3.3.14
I have faithfully bought the Drive-By Truckers studio albums for over a decade, but I haven't really loved any since 2003's Decoration Day. Despite the presence of some good songs on each release, the albums were overall pretty weak, mainly because the band became too equitable——each songwriter in the band (generally at least half the members no matter what the lineup) got their fair share of tracks on each album.

Instead of using a more traditional process where everyone brought their songs and the band focused on the strongest no matter who they were written by, it seemed like everyone who felt like calling themselves a songwriter got at least three slots on each record, no matter how bad their songs were.

This became an especially big problem during the post-Jason Isbell era, when bassist Shonna Tucker, who has a weak singing voice and even weaker songwriting chops, started getting her songs on every album, and there's not a single one of her compositions that's a keeper.

Despite all of this, I preordered their latest, English Oceans, because of three main factors:

1. Tucker has left the band, so no more of her songs.
2. I've liked what I've heard previewed so far.
3. They haven't recorded any new music together in four years (their last sessions yielded two separate albums, although I would make the case that if they had only kept the best album's worth of songs from those session, they would have had someething that their fans prized much more highly than the sum of those two albums), which means that they've had a chance to craetively recharge for the first time in a while.

We'll see if this ends up being a good bet, but I'm hopefully that this will get them back on track in terms of their recorded output and that this will be the first album they've released in a long, long time that's worth listening to all the way through.

3.4.14
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have shared "Simple and Sure", the first preview from their upcoming Days of Abandon:

This was one of those bands who I briefly loved for their shameless emulation of mid- to late 80s postpunk, but their songs didn't really stick with me in the long run. The first two albums sounded like twins of each other, so much so that it wouldn't be hard to believe that they were recorded during the same sessions, but it's been three years since their sophomore release, and this song is definitely a departure.

"Simple and Sure" is a catchy little tune, but I'm still not sure if gmoving away from their established sound is a good or a bad thing. I'm going to go with good for now, because their established sound didn't end up being something that made them worth listening to and revisiting a couple of years into their career, but I wonder if, despite the production changes, this song will suffer from the same forgettableness in the long run.

3.5.14
I missed another track from Cloud Nothings' new album, "Pyschic Trauma", when the band first shared it a couple of weeks ago, so here it is:

A video released a few months ago showed frontman Dylan Baldi performing this one acoustically in a solo street performance, and although I like the studio version enough to still be excited about the new record, I think that stripped-down live version was a little bit better.

3.6.14
Here are my suggestions for Amazon's latest batch of 100 MP3 albums for $5:

Must-haves: Sting's The Dream of the Blue Turtles, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, and Fiona Apple's When the Pawn. I thought about including the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols for its historical importance, but having digested its cultural significance long ago, I'm not sure I can actually recommend it musically.

Recommended: White Stripes' Icky Thump, Passion Pit's Gossamer, and Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger.

I'm thinking of buying: Arctic Monkeys' AM and Bombay Bicycle Club's So Long, See You Tomorrow.

3.7.14
Note to self: stop buying new Eels records. Even if you can get them for only $5.

3.10.14
Before I get to my best-of lists for 2013, I'm going to do my annual exercise of seeing how many of the singles and albums that made Pitchfork's best-of lists I actually own.

First, the singles. Here are mhy overlaps using Pitchfork's ranking number (lower numbers are better):

95. Swearin'——"Dust in the Gold Sack"
90. Yo La Tengo——"Ohm"
87. The National——"Pink Rabbits"
85. Janelle Monae——"Q.U.E.E.N."
84. Chvrches——"Recover"
83. My Bloody Valentine——"New You"
66. Chance the Rapper——"Chain Smoker"
62. Vampire Weekend——"Ya Hey"
58. Sky Ferreira——"Nobody Asked Me (If I Was Okay)"
51. Arcade Fire——"Afterlife"
44. Parquet Courts——"Stoned and Staring"
41. Janelle Monae——"PrimeTime"
40. Kanye West——"Bound 2"
39. Waxahatchee——"Swan Dive"
27. Chvrches——"The Mother We Share"
26. My Bloody Valentine——"Only Tomorrow"
14. Vampire Weekend——"Step"
12. Sky Ferreira——"I Blame Myself"
11. Kanye West——"Blood on the Leaves"
4. Arcade Fire——"Reflektor"
3. Vampire Weekend——"Hannah Hunt"
2. Kanye West——"New Slaves"

Out of the 100 singles in the Pitchfork list, I own 22 of them, which is about what I would have guessed. However, the list includes many duplicates——Janelle Monae, Chvrches, Arcade Fire, Sky Ferreira, and My Bloody Valentine each have two songs in the list, and Kanye West and Vampire Weekend have three apiece. That goes against my personal rules of year-end lists——only one song per artist——but I guess when you've got 100 slots to fill, even Pitchfork runs out of obscure songs to put on the list just to show us how cool they are.

Some of these artists will be in my personal top 10 singles for 2013, but likely with different songs (although Kanye's "New Slaves" is the best track from Yeezus, and "Swan Dive" was the song that made me fall in love with Waxahatchee). If it weren't a great way to create content for the end of the year when the Pitchfork staff wants to take two weeks off, I bet they could get away with just listing their top 50 albums and then calling out the best song on each one and the list wouldn't look much different than their top 100 singles once you removed the duplicates.

3.11.14
Now for the album list, starting with the honorable mentions and moving down to the ranked albums (lower numbers are better just like the singles):

HM. Mikal Cronin——MCII
43. The National——Trouble Will Find Me
40. Parquet Courts——Light Up Gold
36. Chvrches——The Bones of What You Believe
22. Waxahatchee——Cerulean Salt
18. Janelle Monae——The Electric Lady
15. Sky Ferreira——Night Time, My Time
12. Chance the Rapper——Acid Rap
10. Arcade Fire——Reflektor
4. My Bloody Valentine——MBV
2. Kanye West——Yeezus
1. Vampire Weekend——Modern Vampires of the City

As with the singles, many of these will likely end up in my personal top 10, but not in the same order. And there are definitely a few that will be in my top 10 that don't appear in the Pitchfork list, like Okkervil River's The Silver Gymnasium, which I think might be their best album so far.

3.12.14
I don't know if No Blues, the latest release from Los Campesinos, will make it into my top 10 albums list for 2013, but it is a bit baffling how, given their consistently positive reviews, how little recognition this band has been given by Pitchfork over the years.

Every album has received a rating of at least 8 from Pitchfork (a track record not even Radiohead can match, although just barely——Radiohead's latest, The King of Limbs, received a 7.9), but not once has Pitchfork given them a Best New Music label. The band's absence from Pitchfork's year end lists is equally notable: going back to 2007, when Los Campesinos released their debut EP, they have been called out only three times in Pitchfork's annual wrap ups of the top 100 singles and the top 50 albums: once for a single in 2007 and once each for a single and an album in 2008. Their two best releases, which contain some of their best songs, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed and Romance Is Boring, don't receive any recognition at all other than their sterling initial reviews.

I could understand this more if the band's ratings had seen a precipitous dropoff from the Pitchfork staff and it was clear they just didn't like the band, but I can't find another group that they rate so consistently highly. Pitchfork is a significant enough cultural influence at this point that showing up on their annual best-of lists or getting a Best New Music tag can have a real impact on a band's ability to break through to the next level; I remain mystified as to why they aren't willing to grant that recognition to a band that they clearly think is making good, worthwhile music.

3.13.14
I've been listening to Rage Against the Machine's eponymous debut album, which I picked up for $5 from Amazon last month, and it's about what I would have expected. You can hear hints of the band they were to become, and their signature sound is pretty well established even at this point, but the songs are less coherent and more prone to wandering off in a less compelling direction.

The standout, the song that shows the potential they were able to reach on later records, is "Wake Up", which most people will recognize as the song that was played over the closing credits of The Matrix. There are some other decent songs, but there are a lot of ideas that still seem half-baked, and "Wake Up" is probably the only track from this album that would make it onto a best-of collection for the band.

