Now, now

I felt like a truck ran over me when I got up this morning, but a prescription of knitting, napping, and live music went a long way in curing what ailed me and steeling me for the hectic week to come.

I ripped out everything I knitted on the project I started Friday. I'm not sure how the item I'm knitting in the round got twisted, but had a Mobius strip twist where I split the stitches for magic loop. After seven rounds I'm beginning to think I've done the same thing again. GRR! For now I think I'll just knit for awhile and see if everything is fine once I have more to show for my effort.

I decided that today was going to be hopeless for getting any work done at home, so I gave in and rested. I didn't feel like going out this evening, but I had a ticket to see St. Vincent, which I was looking forward to.

Multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark, who performs under the name St. Vincent, was joined on stage by a violinist, bassist/keyboardist, and drummer to play songs from her debut album Marry Me. It's an eclectic and detailed record, one that doesn't necessarily translate to live, small-scale performance, but I was really impressed with the expansive sound they generated and recreation of the songs' complexity without relying extensively on pre-recorded loops.

The 70-minute set saw Clark doing some interesting reworkings of her songs as well as covers of "Dig a Pony" and Nico's "These Days". She was the only one on stage as she ripped through the fuzzed-up Beatles song and cooed the quiet song written by Jackson Browne, which served as a fitting encore. I'm a fan of American Idol, but one thing I wish the show's singers (and producers) understood is that you don't have to bludgeon a song to death to sing it well. It was such a pleasure to hear Clark sing well technically without overdoing it. Her singing of "These Days" was like a whisper, yet it was absolutely riveting.

Ah, live music... For as rotten as I felt at the day's start, this concert did its part in restoring my energy.