Music: Yes, Music

So, I've decided that I'm going to start posting here about music I like. There will be tags at the bottom for comics or music. I hope that, beyond my taste in music expanding and improving my writing about it, this new turn in the blog-o-machine will cause me to update more.

Holy crap! Has anyone else seen the release list of CDs this week? My wallet is hiding in fear with my debit card, holding each other tightly and weeping, promising each other that everything will be okay, like extras in Independence Day or Deep Impact.

Here is the run-down:

Piebald - Accidental Gentleman

I've only recently gotten into Piebald - the last three months or so - but after being shoved into them as if they were a sliced open taun-taun by my sister and friends, I'm completely in love with their non-hardcore, happy indie-pop-punk mix. Their songs for the most part, are adolescent, but not in a bad way. Singing about road trips with girls, their old tour bus and The Catcher In The Rye, the music colors your glasses rosy with youth no matter what you're looking upon.

I haven't heard anything off of the new album yet, I'm wondering what maturity has done to the band - members are now married, and one is a schoolteacher - but the reviews I've heard are overwhelmingly positive. I'm going to see them the day of the release, so I'll get to hear some tracks live before I hear them on CD.

The Shins - Wincing The Night Away

Does Zach Braff get a check every time someone new loves The Shins?

While the band was great 3 albums ago, they got a lot of success from being the keystone in the mix-tape for everyone that was the Garden State soundtrack. And even though most of the key tracks from that soundtrack were off of Oh, Inverted World (can anyone think of a non-Elliot Smith song more tear inducing than New Slang?), it definitely gave Chutes Too Narrow, their recent release at the time of the film, a push.

Now we're two years later, the expectations for their new release is even higher, and I can't wait to get my ears around it. Reviewed as a more somber piece than Chutes Too Narrow, I hope Wincing The Night Away proves the Shins are still the best at breaking indie rock hearts.

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

Sugar cereal powered alt-pop, Of Montreal has proven to be some of the weirdest, happiest music I've gotten on mix CDs in the past. Springtime Is The Season features some of my favorite lyrics:

The winter's good for penguins,
Though brown bears must object.
When talk comes to the joys of winter,
They must interject,
"Hibernating in the snow just isn't where it's at,
because sleeping makes you skinny,
and we bears like to be fat."

More of their songs keep this whimsy, their warbling vocals on Jaques Lamuer (the volunteer fireman) or Everything Disappears When You Come Around (in the song, things litterally disappear) cause your smile to widen with each track. It's with these tracks in mind that I'll be picking up the new CD as soon as possible.

The Good, The Bad, And the Queen

Logic: Brit-Pop geniuses Blur haven't had a new album in 4 years. This is bad.

Reality: Blur frontman Damon Albarn keeps teaming up with people like Dan the Automator, Dj Danger Mouse for new Gorillaz albums and this new project The Good, The Bad, And the Queen. I kind of don't care?

I mean, what more does a CD have to have for me to buy it? It's produced by the "I can't lose even if I tried!" Dj Danger Mouse, who's put out pretty much nothing but gold as far as I'm concerned. The Grey Album mashing up Jay-Z and the Beatles spawned a sea of imitators, and on many tacks Danger Mouse out-produced and out classed the actual producers from Jay's original.

Follow that up with Alban's first Danger Mouse collaboration the Gorillaz cd Demon Days which sits atop a mountain of critical acclaim, then move onto the slightly underrated but personal favorite Danger Doom with MF Doom - a CD completely about Cartoon Network's [Adult Swim] line up. Where then next? Why, the gospel techno hip-hop mash up of Gnarles Barkley, with partner Cee-Lo. This is a disc hot with pretty much everyone. I actually helped a fifty year old woman find it at work the other day, and when I asked if it was a gift, she looked at me sideways and said "Uh, it's for me."

So we've got the frontman from Blur and Gorillaz, producer of Danger Doom and Gnarles Barkley, and that's not enough for you still? STILL? How about Paul Simonon, the bassist from The (mother fucking) Clash? How about Simon Tong, of The Verve fame?

God damn, I wish I had this disc NOW.

COMICS TIE IN:

Interested in Brit-Pop? Check out the amazing Phonogram (phonogramcomic.com) which blends music and magic into this amazing modern fantasy tale of music snobbery gone horrible wrong.

So four CDs in one week is not a lot for some people. But for me, looking at this list, I honestly don't know what to do I'm so excited.

I'll be broke for a long time, but it'll be oh, oh, OH so worth it...

-casey-