Waterloo...

No worries, I'm not about to break out some Abba analysis (although it's happened here before). Waterloo Records, nestled downtown on Lamar near the intersection of Sixth, is an Austin institution and I'd venture one of the top ten best remaining independent record stores left among us. They've catered to changing times with iPod shuffle sampling stations, but the rest of the massive but overcrowded two-room layout is the way it's been for a long while: shelves and rows and more shelves full of the newest stuff right next to dusty boxes of old LPs and bins of constantly-arriving used discs. This is the kind of place where record signings still seem magical. This is the kind of place you'll leave with a smile on your face after you found some Sonic Youth in the dollar bin (this happened to me today). I am by no means anti-iTunes; in fact, the opposite is true. Without that thin white cord that connects my iPhone to my laptop, I'd feel like the sun wasn't shining brightly enough anymore. But at the same time I can never give up the dream of popping in a new album and finding something that will change my life. And that's a tactile experience.

This weekend I picked up the two albums below, both new material by artists that have carved out a little piece of my musical heart-space already. New songs punctuated my summer afternoon, and I couldn't have been happier. Josh Ritter's 6-song EP is very quiet, his signature somber-ness but without the crescendos his longer efforts usually offer; that said, his voice is like whiskey on the rocks to me, so that doesn't matter. Brandi Carlile's self-titled album came out right when I started grad school six years ago, so her voice is this iconic thing to me--so relatable in its confusion and sweetness that often I feel like it is just my voice. This newest album is more country and slightly more upbeat than previous stuff. She's a guilty pleasure of mine--I mean, she's kind of like the third Indigo Girl--but one I will shout from the rooftops.