Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg return with their second full-length album, a collection of simple indie-folk songs which feature their well-matched vocals above all else. Beyond the lyrics and the songwriting — none of the lyrics are particularly groundbreaking — their voices are the real draw on this album. They’ve been previously compared to a female version of Fleet Foxes, which is understandable, given their tight harmonies and simple backing music. Most of the tracks fit that model of gentle but mostly upbeat folk-rock songs. Title track “The Lion’s Roar” is an excellent track, one which I already admit to listening to on repeat an embarrassing number of times. “Emmylou”, a sweet tribute to country greats like Emmylou Harris and Johnny Cash, is heavy on lap steel and could easily be mistaken as a track from any of the current Americana-inspired US bands rather than a pair of Swedes. Closing track “King of the World” features a guest appearance on vocals by Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes).

The Lion’s Roar is out today on Redeye (Wichita in the UK).

First Aid Kit: Official Website | Facebook | Twitter | Store

Related posts:

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3. Album Review: Fleet Foxes, “Helplessness Blues”

So. New Wilco album. I didn’t get it the day it came out — there aren’t any record stores in Oxford, so I waited until I could make it to Criminal Records in Atlanta. (They’re having money problems; I’d rather buy it from them than online. Sling some business their way if you can.) For a while I’ve been struggling to form strong opinions about it. I don’t dislike The Whole Love; I like it more than Wilco (The Album), and not as much as Sky Blue Sky. I could talk about how Wilco seems to be cycling from alt-country around to something more progressive and then repeating the cycle, but… it’s just not all that interesting.

And it’s not like I don’t have other draws on my time at the moment. I don’t want to spend my limited free time writing about things that don’t provoke strong responses in me, whether positive or negative. I’m neutral on The Whole Love. The album makes sense to me. It doesn’t do much to challenge me. Some of the tracks are intriguing, some make sense in the context of Wilco’s overall discography, and some I find eminently skippable. There’s not a lot more I have to say about the album.

That’s what I thought. And then I saw today’s New York Magazine piece by Nitsuh Abebe that asks an intriguing question: are Wilco and Feist our adult contemporary music?

Months before the release of Wilco’s latest record, The Whole Love, front man Jeff Tweedy told Spin the album might turn out a bit obnoxious and irreverent, at least compared with the band’s other work. Of course, he also figured that as soon as the record was out, there’d be “somebody sitting in a basement at their computer with the word ‘meh’ already typed up,” waiting to write it off. The finished product certainly doesn’t sound cramped; it ranges around from sunny Americana to pop-rock fundamentals, and it’s bookended by two long tracks you might describe as experiments. But it’s the kind of record a lot of fans praise not by pointing out powerful songs or grand ideas but by spotlighting the musicians themselves—some imaginative, molten-metal guitar leads from Nels Cline here, some nimble and inventive drumming from Glenn Kotche there. It turns out that Tweedy and his basement “meh”-sayers are both right: Wilco has packed some first-rate musicianship into an album that feels a bit like sitting on a Chicago back deck watching a particularly uneventful baseball game.

…If I were to claim that records like Metals and The Whole Love—or recent albums by Neko Case, Bon Iver, Stephen Malkmus, perhaps even Radiohead—represented some kind of norm or mainstream in American music, you might wrinkle your nose a bit. These acts don’t sell nearly the number of records that Beyoncé or Taylor Swift or Coldplay do, and we have the habit of thinking of them as independent acts (and, by extension, underdogs). But if there is a consensus about what counts as respectable, adult music in 2011, these acts are surely a part of it: While more people consider pop music inherently silly than enjoy it, few assaults are leveled at the seriousness or artistic value of this stuff. It’s tasteful and subtle and brings a few newish ideas to the middle of the road; it adheres to a classic sense of what rock and American music are, but approaches it from artful enough directions to not seem entirely fusty; a certain type of teenager and a certain type of parent might agree on it. If this sounds close to the definition of what was once considered “adult contemporary,” well, that’s precisely the territory bands like Wilco have spent the past decade colonizing, often entirely by accident. One good indicator of this norm’s normalness? The main criticism you hear about this kind of record—even outweighing references to Starbucks and/or the bourgeoisie—is that it is just too dull to even bother producing any more complex indictment of it.

