Band: Bedhead
Album: Transaction de Novo
Best song: “Forgetting,” “More than Ever” and “Psychosomatica” are all classics in different ways. “Parade” is brilliant, too.
Worst song: Guess who writes only about albums he loves? This blog should be called Albums that I Love (more on titles below).
This blog could have and should have been called Forgetting.
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Band: Jens Lekman
Album: Night Falls Over Kortedala
Best song: “A Postcard to Nina” is gorgeous. “Sipping on the Sweet Nectar” is lovely.
Worst song: “If I Could Cry (It Would Feel Like This)” is my least favorite song on the album and it’s still amazing.
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A quick disclaimer: Part of the joy of writing a blog/self-publishing is that you don’t have to go through anyone else to get your work out there. This review is sort of another opus of mine, a culmination of a lot of what’s going in my head, soundtracked by my favorite Swede. The piece has gone through several edits. It took over a week to write, then I put it down and picked it back up this week. I struggled a lot with the question of asking someone else to look at it before I posted it. So, I didn’t. I’ve simply let it simmer for nearly a year, re-edited it and posted it.
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Band: Ratatat
Album: Classics
Best song: “Lex” and “Wildcat” are tons of fun.
Worst song: “Nostrand” and “Gettysburg” are pretty mediocre.
I am totally fascinated by nature. My PS3 plays Blu Ray discs and — save for a couple of favorites (8 1/2, Away We Go, The Dark Knight and Dawn of the Dead) — all I own is nature documentaries in the high definition format. Much of my Netflix queue is occupied by nature documentaries and when I’m completely bored, I will automatically jump to the various channels playing nature documentaries on my cable system.
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Band: The Les Claypool Frog Brigade
Album: Live Frogs Set 2
Best song: I am such a sucker for this album.
Worst song: Awesome. Awesome awesome awesome.
I had a frog as a pet for, like, one week when I was a wee lad. I was oddly freaked out by it. They’re pretty slimy, all told, and very very foreign. Their eyes come out the top of their heads, all weirdly. They can breathe underwater.
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Band: Hum
Album: You’d Prefer an Astronaut
Best song: “Stars” is a great song, “I’d Like Your Hair Long” is awesome and “I Hate It Too” is amazing.
Worst song: “Songs of Farewell and Departure” and “Why I Like the Robins” are both relatively weak.
Because of the band’s roots in Urbana-Champaign, Hum was considered emo for a time. The main campus of the University of Illinois spawned several impressive bands from the all-familiar genre — Braid, Sarge, etc. — as well as many other fantastic bands (Poster Children, Dianogah, etc.). Because of the size of the town, these bands played together a lot. Continue reading
Band: Iron Butterfly
Album: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Best song: Come on.
Worst song: Really? The whole album kind of stinks, save for the title track.
I’m a pretty big sports fan. The Blackhawk Stanley Cup victory was one of the highlights of 2010 for me, as the Hawks are the first team for which I’ve ever rooted.
Which would say that, like most of the world, I’ve spent the last month or so watching the World Cup. Soccer isn’t my favorite sport; I prefer baseball and hockey over any other sports. Nevertheless, I’ve attended a soccer game in Italy and played in a soccer rec league off and on my whole life. I follow my family’s ancestral home’s team in Italy.