Releases next month-1995 or 2007?

Not that I mind at all--indeed I'm quite delighted--but I was reading Rolling Stone and was confounded by a page on upcoming releases. Smack in the middle, back to back to back, the following three bands/musicians had blurbs about their upcoming releases: Tori Amos, Dinosaur Jr, Bjork. I had to double check the fine print at the bottom left hand corner to check that there wasn't some leftover issue of RS hanging around the powder room literature. (Come on, we all do it!) Alas, it was the current issue.

Dinosaur is back together but they're like that couple that should be broken up permanently but can't keep away from each other because of the chemistry. Even in the RS blurb J was all snarky about Lou not sharing songs for the band but instead keeping them for his solo career.

Bjork is going back to the dancy-poppy fun that Pete and I experienced on Lansdowne St at the Avalon in June of 95. (Jeff Buckley opened. Seriously.) It will be nice to have another Bjork-y tune like "Big Time Sensuality" to hippie swing to while seat dancing in the car.

And finally, Tori's latest. What's funny is the retro trend of persona/ alter-ego work. It's coming around again in all forms of artistic expression. On the next page of the RS issue referred to above, there was an article about Of Montreal front runner Kevin Barnes, who has three alter egos that he uses to create songs.

It's the 40th anniversary of Sgt Pepper, so maybe that's looming the back of the creative minds.

It's also this: when writing poetry or rock music lyrics, it can get boring writing about oneself all the time. So, to take on a persona and write from that person's perspective opens up doors that staying within one's own head wouldn't.

In February I went to the Grolier Poetry Series at the Democracy Center in Cambridge, featuring Joan Houlihan and Ander Monson. The two poets weren't in any sort of collaborative relationship, they just happened to be reading together that night. But, oddly enough, both were working on writing that did the same things. First, both had poetry projects that were in the realm of fantasy science fiction--though not in a cheesy, obvious and banal way, more like a venerably literate Vonnegutesque way. Joan Houlihan was working on poetry that explored a distopic society. Ander Monson also had elements scifi. The other thing that both were doing was taking on a persona and writing from that persona's perspective. We've been binging on confessional poetry for so long, it was time to go elsewhere with the meaning of "I."

For Tori's part, she makes it fun to anticipate the new album. There are gimmicks, and being a toriphile, I'm all-in. And she knows we'll all be all-in. It's fun, like finding the blogs of the "dolls": Santa, Isabel, Tori, Clyde and Pip.

Two weeks and two days until the release of American Doll Posse.