Twice this fall I’ve been within striking distance of Wilco on the night of a show, and gone are the days when the promise of watching Jeff Tweedy and Nels Cline shred the hell out of “Handshake Drugs” was enough to overcome all financial and logistical difficulties. The clerk at Criminal Records asked me sympathetically if I wasn’t able to get a ticket to the show; I told him I didn’t feel I was missing anything. Fact is, I’m in Jeff Tweedy’s ‘meh’ zone. I’d hoped that The Whole Love would make me reconsider — as I said in January, this album was likely to tell us something about whether or not Wilco was in a rut. As far as I’m concerned, the answer is yes, they are. I think there’s something to Abebe’s conjecture about Wilco’s potential place in an evolving adult contemporary canon. I can’t judge what they’re like live after the release of The Whole Love, but the album is inoffensive. It’s safe. It doesn’t excite me. And I’m not willing to hand over $50 or more for tickets, fees, parking, and gas money for music that doesn’t excite me.

And sure, there are more questions to answer about Wilco’s work. Jim DeRogatis is still keeping an eye on Tweedy’s affiliation with Rahm Emanuel, for one thing. I’m also curious about exactly what Jane Smiley has to do with the last track on The Whole Love, though I can’t shake the feeling that poking at it too closely would be like exploring Bluebeard’s closet — I’m not likely to like what I’d find. (Admittedly, my only encounter with Smiley’s work to this point is A Thousand Acres, her retelling of King Lear in the age of Iowa agribusiness — in other words, not a work that would encourage me to overcome the Bluebeard-inspired jeeblies.) There are other questions, too. But someone else can and should ask and answer them. I’ve got other, more interesting fish to fry.

That, and as down as Tweedy seems on not just the internet, but his audience — basement reviewers (I live on the ground floor, thank you very much) typing ‘meh,’ all conversation on the internet coming down to socialist kittens (I don’t know where he hangs out on the internet, but it’s clearly not where I hang out) — it makes me wonder what value he sees in us, aside from the money we give him. So, yes, I’m fine with Abebe’s conjecture: Wilco’s recent output is safe, inoffensive, has a decent beat, and enough frills to be respectable. I look forward to hearing it on JACK-FM any day now.

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Chicago-by-way-of-Iowa band Death Ships returns with their first full length album since their 2006 debut. Circumstantial Chemistry is more of a straight-up pop rock album than their previous efforts. Gone is the acoustic guitar of singer/bandleader Dan Maloney, and for the most part, gone are most of the country folk tinges that the band started out with; in its place are ten solid, upbeat rock songs peppered with guitar riffs and occasional swirling electronica effects. There’s nothing truly groundbreaking in this collection of songs, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing.  Not all albums need to revolutionize music as we know it, after all.  The album is an easy listen, with songs about love and luck and death, led easily by Maloney’s soaring voice.  My particular favorites include album opener “Fan Sleeper”, “Bootstraps”, and “We’re In Luck”.

The album is available to stream and/or purchase on Bandcamp.  Check it out below, and throw some money their way if you like what you hear.

Death Ships make a stop at Schubas on Saturday night for their record release show.  The show starts at 10 pm and admission is $8.

Death Ships: Facebook | MySpace | Bandcamp

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Marissa Nadler’s latest self-titled release, her fifth full-lenth album, pushes her music further out of her usual box of sparse, dreamy folk and into something a little more fully realized.  Stand-out tracks like “Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning” bring a full band sound to the album, yet still fit well alongside quiet, acoustic tracks like closing song “Daisy, Where Did You Go?”.  The new album, which was entirely fan-funded via Kickstarter, sounds a little more full, with slide guitar and a tinge of country style to it, but the real draw here is Nadler’s voice.  Breathy and tremulous, Nadler’s voice transports the listener into her world, and it’s hard to escape the feelings of melancholy and sadness that she brings to life.

Check out the below video, for “Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning”.

Marissa Nadler is out now, from Box of Cedar.   Catch her tonight at Schubas as she opens for Timber Timbre.

