You're gone and it's just daybreak.

dommeyourass was cleaning through her years of acquisitions while packing and found a cardboard card. "Here," she said unceremoniously. "You'll make better use of this than me. It's for helping me move." Inside was an unexpired gift card to Tower from a birthday of hers that did not occur this year.

She picked a good time to bestow a random gift on me, since lots of new music comes out in September. I was going to use it on the new OutKast album next week but then I decided I wasn't sure I could wait. I read reviews of the new Shelby Lynne album and the new Dido album (shh!) last night and decided I could probably afford both this morning. Of course, I wandered around Tower in a daze when I got there to discover I have to wait two weeks for Dido. Which I'm guessing is enough time for my enthusiasm to wane. But Shelby is mine. All mine.

I tried to like her last album, and there were definitely a few great cuts, but overall it was just too overproduced. I mean, she's still ahead of her time -- she pulled a Liz Phair two years before Liz Phair did! Though I am curious to pull the album out now and see if I might like it, though I kinda doubt it.

But this one is good. I had my stereo a little louder than usual, and Roberto yelled over the cubicle wall "are you listening to Indigo Girls?!?!" I think he was excited because he loves IG. I for some reason was overly annoyed that he unwittingly implied all female vocals with jangly guitars sound alike. I'm protective of Shelby, I know. I feel like she was secretly mine first, even though I was still a major Johnny-Come-Lately. Just because I discovered "I Am Shelby Lynne" several months before the rest of the world and introduced her to most of my friends doesn't really make up for the fact that she had three albums before it. I think Riley has known about her music for longer, so he would win that contest, but I would sure arm-wrestle my heart out to get her back. I mean, this is all assuming one really has ownnership or possession of an artist, which we don't but it sure feels that way sometimes when it hits close to the vest.

I'd like to give it some closer listens at home when I'm not distracted by doing work and answering the phones, but right now the stand out track is "Lonesome" which could have been extracted from the Patsy Cline vault. If nothing else, buying this album will save me from continuing to listen to Beyonce -- for someone who claims to not like it, I sure put it in the stereo a helluva lot.