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may 2010
5.3.10
I think Liars' Sisterworld is worth four stars when taken as a complete album, but I haven't been able to find enough individual four and five star tracks on the record to bring iTunes' conglomerate rating up to four stars. It vexes me. I am terribly vexed. |
5.4.10
I'm still getting to know most of the new discs that came in last week, but their time in the rotation may be short-lived: due in this week are new albums from Broken Social Scene, New Pornographers, and the Hold Steady, and it's hard for me to believe that at least two out of those three won't be dominating my playlist once I get them. |
5.5.10
I think I'm changing my mind about the strongest record from the last batch from Amazon. The Morning Benders' Big Echo is still a pretty good record, but Love Is All's Two Thousand and Ten Injuries is the most interesting, and it's winning me over.
The final track, "Take Your Time", gets a little annoying after the first couple of listens——it's based on Pachebel's Canon in D, which most of you will recognize either from a light bulb commercial from the 80s or the most recent wedding you attended, and it's too obvious and overused to stomach as the basis for a pop song. But otherwise it's a great album——it's hard to pin down a specific genre to attach it to, but it's got a global pop feel that doesn't seem forced. |
5.6.10
After a few more listens,
I still think MGMT's second album, Congratulations, isn't nearly as good as their debut. It could be a grower, so I wouldn't be surprised if I feel more positively about it in a couple of months. But I also wouldn't be surprised if the only songs I remember from it six months from now are the two or three tracks that I've rated at four stars or more that will still show up in my shuffle playlists. |
5.7.10
New records came in yesterday, and so far each release is living up to expectations. The Hold Steady is the Hold Steady, Broken Social Scene is Broken Social Scene, and New Pornographers are New Pornographers. And those are all good things. |
5.10.10
Every time I hear music made this decade by the Fall, it reminds me strongly of LCD Soundsystem. I realize the influence is the Fall to LCD Soundsystem and not the other way around, but my real question is why I haven't bought any Fall records yet given how much I love LCD Soundsystem. The latest one, Your Future Our Clutter, is getting pretty good reviews, so maybe it's time. |
5.11.10
This month's $5 MP3 album downloads from Amazon isn't as strong as last month's, but there are still some killer deals here. The ones I wouldn't pass up: Spoon's Kill the Moonlight (still their best record), the Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America (probably tied for their second best release), Beulah's Handsome Western States (their third best album, but third best for Beulah is still pretty amazing), and Descendants' Milo Goes to College (one of the best punk records ever made).
There are a few other notable offerings——the Black Keys' thickfreakness, former Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell's second solo release, and Caribou's Andorra——that might be of interest depending on your fandom levels of those group's genres, but overall, there's not as much to choose from as there was in April. |
5.12.10
I don't really like any of the non-New Pornographers projects that the member of New Pornographers busy themselves with when they're not doing something New Pornographers-related: A.C. Newman's solo albums, Dan Behar's work as Destroyer, and Neko Case's solo stuff. But I really like New Pornographers, and I kind of wish they would just focus on this group and so they could release a record more often than every two or three years.
Their most recent, Together, might be my favorite since the first record of theirs I bought, Electric Version. And I guess maybe it's possible that the reason their efforts as New Pornographers are so consistently good is precisely because they take breaka to work on other projects, and maybe the reason I don't like their solo records as much is because they save all the stuff I do like for the New Pornographers sessions.
Related but kind of non-sequitorish: A.C. Newman seems to sometimes go by Carl, and I can't figure out why some interviews/reviews call him A.C. and some call him Carl. A.C. Newman is the moniker he uses for his solo works, but I've found two New Pornographer interviews from 2001 and 2010 where he is referred to as Carl. |
5.13.10
I haven't disliked much on Robyn Hitchcock's latest, Propeller Time, but it's been in my primary playlist since I got it a few weeks ago, and so far I haven't bothered to rate any of the songs. In my experience, songs that go unrated after three or more listens generally end up being rated with three stars because they haven't made me love them enough to give them four or five stars and they haven't irritated me enough for me to give them one or two.
When I get a whole album like this, I usually try to give it a rating session where I focus more on listening to the music than I usually do when I'm sitting at my computer, just to make sure I'm not missing anything before I apply three stars across the board. I wouldn't be surprised if I convince myself to rate one or two tracks with four stars, but from my lack of action thus far, the album as a whole is feeling solidly three star. |
5.14.10
The National's High Violet, which I preorderd from Amazon as has been my custom this year, arrived yesterday, two days after its official release. That's been the pattern so far for all my preorders with them——they usually get here the Thursday after their official Tuesday release, and no later than Friday.
Another nice feature from Amazon: they don't charge you until your item ships, and if the price changes on anything you've preordered, you get it at the lowest price that the item was marked at since it was in your preorder basket. I also discovered with High Violet that if the price drops between when they shipped the item and you recieve the item, you get automatically refunded the difference.
