Album of the Month - This is Ivy League

Artist: This is Ivy League
Album: This is Ivy League
Released: 2008

Background: comprised of two touring members of Cobra Starship.

Sharon's Rating: 3/5

Sharon's Thoughts: Fun & upbeat. I enjoy the vocals, especially the harmonies. A little Simon & Garfunkel-esque. I also like the mix of the rhythm acoustic guitar with electric solos now and then. They have a nice balance. This is the perfect album for a sunny afternoon on the patio.

Favorite Song: "The Richest Kids in Town"

Dusty's Rating: 4/5

Dusty's Thoughts: Nice summery pop music, with some bossa nova thrown in for good measure. Great harmonies. Nothing groundbreaking, but it's a fun album, especially on a nice day.

Favorite Song: "Don't Waste Your Love on Me"

If you've heard this album, feel free to join in.

Next month, we'll be reviewing Viva Voce's new album, Rose City.

iPod Roulette

It's been a while since I posted, which means it's time for some iPod Roulette. I hit shuffle and write the first 10 songs that show up, with my thoughts. Join in by posting your results in the comments.

1. "So Alive" - Toad the Wet Sprocket (In Light Syrup)
A great song. Normally I'm less than thrilled with b-sides albums (they're usually b-sides for a reason), but this album is great all the way through. This song is one of my favorites on the album.

2. "So What" - Miles Davis (Kind of Blue)
Unmistakeably Miles. This is the first on the album, and it kicks it off in style. It starts off with some meandering instruments, finds its groove, then proceeds to show off the brilliance of the musicians involved over the course of the song. One of my all-time favorite jazz albums. I know that's not an original statement, but it's true.

3. "Depot, Depot" - Tom Waits (The Heart of Saturday Night)
With this song (and, really, most of this period for him), Tom Waits creates a perfect late-night soundtrack. I can't listen to this song without thinking, "I wish I was driving through a city at 3 o'clock in the morning." (I can never get through one of these lists without a Tom Waits or Johnny Cash song coming up...and that's completely okay with me.)

4. "Lucky" - Radiohead (Early live version)
A good recording. This version is more stripped down than the version that ended up on OK Computer. At the beginning of the song, Thom Yorke says that this song came out of his James Bond obsession. I can see that. Great song.

5. "It's a Hit" - Rilo Kiley (More Adventurous)
It wasn't until the last few years that I've gotten into Rilo Kiley. This album is the reason I started listening to them in earnest. Fantastic album. This is not my favorite song on the album (that honor goes to "Does He Love You?), but it's still a darn good song.

6. "Big Black Nothing" - Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band (Outer South)
This is actually Nik Freitas singing, not Conor Oberst. It's a nice enough song...in fact, I think I enjoy it. I suppose I need to listen to this album again. I was less than impressed the couple of times that I've listened to it, but this song is convincing me to give it another shot. Thanks Nik.

7. "Train Song" - Feist & Benjamin Gibbard (Dark Was the Night)
Pretty much exactly what I expected it would sound like. I like it. It's nice. I'm beginning to think that ol' Ben is making his voice sound a little stranger on purpose.

8. "I Am Always the One Who Calls" - Pedro the Lion (The Only Reason I Feel Secure)
When I hear the greatness of this song, I find myself feeling a little sad. Not because this song is so good, but because the last couple of things David Bazan has put out have been pretty mediocre. I'm hoping that changes with his upcoming full-length. Anyway, this song is fantastic.

9. "All Along the Watchtower" - U2 (Rattle and Hum)
Not on par with the Hendrix version, but still a darn good version. Say what you will about U2 (and many people have, especially recently), but they have a tremendous back catalog.

10. "India Rubber" - Radiohead (B-Side)
A dark, slinky(ish) song, sounding like the bridge between Pablo Honey and The Bends. It's not an amazing song, but it's still pretty good.

I'm going to try to get back to writing semi-regular reviews this summer...but I make no promises. I have a backlog of great albums that I've listened to (and a few less-than-stellar albums), so I need to start writing again.

