Today is about music, music, music. In my inbox this morning was Apple’s Quicktime newsletter, which informed me of two forthcoming albums: one from Brad Mehldau and one by Massive Attack. Each has a “listening party” site: Mehldau’s is at JazzOnline and Massive Attack’s is on Video-C. (On JazzOnline, click on the large album cover image to launch a Quicktime stream; Video-C has lo and hi quality streams of five tracks at the bottom of the page; both require Quicktime, which you can get here.) The Mehldau album is solo piano: Live in Tokyo and it’s absolutely gorgeous. Applause aside, it’s a seamless medley. It sounds like he has seven hands, born ready. If you’ve heard his solo version of Paranoid Android (I found it on a college radio sampler and it’s on other discs, I believe), you should hear this version too. I won’t say that one is better; the two compliment each other.

I read a review of Ray (Charles, the movie) as I listen to the Mehldau album again. I really want to get back into piano lessons. The Massive Attack tracks will have to wait.

Next week: politics, politics, politics.

A final Friday treat

A friend burned me a copy of several Pixies albums last year. The only one I really dug until a few months was Surfer Rosa — now I’m into all of them. Doolittle, for example, is excellent, and I’m particularly enamored of the last track “Havalina”. The funny thing is that the copy I have was ripped from a scratched CD, such that Havalina skips in an unusual, beautiful way. I’m not sure I would have thought so before I heard “Everything in its Right Place” from Radiohead’s Kid A. Regardless, it’s glitchy gorgeous and I offer it to you now: Havalina, the effed-up version.