10.1.09
Is linking to a song about brushing your teeth that a band makes for a kids tv program a sign that you are overly obsessed with that band? If so, then I'm officially obsessed: here's a link to download Brush Brush Brush, a song of Montreal did for the Yo Gabba Gabba! show.

10.5.09
The Monsters of Folk project seems like it could be the most worthwhile thing Conor Oberst has done in the past several years, but I still don't know if I can convince myself to buy it. Monsters of Folk? Really?

At first glance, it actually sounds less folky than his last few releases (the last Bright Eyes record, his first solo album, and then this year's release with the Mystic Valley Band), but everything after the I'm Wide Awake It's Morning/Digital Ash in a Digital Urn double release from Bright Eyes has sounded pretty much the same to me (so much so that I haven't bought anything since Cassadaga), and I'm not sure if adding M. Ward and Jim James (of My Morning Jacket) to the mix is going to help things much.

10.6.09
Bought two EPs today from iTunes: the Pains of Being Pure at Heart's Higher Than the Stars and No Age's Losing Feeling. I actually didn't buy any of the remixes for the Pains EP, just the original four songs; I'm usually not big on remixes and it didn't seem worth it to me to pay another $3 for four remixes (three of which are of the same song). And I suppose if I really want to be completionist about it later, I can use the Complete My Album feature to buy the rest of it for the same price that I would have paid if I had bought the whole EP now.

10.7.09
My initial impression of the most recent Fiery Furnaces release, I'm Going Away, was that it was a little lacking in ornamentation, especially from a band that has never shied away from adding extra, unexpected flourishes to their songs, but that this relative plainness was highly preferable to some of the over-the-top experimentation that has plagued albums like Bitter Tea and especially Rehearsing My Choir.

I still kind of feel that way, but I'm growing to really love the record, maybe because of its simplicity. I don't know if they'll ever recapture the blend of out-of-left-field ideas and pure songcraft of their masterpiece, Blueberry Boat, but if they can keep cranking out records like I'm Going Away, I'm still going to be a fan for a long, long time.

10.8.09
The new Pains of Being Pure at Heart EP Higher Than the Stars is supposed to be all-new material. But I wouldn't have been surprised if you told me it was just leftovers from the recording sessions for their debut album.

10.9.09
I could probably say the same thing about the new No Age EP Losing Feeling that I said about the Pains of Being Pure at Heart's——that despite it being composed of new material, it sounds like leftovers from the sessions for their last album——and not too many people would argue with me. But even though there's no mistaking that this is No Age, there are subtle differences between these songs and their last record. And when I make those comments about the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, I mean it as a criticism and a challenge for them to do something a little more adventurous, but when I make them about No Age, I mean it more as a compliment.

10.12.09
Other than to fuck with us, what was the point of YACHT switching the titles of the two tracks that compose the title of I Believe in You. Your Magic Is Real? The chorus for track 10 is "Your magic's real, so why aren't you using it?", but the title is "I Believe in You". Likewise, track 11 has a backing litany of "I believe in you, I believe in you...", but the title is "Your Magic Is Real". Whatever, I guess. They're both good songs, and you can see why they put them back to back and named the record after them.

10.13.09
I think the new Islands record, Vapours, might be another semi-Saberhagen——a record on which about half of the songs are instantly likeable and the other half are not, preferably sequenced so the good and the bad are in alternating order (which would make it a true Saberhagen)——although the highs on Vapours aren't nearly as high as the album which first got that label, Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion. Vapours isn't quite the return to form I was hoping for, it's still a major improvement over their last album, which has only one or two tracks I can tolerate.

10.14.09
I got really excited when I read that Jens Lekman had three songs on the soundtrack for a recently released movie, until I read further and found out they were all old tracks. Pop music seemd exciting again when I discovered Jens a couple of years ago, and since then I've basically been waiting for new material from him. Come back to us soon, Jens.

10.15.09
Yo La Tengo's Popular Songs sounds like what I imagined Summer Sun would sound like based just on the title. And the songs on their last album, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, sound like what I would have imagined an album with the title Popular Songs would sound like. But there is no closing of this loop; Summer Sun definitely does not sound like what I would imagine I Will Beat Your Ass would sound like based purely on the title.

10.16.09
So about a month ago I had the same plan for this year's site anniversary (which is tomorrow) as I did last year: to finish the entries on the 1988 mixtape. Alas, it was not to be. As this site enters its seventh year, I find myself five years farther behind than I was when I started the site and I thought the year mixtapes were going to be the main source of content for at least the first few years. I haven't given up yet, but it's not looking good for me every getting within a decade of the present with this project.