St. Vincent - Actor

St. Vincent's first album (Marry Me) was a terrific debut. Strange and intense and amazingly listenable. I didn't think there was any way she would be able to top it.
After my first couple listens to Actor, I assumed I was right. It was good, but it wasn't as good as Marry Me. There was only one standout track, and the rest all seemed to blend together. It still sounded good, but it didn't compare to Marry Me.
I listened to it again. And again. And again.
After 5-6 listens, it clicked. Every song became spectacular. My previous standout track was still my favorite track, but the rest of the album was not far behind. And now, every time I listen to this album, it gets even better than the last time. Marry Me was good. Actor is great. There's not a down song on the album.
This album is currently on my short list for Album of the Year. It's still early, I know, but this album has a real shot to be my favorite by the end of the year.
If you liked her first album, you definitely need to check this out. If you haven't listened to her first album, check this out. It's extremely creative (and sort of quirky) chick pop. I usually compare her to Regina Spektor, but this new album is better than anything Regina Spektor has done.

Rating: 5/5

Favorite Song: "Marrow"

What I've Been Listening To

Here are some albums that I've been listening to lately.

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Front to back (frog track aside), this is probably my favorite album of hers. Before this, Fox Confessor was probably my favorite, but there were still some tracks I wasn't crazy about. I think this entire album is stellar. It really hit me on my fifth listen. Just fantastic stuff. I love it. The full instrumentation of some of the songs ("This Tornado Loves You", "I'm an Animal") sounds amazing. The lesser instrumentation of other songs ("Magpie to the Morning") sounds amazing. And her stark cover of Harry Nilsson's "Don't Forget Me" is breathtakingly gorgeous. Everything she did on this album works. As I mentioned, I could've done without the 30 minutes of frog noises at the end of the album, but, since it's at the end, it doesn't really bother me that much.

Rating: 4.5/5

Favorite Song: "Don't Forget Me"

U2 - No Line on the Horizon

I like this album much better than I thought I would. There are some tracks that I really don't care for at all ("Get on Your Boots" and "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" being the main culprits), but it's pretty good for the most part. The title track works extremely well as an opener. I really like "Moment of Surrender", but I cringe a little every time that line with the ATM comes on. Still, the music is so good (I love the keyboard and string section lurking in the background) that I can't help but like it.
There are a lot of parts on this album that sound less like a U2 album and more like a new album from a U2 cover band who has written their own music. It's not bad...it just sounds like a rehash of their older albums. It's better than How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which was my only requirement for the album.

Rating: 3.5/5

Favorite Song: "Moment of Surrender"

Handsome Furs - Face Control

I didn't listen to their first album, and I'm not really that into Wolf Parade. This album, however, completely blew me away. Great electro-rock music, complete with a rough voice and catchy melodies. I listened to this album after hearing how good it was...and it completely exceeded those expectations. Jump in your car, roll down the windows, and crank this album. You'll love it.

Rating: 4.5/5

Favorite Song: "Radio Kaliningrad"

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

I have a personal vendetta against Animal Collective and their legion of loyal fans. I have never understood the love and praise heaped on their heads. Apparently there's a fine line between "genius" and "unlistenable", and I have always counted myself among the latter camp. That is, until this album. They have taken their sound, polished it up a bit, and made a great pop album. They took their love of Brian Wilson and have turned out an album that is extremely creative and listenable. Personally, I didn't think they had it in them.
It's not all fantastic. I could do without the repetition of "Guys Eyes" and the lyrics of "Taste". A couple of the songs go on for a bit too long (I suppose that's to be expected when listening to an Animal Collective album).
Most of the songs are good, though, and there are a couple of great songs. "My Girls", "Bluish" and "Lion in a Coma" are the ones that stand out above all the others.
This album definitely isn't for everyone, but, as far as I'm concerned, it's the best album of their career. And it's not even really that close.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Song: "My Girls"

Hopefully I'll follow up this post with some other random albums I've been listening to. Hopefully.

Artist of the Month: Bjorn Norestig

Bjorn Norestig hails from Sweden, as so many pop artists are doing these days. Hello Inside is his first full length album, and was originally released in 2006. You can visit his website here.

Sharon's Rating: 3/5

Sharon's Thoughts: I enjoy the way his melodies are bright and hopeful, and manage to have a full and deep sound as well. I always love the use of trumpets! His vocals are pretty good, too, and work especially well for harmonizing.

Favorites: "We Can Make it Last"

Dusty's Rating: 4/5

Dusty's Thoughts: Wonderful moments of pure pope awesomeness, mixed with elements of folk and jazz. His voice works extremely well with the music, and the harmonies are amazing. The horns are magnificent; they really fill out the songs well, and perfectly complement the gorgeous sounds of the Hammond B-3 that is present throughout. I'm not too fond of "Character Song", but the rest of the album is terrific. A great album to listen to in the car on a nice day with the windows rolled down.

