the ny times pays tribute to snarkiness in blogs by praising the blog the shins will change your life at the expense of believer magazine's professed earnestness. people may make fun of zach braff's effusiveness, but really garden state did for indie rock what breakin 2: electric boogaloo did for turbo's career.

If The Believer's music issue is more problematic, that's because it's also more neutral. In an effort to stamp out snark, the editors also seem to have stamped out skepticism, and so the magazine takes it for granted that indie-rockers are the most important musicians on the planet: the harpist and songwriter Joanna Newsom, for example, taps into "a deep, universal pain." (Might those words appear on a certain blog sometime soon?)

(thanks, rarce.)