Let's just jump right back into where I left off on my top 10 albums I heard and enjoyed in 2008.
7. Panic At the Disco- Pretty.Odd
Anyone who knows me knows I wrote a very extensive review of this album in The College Voice at my old community college when it came out this past March. I still stand by all my feelings about this album and still think it is top notch even if it's not completely original. Let's be honest, today's music listeners hate it when their favorite bands decide to stray away from the sound that made their first couple albums so catchy and unique, especially when it's on their sophomore release. It is even more daring when after pushing your first album for three years you decide to follow up with an album paying homage to some of the most influential rock albums of the sixties. It does seem a bit like an inflated ego to make an album like Pretty.Odd which pretty much rips off the sounds of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and The Beatles Sgt. Pepper but so what. Teenagers sit there and say ew this is what my dad listened to yet this music wouldn't be here if it wasn't for your dad's music. As I said this isn't that original of an album, but Panic at the Disco did produce some great tunes on this album. If you want me to justify more, I will gladly do so at a later point.
6. Shel Silverstein- Freakin At the Freaker's Ball
So this little gem I found by accident because my co workers rock at listening to the most obscure shit ever recorded. Anyone who knows the name Shel Silverstein associates him with reading deep poems from books like Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic, all of which were a staple of adolescent readers during elementary and middle school. What many people don't know is he also recorded at least five albums of music and this just happens to be his best. I have to admit I haven't listen to his other albums but I really don't think I need to because this album speaks for itself. Tracks like "Thumbsucker" and "I Got Stoned and I Missed it" are just pure seventies pop and funk. The songs are almost borderline corny but they are just too good to miss checking out. I don't know if this album is available one CD, I only heard it on vinyl, hence my job at a record store, but if you can find it I suggest checking this sucker out real quick.
5. Foxboro Hot Tubs- Stop,Drop, and Roll!
The band is Green Day, plain and simple if you didn't know this already but the album is pretty much not something typically from Green Day. Sure this project was an easy way of saying, hey lets do an album of different material but put it under a different name to avoid criticism from our fans but it paid off pretty damn well. The album itself encompasses some old school sounding Green Day material dating back to the likes of Nimrod but also tracks that harken back to the greaser garage rock music of the mid sixties. If you need to know what that sounds like listen to "the Dark Side of Night" a very beatnic like song about mystery and loners and what have you. Other tracks like "Broadway" and the title track are just pure adrenaline only how Green Day knows how to do it. As much as I could rant and rave about this album to most people, i think most would just brush this aside and wait for the next Green Day album due sometime this coming year.
4. The Move-Looking On
Christ where has this band been all my life! I tell you where, they have been broken up since 1971 that's where. Anyone who knows me knows I have a great love for classic rock and the music of the late sixties and early seventies. The Move just happened to be one of those hidden gems of the late sixties british invasion movement that if you caught them you were seeing something different from the music at the time. They are honestly the greatest band of the sixties to never make it big in the United States. Their first four singles after their formation in 1966 were all top ten in their native england but absolutely bombed here in the states. Personally I think its because their music was a little too sophisticated for American AM radio at the time, I mean honestly they had a song whose main riff was to the tune of the 1812 overture.
Their third album, Looking On, released in 1971 is not really considered a classic amongst their four album discography but it's a great representation of a band in transition of sounds. To give a little background on the band, by the release of this album the band consisted of founding members Roy Wood and Bev Bevan as well as a young guitarist named Jeff Lynne. By this point the Move was more of contractual obligation to their record label and what they were really planning was to use the move studio time to help create their new band which would combine rock with strings, to be dubbed the Electric Light Orchestra. Yeah and so that is where the band went.
Anyway this album dabbles in what the band was and what they wanted to become dabbling in sounds that were transfer over into the first ELO album a year later. Although only seven tracks, the album is a heart pounding 45 minutes and has some of the most down and dirty rock tracks of the early seventies. The album's single, "Brontosaurus" speaks for itself as a truly monstrous song with a great bass line and thunderous drums courtesy of mr. Bevan. Other long gesting jam tracks like "Looking On" and "Feel to Good" are just worthy the long play listen that they are with both songs clocking in at over 15 minutes combined. For his first forey into the band, Lynne shows off on some very complex and well arranged tracks like "Open Said the World At the Door" and "What?" which echo the early ELO albums as well as what the band created on their next release, Message from the Country. Even Bev Bevan gets to show off some song writing talents with the track "Turkish tram Conductor Blues" only amplified by Roy Wood's screeching vocals. The album is in a sense a mess as far as how things don't seem to fit the mold of the album, just listen to the last 5 minutes of "Feel too Good" and the unnecessary drum solo bridge in the middle of "Open Up Said the World." However, the album is just a good jam record and is really just a classic example of music just going unnoticed for the longest times.
