Feaverish

I think I’ve finally found a soundtrack for this summer. Go here and listen. I found them on the KEXP blog, which you should really be reading instead of this site.

You can buy the album at their website or at iTunes.

You may think you know what true love is, but until you’ve stood in line behind a guy with a tattoo on the back of his neck, and until that tattoo is the photo-realistic face of the woman standing beside him, you have no idea what true love is.

According to last.fm (nÃ�©e Audioscrobbler) I’ve listened to almost 60,000 songs. I’ve only been using last.fm for a year or so, though, and I was wondering how to get the same kind of statistics for all the songs I’ve listened to in iTunes. Enter iTunes Statistician. It’s fast and free, and it’s just what I was looking for. I’ve posted my listening statistics here, so go have a look.

I’ve changed and updated computers several times since I’ve been using iTunes, so I’m pretty sure even these statistics are only from the last couple of years. According to iTunes, the oldest song on my computer was added in early 2004. Oh well. I guess this is as close to a complete history as I’m going to get.

There aren’t really too many surprises in the statistics. For the most part, albums I’ve had the longest have the most plays, as do bands with several albums under their belt. The exceptions are, of course, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Pas/Cal. These bands have barely 20 recorded tracks between them, but they’re 7th and 10th on the Top Artists list, respectively, and account for 7 of my 20 most-played tracks.

iTunes Statistician is Mac- and iTunes-only, but I’m sure similar software exists for other jukebox programs. If you try it out, be sure and post the results in the comments.

Love,

Aaron

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:

Clearlake? (Homepage, iTunes)

Irving? (Homepage, iTunes)

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.

Swedishish |��sw��di SH SH |
adjective
(almost) having the qualities or characteristics of, or relating to, Sweden, its people, or their language: his design sensibilities are Swedishish, but that show of emotion certainly was not

see also: Finnishish, Oslolian, Danesque

Childbearing-Hipster |�� ch �«ld��be(��)ri ng ��hipst��r |
noun
a chubby hipster

�but I lost count after 47.