Marissa Nadler: Official Website | Facebook | Twitter | Store | Bandcamp

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Reviewers of Gillian Welch’s The Harrow & The Harvest seem to fall into two broad camps so far: reviewers who are delighted to get more of what they love about Welch’s music, and reviewers who expect Welch and Rawlings to evolve past what they’ve done for the last twenty years and who then express disappointment when they see few or no signs of stylistic evolution.

It’s an interesting critical divide, made more interesting by the musical genres in play. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings work more firmly within much older musical traditions, in older styles, than a lot of the artists reviewed alongside them — when they’re playing as Gillian Welch, anyway. When dealing with music that sounds like it’s fresh off the archetypal (or stereotypical) American mountain, questions of authenticity, lineage, and genealogy arise. How much evolution, in other words, is too much evolution? And how much evolution can we expect Welch and Rawlings to display on a studio album, given their artistic choices in the last twenty years?

I’d expect to see more of this critical divide with other artists who are more interdisciplinary in their approach to their music. For an example close to hand who’s been active for approximately the same period as Welch and Rawlings, try Andrew Bird. The difference between the first Bowl of Fire album, Music of Hair (1996), and Noble Beast (2009) shows obvious shifts in genre and style.

In comparison, the first Gillian Welch album, Revival (1996), resembles The Harrow & The Harvest (2011) far more closely than Bird’s first album resembles his most recent album. Welch’s music gets better — I do think Welch and Rawlings have improved their songcraft over the last twenty years — but the way it sounds hasn’t really changed that much. I don’t think it’s out of artistic laziness, either. Welch and Rawlings, working as Gillian Welch, are not and never have been about massive stylistic evolution. (Which is in large part why I was and am so enamored with Dave Rawlings Machine, but that’s another post entirely.) Their work as Gillian Welch dwells in subtleties and shades of gray.

They’re still giving voice to the fictional downtrodden and dispossessed, still using deceptively simple songs to introduce larger philosophical questions (and using album structure to craft drafts of answers to those questions), and still inverting and subverting tropes in the corner of American music that they’ve chosen to occupy. Welch and Rawlings have been doing these things all along. They’re just better at it now than they were in 1996.

The Harrow & The Harvest isn’t more of the same, it’s a continuation of the same — a subtle difference, but an important difference. Welch and Rawlings play with tropes. They play with what we expect to hear, on more than one level and with more than one approach. David Rawlings takes his guitar lines down unorthodox paths to anticipated chord resolutions; the timbre of Gillian Welch’s voice imbues her protagonists’ stories with more or less vulnerability depending on the register she’s using; the stories in the songs that Welch and Rawlings write together hinge on sins committed by the powerful against the powerless — or the seemingly powerless.

This last isn’t a new innovation in American folk music. What’s less common are the songs like “Caleb Meyer” from Hell Among The Yearlings, where the murder victim is the rapist, and the unapologetic murderer is the rapist’s victim. What’s less common are the songs like “Look At Miss Ohio” from Soul Journey, where cultural expectations about right and proper behavior for beauty queens are spelled out for the seemingly powerless beauty queen in question, and where we as their audience are asked to bear witness to both her sins, and the expectations that label her actions as sinful behavior. If anything, The Harrow & The Harvest picks up these uncommon trends and runs away with them in ways more tightly focused than we’ve seen in their previous work. There’s more of a focus on gender and slightly less on class — but both are still present in spades, and often in ways that interlace.

I don’t think the right question to ask is why haven’t Welch and Rawlings evolved stylistically with the music they play as Gillian Welch? The right question is why haven’t we evolved in ways that make the tropes they play with obsolete?

When the protagonist of “Tennessee” doesn’t have to assert her right to go to heaven, when “The Way It Goes” isn’t the way it goes any more, when there aren’t any “Hard Times” to rule our minds — that’s when we get to question why Gillian Welch hasn’t evolved. In the meantime, Welch and Rawlings are still around to use familiar song forms and styles to ask hard, uncomfortable questions with no easy answers.

So, yes, The Harrow & The Harvest was worth the eight-year wait. If there’s any disappointment at all, it’s that their methods are still relevant and that the stories they tell still have resonance. But that’s not the fault of Welch and Rawlings.

Gillian Welch: Official Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | Store

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1. The Gillian Welch Listening Party Adventure
2. Album Review: Dave Rawlings Machine, “A Friend of A Friend”
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Once upon a time, I was headed off to see Wilco in Bend, Oregon. As I tend to do, I checked to see who was opening, because I tend to get a lot more enjoyment out of concerts if I’m at least a little familiar with what I’m about to see. Opening for Wilco at that show in late August 2008: Fleet Foxes.

I sampled a little on the internet and went straight down to the record store to pick up the self-titled album and the Sun Giant EP. I spent the next several weeks getting more familiar, and I liked what I heard. Oregon was lovely, the show was excellent, and the whole thing wound up with Jeff Tweedy and Robin Pecknold tearing up the  lead vocals to “I Shall Be Released”. Expansive feeling of well-being achieved, I drove back over the Cascades to Portland and flew back to Denver.

Since then, Fleet Foxes have made an appearance on a few of my playlists. I tend to listen to them when I’m driving in the mountains; they’re a natural soundtrack for that, for whatever reason. (I’ll spare us all my crackpotted theories about regional music.) I like their work. There are things I don’t like about their work — things that keep them from being on my All-Time Favorite Artists list — but their work is pleasant, generally inoffensive, and I’ve got good associations with it. If you divide a given song into instrumented music versus lyrics, the music wins, every time. It’s not that the lyrics are bad, they’re just not as good as the rest of it. They don’t take risks, and so I don’t listen to Fleet Foxes when I’m in the mood for risk-taking.

I was looking forward to their second album, Helplessness Blues, and now that I’ve got it in my hands and in my ears I like it well enough. The album is what Fleet Foxes does: shimmery, mostly acoustic music, with a lot of reverb, and good, tight close harmony. Helplessness Blues, like Fleet Foxes and Sun Giant, is generally inoffensive and doesn’t take risks. It’s music that sounds easy. If that kind of music is not your thing, you won’t like Fleet Foxes.

The question I’m still trying to answer for myself is how Helplessness Blues differs from their first two releases. The most obvious way isn’t one I like: Fleet Foxes has this tendency to write songs in two or more parts, like a suite or a sonata. It’s tolerable in their earlier work, because like a suite or a sonata, you could always hear the relationship among the parts. You can tell how they’re supposed to fit together, and how Pecknold and company got from point A to point B. On Helplessness Blues it sounds a lot more like they’re jamming shorter songs into one track with pasted-on transitions because the shorter songs weren’t going anywhere by themselves. Songs don’t have to be linear, and they don’t have to consist of one movement, but if they’re going to go in the same track there should be some clear relationship between the pieces. It sounds like lazy songwriting. I don’t think that’s the case, and I don’t have beef with the band’s performance on the record, but it’s frustrating. They’re better than that, and I wish they sounded like it.

A perfect example of what I’m talking about is the title track. The first time I heard “Helplessness Blues”, I had to put down everything I was doing at work in order to sit back and let it sink in — until I got to the second half, at which point my eyebrows went up and I made a face.

If you chopped off the second half of the song — the part about the orchard and how the lady should be the waitress — it’d be much stronger. There’s a place for the second half, but I don’t know that it’s with the first. “I’d work till I’m sore” is a poor follow-up punch to the big questions about theology and power and self-determination the first half asks and attempts to answer.

That said, “Helplessness Blues” is maybe my favorite new track this year. (It’s either that or “Damn These Vampires” by the Mountain Goats.) And I’m absolutely going to be listening to the album for a while. Like I said: generally inoffensive, pretty, shimmery, good associations. It’s a solid follow-up to their first full-length album, but I have a feeling I’ll be more excited about their third album. And if you’re thinking about giving Fleet Foxes a try for the first time, I’d go with Fleet Foxes or Sun Giant first.

