Sorry I have been M.I.A. lately! I need to get better at keeping up with this. I’ve been pretty busy — went to Austin for my first year of SXSW, have been going to a sick amount of shows lately, and the whole full-time job thing is sort of time-consuming (but I’m loving pretty much every second of it).

That being said, if you want to follow some of the stuff I’m doing, add 17 Dots to your Google Reader/RSS feeds! It’s eMusic’s staff blog and I write a bunch of stuff on there. Of course you can also follow me on Twitter, too. So, uh, here are some links to stuff.

SXSW! I finally went to South By Southwest for the first time! Yes, it deserves lots of exclamation points!! My friend Dominick describes SXSW as a field trip for all the New York music people, and it totally is, although I also got to hang out with some awesome people from other states who I don’t get to see often or hadn’t met in person before.

Stuff I wrote that week:

DAY 1
17 Dots recap (Broken Bells, Warpaint, Basia Bulat, Washed Out, Rose Elinor Dougall)

DAY 2
17 Dots recap (Man/Miracle, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Sharon Jones, Peasant)
Those Darlins on Spinner.com (ridiculous!)
Sharon Van Etten and Sarah Jaffe on Spinner.com (They will blow your mind! Especially in a church.)

DAY 3
17 Dots recap (Standard Fare, Local Natives, the Antlers, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Mayer Hawthorne)
The Antlers on Spinner.com (Amazing! But that’s nothing new)

DAY 4
17 Dots recap (Slow Club, Titus Andronicus, Peasant, the Antlers, Estelle)
Slow Club on Spinner.com

A couple of stories on Spinner.com:

Anaïs Mitchell on her folk opera, Hadestown

Dead Meadow on their concert film

A bunch of show writeups with LOTS of photos (all on 17 Dots):

Clogs (members of the National, w/ Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and Sufjan Stevens) at the Bell House, March 24

Miike Snow and Delorean at Bowery Ballroom, March 28

She & Him and the Living Sisters at Bowery Ballroom, March 29

Micachu & the Shapes at Le Poisson Rouge, March 31

The Low Anthem at Bowery Ballroom, April 14

Kaki King at Music Hall of Williamsburg, April 15

Owen Pallett at Webster Hall, April 22

Anaïs Mitchell at Joe’s Pub, April 23

Aaaand, a few record reviews while I’m at it [EDIT: I learned that if you don't have an eMusic account, you probably can't see these reviews; I'll be posting them on here probably in the near future!]:

Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown on Critical Mob

White Hinterland’s Kairos on Critical Mob

Tori Amos’s From the Choirgirl Hotel on eMusic

The Morning Benders’ Big Echo on eMusic

Dr. Dog’s Shame, Shame on eMusic

Sarah Jaffe’s Suburban Nature on eMusic

Nathaniel Rateliff’s In Memory of Loss on eMusic

I can’t think of the last time a song made me cry, and, for the record, I did not cry at the first four Ani DiFranco shows I attended. Two years ago I was driving home from Lansing, listening to Ani’s live Carnegie Hall album, when I heard the song “Angry Anymore” for the first time. I had to play it a few times on repeat because I couldn’t comprehend that she was actually telling my story. I know a lot of people who can say that about her songs, the generic fuck-patriarchy this and fuck-Bush that, which I also can relate to. This song doesn’t fall into those categories, and it was (and still is) scary to me how I can explain how each verse fits in to my family/life, because it’s a story that’s so specific to me. And I know that my interpretation of it probably isn’t how she intended it, but the song still means a lot to me.

However, it’s not a song she plays often live, so when I recognized the chord progression at the beginning of it just a few songs into her show tonight, I was so caught off-guard that I couldn’t help but start crying. And that, along with her playing “Subdivision” right before (another favorite song I hadn’t heard live), made it totally worth the $50 + service charges I spent on my ticket.

Aside from that, the show was still great, despite my crappy seats (although I did move up a few rows), but hey, you can’t win ‘em all. Plus, today I bought tickets to see her at the Royal Oak Music Theater in October, which is general admission and a fairly small venue.

A couple of interesting things I noticed … she played four tracks from her upcoming Red Letter Year, but didn’t mention anything about the album, and she didn’t play a single song from her most recent album (not counting last year’s retrospective collection album Canon), Reprieve, and only one track from 2005′s Knuckle Down.

As with any show by an artist who has 20 albums (yep, the new one is her 20th), it’s impossible to hit everyone’s favorite song in every set, so there’s always stuff I’m surprised/sad got left out, but that’s why I keep going to see her.

Ani’s setlist:

“Anticipate”
“Present/Infant”
“Subdivision”
“Angry Anymore”
“Red Letter Year”
“Napoleon”
“Raincheck”
“Welcome To:”
“Sunday Morning”
“Animal”
“Garden of Simple”
“Imagine That”
“The Atom”
“Alla This”
“As Is”
“Shameless”

Encore:
“Evolve”
“Everest”
“32 Flavors”

I wrote about it for Billboard.com, so check out my story for a quick preview of what it sounds like!

And it’s a super Ani-filled week (and, of course, those are always the best), since I just got back from seeing her at United Palace Theater — second post is on the way.