New work from old favorites

You know how sometimes you haven’t heard one of your very favorite musicians for a while, perhaps for a reason as dumb as “oh, yeah, I keep meaning to get those tracks into iTunes,” and then something serendipitous happens, like you’re cleaning your desk at work and find that 2002 live album, and you figure gosh, I barely remember this, I should just put it in and see what it sounds like, and you do, and then you can’t stop listening, and you think, this is so fantastic, and huh, it’s really been a while, I wonder if she’s got anything new out?

She does, and she’s working on something else that sounds like it’s going to be amazing. If you click that first link you will find that Veda Hille’s childhood interests included “plants, books, microscopes, science fiction, and psychiatry.” Among other excellent work, she has done a song cycle about the painter Emily Carr and another about the Yukon. There’s a music player on the site. Go, listen.

Then a friend says that O’Hare looks like it was designed by William Gibson, and you’ve already been listening to the audiobook of Pattern Recognition for the zillionth time; it’s always great for travel because it starts with that brilliant evocation of jet lag. And you bought a bag at Goodwill just because it reminded you of Cayce’s “East German envelope,” though you’re aware of the supreme irony in buying a product that you associate with a character who has panic attacks in the presence of logos and brands (but the bag has no logos on it, see) — and anyway, you think it’s about time for him to have a new book out, and he doesn’t yet, but he will in August, and in the meantime he’s made a video about it. [edited to add: for some reason that link refuses to load properly. Google “spook country” video and you’ll get it.]