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If a lion mates with a tiger, what do you get? Well according to wikipedia ..

The liger is a cross between a male lion and a female tiger. It is therefore a member of genus Panthera. It looks like a giant lion with diffused tiger stripes. Like tigers (and unlike lions), ligers like swimming.

A cross between a male tiger and a female lion is called a tigon.

Known ligers exist due to human influence, either by deliberate human intervention, or by humans putting lions and tigers in enclosed spaces together. In natural conditions tigers and lions generally do not inhabit the same territory - the two species coexist in the wild today only in the Gir forest of India although their respective ranges used to intersect in Persia, China and perhaps also Beringia. Even where they do coexist, there have been no confirmed reports of interbreeding, though there are long-standing claims that this has happened.

I woke up this morning and ran down to my local record shop to buy this album perhaps due to the rave reviews it has received, or perhaps due to my absolute love for the Eels. After my first listen I think everybody should listen with a little understanding about its conception and of who lead singer ‘E’ is, the Eels website has a fair about this. Basically this is about the writer/lead vocalist, E, a man fighting through his troubled life moving on from some absolutely heartbreaking tragedy, such as the suicide of his sister. Its not all depressing though, actually for an Eels album this is really uplifting, it shows the E has moved on from the deeply depressing (but wonderful) Electro-Shock Blues, whilst tackling his troubles head on. This is a masterpiece, and for anybody who loves violins, gravely voices or wailing guitars (I really love wailing guitars) please for the love of god buy this album. Even if you are really cheap, think of this as a double album (a whopping 33 tracks) for the price of a single CD of girls aloud. This album, is simply amazing everybody needs to listen.

Ok I suppose it’s about time I write a little about what I’ve been listening to over the past few weeks. First of all British Sea Power released Open Season, and at the beginning of this month I went to see them at the Academy in Manchester along with Neal and Rachel. This was the 3rd time I have seen them now, and they rocked as usual. I somehow fear that seeing them at Keele University in the tiny club was the best, especially when they had the 9 foot bear costume and decorated the stage with foliage. As for the album, well it’s unmistakably BSP, with lots about the countryside such as the lyric “and the country is sectioned off like a honeycomb�, whispery voices and wailing guitar riffs. I love it.

The Eels new double album Blinking lights and other Revelations is due out next week Monday. Q and the NME have given it pretty good reviews. I really hope that this album is better than Shootananny! which was rather disappointing. They are just setting off on a little tour with an orchestra, wittingly entitled Eels with Strings. To boot this is proper sit down affair at the Bridgewater hall in Manchester, which will be slightly uncomfortable for a slob such as me.

Other albums which I have enjoyed recently ..

Beck - Guero
The Arcade Fire – Funeral
Kasabian – Kasabian

On a side note, late the other night I made a playlist of wonderful songs, which everybody needs to listen to at least once. The list was going to be 21 songs long, a nice amount, but settled on 30 in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to delete anymore. Click here to grab a hold of the list.

To listen to the Eels new album at the home page. Or here for the Sweet Hey Man mp3.

Well it looks like Welsey has struck a chord with the world. I should point out they I only really made the page for a few people on B3ta who found Wesley cute. Since its launch the site has had some 14000 visits, now although to some this maybe a tiny amount. For me, this is kinda mad. They seem to be coming to my site via the blog-a-sphere with people passing it on to other blogs and so on. Perhaps the funniest thing is that 25% of visitors are from Japan, here is a screen shot of one site where Wesley was chatted about.

Conclusion, the internet is full of people wanting to waste time.

I finally got round to collecting all of my ‘Wesley buckaroo’ photos together. This is when I play the time honoured game of Backaroo but with a live sleeping cat. I have however plonked it on my ISP’s server, because of possible bandwidth issues with B3ta and other sites.