Entertainment For Lively Minds
So how's 2008 been for you?
What music have you most enjoyed (if any) from 2008 so far. Is there anything I've missed from this year that I should give a listen too?
The albums I've heard from this year so far are:
Thao - We Brave Bee Stings & All
Vampire Weekend
Sons & Daughters - The Gift
Adele - 19
British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
The Duke Spirit - Neptune
Cat Power - Juke Box
The best for me has easily been Thao, I took a flier on this thanks to the Word review and it's been excellent. British Sea Power is slowly growing on me. Cat Power is always good value and I'm not sure if I lie Vampire Weekend or if it's tat that I get sucked into listening too because of the hype.
I'm looking forward to Goldfrapp, Nick Cave, R.E.M and Portishead over the next month or 2. Any suggestions?
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New in 2008
The Felice Brothers' follow up to Tonight At The Arizona is getting some good airplay courtesy of Mark Radcliffe and what I've heard so far has certainly impressed. I think it's out next month.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/folk/story/0,,2217019,00.html
The Felice Brothers
are fabulous. I you like The Basement Tapes or anything by The Band I'd highly recommend them...I did a bit of digging last year a came up with a few albums, all a bit confusing as they seem to have changed labels a few times.
'Tonight at The Arizona' came out last year as an official UK release. You can download it from here. I'd start here, recorded in a chicken shack, one track features a lightning strike and thunder; don't worry it's not, as I thought, a faulty CD!
'Through These Reins and Gone' came out in 2006 you can download from here
They also have a CD called 'The Adventures of the Felice Brothers Vol. 1' which you can buy at gigs or order from their myspace page via paypal here
The new one is 'The Felice Brothers' and is out on the 4th March...
I've been quite enjoying BSP, Vampire Weekend, Cat Power and Beach House, but nothing's really blown my socks off.
Nah...
...nuthin yet has rocked G Towers I'm afraid.
Recognising that…
...one man's Leonard Cohen is another man's Joe Dolce, I am reluctant to make recommendations to strangers. That said, there are two new releases that are working for me.
The first - In The Future by Black Mountain - I was in two minds as to whether to buy. The thing that swung it for me was the cover, which looks like it has been imported from the 1970s.
I am loathe to describe the music of a group whose members worked as drug councillors as stoner rock, but that's what springs to mind: Sprawling narcotised grooves; long dragged-out passages; chugging guitar underscored by vintage synthesiser. The absence of polish and the ramshackle construction of the songs works in the album's favour. Wucan fades out after six minutes but leaves behind the lingering suspicion that there is a colossal two hour version lurking in the vaults. The hymnal Nightwalks is a moving coda.
The Mars Volta's impressively mental 4th album - The Bedlam In Goliath - disposes with bothersome intros, beginning at breakneck speed and going pedal to the metal for close to eighty minutes. The English edition concludes with a relatively conventional reading of a Pink Floyd B-side - Candy & a Currant Bun.
It's an overwhelming experience, typified by the amphetaminised prog of Metatron - initially the musical equivalent of a toddler violently scribbling with a crayon, while shouting random sentences from a Stephen Hawking book - and which only reveals its complicated honeycomb structure after repeated plays.
Bedlam is at its best when heard at high volume. Out of consideration to my neighbours, I have been doing a lot of headphones listening. Later in life I will probably be afflicted by a condition known as ‘Volta's Ear', defined in medical journals as tinnitus with an unusual time signature.
cheers
you've just reminded me that I meant to download Thao's album. looking forward to listening to it!
wish I could recommend you something but you've covered everything I would have said...
Try HotChips new one.
Try HotChips new one.
Funny you should say that,
I've downloaded it, and I love Shake Your Fist, but I'm not sure I'm up for a whole album of their stuff.
Lift your spirits
Have a little peek at the re-issue of 'Becks-Odelay'' than...
According to The Times 'You have to be quite pretentious to prefer Aphex Twins remix of Devils Haircut (re-titled Richards Hairpiece),''.
Confession? I prefer it.
Sea Power
British Sea Power is the best I've heard this year and still discovering new joys every time I listen to it.
Have enjoyed the
Have enjoyed the aforementioned Mars Volta's 'Bedlam In Goliath' and Black Mountain's 'In The Future'; both owe a certain something to the 1970s (Zeppelin/Floyd/Sabbath in Black Mountain's case and Yes/King Crimson in Mars Volta's) but add their own thing so it sounds very fresh.
Am waiting on Van Der Graaf Generator's new one 'Trisector' and Van Morrison's 'Keep It Simple'. Mind you, I'd be shocked if the Van one was a deviation from the sound of his last few albums...
If this was a forum, this comment would send this thread
up the up to the top of the page.
Anyway. I've now added the Mountain Goats album and The Feeling (no-body call it a 'guilty bleedin' pleasure') to my 2008.
Only played once each so far, but I've heard good things about the Mountain Goats.