Fleet Foxes: Official Site | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter

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Hey, it’s Mike again, you know the friend of Sarah’s from way back who occaisionally fulfills her need for a list of albums because she spends 90,000 hours agonizing over her own. (Do I really like this Andrew Bird album more than this other Andew Bird album?) Ha. I keed.  So I did this thing last year, and since I mentioned Paper Route, and Gavin (Paper Route’s drummer) tweeted a link to the site, I gave Sarah a bunch of traffic, so she owes me, and that’s why you get the:

Seven Albums That Came Out in 2010 That Mike Listened To and Enjoyed the Most

Devo – Something For Everybody
Devo’s first foray into the world of music since Smooth Noodle Maps was met with much ado (mostly by the band itself who used focus groups and a lot of fake promotional material to choose everything from what songs appeared on the album, what order they were in, what type of outfits Devo would don, and of course what color the new Energy Domes would be).  Hoopla aside, this is actually a really awesome album.  What We Do and Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man) are worth the price of admission alone.

Something For Everybody was released June 15.
Devo: Official Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | Store

Chromeo – Business Casual
This is my pick for album of the year. Nobody is able to mix 80s beats, Roger Troutman Voicebox, and fun better than chromeo, and this album is nothing short of spectacular.  I don’t think its possible to not like this album.  From start to Huey Lewis finish, this album is nonstop fun.

Business Casual was released September 13.
Chromeo: Official Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | Store

Gogol Bordello – Trans-continental Hustle
Gogol Bordello’s music is absolutely nuts, and their latest album continues the trend.  With all this punk-polka it leaves me to wonder if there are any Mariachi Punk bands out there. That would be truely amazing, but I digress. [See Mariachi el Bronx. -S]

Trans-continental Hustle was released April 27.
Gogol Bordello: Official Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | Store

The Soft Pack – The Soft Pack
It’s been a while since I’ve heard such awesome surf music.  Plus these guys use organ.  That alone puts these guys up there with Man or Astroman? as surf punk greats.

The Soft Pack was released February 2.
The Soft Pack: Official Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter

Frank Turner – Sleep is for the Week
I really like this album, but it’s just songs about being hungover, so thats probably why.  This guy is either the English equivalent of me, or he just reads my mind, and makes songs that I like.

[ Sleep is for the Week was released in 2007, apparently, but I'll let it slide.  This time. -S]
Frank Turner: Official Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | Store

Balkan Beat Box – Blue Eyed Black Boy
Rarely do you get a mix of ska, dub, rap and disco, and even more rarely is it any good. Balkan Beat Box manages to pull it off, though.  This is great music to cruise around to in your convertable.  Especially in suburban areas where there are few Israelis.

Blue Eyed Black Boy was released March 29.
Balkan Beat Box: Official Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | Store

The National – High Violet
My love of The National’s music can only be compared to my hatred of their live show.  High Violet is moody, emotional and beautiful.

High Violet was released May 11.
The National: Official Website | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | Store

Honorable Mentions
Butch Walker – I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart. Maybe it’s just cause Butch is now 40 but this is his most mature album to date.  That said, there aren’t any real rockers on this album, so it falls short of my list.

Gorillaz – Plastic Beach. I didn’t like this album as much as I liked Demon Days, but Stylo and Superfast Jellyfish are awesome.

Maroon 5 – Hands All Over. Maybe its because the first time I heard Misery I was in the middle of a break up and the person in question didn’t answer any of my texts that day, or maybe it’s just cause I have a secret love of Maroon 5.

And of course the Worst album of the year.
This year it goes to Katy Perry for Teenage Dream. I am no snob to popular music, as many people I work with will tell you how disturbing it is for me to sing along to Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus when it comes on over the muzak, but Teenage Dream is just beyond garbage.  It’s not great dance music, its not great pop music, and there’s a song about penis. Well, that’s not bad in itself, but it makes it seem like its really hard for a girl like Katy Perry to see dong.  Though maybe it was in regards to Elmo, who ran away from her the entire Sesame Street skit that was yanked due to cleavage issues.

[ While not compiling Best Of lists for me, Mike can be found at landofabsurdity.com. ]

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2. Guest Post: Seven Albums That Came Out in 2009 That Mike Listened To and Enjoyed the Most
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Happy is the day that itchy fingers get some new vinyl, especially when it comes from Mr. Bird.

Originally part of the special edition of January 2009′s Noble Beast, today marks the release of the bonus disc, titled Useless Creatures, as its own LP. You can see my copy chilling there against the crate. I’ve been fond of Useless Creatures since I first heard it, and as time has passed I’ve returned to it more and more, both as a weathervane to try to guess where Andrew Bird is going next, and because I like it for what it is.

