New to you, not necessarily newly released. I’ve purchased many CDs in the past few weeks. My favorites:
The Blood Brothers - Crimes
Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Reissue; never got it the first time)
Spoon - Girls Can Tell
All recommended of course.
William Shatner - Has Been
Rilo Kiley - Take Offs & Landings; The Execution Of All Things; More Adventurous
The Shins - Oh Inverted World
Mitch Hedberg - Mitch All Together
Damn!! I always forget to look for this. I’ll probably have to tack this onto my Xmas shopping Amazon order (too impatient to actually wait for somebody to give it to me).
Recently, I’ve been listening to:
Tom Waits - Real Gone
Brian Wilson - Smile
Alice Cotrane - Translinear Light
on near constant repeat.
To break this cycle (or add another one to the mix) I’m looking forward to taking the shrink-wrap off Neko Case - The Tigers Have Spoken.
The Hot Trumpets of Joe Newman and Henry “Red” Allen.
Not the sort of disc I’d usually buy…it’s split between a 1961 session of Newman with a rhythm section, and a 1962 session of Allen with an entirely different rhythm section, so it’s two completely different LPs on one CD.
But the Newman sides kick ASS…great swing trumpet…and then it shifts violently over to New Orleans-style trumpet with Allen, the guy Louis Armstrong WISHES he could’ve played like. And Allen veers and schmears all over the place…there really has never been another trumpet player like this guy, and his late-period work is too, too swoon-making.
I love Pavement - they were the bored and frustrated dork to Nirvana’s surly outcast.
Olivia Tremor Control’s Black Foliage Animation Music Vol. 1 is great stuff.
Labradford’s Mi Media Naranja has become my late-night saviour.
You have good taste in music. My favorite male and female singers are Tom Waits and Neko Case, and I have both of their new albums on my Amazon wish list myself. I’m sure you’ll like Shatner’s new one, too.
Yes to those!!!
Shatner’s is almost more than just kitsch value. It’s got some good stuff on it like"Real" and I’ve been pimping Rilo Kiley before on the boards. Jenny rocks!
New stuff for me (and yes, I do buy a lot of music):
Thirteen Senses-The Invitation (LIke Keane, another Coldplay knock-off)
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes- Ruin Johnny’s Bar Mitzvah (Not their best)
Optiganally Yours -Spotlight On (This is kitschy and fun)
Aberfeldy-Young Forever (Same as above)
Brian Wilson-Smile (more hyped than shoulda been)
Alice Peacock-Alice Peacock (Mod Folk Rock that’s not too important)
Angela McCluskey-The Things We Do (Ex-Wild Colonials singer, interesting, addictive voice)
Bic Runga-Beautiful Collision (Would make a good opening act of Ani D.)
Garden State-Soundtrack (Fun collection of lowbeat)
Camera Obscura-Underachievers Please Try Harder (Belle and Sebastian substitutes or like Yo La Tengo’s Fakebook CD without the covers)
The Beautiful South-Golddiggas, Headnodders and Folk Songs (Mediocre all cover album)
Katie Melua-Call Off the Search (Like Eva Cassidy woulda been without covers)
Tom Baxtor-Feather and Stone (Wonderful CD with a softer edged Damien Rice meets the Blue Nile)
Finn Brothers-Everyone is Here (Crowded House boys that’s really unengaging)
Glenn Tilbrook-Transatlantic Ping Pong (Ex-Squeeze singer, not much different from Squeeze)
Jill Sobule-Underdog Victorious (Great new CD, as usual)
The Dears-No Cities Left (Holy Crap, did the Smiths reunite!? No, but you couldn’t tell the difference)
Feist-Let It Die (Really wonderful upscale shopping music with a smooth lead female)
Gisli-How About That (Uneven, some good folky, some experimental misses)
Kings of Convenience-Quiet is the New Loud (Perfect autumnal drive music.)
Green Day - American Idiot. I never thought that I would hear a 9 minute green day song, but it works.
Flogging Molly - Within a Mile of Home. They aren’t the Pogues, but they are close enough.
Thanks! I haven’t heard Neko Case’s new one yet, but the new Tom Waits is probably my favourite of his recent CDs (of course I’ve said that about every Tom Waits release since Swordfishtrombones).
Oops. That should be Alice Coltrane. Man, her first commercial release in 30 years and I can’t even get her name right.
The Complete Blind Willie Johnson.
Some really horrible imagery-the Titanic and the 1918 Influenza epidemic for example-but I guess that’s why they call it the Blues.
Nightwish - Once
I’d heard this one several months ago, but was only recently released in the US. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were two bonus tracks that weren’t available in the Finnish release (each a b-side for a different single releases of the same song!). With an opera-trained female singer and a well-integrated orchestra, this sounds like a Broadway production done to power metal.
Finntroll - Nattfödd
Also from Finland, this band creates a unique cross between extreme black/death metal and traditional Humpaa music (a variety of Polka). And they sing about Trolls. In Swedish. It’s both angry-growly and bouncy-happy at the same time!
Both fantastic albums, especially if you’re an eccentric metal-head like me. 
D
That’s Humppa! is what I meant to say… :smack:
I’ve been listening to the Garden State soundtrack for a month straight now. It’s very mellow and relaxing… especially the tracks by Frou Frou, the Shins, Coldplay, and Zero 7.
I usually have no tolerance for metal, but I love Nightwish, and I think I’d enjoy hearing them with an orchestra as backup.
Once is a decent album, but nowhere near the quality of Oceanborn. Nightwish works best as a trumped-up Finnish folk band. Of course, it’s nowhere near as bad as Century Child, but that’s setting the bar kinda low. Century Media is going to be releasing Nightwish’s most recent EP, Over The Hills And Far Away in early 2005, and that’s definitely worth picking up if you like them.
The Blood Brothers’ Crimes is one of my favorite albums of this year. It’s a bizarre mix of hardcore, metal and free jazz with a little bit of techno thrown in just for the hell of it. Weird as hell, but oh man, does it work.
I’ve been listening to Modest Mouse’s Good News For People Who Love Bad News a lot recently. It’s a high-quality album.
(and Finntroll sings in Finnish, not Swedish. I mean, c’mon…)
The Black Keys - Rubber Factory
Stumbled across this quite by accident. Never heard of these guys, a blues-rock duo from Akron. I was killing time at a Borders whilst Mrs. zoog did a bit of clothes shopping at a nearby mall. They had this on a listening station there, and I was digging the first few tracks and it was cheap, at least by Borders standards, so I bought it for the 45 minute ride home.
Then we went to a movie, had dinner with some friends, got in the car for the drive home - lo and behold, this album was decidedly not what they had on that listening station. It was in a similar blues-rock vein, but much edgier, much less slick sounding than what was on the listening station. Turns out I liked it even more than whatever it was on the listening station (forever to be a mystery, I suppose).
Mine are …
Death Cab For Cutie Transatlanticism
Erasure Nightbird
A Perfect Circle eMOTIVe
Keane Hopes and Fears
Big Drill Car - No worse for the wear
Mark Doyle - Out of the Past
4Front - Gravity
Genesis - * Duke*
I agree, and plan on getting Wishmaster and Oceanborn the next time I get around to buying anything. When I first heard them, I didn’t quite “get it,” but Once was the conduit to my enlightenment.
The Blood Brothers sounds interesting, I should check it out.
It’s Swedish, that’s for sure. (See 5th question on the FAQ) It’s the cherry on top, in my opinion. It allows me to amuse myself by re-wording translations. Like “Försvinn du som lyser,” literally meaning “Begone thou who shed light onto my folk,” I like to interperet as “Get that cursed light out of my face!”
D