new(ish) music, and I now suck at playing guitar

One of the roommates works for a music distributor. He gets a lot of free music, and nearly all of it is crap. Every now and then he'll loan me a cd to listen to, or, rarely, give me one. When he does, it's up to me to put it on the ipid, play it at home, or listen in the car. Sometimes he gets stuff before it breaks, and I ignore it (Matisyahu was on my floor for 3 months before he realized I never listened to it and he took it back). Other times he'll have a choice between two cd's at work, such as Fall Out Boy and, umm, The Lashes, and he'll grab the Lashes cd. bust.

But every now and then he comes home with something really good. Late last year it was Andrew Bird and and album called The Mysterious Production of Eggs. If you like Bright Eyes, or the Decemberists, or Sufjan Stevens, then you'll dig Andrew Bird. He must be huge in the Netherlands, because he's doing a bunch of shows there and his manager is dutch. who knew?

more recently, the roommate brought home Panic! At the Disco, which was good but they're the indie-hipster band of the moment so that was easy. recently big in the UK and looking to break here in the US is Hard-Fi. if you like Bloc Party then you might like Hard-Fi. they're on Atlantic now, so i'm sure you'll hear about them fairly soon.

in other news, my friend sam sold me his old guitar. This is a great opportunity to suck at something. haven't had a chance to do that recently (relationships excepted), so i'm looking forward to it. sort of. the guitar sounds great. I do not. i tried to get it to make beautiful noises last night. no luck.
thanks for reading.