We got a new record player...

...and it is awesome. Last Friday, M and I sat up (too) late and listened to records and drank some wine and talked. These days, it is a rare occasion that we can have a conversation that lasts longer than a few minutes. While we were sitting there I had a flashback of sitting on our tiny porch in Phoenix, bare feet propped up on the railing that always felt warm to the touch, even in the middle of the night. We didn't have a record player then (or did we? I seem to have a memory of putting Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood on a turntable. Hmmm.), but we definitely had thousands of CDs, and we went to shows all the time and sometimes got home very late because we had driven to Tucson, which always seemed like a very good idea on the way there, but driving home on that flat, dark stretch of the 10 was another story. In those days, we were always going somewhere, with music blaring in the car, windows down and breeze in our hair. There was always a party, friends crowded into whatever tiny space we were living in at the moment, the din of conversation nearly drowning out the music in the background.

Now we put on a record and just listen to it. We enjoy the excuse to sit down for 20 minutes before it's time to get up again and flip it over.

Don't miss Bill Callahan's Apocalypse or tUnE-yArDs's whokill, some of our favorite releases of the year.

And don't worry, we're not total luddites....Laurel knows what a playlist is, too.