5.1.12
So I bought Best Coast's Crazy for You for $5, and I have to admit I kind of like it. I have very mixed feelings about this, because I've developed a strong dislike for frontwoman Bethany Cosentino based on interviews with her and news items about her, and I was really hoping I wouldn't like her music. But I think I do, and I'm not sure that me liking her music is going to make me like her any better (even though there are plenty of people I know I wouldn't like if I had to deal with them in real life who I absolutely adore based solely on their music and lyrics). My real dilemma now is whether or not I'm going to pay full price for her follow-up, which is due sometime this year.

5.2.12
I'm happy to report that my other $5 purchse last month from Amazon, Tennis' latest, Young & Old, I also absolutely adore. There is a veritable plague of bands with female singers who borrow heavily from some combination of 50s doo wop and 60s surf rock, and while I would definitely put Tennis in that category, they have quickly become one of the bands that make me believe in this sound. There's not a track on there that I didn't like instantly, and "Petition" is already on the short list for my top 10 tracks for 2012.

5.3.12
I took a chance on Grimes' Visions based on lots of glowing reviews and me being in a certain mood the third time I tried listening to samples from the record. I don't regret buying it——it's perfectly pleasant with a few great tracks——but I think it's going to take that certain mood to have me enjoy it fully. Also: a lot of the songs are a minute or two too long, which really starts to drag the record down when you're listening to it straight through. Definitely not done with this one, but it didn't click with me immediately like I was hoping it would.

5.4.12
I went on a little buying spree this week, picking up two albums in MP3 format from Amazon, ordering three more on CD, and then ordering two more a couple of days later. The final two arrived today: Rufus Wainwright's Out of the Game and the Men's Open Your Heart.

Haven't had a chance to really take them in yet, but I have high hopes for Rufus. Even though his career is filled with lots of somewhat aimless meandering, I'm a big fan, and I'd like nothing more than for him to have some sort of mainstream breakthough and become a genuine pop star. His latest record seems very focused on that goal: it mostly sticks to a very radio-friendly 3-4 minute song length, and it was produced by Mark Ronson, who has also worked with artists like Amy Winehouse and Adele, and who might be just the kind of guy to guide a somewhat retro talent like Rufus to real stardom.

5.7.12
Jack White was hilarious on his Colbert Show segment, and his live performance was blistering, but Blunderbuss so far is less than impressive. The good stuff is front-loaded, and the second half really seems to be of lower quality. Plus, the song he performed on Colbert, "Freedom at 21", sounds really flat and lifeless on the record compared to the live version. I still think he's an amazing musician and one of the best guitarists of our time, but I'm guessing that it will be more enlightening to see him on tour than it will be to buy this record.

5.8.12
Rufus Wainwright's Out of the Game doesn't have any immediate stunners like "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" or "California" from his early work on Poses, but it's a pretty decent album overall. And I've only listened to a couple of times because I've been trying to get to know all the new stuff I've purchased in the last couple of weeks, so there's still a chance it could impress me more on repeated listens.

5.9.12
Frank Ocean has a couple of sort-of covers on his album Nostalgia. Ultra. where he takes the backing tracks from songs and uses the same basic vocal melodies but writes his own lyrics (he did this with the Eagles' "Hotel California" and MGMT's "Electric Feel"). He also does a cover of Coldplay's "Strawberry Swing", which I assumed was a straight cover, but it turns out that he also wrote new lyrics for that song.

And that makes me feel a little bit better about liking it so much, because I long ago decided that Coldplay is just not for me, and that was making me rethink whether I'm missing some hidden gems like "Strawberry Swing" on their albums that don't ever become singles that I would encounter elsewhere. Granted, I do think the music and the melody are pretty genius, and that's 90% of the song and it's all Coldplay, but Ocean's lyrics, which I've recently become a little obsessed with in the face of our impending depature from the house we've lived in for the last twelve years, are what really sell the song for me.