Favorites: "We Can Make it Last", "Everything is Good", "Feeling of Emptyness"

We're going to be altering this a little bit going forward. From now on, instead of Artist of the Month, we'll be doing an album of the month. This will give us a chance to talk about artists that have more than one album.

Next month we'll be looking at This is Ivy League's self-titled album. Feel free to join in.

Wavves - Wavvves

I kept hearing great things about this album. "Lo-fi surf rock," they said. I like lo-fi surf rock. Not many people do that kind of music anymore. I was excited.
My excitement was completely unfounded. They got the lo-fi part right, but there's not much that resembles surf rock on here. There may be a couple songs on this album that fit that bill, but the majority of it is filled with noise that borders on torture.
Let's get this out of the way: I like noise. I enjoy Sonic Youth's SYR albums, which are, for the most part, orchestrated noise. I also enjoy Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's Now I Got Worry, which is about as lo-fi and noisy as music can be and still be listenable. I could go on, but I won't.
So it's not because of some old-person sensibility that leads me to say this: the majority of this album is nothing but noise. It's not good noise. It's terrible noise. This noise is at a frequency that can be literally painful to listen to...and that's at low volume.

There are a couple of tracks on here that were pretty good, but I don't remember what they are, and, frankly, they weren't even worth skipping through the album trying to find them again. Not a good sign.

Rating: .5/5

Visit their website here

Random Grammy Thoughts

I'm sitting here studying for some tests this week, but I thought I'd watch the Grammy's as well, and write down some random thoughts as they come to me. Here we go:

- If you wrote a song with lyrics as terrible as the opening song from U2, would you project them up on a big screen for all the world to read? Lyrics like, "I don't want to talk about wars between nations," followed by "Boots" repeated a number of times. The music isn't bad, and I probably wouldn't even notice the lyrics if they hadn't been posted.

- Ah Whitney...still as crazy as ever.

- Boyz II Men put out an album this past year?

- That "Beatle Fighters" joke fell about as flat as is humanly possible. Thanks Rock.

- Was that General Store thing supposed to be a joke? You have to either be a bit more obvious or a lot funnier, Mr. Timberlake.

- With one hand I want to punch Chris Martin, but what would I do with the other hand? Oh...hello Kanye. Where did you come from...and what are you talking about?

- Joy! A Coldplay medley, with Chris Martin prancing to another stage. Now he's spinning. And he's raising his hand in the air. Does he think this is the iTunes commercial again? Did he slip in a line from Springsteen's "Working on a Dream", or am I crazy? I'm 95% positive his bandmates hate him.

- Carrie Underwood: single-handedly trying to bring back the faux-puffy shirt. The strange thing? It actually looks pretty good on her. Somewhere Matthew is salivating.

- I love that Sheryl Crowe walks out to "All I Wanna Do". For some reason that is humorous to me.

- The chick from Sugarland is CRAZY. McCartney might want to look into a restraining order.

- You don't have to jump through hoops for Duffy, Al Green.

- What is Kid Rock doing? Somewhere along the line, he grew tired of his rap-rock schtick and embraced an era of terrible (TERRIBLE) socially-conscious/political songwriting. I never thought I'd say this, but you're better than this. And right on cue...his "Werewolves of London"/"Sweet Home Alabama" mash-up. I'm seriously considering recanting my previous statement.

- Awwww...a song about high school romance from Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus. I can't even begin to tell you how little I care about this. I just found out that they're best friends. Who knew?

- Robert Plant looks like sin.

- Did the CSI chick just compare the Jonas Brothers to Cain and Abel? Someone had to say it.

- Stevie Wonder singing through autotune? What a waste. The next time you decide to jack up someone's voice, pick someone who can't sing.

- Hey...Bandana Jonas. That's Mr. Wonder to you. Show a little respect.

- Could someone tell me why the Jonas Brothers are popular? Now they have decided to ruin "Superstition". It's going to be hard to listen to this song the same way again. Thanks for ruining music, Grammy's. And let's not forget the Jonas Brothers...single-handedly setting music back 50 years.

- Blink-182 announcing their reunion. Does this mean we don't have to listen to Angels & Airwaves anymore?

- I can't help that I like Katy Perry, and I won't apologize. Her voice is not necessarily in top form tonight, though.

- Kanye West looks hideous, and he doesn't sound any better. Estelle is not even close to saving this thing.

- There is not a single good artist in the Best New Artist category. Who wins? Why...Adele, of course. The woman who has one decent song. Oh well...at least it wasn't the Jonas Brothers.

