Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Aches in the bones, moving slowly, my body refuses to cooperate Sick and sad over the cold weather; it's frigid out there waiting White winds blow white snow over white roads -- white The grey skies sit against heavy trees, laden with yesterday's batch. Twisted slivers of air, cold shards of temperature, ever dropping Except when it warms to snow. The supermarkets are full of shoppers trying to miss the weather, bundled up like yesterday's babies, blocking the aisles, hogging the warmth. I stand looking at boxes of fabric softener. Later, at home, I count my books and avert my gaze from the windows. Snow on the window ledge only strengthens the ache.

My mind floats between images on the screen, pure and pristine, and flickering print in books, studying, fretting, thoughtfully coursing through tons of material -- materiel? The list is long and twisting: Dead Elvis by Greil Marcus, The Foundations of Screenwriting by good ol' Syd Field, a horror movie podcast, (complete with cheesy trailers), Robert Bloch's Psycho , Don DeLilo's White Noise   the twisted golden age comics of Fletcher Hanks. This is all part of the process in studying for PhD exams. Throw it in a blender and hit frappe.

Jason Isbell's Southeastern, is a rare thing -- an honest, singer-songwriter record that strikes a truly personal vein without drifting into the realm of the precious or overwrought. Isbell, wearing his proverbial heart on his sleeve, is getting the kind of press that he hasn't seen since he was part of the Drive-by Truckers. He might finally be leaving that part of his career behind, so that he can be respected on his own as the fine song writer that he has become with each successive record.   Southeastern's stripped-back arrangements allow the songs to breathe. His character sketches remain strong; in fact, they seem more grounded in reality than they have before. Isbell has created a record with truly believable characters, something he has been groping towards since Sirens of the Ditch. Here he is entirely successful because he doesn't try to experiment as much. Siren's great songs ran the gamut of rockers, blue-eyed soul, and folk. While they showed Isbell...