As the Crow Flies

Greetings, dear reader. We hope you too have begun to slack off on work and are also eyeing the door a tad early this Friday. We personally smell the hint of spring floating above the run-down, greyed out snow, and we're getting outta here. But not before saying hello and goodbye to you via this post. And probably doing a little more work. Oh, and maybe calling about that weird charge on our credit card. And finding a good dentist that takes our insurance. But THEN we're outta here! Thanks to MeanRed for tipping us off to TrustoCorp, creator of more and more odd sign art that's springing up around NYC. We like funny signs.

Counter Intuitive

We excitedly hit up one of our more coveted vegetarian joints in the city last night before heading off to a late night show—you know, 'cause we're in our twenties still, right?—only to find out that it suddenly sucked. Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh, but we hear hyperbole suits us. Restaurant in question? Counter in the East Village. Now we're not ones to throw around negativity, but the place has seriously gone downhill. They, evidently, have a new chef and, whereas we're into them calling out the locally sourced foods (yay), we're not as much into the total rearrangement of the menu that focuses on small plates and the introduction of a lot of dairy (boooo). Granted, it's local as well and animal rennet-free, but still, we liked it when this place was a hair away from vegan. AND they've severely downsized one of the best remaining entrées (the farmhouse panini), seemingly changed the recipe for the worse for their veggie burger, and totally gotten rid of our favorite appetizer—the corn fritters. So we were a little disappointed. Looking at the recent comments on menupages though, totally seems like aren't the only ones. So, on to find new favorite vegetarian restaurants!

Un-Disappointed

Said late night show last night was that of Dan Black, playing his first American show to promote his album, Un, which just dropped in the US this week. We interviewed Dan a couple weeks ago and we're happy to say he seemed as charming on-stage as he was over the phone. Dan's celebrating his American release with a sort of mixtape he created, stitching together songs from other artists along with new sounds he's created to produce, as he's called it, sort of musical Frankenstein's monsters. Check out his smash up of the Boss' Dancing in the Dark with what we think is some sort of Nick Drake loop.

Can We See Your Wallet For a Second?

A bunch of musicians we absolutely love are about to drop new albums, leading us to ask—can we borrow some cash? It's just for records, man. Just for records. We can quit any time. Our sources of addiction? First off ever-weirdly-beautiful Joanna Newsom is releasing her three-LP/three-disk Have One On Me Tuesday. We hear no harp on the track, Good Intentions Paving Company, but we do hear some good times. Kinda early 70's, right? You can pre-order the whole via her label, Drag City.

Also out Tuesday, Efterklang's Magic Chairs. We've waxed on about this group from Copenhagen many times on this here blog, so we we won't say much more than we're psyched for the new album, which sounds like a refined departure from what we've heard. You can listen to a few of the tracks and even pre-order the album with the player to the right.

Also also out Tuesday—Shout Out Louds' new album, Work. In honor of its release, their label, Merge, just announced Passion Pit's chilled out remix of one of the singles, Fall Hard. You can download it over at Pitchfork.

Ooh, speaking of Passion Pit, over at MTV.com you can check out their brand new video for Little Secrets, quite possibly our favorite song by our favorite artist of 2009. We just wish the PS 22 chorus had made the video.

Minus the Pants

Ooh, speaking of videos, check out this new one for one of the better tracks on Vampire Weekend's latest. Oddly, it seems to feature a stark sci-fi tennis match with samurais, spacemen, and, eventually, a whiskey-swiggin', pants-removing Jake Gyllenhaal. So, not *quite* Cape Cod?

That's it. NOW we're totally leaving. Crap. It's totally almost 5. Eh.