An ass and a mule went laden over a brook, the one with salt, the other with wool; the mule’s pack was wetted by chance, the salt melted, his burden the lighter, and he thereby much eased; he told the ass, who, thinking to speed as well, wet his pack likewise at the next water, but it was much the heavier, and consequently he quite tired. So one thing may be good and bad to several parties, upon diverse occasions (Prudenti diffidentia / Nil est melius, nil utilius mortalibus).

Joachim Camerarius the Younger

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Lake Trout – “Look Who It Is”
Another One Lost

An ominous, Lynchian instrumental that seems at odds with the rest of the album, which is energetic but uneven. Really impressive second half, channeling Angelo Badalamenti’s “Go Get Some” from the Mulholland Drive soundtrack.

Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Cover art for Alex Cobb’s Passage To Morning

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Juno – “The Great Salt Lake”
This Is the Way It Goes & Goes & Goes

I missed out on Juno when they were a Seattle band, though I had their split with Dismemberment Plan and later taught Travis’s daughter at preschool for a couple years. It seems they helped lay the foundation for later indie rock bands, and present a sort of middle ground between earlier alternative bands and post-punk stuff, like The Wrens mixed with Built To Spill, if that makes any sense. This track is not representative of the album at all, but is too good not to share with anyone who likes atmospheric rock and hasn’t already encountered Juno. (insound)

The pattern of life, therefore, appears to have made the world weak and to have handed it over as a prey to the wicked, who run it successfully and securely since they are well aware that the generality of men, with paradise for their goal, consider how best to bear, rather than how best to avenge, their injuries.

Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy