I'm treating today's post as a confessional for my deep dark secrets. First up, I have to admit that I still like Powderfinger. I mean, I bought their new album, and I really like it. Is this okay? I could understand and live with a lukewarm appreciation of them at this point, but I really really like this new shit, and I am concerned by the extent to which I like it. It's turning out to be one of those albums - alongside Rage Against The Machine's Renegades and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Fever To Tell - that I can't listen to without grinning... no, beaming, in an uncontrolled fashion that sometimes erupts into hysterical giggling. And what's worse, I cannot refrain from turning to whoever else is listening in my vicinity and nodding madly, with eyes widened and that damn plastered grin all over my face. But here's the really scary part - when I'm listening to the album, I don't care! I have no control. It's only later that I realise that this foolish and unrestrainable enthusiasm has been triggered by a Powderfinger album, which is fine by me, you know, because "good tunes is good tunes" and all, but what will other people think of me! If I didn't know me, I would be totally horrified with myself, eg. picture me, reading celebrity answers to the question "What music do you like?" and seeing Powderfinger and Coldplay listed, and then going, like, "Sheesh. You stinker". This is so confusing. I mean, I listen to those bands, and I rather like them. Yes. You got me. I... like... Coldplay. Okay? Chief? You gotta prblem with that, bucko? Well, I do. I like them, and yet I would never include either of these bands in a list of my musical taste. You see, these bands fall into an uncomfortable section of my music collection. You can't joke about enjoying them on an ironic level [Justin Timberlake, anyone?], which is only a half truth anyway, so they don't fall into the "so bad it's good" category. And yet, neither do they easily slot into the "so, soooo fucking good, but only liked by really cool people (we think)" category. So they have to exist as an uneasy, undeclared part of your life, closeted in a section called "very good, but without an established cool pedigree". Why? Why? Why? How can I get over this shame? I really need to get over it too, because I know that by the end of this after school special called 'Life' [ha ha ha], I will have been made to realise that the only thing I need to be ashamed of for its lack of cool is my shame about the lack of cool of some of the things I like. You know?

But I'm not a loser or anything. I had the same grinning and nodding reaction to Kings Of Leon and The Black Keys, okay? I just wasn't discomfited by them is all. So I'm still cool, right?