5.10.12
Going to see Spiritualized at the 9:30 Club tonight. Might be the last show I ever see there...

5.11.12
The opener for Spiritualized was not what I expected: an old school country throwback named Nikki Lane who performed an acoustic show. With her super-thick southern accent and her trailer trash outfit (a falling-off-the-shoulder top with an 80s print, skintight black jeans, and white leather ankle high boots), it was tempting to see her whole act as schtick, especially in an alternative rock club populated mostly by aging hipsters.

But I don't think it was. Her banter with the crowd was very genuine and open, and I got the feeling that while she was aware of how she was presenting herself and aware of the incongruity between her genre and the typical fare of the 9:30 Club, her look and her songs were straight from the heart and a very real part of who she is.

Musically I thought she was an odd choice to open for Spiritualized, but after the first couple of songs I saw the connection: there were many of her compositions that, if you put them in the hands of Jason Pierce, could be transformed into Spiritualized songs that you would have no idea were written by a 25 year old from South Carolina. And it's not just the spiritual references in some of her songs——although those certainly didn't hurt——there were certain songs where the music itself was very much in tune with Spiritualized's approach.

She has a great backstory and she was fun to watch for 45 minutes, but despite my fondness for 50s and 60s country music that is clearly a big influence for her, I'm not sure if I'll end up buying her record. She's on my radar now, though——it would be interesting to see what a producer like Steve Earle, who's used to working on the outskirts of contemporary country music to restore the genre to its classic roots, would do with her.

5.14.12
Spiritualized themselves were as good as I had hoped they'd be. They played a good mix of the more accessible stuff that I'm into and the more challenging material, but they were such masters of building one simple loop into a majestic crescendo of noise that I enjoyed those songs much more than I do when I'm listening to the recorded versions. They would almost always start out with seemingly random little bits of guitar or keyboard noodling that would slowly coalesce into a recognizable bit of music, and then into a full blown song, and that became a fun aspect of being at the show: trying to figure out the next song while they were slowly building it.

The stage setup was kind of odd. There was no one in the center of the stage——instead, the lead guitarist was set up on the left side of the stage (from the crowd's point of view) looking towards the center of the stage, and frontman Jason Pierce was set up on the right side of the stage, also looking towards the center of the stage. Along the back of the stage were the keyboard player, the bassist, the drummer, and two backup singers. I've never seen a frontman interact less with the crowd——he wore sunglasses the entire time and didn't speak a word in between songs——and I've never seen seven people take up less room on the 9:30 Club stage. But the minimalism kind of worked for them.

I was hoping to hear four songs in particular: "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" and "I Think I'm in Love" from Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space and "Hey Jane" and "So Long You Pretty Thing" from their latest, Sweet Heart Sweet Light. And I didn't get all four, but I got pretty close: "I Think I'm in Love" was the only song they didn't play, and they almost made up for it by playing two other great songs from Floating in Space, "Come Together" and "Stay With Me".

The encore was kind of short——and by that I mean it was only two songs. In terms of time, it was decent, starting with the 8 minute "So Long You Pretty Thing" and finishing with the 15 minute plus "Cop Shoot Cop", which was the last song they played. I've never been a fan of that song on the record, even though I know some critics think it's their masterpiece, and although it was tolerable here, I wish they would have ended with something else——closing the set with that track is really the only negative thing I have to say about the show.

5.15.12
After I went to see Spiritualized, I was watching a television show (and for the life of me I can't remember which one now——it's kind of been driving me crazy) and I heard instrumental strains that sounded just like "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space". It started off with just a subtle string section, and then slowly added in other instruments, and while I was listening, I was thinking to myself that there was no way that this show commissioned a special orchestral recording of "Ladies and Gentlemen" just for background music for a scene.

And of course they weren't: as the song developed, it became clear that what I was actually listening to was the wedding favorite Pachelbel's "Canon in D Major". But in that instant of realization, it was also clear to me that, even if Jason Pierce didn't directly use this song as a template for "Ladies and Gentlemen" (I don't know enough about writing and playing music to have any jugdment in that regard), they absolutely share the same DNA, and Pierce was influenced by Pachelbel's composition whether it was a conscious appropriation or not.