- Wait. Morgan Freeman and Kenny Chesney are friends? What do you suppose they do on a Friday night?

- The interchange between Natalie Cole, Herbie Hancock and Diddy was terribly awkward in an extremely funny way.

- I was pulling for M.I.A. to win Record of the Year, if only for the possibility of seeing her go into labor on the stage.

- T-Bone Burnett is wonderfully crazy. You can't help but love that guy.

- I knew it only a matter of time before Queen Latifah used the term "Rap Pack".

- Is it healthy for a woman who is nine months pregnant to be bouncing around the stage? Regardless, she sounds better than everyone else currently on the stage (Kanye, Jay-Z, T.I. & Lil' Wayne). What a terrible excuse for macho posturing. I'm actually starting to feel a little nauseous. If you want to primp and preen, fellas, take it to the corners.

- Kate Beckinsale? What a wonderful surprise. And introducing Paul McCartney. She's actually doing a terrific job.

- McCartney's voice is on the downswing, but he still sounds pretty good. Performance of the night so far.

- Best Male Pop Vocal: I'll take McCartney, only because the other ones are garbage. And...it's John Mayer. Wow. Way to win an award with yet another piece of terrible acoustic pop garbage. Thanks John.

- Jay Mohr & LL Cool J? When exactly is Jay Mohr going to finally see his career die? Shouldn't that have happened years ago?

- Is it just me, or did the chick from Sugarland age 30 years since the beginning of this show?

- Adele sounds terrible live. Did they doctor her voice for her album, or is she just really nervous? Since she steadily got better throughout her performance, I guess I'll blame it on a case of the jitters.

- Radiohead coming up. This should be fantastic.

- The marching band was a nice touch. Some of Thom's movements seemed a bit forced. Other than that, it was a good performance.

- What is Samuel L. Jackson wearing? This show just keeps getting more confusing.

- You know, T.I. isn't a bad rapper, but there's something off with this Justin Timberlake collaboration. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I'm really not enjoying this at all.

- T.I. just welcomed me on his road to redemption. Thanks T.I.

- I always hate when the president of the academy shows up, but this may be one of the worst speeches of his I've heard. He just sounds unnecessarily egotistical. Just stop with the whole "Yes we can" stuff. It's a little played out at this point.

- In order to honor the musical contribution of the Four Tops, they bring out Jamie Foxx. Sure. That makes sense.

- I may have to take that back. This is actually a pretty good performance. The last living member of the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, Ne-Yo and Jamie Foxx. They sound pretty good together.

- I should have figured that The Grobanator would've shown up at some point.

- Neil Diamond still has that swagger...so why wasn't he included in the debacle that was "Swagga Like Us"?

- They couldn't find someone better than Gary Sinise to introduce Lil' Wayne? And why is Robin Thicke up there? While Lil' Wayne is rapping about the hardships of New Orleans, Thicke is raising his hand in the air, singing "New Orleans" over and over again and grinning like an idiot. Does anyone actually like this guy?

- Alan Toussaint just showed up...and he still has it. And now's he's being joined by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. And Terrance Blanchard. That was actually pretty enjoyable.

- Will.I.Am sighting! Let's hope he doesn't embarrass himself like he did last year. He did fairly well...but I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with T-Pain.

- Best Rap Album...Lupe Fiasco? No...of course not. It's Lil' Wayne. Of course it is. Why, it's only one of the most hyped rap albums in recent memory. Of course it wouldn't go to Lupe Fiasco, who crafted an extremely creative and eclectic album. That would've made sense.

- It's about time Zooey Deschanel showed up. And she's introducing Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. That's pretty cool...but I wish she didn't use the "She & Him" hook.

- This Plant/Krauss performance is really good...and pretty dark. I'm really enjoying it. It's nice to see T-Bone Burnett on stage with them.

- And here I thought I could get through the night without seeing Green Day. Those guys are idiots. Does the one guy still call himself Tre Cool?

- Album of the Year...here we go. I am, of course, rooting for Radiohead, but I don't really think they'll win it. I'll predict Coldplay.

- Annnnnnd....Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. I did not see that coming. I thought that album was decent, but I was surprised it was even up for Album of the Year, let alone winning it. Oh well. I've seen worse winners. Congrats.

- How dare they try to cut off the Album of the Year acceptance speech. That is shameful.

Well, this was kind of fun. It was my first time doing something like this. Hope you enjoyed it.