Difficult Music

I always check out the Staff Picks rack at A&B Sound to get a sense of what’s going on out there. Every store has its own particular scene, and judging by what I see, A&B’s scene is mighty strange. Along with the standard nerd-approved stuff you’d expect, like the latest Guided By Voices or Robert Pollard side project, Death From Above 1979, or a boffo expanded Pavement reissue (making me feel really old), there’s always something that seems placed there just to spook me. The Witchcraft album, an album I’ve never actually seen in their regular racks, resided there for a time, and on my last visit I spotted a copy of The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other sitting out in plain view of women and children. What’s going on with that, and on what sort of weird hipster level (if any) has this staff picker been embracing the White Hammer of Love? Am I going to chance upon a band at the Brickyard featuring a “heavily modified B3" and guy honking on two saxes through a distortion box sometime soon? I live in hope.