Between going to Atlanta for a wedding and being neck deep in research at the various libraries at Boston College, I’ve been busy, but I don’t know how well that translates to entertaining reports. I’d never been to Atlanta before and besides suffering in the sweltering heat, I don’t know if I “experienced” it in any notable way. The library research has been somewhat interesting, as I’ve spent a number of hours determining the degree of fame that minor literary figures received from scholarship to see if they would be worthy topics for my annotated bibliography. Finding that certain degree of fame—not as big as National Skyline, not as small as Days in December—is a bizarre process.

Through my travels in the stacks of the BC libraries, I noticed that Anthony Cronin, who wrote a biography of Flann O’Brien called No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O’Brien, is also a noted poet. (He also wrote a biography of Samuel Beckett that I should check out at some point.) I took his Collected Poems out early this week and enjoyed what I skimmed. Last night I happened to find a signed, used copy of said book at Brookline Booksmith. I typically don’t care much about rare editions or signed copies, but since I just spent a few hours in the rare books library hearing about signed editions and inscriptions, I figured that ten bucks was hardly an exorbitant price to pay. As it turns out, that’s on the absolute low-end of any online listings I found.

I picked up two somewhat recent math-/post-rock hybrids, Russian Circles’ Enter and the Timeout Drawer’s Alone EP, at the usually frustrating Newbury Comics. (I have a rant about how Boston record stores make me long for Parasol, Reckless, and Vintage Vinyl, but I’ll save that for another day.) Russian Circles frequently sound like the logical midpoint between Pelican and Explosions in the Sky, and though they never quite reach the heights of either band, Enter is a consistent, muscular debut. I hadn’t heard anything from the Timeout Drawer since I received their debut, A Record of Small Histories, as a promo back in the day, but I saw some positive press and downloaded it. Thankfully, they have moved past the “instrumental Cure” sound of that era, choosing a better balance between aggressive post-rock and their past synthetic urges. Semi-epic opener “Man Must Breathe” is the obvious highlight, but the rest of the EP is solid and the video from a song from their previous record is well done.

Of course, if any record store in the Boston area stocked Mock Orange records, I would gladly forgo purchasing the above book and records in order to pick up the excellent First EP or Mind Is Not Brain. Jon pines for The Record Play, but there are some fantastic songs on these records. The jury’s still out for the split with the Band Apart, but I harbor no illusions of ever finding that.