They remain for me one of those bands whose work got better and better with each release, and while it's possible that their last record, The Battle of Los Angeles, may well have been their peak and it would have been downhill from there, but it's hard to believe that they didn't still have a couple of good or better albums left in them if they had just been able to hold things together from a band relationship standpoint.

3.14.14
Not digging Beck's Morning Phase AT ALL. Three long, slow, painful, forced listens in and I can't find a single reason to listen to it again. I was hoping for more after such a long layoff.

3.17.14
For some reason Amazon has chosen the middle of March to offer over 1,000 (as opposed to their typical 100) MP3 albums for $5, so I'm going to cover the batches of recommendations using the Amazon categories (noting as always that these categories are devised by Amazon and that some records show up in multiple categories). First up: Alternative Rock.

Must-haves: The National's Boxer, the Stone Roses' The Stone Roses, Cults' Cults, Stereolab's Dots and Loops, and Echo and the Bunnymen's Ocean Rain.

Recommended: Vampire Weekend's Modern Vampires of the City, the National's Trouble Will Find Me, High Violet, and Alligator, the Decemberists' The King Is Dead and The Hazards of Love, Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero, MGMT's Oracular Spectacular, the Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America, and Superchunk's I Hate Music.

I might buy: Deerhunter's Monomania, and Drowners' Drowners.

3.18.14
Today's selections of MP3 albums for $5 at Amazon come from the Rock section:

Must-haves: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, the Police's Ghost in the Machine, Outlandos D'Amour, and Reggatta de Blanc, Tom Waits' Bone Machine, Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, R.E.M.'s Murmur and Reckoning, XTC's Skylarking, John Mellencamp's Scarecrow and Uh-Huh, Elliott Smith's Figure 8, and Duran Duran's Duran Duran.

Recommended: Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire (funny that these two should show up together given Rage guitarist Tom Morello's work with the Boss on his most recent album), the Strokes' Room on Fire, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Show Your Bones, Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True, U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind, Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets, Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedos, Sonic Youth's Goo, R.E.M.'s Document, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mother's Milk, and PJ Harvey's Rid of Me and Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.

I might buy: U2's Rattle and Hum (yes, I know, overall it's a mess, but there's $5 worth of great songs on there) and Zooropa (same comment about this one that I had for Rattle and Hum——these are the only two U2 albums that I don't already own) and Concrete Blonde's Bloodletting (not normally my thing, but I had a roommate who played this album over and over and it kind of got into my head).

3.19.14
Amazon's MP3 albums for $5 from the Pop category:

Must-haves: Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, and Steve Earle's Copperhead Road.

Recommended: Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, Sting's ...Nothing Like the Sun (which in retrospect was his last decent album), Elvis Costello's This Year's Model, Armed Forces, and Blood and Chocolate, Big Country's The Crossing, and Son Volt's Trace.

I might buy: Weezer's Pinkerton.

3.19.14
And here's what's left over in all the other categories, including Classic Rock, Rap, Country, Electronic, etc.:

Must-haves: O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack, Johnny Cash's American Recordings, Kanyes West's The College Dropout and Late Registration, Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon, and Qween Latifah's All Hail the Queen.

Recommended: Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours, the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head, DMX's ...And Then There Was X, and Q-Tip's The Renaissance.

I might buy: one or more of Johnny Cash's other offerings from the American Recordings series (I think all of them might be included in this deal).

3.21.14
Tune-Yards shared a new song, "Water Fountain", from their upcoming album Nikki Nack:

As much as I love Tune-Yards and Merrill Garbus, it's hard for me to imagine them having any sort of mainstream success. However, if it's ever going to happen, it's going to be on the back of a single like this. I've been waiting for new material from her since I fell in love with WHOKILL (and then Bird-Brains), and if this track is any indication of what's to come, there's every chance that this could be the album of the year.