Okay so I am tired, done again, I might finish this list.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
A Year's Worth of Listening to Mainstream non sense Results In This
So this is the third blog I have created. I have a bad habit of creating these things when I am creatively inclined to want to do it and then I get bored and don't do them for awhile. Sometimes, as I learned before I created this one, I forget how to even access my old account. Oh well I figured I would do some much needed critiquing and reviewing since I can't tell you the last time I did that. So 2008 is coming to an end and for the first time, I haven't thought about what the new year will bring. As one gets older, you tend to lose sight of the world around and days months, and yes, even years slowly begin to run together. I'm almost 21 and it seems like the past four years just slowly slipped away and I didn't even notice.
None the less, I am not here to be sappy I figured I would review my top 10 albums of the year based on what came out this year and acts that i only discovered this year so don't correct me if the year of these albums release are not sisinct with the year in review.
10. Vampire Weekend- Vampire Weekend
I still have yet to decide if I actually like this band or even this album. Working in a record store you here alot of in coming hype from artsy fartsy customers who talk about the next big thing in music and how they want to be wearing berets in the Soho district of New York or move to Williamsburg and start the next installment of bands that sound like Pavement or The Apples in Stereo. Vampire Weekend was another one of those bands that fell into the overly hyped category when their debut album was released this past January. At first listen the first couple tracks were catchy and clinged to my side for the remainder of the album's length. However I slowly became disenchanted with the combination of indy rock riffs and African beats. Nine months later I picked the album back up after hearing their music prominently used in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, a film that connected to me about what you would hope love could be but I knew it was only a movie. On further examination the album is pretty top notch for its genre. Tracks like "Oxford Comma" and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" proved to be even more entertaining upon a second listen and other tracks like "Walcott" and "Campus" made a better impression this time around. "Punk-A," which I am convinced I heard in every available medium at some point this year is really as cracked up as it seems to be. Reinvigeration in my interest aside I can't tell if this band is going to be the fad that the Williamsburg kids always talk about or if they have enough gusto to last through a couple more albums in these shakiest of times in music.
9. Jack's Mannequin- The Glass Passenger
This little fella came relatively late in the year so it doesn't get as big a praise as some of the other ones in this list. At first listen I found myself rather dissapointed in Andrew McMahon's second effort in his side project known as Jack's Mannequin. The album sounded entirely removed from the band's first release, Everything In Transit. However I realized soon enough that I could no longer refer to Jack's Mannequin as a side project. My hopes of seeing another release from McMahon's first band Something Corporate have died completely and the acceptance of Mannequin as his entry into maturity in music has settled in. I realized that the Glass Passenger was very much a Jack's Mannequin record where as the first album was more of a continuation of the Something Corporate style of writing and producing music. It is also important to point out that after being through a near death experience like leukemia like he had one needs to write about something more meaningful in life than chasing the girl and hanging out with your best friends. Glass Passenger is truly a fantastic piece of pop music, its everything modern about mainstream music as well as everything old school about songwriting. Tracks like "The Resolution," "American Love," and "Bloodclot" represent what putting your spirit into a song is all about. Heartache, personal triumph and omptimism are things that play well into some of the best songwriting out there and Andrew McMahon has shown those colors in these songs that are more than just the blood from his veins.
8. Rilo Kiley- Under the Blacklight
Okay so this album came out last year but I only recently discovered a taste for this group. Rilo Kiley, which features two former child stars dipping their feet into music is quite honestly a very refreshing band. I can't pin point exactly how to define them or really what I see in them but they just don't mind experimenting with sounds and writing some real catchy new wave kind of rock tunes. The two former child stars, Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett, seemed to found a better niche in writing and recording music then either of them did touring the television circuit through out the eighties and nineties (Lewis use to be on Troop Beverly Hills and Sennett was on Salute Your Shorts) Under the Blacklight the band's forth album was very much what I thought 2007 and even 2008 have been, a yearning for the night life. Honestly I have found myself over the past year and a half what is so exciting about hanging out in the city visiting bars and listening to upstart bands that Pitchfork will eventually profile but in a way I assumed this is what I would be listening to at 1 AM in a Williamsburg bar so I think its worth looking into. Catchy guitar riffs coupled with a massive amount of symphonic sound makes for many poppy yet danceable songs. Recommended songs to check out: Silver Lining, Close Call, Breaking Up, Dejalo, and 15 (probably the most sixties sounding about falling for jail bait I have ever heard!) I will probably continue to pursue listening to these guys, maybe go see them if they come around again but I can't help but laugh when I think of Blake Sennett when he plays guitar all I can see is him as Joey the Rat on Boy Meets World when I was a kid.
