid right down on that floor and soaked it all up.

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My copy of Sonic Youth's new album, <i>The Eternal</i>, arrived earlier this week. It's hard to imagine a more embraceable package of vinyl. We hit it off immediately. I mean, we really just sort of clicked. It was all very natural, very comfortable. It was, you know, <i>easy.</i>

I know, I know. Things were going pretty fast, but it all felt so <i>natural</i> and neither one of us wanted it to stop. When it all got a bit too heated, we slowly moved on to the couch.

Afterwards, we spent the most delicious morning together, just holding one another. Everything felt so thick and hot and <i>gorged</i>. We couldn't help but move slowly. Time felt <i>eternal</i>.

It ain't the stuff you don't know that trips you up, it's the stuff you know that ain't so. When, at the 2007 CEDIA Expo, I encountered Klipsch's startlingly new Palladium P-39F loudspeaker ($20,000/pair), I was impressed by its looks. Tall (56"), as beautifully contoured as the prow of a canoe, and clad in striking zebra-stripe plywood, the P-39F is possibly the best-looking speaker Klipsch has ever made.

The drive home from Montreal and the Salon Son & Image show is smooth and uneventful. The snow kindly stops just as John Atkinson and I climb into his Land Cruiser, the woman at Customs lets us into the US with little fanfare, and, there isn't much to set the heart racing. Every fifty or so miles, the highway's long dividing guardrail is punctuated by some enormous brown bird—a once majestic body that owned the sky is now slung awkwardly and pitifully over cold steel. It's sad that something so beautiful and strong can die so quietly. But quiet abounds out here. The sky seems to move nearly as fast as we do, clouds cling to tall mountains, and winds tug at the Cruiser's tires.