My friend in New York has been bugging me about Battles for at least a year, and now the experimental band is out with a new record, Gloss Drop, and the track “Ice Cream” is making the rounds.

Honestly, this is the kind of song that can really grind on me if I’m not in the right mood for it. But if I am, it’s got this odd mix of funky and noisy and slightly goofy. I just needed to put up something that wasn’t mellow and introspective, which is what I’ve been flirting with these days. And I don’t want to make this look like some emo LiveJournal knockoff. No thanks.

Here I was just about to moan and groan about how Fleet Foxes was just one more band I was doomed to miss at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. I just ASSUMED this was the case, as almost every other current indie darling will be doin’ it in the desert. But when you assume, of course, you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me.”

Meanwhile, this nu folk sensation from Seattle is playing the Fox Theater in Oakland, which is almost as disheartening as Coachella. Not that I’m one of these uber-provincial San Francisco city folk who won’t venture across the bridge to the East Bay. But I’ve heard some pretty underwhelming reviews of the sound at the Fox, which doesn’t exactly make my big toe jump up in my boot, as Little Richard would say.

Anywho, “Helplessness Blues” is not only a really pretty track (and honestly, that can be enough), but the lyrics are really speaking to me at the moment. Which might just mean I have to get out of the house more often. But it’s been so freakin’ cold!