So High Violet was $13.99 when I initially ordered it, but by the time they shipped it to me, the price had been $9.99 at some point, so that's what my credit card was charged when they sent the item out to me. But in between when they shipped it and when I received it, the price dropped to $7.99, so I got a notification that I was being refunded $2.
With a policy like that and price drops that seem to happen pretty frequently with preorders (all in all, out of eight preorders in my last big order from Amazon, the final price on six of them ended up being only $7.99), I'm paying way less than I would at my local brick and mortar independent record store, even when you factor in shipping. And I never have to worry about an item not being in stock, and I get my stuff pretty quickly after it's released. I can't see a reason why I'm ever going to buy something from my local store again. |
5.17.10
When I heard the two or three pre-release streaming singles from Heaven Is Whenever, the Hold Steady's latest album, I thought there was a good chance it could end up ranking somewhere with Boys and Girls in America and Stay Positive——a solid album, but nothing that would eclipse Separation Sunday.
And for the most part that's true, although there are little adjustments they've made for this record. For the first time in their career, the opening track isn't a blazing salvo of rock, but rather a slower-paced, country infused number that works better than you might expect. This is also the first time that the closing track hasn't been a killer——"A Slight Discomfort" is sprawling and unfocused, and at over seven minutes it's just plain too long. The whole point seems to be to demonstrate that Craig Finn understands what a crescendo is, and that he knows how to build one over several minutes, but that's not really reason enough to justify a song.
The production also gets a little wonky in places——there seems to be a more liberl and pronounced use of echo effects on Finn's voice and on some of the guitar solos——but it's not as slick-sounding as I was expecting from some of the reviews.
A decent record all in all, but probably their weakest since Separation Sunday, with the fewest essential tracks. |
5.18.10
I loved, loved, loved the National's Boxer, and in a year of several highly anticipated releases, High Violet was at the top of the pile. As the reviews came in and they were overwhelmingly positive, I got even more excited about it. But I had it on repeat most of the weekend, and it's not quite what I was expecting for. It certainly doesn't exceed Boxer, and I don't think it really even matches it, even though it's a solid release with some great songs.
I mean, Boxer is a tough record to top, but I really thought they could pull it off. I guess I just bought too much into the pre-release hype, which saw them with a multipage profile in the New York Times magazine and garnering raves from pretty much everyone.
I still hope this record takes them to the next level, and it's definitely worth owning. It's a worthy addition to their catalog, better than Alligator and their second best release to date. But I had hoped for so much more. |
5.19.10
The only time I've ever seen Broken Social Scene live was a summer show at Merriweather Post Pavillion. They only had about an hour on stage, wedged between opener Ted Leo and headliner Belle & Sebastian, but what an hour. It was a perfect summer day, and we were sitting on the lawn, talking with friends, and the band playing on stage seemed as much a part of the experience as the sun or the sky or the company. I could have sat listening them to hours. For days.
They were touring in support of their self-titled album from 2005, and their latest, Forgiveness Rock Record, reminds me a lot of that disc——it's got the same sort of dreamy, mellow vibe on a lot of tracks that made the band's performance that summer fit in so well with the day. I think a perfect show for me at this point would be three hours of Broken Social Scene on that same kind of summer day at Merriweather Post Pavillion, followed by a couple of hours of Animal Collective playing the venue that they made famous with their last album title. |
5.20.10
From the National's "Sorrow":
Sorrow found me when I was young
Sorrow waited, sorrow won
Vocalist Matt Berninger's strength is usually his ability to create a mood with loose, impressionistic lyrics, but every now and then he just delivers a knockout couplet like this.
It feels to me a lot like early R.E.M. records, where you couldn't make out what Michael Stipe was actually saying very often, but when he moved away from mumbling and sang clearly, his words stuck with you forever. It's not the mumbling part that's similar——although Berninger's soft baritone fades into the songs, if you actually listen he's pretty easy to understand——it's the way he can use a lyrical ray of light to pierce the soft fog of the stories he tells and burn an idea into your brain forever that reminds me of Stipe. One did it with the style of his vocals, the other with his actual lyrics, but both achieve the same effect. |
5.21.10
Caribou's Swim just isn't doing that much for me. I think it's time for me to admit that this is one of those bands that critics love that I only kind of like and move on with my life. |
5.24.10
After producing the last Black Keys record, Attack and Release, Danger Mouse only worked with the band on one track out of fifteen on their latest, Brothers. But this entire album sounds much more Danger Mouse-influenced than Attack and Release, and you have to think his work with the duo (in addition to the multiple other projects the band members have been involved with over the past couple of years) had a lasting influence that's really reinvigorated the band.
I mean, the vibe is still distinctly the Black Keys, but it sounds both catchier and more vital than anything since thickfreakness——the flat, lifeless tunes that characterized their past few records are mostly gone. Like most albums with more than a dozen tracks, it probably could have stood to be a little shorter, but this is the comeback I was expecting and only partly got from Attack and Release. |
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