The 9:30 Club welcomed The Books and openers The Black Heart Procession on Thursday night. First up, Black Heart Procession and a thoughtless series of randomly Googled images, bearing no connection to the music ho-humming from the speakers: a naked man lying in the snow, Cookie Monster, and vampires who are…fond of bondage. Up next, The Books and a visual element that was a perfect complement to the music at hand: thoughtfully chosen images that practically worked as an extra band member. Ebbing and flowing like the music it illuminated, the series demonstrated that The Books are hardly another experimental band playing with videos, strings, and effects pedals. They’re expressive, daring and somehow accessible — maybe that’s why their audience stood in rapt silence.

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we’d cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay…

During their set yesterday at the 9:30 Club, Nick Zammuto, one half of The Books, introduced a song as being about the end of the world then changed his mind and said it was about conception. It was a good synopsis of the band’s music — it could be anything you want it to be. The Brooklyn band’s songs are pastiches — mostly instrumental with guitar from Zammuto and electric cello from Paul de Jong,…