Here's something else I realized after this show: church would be a lot more fun if we replaced the tons of middling hymns (there are some truly great songs in the hymnal, but you're lucky if you average one per service) with Spiritualized songs.

5.16.12
Still waiting for a 2012 record to wow me...

5.17.12
Got into a little Frank Ocean Nostalgia, Ultra. rut in the last day or so. That has really become one of my favorite records of the past few years, and it's unbelievable to me not only that it was initially deemed not worthy of release by his record company, but that after being lauded with critical praise after Ocean posted it for free on his web site, his label still decided to leave it unreleased. And, since they demanded that he remove the download and have apparently been aggressive about pursuing music sharing sites as well, there is nowhere you can easily find the record.

I understand why they might not want to do a physical release——there are significant costs associate with manufacturing and distribution——but I don't get why they wouldn't upload the files to the digital music services like iTunes. Even if the argument there was that they'd have to pay expensive licensing fees for the songs he covers from Coldplay, the Eagles, and MGMT, you could always reformat it as an EP and only include the original material (although I'd really push to pay the fees for the Coldplay song "Strawberry Swing"——despite being a cover (with new lyrics) of a song by a band I don't like very much, it's also one of my favorite tracks on the record).

Hopefully this year will see the release of Frank Ocean's first official solo album, but at some point——and the sooner the better——the songs on Nostalgia. Ultra. need to find their way into an official release where anyone can find them and add them to their collection.

5.18.12
Based on his requests for repeat after repeat, here are Will's favorite songs over the past couple of weeks: the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop", Kid Cudi's "Make Her Say", the Voluntary Butler Scheme's "Tabasco Sole", Hüsker Dü's "It's Not Peculiar", God Help the Girl's "Come Monday Night", and XTC's "Summer's Cauldron". As you can see, it's hard to find a pattern in his tastes, but I'm glad to see him so enthusiastic about music even at his early age.

5.21.12
I was all set to order Best Coast's The Only Place from Amazon when I noticed that, even though it was just released, it won't ship for 1-4 weeks. And since I'm going to be at a different address two weeks from now, that's not a timeline I can take a chance on.

I don't think I've ever seen this situation on Amazon before, and I can't imagine what's causing it. Did the record company not make enough physical copies, or did Amazon not stock enough? Either way, it seems like either entity would have good enough predictive algorithms that this kind of thing would never happen.

5.22.12
The rest of this month is going to go very, very quickly, so I should do my Amazon MP3 albums for $5 for this month before it slips away.

For the first time I can remember, there are none that I would put in the must-have category, and there aren't really any that I would put in the recommended. If you're a Stephin Merritt fan and you don't already own them, you could pick up his collection of b-sides and alternate versions, Obscurities, or the most recent Magnetic Fields album, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, but other than those two, there's not much.

I'm going to pick up Descendents' Milo Goes to College. I've never actually owned a Descendents record, but I've always meant to pick up the first few——I had a roommate in college who went through a big Descendents phase, and we would ride around in his car listening to the records over and over (mostly All).

5.23.12
To my surprise, I think Tennis' Young & Old might be my favorite album of 2012 so far. I keep listening, waiting for a flaw to appear, but it's nearly perfect.

5.24.12
I got a couple new things in the mail from Amazon today: the Gossip's A Joyful Noise and, in what you will undoubtedly recognize as a nostalgic impulse buy, Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger. And even though I just bought the digital version of the Ramones' eponymous debut last week because of my son's recent obsession with "Blitzkrieg Bop", I also ordered the physical version, which was under $6.

I'm always hopeful that the Gossip will produce another classic album, but their recent obsession with dance music has veered far from the arty, off-kilter Le Tigre vein into pure pop, and I think they may never make the album in this style that their longtime fans and their record company both thought they had in them. Beth Ditto's vocals are always amazing, but she seems so desperately to want a hit that they are often wasted on lesser compositions. We'll see how this one goes.