Trending toward slow and dreamy, Useless Creatures is nine instrumental tracks of varying lengths. I tend to put the album on when I’ve got some thinking to do or when I feel like being quiet, but not silent. On the whole, I think of it as a companion album, but I mean it more broadly than the easy meaning of the other part of Noble Beast: it’s a companion for me. It’s an album I feel comfortable with.

Since the album was released, I’ve been able to pull out a few motifs that Bird has played live — usually as the opener to his set, but sometimes they’ve shown up as bridges. He’s also played “Carrion Suite” live a few times, especially in late 2009′s solo European tour, and several of the pieces showed up in the gezelligheid shows, but the piece that has shown the most public evolution since the release of Useless Creatures has to be the second track, “You Woke Me Up”.

The album version is sedate, even cautious, and takes its sweet time introducing its primary melodic line. Bird uses a myriad of violin techniques, as well as his usual looping equipment. There’s a minimum of audible distortion, and seemingly minimal contribution from Todd Sickafoose on bass and Glenn Kotche on percussion. The themes repeat and come to a near non-conclusion. The piece is a dark meditation — no narrative line, no catharsis, and no hint of eventual change.

This is partly why I was left totally shocked at the first gezelligheid show in Chicago last year — which is where I heard the lyrics Bird gave the song for the first time.

The primary difference, as far as the instrumental portion, between the album version and the version from the 2009 gezelligheid shows is arrangement. Bird didn’t have Kotche and Sickafoose with him at Fourth Presbyterian; he used his customary glockenspiel and distorted his violin looping a little further. Until the 3′ mark, the arrangements for live solo performance were the only real difference between the album version and this version.

The vocals kick in at three minutes.

Back in May, one of the things I touched on in my review of one of his shows at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles was how his lyrics are starting to be framed not as passive action, or action in response to outside stimulus, but as imperatives. “You Woke Me Up”, then and now, is a good example, and this is where I first heard them. To be honest, I’m still not sure what I make of the song in this draft, though I know I like it a lot. The lyrics borrowed from “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning” make me love the song on a gut level, though I’m still not sure that the lyrics aren’t placeholder lyrics — and I have to say that I hope they’re not placeholders.

The problem with the song at this tempo is that the plodding, repetitive parts, with the tempo barely slower than an average heartbeat, draw attention to the sections that Bird has taken from “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning”, and it makes his original material seem like a mere framing device. His work is better than that, and the potential for interaction between the two sets of lyrics — Bird’s original lyrics, and the lyrics he borrows — is much greater than we hear in the gezelligheid version.

Which is why — or mostly why — I was so shocked the first time I heard the version from the Newport Folk Festival at the end of July of this year, because in this version, he’s made those edits that seem necessary in hindsight. The tempo is faster and the two sets of lyrics flow into each other much, much more easily.  (This version from Newport is much closer to the version I heard at Largo in May.)

More than that, though, what improves the piece is the wholly different instrumental arrangement in the first three minutes. If he’s officially recorded and released this particular theme or motif, I haven’t heard it, but I know he’s used it live before. The effect of leading into what we’ve known up until this point as “You Woke Me Up” with an instrumental piece that seems to have nothing to do with it is jolting: he’s waking us up, creating an unsettling feeling that steadies out with every layer he adds with the looping mechanism.

With the Newport version, it feels more like he’s telling us a story — and more like the command to keep it together, you’re not alone is just that: a command. An imperative. This is what I mean when I say that his music seems to be growing more confrontational than it’s been up until this point. Like his earlier work, it presents problems, but the shift, again, is in the demand for concrete, decisive action.

I’m hoping we’ll hear how this song has evolved in this year’s round of gezelligheid shows — I’m headed east for the first two shows in DC — because I expect it will have changed again. I’m also looking forward to seeing how the rest of the tracks on Useless Creatures may have changed.

Andrew Bird: Official Website | MySpace | Twitter | Store

Thank you to the tapers who made it possible for me to share these last two recordings. I checked my files, and I didn’t see either a place I could credit your work or instructions regarding how you want it distributed. If you taped these shows and would like credit, please let me know — and thank you so much for what you do.

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