Oh, Manchester, So Much To Answer For

respect to: michelangelo matos' "you can't wear nail polish to a surgery," nate patrin's "hipster detritus," and rockcritics.com. matos and patrin are, simply, two of the best damn writers writing about music (and such) right now. rockcritics.com is just good love. I'm at work at the moment, listening to the the's '45 rpm,' which is a lovingly-put-together and quite clever collection of matt johnson-and-co's singles output. now I do think that 'infected' and 'mind bomb' could've been more fully represented (matt, the new tracks are nice, but not your greatest work, sorry), but the "12" mixes" bonus disc pert-near makes up for that. essentially, those mixes are longer and have some added bleeps and blips, which somehow manage to enhance the damn songs. and say what you will about johnson, he's without question one of the better lyricists of the '80s: not quite on morrissey's level, say, but I'd put him above mould and westerberg (yeah, I said it).