Everytime I think about back home, it's cool and breezy...

In about 13 hours, I'll be on a slow boat to Saskatchewan, with a three-hour portage through Edmonton. That will treble the cumulative amount of time I've spent in Alberta over the last decade.

Already, a week feels too short, but once I'm back on solid ground, on fertile soil, with no NYT Crossword, no jackhammers outside my window when I'm trying to sleep, I'll probably start pining for ye olde urban lights and blights of Vancouver.

Nicole left on Tuesday morning. She asked me to help her fill up her mp3 player for the trip. "But none of your jazz," she hissed. This from the lady whose first three picks for girls' names were Billie, Nina, and Simone. (Of course I know the difference between jazz-jazz and the free-type jazz I've been into lately.)

Nicole's musical tastes don't always run parallel to mine, which is fine. Over the years, I think I've become less and less discriminating when it comes to music. Having to go to multiple Tommy Hunter concerts will do that to a person. In a lot of ways, I think it's made me a happier person than the 20-year-old snob I was when I started writing about music. But Nicole's kept her edge. She will occasionally vehemently dislike something I think is excellent. So I knew I was on to something when I was going through various new songs I'd been sent and about 15 seconds into "N'Heat" she said, "Yes, put this on my player."

"N'Heat" is from Chicago's the Spectacles (not to be confused with the wedding bands of the same name from Conneticutt and Tennessee) and their new album, Home. They're from the same stable as other Chi-Town pop we've brought you like the Fake Fictions and the Prairie Spies. All three bands, and a few more, will be playing this Saturday, Aug. 2, at High Concept Laboraties in Chicago. Me, I'll be in Saskatchewan on Saturday, having just jumped the broom. But if I wasn't doing that, and if I was in Chicago, I'd totally go to that show.



mp3: "N'Heat" by the Spectacles
mp3: "Outdated Model" by the Spectacles