3.24.14
The Black Keys announced a new album, Turn Blue, and shared a song, "Fever":

I'm a historical fan of the Black Keys, but I didn't buy their last album despite the production by Danger Mouse, and I'm not sure if I really need any more of their music in my collection. Danger Mouse produced this one as well, and this is the most Danger Mouse-y track I've heard from them so far even though he's been their producer since 2008 (their last four albums—half of their catalogue).

I'm not sure if Danger Mouse's (a producer who I've liked for a long time) more pronounced influence is a good or a bad thing, but this track isn't enticing me to pick up the record.

3.25.14
Animal Collective's Avery Tare shared a second track from the upcoming debut album with his second band, Slasher Flicks. The song is called "Strange Colores":

I like this track better than I did the first one they shared, but I still don't like it as much as Animal Collective, whose style you can hear lurking around the edges of Slasher Flicks——I don't know if it will ever be possible to hear Tare's voice and no immediately think of Animal Collective, but there are production similarities and similar rhythmic patterns that reinforce the connection.

I'm curious to hear more, though——I thought I was done with Animal Collective at one point, but their last record renewed my fandom, and so I'm likely to enjoy anything that sounds even a little bit like them at this point.

3.26.14
This is a Radiohead kind of week at work. Only problem is that I don't really get to listen to music on headphones while I'm working anymore...

3.27.14
The Faint are set to release their first album in six years, Doom Abuse, and they recently shared a track, "Help in the Head":

I'm really happy that this band is still making music——I loved their last album, Fasciinatiion, but it wasn't received that well by most critics, and their lack of output or touring since then left me with the impression that the band was done even though they never announced a formal breakup.

I don't know how representative this track is of the rest of the album, but unlike Fasciinatiion, which had a more esoteric, keyboard-centered bent to it, this sounds like what I imagine the lead single off of Wet From Birth might have sounded like if they had focused on the edgier aspects of Danse Macabre instead of the poppier elements.

But whatever they do is pretty okay with me. I'm just glad they're back.

3.28.14
One of the frustrations with having so many differnt music venues in Atlanta is that it's really hard to keep track of all the bands coming to town. In Baltimore, I pretty much only had to monitor the schedules for the 9:30 Club and the Black Cat, and that would cover about 90% of the bands I'd be interested in seeing, especially because the 9:30 controlled a few other venues in the area, from a club in Baltimore to the Merriweather Post Pavillion outdoor amphitheater in Maryland.

Case in point: I saw a news item about Perfect Pussy's upcoming tour and noticed that Waxahatchee, a recent favorite of mine, were opening for them on a few dates. But not when Perfect Pussy was coming to Atlanta. So I dug deeper into Waxahatchee's other tour dates and found out that they are playing at a little club called the Earl, located in East Atlanta, this Sunday.

I've never been to the venue, I don't have anyone to go with, and it's always tough going to a show the night before work, but I'd do just about anything to see this band right now, so I'm planning to go. But I came very close to missing it and/or not even knowing that it was happening, and I still don't know how to solve that problem——there's just no good one-stop shopping for concerts that covers all of Atlanta's many venues.

3.31.14
I just recently warned myself on this blog not to buy any further Eels records, and here they come already tempting me with a new release. I'm still searching for that album-long high that I got from the amazing Electro-Shock Blues and the occasional great songs from some of their other releases from that period, but they really haven't had a record worth listening to since 2005's Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, and there have been precious few decent tracks since then as well.

But last week they shared two tracks on Soundcloud from the upcoming The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett (the frontman and only constant member), "Mistakes of My Youth" and "Agatha Chang":

"Mistakes of My Youth" is a quietly beautiful track that reminds me of everything I love about Eels, and it's just the kind of thing that could pull me back in and make me ignore my own very recent admonition to myself. But "Agatha Chang" counters this by reminding me how achingly close they can come to making great music while instead settling for mediocrity.

But even the weaker track is better than almost anything on their last release, Wonderful, Glorious. So I want to hear the whole thing before I would even think about buying it, but I can no longer promise myself that I won't end up buying it, especially if it shows up on sale for $5.