Currently Whistling Along To:
The year’s not even half over and already I’m up to my ears in great new albums. I’ve mentioned Tapes ‘n Tapes (Homepage, iTunes), but have you heard:
Band of Horses? (Homepage, iTunes) Think My Morning Jacket meets The Shins — I know!
Sunset Rubdown? (Homepage, iTunes) It’s Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade! What more do you need to know!?
The Essex Green? (Homepage, iTunes) Featuring members of the Ladybug Transistor! Buy it just for the album art! Thanks Jim!
Brakes? (Homepage, iTunes) Think Clinic singing the Futureheads. Sort of.
Islands? (Homepage, iTunes) Featuring members of the Unicorns!
Love is All? (MySpace page, iTunes) Swedish punk-pop. Think Electrelane meets Life Without Buildings.
Or how about the latest albums from:
Lilys? (MySpace page, iTunes)
The Oranges Band? (Homepage, iTunes)
The Fiery Furnaces? (Homepage)
Kings of Leon? (Homepage, iTunes) What!? It’s good!
I also “discovered” some excellent older releases, like:
Vetiver (Homepage, iTunes) Thanks again, Jim!
and
Summer Hymns (Homepage, iTunes) Think (mellow) Pavement meets the Fruit Bats, and they all go over to Sparklehorse’s house only to discover he’s already having a barbeque with the Beachwood Sparks, Smog, and the Silver Jews.
It’s just like that.
Also, I finally signed up with eMusic. Compared to iTunes, their music is higher quality (Variable Bit Rate MP3s encoded with LAME) and cheaper (their entry-level plan works out to just under twenty-five cents per song), and there’s no DRM to prevent you from using the music on all your computers and whatnot. You download an MP3 and it’s yours, no matter where you want to play it, for as long as you both shall live. They don’t have as many artists as iTunes, but in the few months I’ve been using it I haven’t run out of stuff to download.
I’m loving that Islands record. Although every song on it seems to remind me of something I’ve heard before but can’t quite place.
I went to try and buy that Sunset Rubdown thing today. I got excited reading pitchfork. They didn’t have it yet though. I don’t know when the release date over here is. I don’t buy music made from electrons. I’m old-school like that.
Comment by Pierce — May 5, 2006 @ 12:30 pm
Probably it reminds you of the Unicorns. Sunset Rubdown is pretty good. I’m still processing it, as I’ve only given the album a couple of listens, but so far it sounds like what Wolf Parade would sound like if everyone but Spencer died of a mysterious ailment and Spencer was like “oh well” and they (he) kept recording and playing shows.
I feel you on the whole digital music thing. For a long time I wouldn’t buy recorded music at all, preferring instead to purchase entire bands which would play for me whenever I wanted. The quality was great, but my collection was limited for obvious reasons. Housing and feeding rockers (even indie rockers) gets expensive, and more than a few of them wore out their welcome. You’d think having the Walkmen play Bows + Arrows in your living room would be awesome (and you’d be right), but having Leithauser scream at you to pass the salt or the mustard or whatever at dinner gets old real fast.
Comment by Feaverish — May 5, 2006 @ 1:31 pm
If you’re having trouble getting rid of bands, you should check out this article in The Morning News about getting rid of hipsters. There’s probably a lot of overlap.
Comment by Pierce — May 5, 2006 @ 2:46 pm
Nice to see you liked a couple of my suggestions. Another record I’m really digging right now is the Feathers. They are apart of the whole Devendra/Espers psych-folk thing.
Comment by STB — May 7, 2006 @ 8:06 pm
Sweet. I’ll check them out.
Comment by Feaverish — May 8, 2006 @ 8:05 am
I have one major issue with eMusic. You can’t seem to browse what’s available on eMusic without giving them a credit card number which to me is kind of bush league.
I used to be an eMusic subscriber back in the day when it was unlimited downloads. I downloaded all I could in two months on a external hard drive and them cancelled my order. Oh the innocent days of music scamming!
Comment by STB — May 9, 2006 @ 4:42 am
That’s easy to get around. Just go to emusic.com/whatever and you’ll get a Page Not Found page. From there you can click on Browse or Search or whatever you want.
And yeah, I went through a couple of free trials before I felt so guilty I had to sign up for reals.
Comment by Feaverish — May 9, 2006 @ 5:16 am
So much good stuff here that it would be wrong of me not to suggest The Battles because you’ll dig them the most.
Comment by Oatmmmeal — May 10, 2006 @ 12:10 am