New Music: Weekend Edition

/ / New Music, rantings

Interestingly enough, I don’t know if this can qualify for “new music” since it’s been sitting on my tower, waiting to be ripped for about a month or more. Truthfully, I don’t remember when I bought it. Oh well. They’re still new to me, right? RIGHT!? So here’s the list (so far):

  • Gray Does Matter – How to Make Millions in Real Estate
  • Ric Ocasek – Troublizing
  • Old Hickory – Other Eras … Such as Witchcraft
  • Ridel High – Emotional Rollercoaster
  • Mumble & Peg – Wondering in Volume
  • Olympus Mons
  • Dan Sartain – San Sartain vs. the Serpientes
  • Magnapop – Fire All of Your Guns at Once
  • Mysteries of Life – Come Clean
  • Year Future
  • B.L.A.M. – The Blam
  • Snow Patrol – Songs for Polar Bears
  • Mighty John Henry – Hot Air Head
  • The Honeydogs – Seen a Ghost
  • Danielle Howle and the Tantrums – Do a Two Sable
  • WIld Sweet Orange – We Have Cause To Be Uneasy
  • Maximum Balloon
  • Chin Up Chin Up – This Harness Can’t Ride Anything
  • The Frames – Black Forest
  • An Angle – And Take It with a Grain of Salt
  • Animal Collective – Grass

I’m familiar with The Honeydogs, Snow Patrol, M&P, Animal Collective, and Ric Ocasek. Other than that, I have no idea what the rest is like. I’ve spun a few random sampling tracks from a couple of these, such as Danielle Howle, Magnapop, Olympus Mons … all of it sounded pretty good so far. Tomorrow I’ll listen to some of this at work and see what happens.

More Upcoming Music for 2011

/ / New Music, Opinion, rantings, upcoming music

I was really just looking for music coming out this week. Instead, I got a pretty large list of things coming out for this year. Check out this link. Isn’t that sweet?! It may or may not be comprehensive. I’m betting it’s not, but it’s a healthy-sized list regardless.

Of interest to me are:

  • Motorhead (actually came out yesterday)
  • Bright Eyes
  • The Dears
  • Mogwai
  • Sonic Youth
  • Dropkick Murphys
  • R.E.M.
  • Green day
  • Soundgarden (*really* stoked for this one!)
  • Mountain Goats
  • The Kills
  • Vivian Girls
  • Lady Gaga*

I’m sure I’ll become excited for more of those bands as I start researching them and seeing what they have to offer, but for now, my list from now until the end of April is looking pretty healthy. Not to mention the unscheduled-yet-semi-confirmed list!

Two interesting CDs from the no-date-confirmed list are from The Cars and Human Leauge. I thought that Human League had all but fallen off the face of the earth. Not too far from it … they’ve only released 3 CDs since 1986’s Crash gave us the hit “Human.” The Cars, on the other hand … they haven’t released a studio CD since 1987, if I remember right. The notable absence on this new release will be Benjamin Orr, who passed away in 2000 from cancer. I’m curious to hear how this new CD sounds without him.

Anyway, happy perusing. I hope your favorite band is on the list!

*yes, crystal … that was my little joke to you. 😉

New Music Friday

/ / New Music

Another Friday lunch hour, another trip to Graywhale.

By the way, Team USA just scored again on Team Finland. 4-0. Gold medal bound, baby!!

It pays to open your mouth at the register. I just happened to ask if the guy had heard of Joanna Newsom. Not only had he heard of them, but the guy next to me at the other register had heard of her and had seen her on some obscure rack upstairs.

I am addicted to peanut butter M&Ms. </tangent>

ANYway, I went upstairs and grabbed it, bringing the grand total to 11 CDs for the day. Here’s the list.

  • Inkwell – These Stars Are Monsters
  • The Happies – If We Were Really Here
  • Interpol – Our Love To Admire
  • Josephine Foster – Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
  • Foma – Inverness
  • Insta – Checklist for Love
  • Great Northern – Sleepy Eepee
  • God Help the Girl
  • The Fever – In the City of Sleep
  • The Appleseed Cast – Peregrine
  • Joanna Newsom – The Milk-Eyed Mender

I have some other Appleseed Cast and Interpol, the rest were all a spin of the Russian Roulette barrel. I’ve yet to be let down entirely, so I’m not concerned.