- So I am cutting off this post real quick because it is getting I will continue on with my reviews.... write after I post this.
None the less, I am not here to be sappy I figured I would review my top 10 albums of the year based on what came out this year and acts that i only discovered this year so don't correct me if the year of these albums release are not sisinct with the year in review.
10. Vampire Weekend- Vampire Weekend
I still have yet to decide if I actually like this band or even this album. Working in a record store you here alot of in coming hype from artsy fartsy customers who talk about the next big thing in music and how they want to be wearing berets in the Soho district of New York or move to Williamsburg and start the next installment of bands that sound like Pavement or The Apples in Stereo. Vampire Weekend was another one of those bands that fell into the overly hyped category when their debut album was released this past January. At first listen the first couple tracks were catchy and clinged to my side for the remainder of the album's length. However I slowly became disenchanted with the combination of indy rock riffs and African beats. Nine months later I picked the album back up after hearing their music prominently used in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, a film that connected to me about what you would hope love could be but I knew it was only a movie. On further examination the album is pretty top notch for its genre. Tracks like "Oxford Comma" and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" proved to be even more entertaining upon a second listen and other tracks like "Walcott" and "Campus" made a better impression this time around. "Punk-A," which I am convinced I heard in every available medium at some point this year is really as cracked up as it seems to be. Reinvigeration in my interest aside I can't tell if this band is going to be the fad that the Williamsburg kids always talk about or if they have enough gusto to last through a couple more albums in these shakiest of times in music.
9. Jack's Mannequin- The Glass Passenger
This little fella came relatively late in the year so it doesn't get as big a praise as some of the other ones in this list. At first listen I found myself rather dissapointed in Andrew McMahon's second effort in his side project known as Jack's Mannequin. The album sounded entirely removed from the band's first release, Everything In Transit. However I realized soon enough that I could no longer refer to Jack's Mannequin as a side project. My hopes of seeing another release from McMahon's first band Something Corporate have died completely and the acceptance of Mannequin as his entry into maturity in music has settled in. I realized that the Glass Passenger was very much a Jack's Mannequin record where as the first album was more of a continuation of the Something Corporate style of writing and producing music. It is also important to point out that after being through a near death experience like leukemia like he had one needs to write about something more meaningful in life than chasing the girl and hanging out with your best friends. Glass Passenger is truly a fantastic piece of pop music, its everything modern about mainstream music as well as everything old school about songwriting. Tracks like "The Resolution," "American Love," and "Bloodclot" represent what putting your spirit into a song is all about. Heartache, personal triumph and omptimism are things that play well into some of the best songwriting out there and Andrew McMahon has shown those colors in these songs that are more than just the blood from his veins.
8. Rilo Kiley- Under the Blacklight
Okay so this album came out last year but I only recently discovered a taste for this group. Rilo Kiley, which features two former child stars dipping their feet into music is quite honestly a very refreshing band. I can't pin point exactly how to define them or really what I see in them but they just don't mind experimenting with sounds and writing some real catchy new wave kind of rock tunes. The two former child stars, Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett, seemed to found a better niche in writing and recording music then either of them did touring the television circuit through out the eighties and nineties (Lewis use to be on Troop Beverly Hills and Sennett was on Salute Your Shorts) Under the Blacklight the band's forth album was very much what I thought 2007 and even 2008 have been, a yearning for the night life. Honestly I have found myself over the past year and a half what is so exciting about hanging out in the city visiting bars and listening to upstart bands that Pitchfork will eventually profile but in a way I assumed this is what I would be listening to at 1 AM in a Williamsburg bar so I think its worth looking into. Catchy guitar riffs coupled with a massive amount of symphonic sound makes for many poppy yet danceable songs. Recommended songs to check out: Silver Lining, Close Call, Breaking Up, Dejalo, and 15 (probably the most sixties sounding about falling for jail bait I have ever heard!) I will probably continue to pursue listening to these guys, maybe go see them if they come around again but I can't help but laugh when I think of Blake Sennett when he plays guitar all I can see is him as Joey the Rat on Boy Meets World when I was a kid.
- So I am cutting off this post real quick because it is getting I will continue on with my reviews.... write after I post this.
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