The Booker went to deserving title, although David Mitchell should have been at least nominated again for Black Swan Green.

And because I’m more of a baseball fan than a Yankee fan, I’ll say it here: The Detroit Tigers are going to win the world series.

Better still, I’ve been listening to the new Califone for a week or so now, and it’s out now, and I like Roots and Crowns, this album being a better distillation of Califone’s strenghts as a psychedelic country-folk band. Songs almost disintegrate in their hands. It’s creepier and less pretentious than Wilco, too. Wait for the final minute of this track, after it goes loopy about four minutes in:

Califone – Black Metal Valentine

And the bigger news? I have a full copy of the Walkmen’s Pussy Cats, their album-length cover of the same-named 1974 drunk-in-the-studio blowout by Harry Nilsson and the Masked Alberts, aka John Lennon and possibly Keith Moon and a cabal of other drunks. The kind of scene where there was a guy in a mustache and hat, named Herman, sleeping in the corner under some chairs, who stayed the whole time, no one person could remember bringing him, and then one day he vanished.

Walkmen – Don’t Forget Me

This is almost as heartbreaking as the original, and quite faithful to it; before this, I didn’t see any feasibility to a Nilsson influence on the Walkmen; and even if there wasn’t before this, they’d be smart to follow up on their skill with Nilsson’s tin-pan alley aesthetics and pop classicism.

It’s also one of Harry Nilsson’s best songs. “I’ll miss you when I’m lonely / I’ll miss the alimony too” kills me every time I hear it.