Don’t get me wrong: There is nothing tedious or unpleasant about my job as music critic, and I still have a great abiding love for music in all its complex and sometimes baffling forms. In a lot of ways, I think the problem is that, as a working journalist, I am overinformed. And now my son has introduced me to the world of downloading. Wow.

It's been a tough week here at Minimum Gauge. The world lost one of its giants of culture and we've barely been able to get out of bed, let alone troll for news headlines to make fun of (largely because all the news was focused on our beloved lost icon). But Billy Mays' untimely passing wasn't the only important thing that happened this week.

As soon as the laser sears the aluminum surface of Eat Sugar's new CD, 'It's Not Our Responsibility,' any booty with a soul attached is liable to grow a mind of its own, get itself up off the chair and shake its proprietor around like a useless sack of meat. But while the bumpin' backbeat is undeniable, Eat Sugar are far from routine, mindless dance-party rockers.

For the better part of the last decade, Brian Olive has been someone's guitarist — sometimes as Oliver Henry or Henry Oliver — from post-high school outfits to his stints with The Greenhornes and Soledad Brothers. When the time finally came for Olive to blaze a solo trail, he had plenty of experience to draw on when considering what he wanted to accomplish as a solo artist.

Sometimes, when you get two solo artists together for a collaboration disc, you’ve just got to have two separate release parties to celebrate. And when you have the distinct pleasure of living in a border city separated from another border city by a river, you’ve got to make sure those release shows cover both metro areas. Such is the case with Ryan Malott and Kelly Thomas and their debut EP, which will see international distribution thanks to Deep Elm Records.

There's a great passage in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' where Chief Bromden explains how Big Nurse controls the clocks in the hospital, tormenting the patients by slowing the by slowing the clock down during the majority of the week and then speeding it up during visiting hours. It's also indicative of my life lately; I never seem to have enough time. Still, I'm here to discuss new CDs from Patterson Hood, LANDy, Otis Taylor, Foreign Born, Lemonheads and Tortoise and a new film of The Turtles' wild ride in the 1960s.

Weird or rude off-the-cuff remarks from musicians on stage are nothing new. And they’re usually pretty disingeuous— do you really think Rob Thomas genuinely cares, “How ya doin’ tonight, Boise?” Those statements are innocuous enough, but there’s a lesson to be learned from an Oasis concert earlier this month in the U.K.