5.25.12
Duran Duran was probably the last true popular act that I was obsessed with before I discovered the music that didn't get played on the radio that I continue to love to this day, and Seven and the Ragged Tiger was definitely my favorite album of theirs back then. When I turned away from radio hits, I exiled them from my life, and it's likely that my music snobbery would have permanently kept Duran Duran out of my music collection forever if not for a car ride with Nicole, a friend of mine while I was in college.

It was summer break, and she came to visit the town I was working in. We didn't have money, so we were just driving around, looking for something to do but really just enjoying talking about our lives. Nicole decided she wanted some music, so she reached into the back seat and randomly pulled out a cassette: Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger.

I hadn't listened to it in probably ten years at that point, and I made some disparaging remark about it, which she completely ignored. She put it into the tape deck, and that's what we listened to for the next hour. And even though the purist in me really wanted to hate it, I kind of liked it, and not just for nostalgia reasons (although I refused to admit that to Nicole at the time).

It would still be many more years before I could get off my musical high horse and actually purchase a Duran Duran album, but I found their debut CD cheap in the used bin, then added Rio a couple of years after that. I'm not sure why I also didn't pick up Seven and the Ragged Tiger as well, and I'm also not sure what made me think of it and throw it in my shopping cart last week.

It's better than I remember, but I think Rio is still clearly their masterpiece. Before I bought it, I could only remember the tunes to a couple of songs ("The Reflex" and "Union of the Snake"), but the others quickly returned to my memory and overall it's a pretty solid little pop record. Duran Duran's main weakness is that, while they write absolutely killer choruses, a lot of the stuff you have to listen to in order to get to the chorus is pretty forgettable. But the payoff when they hit the sweet spot almost makes the dross tolerable.

5.29.12
Kristin Hersh has cut way back on her tweets, and Titus Andronicus' Patrick Stickles has almost stopped completely after being a total Twitter freak for a while there. Too bad——I miss both of them in my feed. Kristin's humor and Patrick's mania both added a lot of flavor. My only hope is that Patrick's absence means he's deep in the recording process for the third Titus Andronicus disc.

5.30.12
I've been watching Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter for her new album for the last few weeks, and I finally backed it last night. She had an initial goal of $100,000, and now, with less than two days to go, she has raised over $1 million and has over 21,000 backers.

I didn't really know much about her until recently, but I was a Twitter follower of her husband, writer Neil Gaiman, and the stuff he would retweet from her seemed pretty interesting, so I started following her too. It was only after she was appearing regularly in my feed that I realized she was a musician and half of the art rock cabaret act the Dresden Dolls.

A live version of her "Ukulele Anthem" appeared on a music compilation for a different Kickstarter that I supported, and that cemented my love for her. Once I saw that she was doing her own Kickstarter, I knew I was going to support it, but I had no idea how historic it would become. There's still the problem of a young act getting established and building an audience, but it's pretty clear from the success of this project that an artist with a core group of devoted fans will be able to truly embrace the DIY ethic and have their fans support every aspect of their process.

And lest you think she's going to take this $1 million and retire to a private island to live a life of luxury, she's got a really great blog post where she breaks down exacly how the money will be spent (she wrote this a week ago when she was about $150,000 shy of the $1 million mark), and also goes into great detail about just how expensive and complex recording and releasing an album without record label support is.

So back the project while you can: in 10 years, people are still going to be referencing this Kickstarter. It's going to be one of those "I was there when..." internet events.

5.31.12
Liars' have made their new record, WIXIW, available to stream in its entirety on Soundcloud. This could end up being their King of Limbs for me (not my favorite Radiohead record, but it grew on me), but I do like the bolder move into electronica. They've flirted with it on tracks here and there before ("Houseclouds" is one of my favorite songs of theirs), and I'm sure there will be some killer songs to come out of this record. It's just a matter of how it holds up as a complete entity.