What with their excellent album but duff gig, Parallax View has been on a bit of a Grandaddy tip this week, so I'll round things off with this Guardian review of the band's show at the London Astoria where Alexis Petrides felt similarly underwhelmed to my good self at the live Grandaddy experience - 'the feeling that you might as well be at home, listening to the albums and watching the Discovery Channel with the sound down, is hard to shake.'

As Ben correctly points out bad gig experiences have been something of a meme this week. Frankly you weren't anybody in the blogosphere if you didn't write about a disappointing live concert you've recently attended. Most dramatic perhaps was Alex's experience at a Cat Power show in Frankfurt during which apparently 'Cat Power's current guitarist Coleman Lewis [said] to Chan Marshall last night in Frankfurt: "You're not part of the solution. You are part of the problem. And that is our problem."' Alex describes it as 'the most pitiful, disgraceful and abominable concert I have ever seen in my life'.

I've been listening quite a lot to the Cat Power album You Are Free this week. It's probably been the most universally acclaimed record this year so far, and it's easy to see the album's appeal as it has a very unique and distinctive sound, and Chan Marshall has a beautiful voice. Some have argued that it is like listening to a Laura Nyro record circa 1968 but it's a fine line between retro and dated and it's a tightrope this album walks across rather gingerly at times.

Also the more uptempo numbers are a little ho-strum and in my opinion there's not a broad enough range of style or mood, producing a claustrophobic atmosphere. Depending on your mood, it'll either give your depression a new aesthetic or send you running out into the sunshine for a welcome gulp of fresh air.