I still haven’t ripped the CDs I bought last week. There’s a reason though, weak as it is. So, I hook our computer to our HD TV so we can wach HD content. We have a blu ray drive in the machine, and I have a smattering of HD documentaries that are pretty cool. Since the tower is hooked to the TV and I sit on the couch and do everything from about 10 feet away, I don’t like getting up and down every 3-4 minutes to switch out the CDs. So they’ve sat in their corner for the last week.

Today, I’m buying a blu-ray player. Panasonic DMP-BD80. Some guy near my house is selling one for $100. Nice. So that means I can move my tower back to the computer desk and start ripping. Woo hoo.

New Music Friday

/ / New Music

A couple of things today. One, I went to the local Graywhale up near the University yesterday. Great guys in there. Really knowledgable. They know their stuff! I went up there looking for some Hungry Lucy CDs, but alas, I completely forgot to ask. Surprise to me: I didn’t know they had 4 full-length CDs. I thought they just had a smattering of recorded songs that I just happened to stumble across several years ago, probably due to the fact that every internet search yielded the exact same results: nothing except some information about Christa Belle living in NYC. At least, I think that’s what it was about. Just for kicks, I googled the name again the other day … this time with stunning results. Wiki article. Official site. Discography. The whole 9 yards.

Anyway, with that in mind, I went to Gray Whale to see if they had any of their CDs. Completely forgot. However, I did walk out with some great new stuff.

  • Bluebrain – Soft Power
  • Q Stands for Q (QsfQ) – In Dreams Awake
  • Cazals – What of Our Future
  • Sam Champion – Slow Rewind
  • The Court and Spark – Witch Season
  • Elf Power – Creatures
  • Gentlemen Reg – Little Buildings
  • Silversun Pickups – Pikul

I find it odd that Pikul was still in its original plastic with the original security seal. People … THIS IS SILVERSUN PICKUPS. You know … Lazy Eye? Checkered Floor? Panic Switch? Yah. I’m just saying.

Interestingly enough, none of the band members are actually named “Sam Champion.” Gonna have to find out the reason behind the name.

It’s pretty cool when you go to the counter and the guy behind the counter says, “Nice stack of music! You have some really good taste.”

“Okay, yah … but here’s the thing: I know one of those bands.”

*blank stare*

“You mean you’ve never heard of most of these bands? You’re just buying them?”

“Yup.”

“Wow. Umm … why?”

Then I spell out my criteria for buying CDs: insert and CD art can’t suck and song titles can’t suck. As a general rule, I try to avoid CDs with the artist’s face covering the whole CD (read: a la Diane Birch). However, there are times when I let that go and take a gamble (i.e. Diane Birch). For the most part, it’s always paid off.

These CDs all have that asthetic that I require. It doesn’t have to be the second coming of Picaso or Michaelangelo, just not stupid looking. The Sam Champion CD utilizes a minimalist approach to the cover art, employing a single color on a white background, but it works.

Anyway, I swear I covered this in another post, but I can’t find it. Oh well.

So that’s the new music for now. From Gray Whale, anyway.

Next up: Review of the new Hungry Lucy CD.

New Music To Heal the Non-Blogging Soul

/ / review

I’ve been in a blogging drought lately. This was evidenced by a comment left on my other blog by a friend who was curious if I was ever going to write again.

So for lunch today, I got a hankering for some new music. There’s a local CD swap shop a couple of miles from where I work, so I thought I’d see what they have to offer. For those of you in the Salt Lake area, if you aren’t familiar with  CD Exchange yet, you either just moved here or your live in a very dark hole that’s 5 feet under a very large rock. Your hole is sound-proof and culturally deprived. I weep for you internally.

For those of you who are familiar with GW, you already know the verneable cornucopia of potential new finds offered at any of their locations. Today being a limited browsing opportunity day, I only got to hastily rummage through letters A through the beginning of D. The yield was pretty good. Here’s a list of stuff I grabbed:

Dear John Letters – Unbroken
Atherton – Skyline Motel
Absentstar – Sea Trials
Kirsten Candy – Glimpse
Blue Condition – Cheap Wine

I also picked up a Cranes Submarine EP with a bunch of remixes, but that’s just because it’s a Cranes CD. That’s a must-have purchase, in my book.

I’ll be reviewing each of these CDs over the course of the weekend (minus the Cranes EP), probably starting with the Dear John Letters CD, since I’m already listening to it. Not bad …

© 2024 A MarketPress.com Theme