10.19.09
I was already pretty excited about seeing the Pixies next month on their 20th anniversary Doolittle tour, but I just found out Jay Reatard will be opening for them, which should make it that much better. It would have been kind of cool if they had gotten Art Brut, since Frank Black produced their most recent record (I didn't like it that much, but I'd still love to see Art Brut in concert again), but I regret not seeing Jay Reatard when he came to Baltimore last month, and now I'll at least get to see him live, even if it's not in that intimate of a venue.

10.20.09
Knowing that I'm not likely to finish the 1988 mixtape even by the end of the year, I've set a new goal for myself: rate every song from a 2009 disc in my library before 2010. I've started working on this, and already I'm starting to realize that one reason so many of the songs released this year are thus far unrated is because they are from artists I generally like, but they're just mediocre, and I'm reluctant to give 2 or 3 stars to artists who have consistently earned 4 and 5 stars on their last couple of albums (Art Brut is probably the best example of that from 2009, but there are plenty of others, including Eels, Peter Bjorn and John, Robyn Hitchcock, and Patrick Wolf).

Figuring out my top 10 shouldn't be too hard this year, because there were relatively few great albums released in 2009. The real problem might be finding ten records that deserve to be on the list at all.

10.21.09
Julie finally gave in and let me get both a Wii and the Beatles Rock Band, and so far I love it. The guitar instrument isn't that hard to master (although I've mostly stuck to Medium difficulty so far, I have practiced a few passages in Hard and I don't think it will take me long to get the hang of it once I've worked my way through the game on Medium), and I'm constantly amazed at how the structure of the fake notes you play gives you real insight into the structure of the actual song.

And I'm not even that familiar with a lot of the songs in the Beatles catalog, so I can't wait to play some songs I really know well as a listener. As you might guess, most the tracks on the original Rock Band are oriented around heavy metal and classic rocks, but glancing through the current track list, I see songs from Dinosaur Jr., Smashing Pumpkins, the Police, Drive-By Truckers, TV on the Radio, Jane's Addiction, the Strokes, Gorillaz, New Pornographers, the Shins, Modest Mouse, Lush, Stone Roses, the Clash, Talking Heads, the Pixies, the Replacements, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and, somewhat surprisingly, Sleater-Kinney.

I'm not wild about the price——it's apparently an extra $2 per track to download any songs not included in the standard Rock Band disc——but once I work my way through the Beatles game, I can imagine that more than a few of these will end up in my download folder.

10.22.09
Speaking of artists I like and Rock Band: not that I'd want to even try to play it, but I wonder how the programmers would ever come up with an Easy version of anything in Marnie Stern's catalog.

10.23.09
I was very excited about the release of a new EP from Stuart Murdoch's God Help the Girl project that was recorded during the sessions for the group's debut album, which I have fallen in love with despite some weak spots here and there. And while I was on iTunes downloading it, I also picked up "Mary's Market", the b-side from the "Funny Little Frog" single.

10.26.09
Got a few things over the weekend: the Gossip's Music for Men, Built to Spill's There Is No Enemy, Karen O's soundtrack for Where the Wild Things Are, and the Mountain Goats' The Life of the World to Come. I also found Dirty Projectors' latest release, Bitte Orca, used for only $8, and although I think I'm going to have a complicated relationship with it even if I end up liking it, it was worth picking up at that price.

10.27.09
The Mountain Goats' The Life of the World to Come instantly irritates me. The production, the singer's voice, and almost all the lyrics, the heavy-handedness of which is further exacerbated by referencing bible verses. I'm going to force myself to listen to it a couple more times so it doesn't feel like a complete waste of money, but I don't think this one is going to stick around the playlist for long.

10.28.09
I've listened to Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca a couple of times, and there are a few songs that I'm really falling for, but there's also some pointless stuff that I could still learn to love but which initially annoys me. Overall, though, I'm glad I picked this up, and I have a feeling it's going to stay in the regular rotation for a while.

10.29.09
Built to Spill's new record, There Is No Enemy, starts out with a strong single ("Aisle 13"), and the song lengths are on average much shorter than on their last outing, You in Reverse, but there's not a whole lot to love other than that. I don't know if I'll ever be able to make the transition from buying whole albums from bands I like to only buying the good tracks on their weaker releases, but it's records like this that make me strongly consider it.

10.30.09
I don't think there's a better sequence of two song titles on an album this year than "Rumpus" and "Rumpus Reprise" from Karen O's soundtrack for Where the Wild Things Are.