Always Sunny in Colcord

1) The Radio Dept. – Heaven’s On Fire

2) Tennis – Marathon

3) Local Natives – Wide Eyes

Wide Eyes by Local Natives

4) Two Door Cinema Club – Something Good Can Work

Something Good Can Work by Two Door Cinema Club

5) Neon Indian – Deadbeat Summer

Deadbeat Summer by Neon Indian

6) Gorillaz – On Melancholy Hill

7) Miike Snow – Burial

Walk the Moon – Anna Sun
Anna Sun by Walk The Moon

9) Free Energy – Dream City

10) Generationals – Greenleaf

11) Foster the People – Helena Beat
Helena Beat by Foster The People

12) M83 – Midnight City

13) Phoenix – Lasso

14) Ra Ra Riot – Boy

15) Matt & Kim – Cameras
Cameras by mattandkim

16) Robyn – Dancing on My Own
Dancing On My Own by robyn

17) The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition

18) Freelance Whales – Hannah

19) Sleigh Bells – Rill Rill

20) Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – Home

This week I’m adding  a new aspect to the reaping.  While I would love to be able to give you a rating for each album listed, that just wouldn’t be possible, because I rarely have time to listen to all of the albums I will post.  But what I am going to do instead is highlight one of the albums in red to signify my most loved ♥ release of the week.

Lead singer Ryan O’Neil and bassist Dan Perdue of Sleeping At Last have started a new blog that I think is worth checking out.  So far it has just been some ramblings on their time on tour and random bits of whatever that they find interesting.

Paste Magazine has teamed up with the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival to bring us a free music sampler with songs from several artists that will be performing at this year’s festival, including She & Him, Dr. Dog, Blitzen Trapper and many more.  Click here to download your free sampler: 2010 Paste Magazine Bonnaroo Sampler.

20.April.2010

Aqualung

Magnetic North

The Doves

The Places Between (best of…)

Full Album Stream (courtesy of Spinner.com)

Horse Feathers

Thistled Spring  ♥

Kate Nash

My Best Friend Is You

The Radio Dept.

Clinging to a Scheme

Rufus Wainwright

All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu

Willie Nelson

Country Music

Full Album Stream (courtesy of Spinner.com)

Late Night Performances of the Week

Jakob Dylan & Neko Case on Letterman

And with a rare live performance, the Colbert Report is a runner up with the Gorillaz’ “Stylo.”

Of course, it’s all the brainchild of former Blur front man Damon Albarn, a challenging and prolific songwriter, and illustrator Jamie Hewlett. The duo stays busy with an endless roll of side projects, thus Plastic Beach, the group’s newest album, comes a full half-decade after the fluke commercial success of Demon Days.

Plastic Beach is a braver record in every way, especially in its bevy of guest spots. Albarn wipes Snoop Dogg of grit and leaves him alone in a sterile soundscape. He employs the influential mutter of former Velvet Underground singer Lou Reed in a barroom piano jam. Veteran rap troupe De La Soul makes “Superfast Jellyfish” the jam of the spring.

It’s worth noting that many of Albarn’s collaborators are washed up music legends. The word here is “rebirth.” He treats these musicians as actors in his giant production, and Plastic Beach proves him a brilliant director – he rouses unexpectedly great performances from almost all of them.

The secret to Gorillaz lies in this pluralistic approach, and Plastic Beach is its realization. It’s as if the shattered pieces of world culture washed up on a beach, and Albarn, with the help of some friends, was there to reassemble them in his own demented way.

Speaking of pollution, the muse is an imagined island, composed of all the ocean’s floating trash. Plastic Beach is as a concept album should be: strange and messy and full of wit. Hewlett’s stylized version of the future is impossible and idyllic. The main characters aren’t cartoon characters anymore – they’re environments.

The result is a great beached whale of an album, one that was really written for sunshine. Albarn has a knack for breezy, winding melodies, as heard in the title track and “Broken,” the record’s best song. Elsewhere, the charming, carbonated sound of the band’s 2001 debut bubbles to the surface. (“Superfast Jellyfish,” “On Melancholy Hill”)

Still, Albarn wrote more than 70 songs for this record, and some of that blubber remains, sandwiched between distinct pop gems. Mos Def’s contributions to “Stylo” and “Sweepstakes” are especially disappointing – the latter sounds like M.I.A. with the cream filling sucked out. Two other songs relegate the funk-cacophony of Hypnotic Brass Ensemble to musical wallpaper.

Regardless, it’s a thrill to hear Albarn evolve from rock star to curator. He’s become a socially conscious prophet and vital pop musician. Plastic Beach is an undeniable success, especially in timing – I can’t think of a better soundtrack for spring break.

The cold harnesses the mind and hones the senses. We see divisions more clearly: the geometry of a bedside table, the sharp difference of darkness and light, the separation of communal identity and the lone self. In winter, the watercolor smear of summer is gone and the world has suddenly come into focus.

Winter keeps us indoors for long spans, which is hell for restless people. But more time affords longer commitments, like that of listening to a record in its entirety. Here are some frosty nuggets.

Music Has the Right to Children – Boards of Canada

Music Has the Right to Children is a future-music dream city submerged in murky water and subliminal messages. Melodies dissolve just as they reach boiling point. Many sounds are so subtle they hardly exist, so strap on some headphones. Hazy jams like “Aquarius” and “Turquoise Hexagon Sun” loom high, stretching a hip-hop beat and warping it forever past time. If Kubrick made beats…

Kind of Blue – Miles Davis

“All Blues” is the winter song on the jazz record. These alien chord changes don’t ever touch ground, despite heaps of praise. A tense theme for driving home from work at the end of dusk, the song has no peers. Kind of Blue is so unassuming but it demands your attention. This kind of record is extinct; it’s for people that have to wait for things.

Kid A – Radiohead

I remember first listening to all of Kid A in the early morning, on a stretch of highway in Colorado. We passed cranes and incomplete shopping malls, all of it dusted with snow, to the chug of “The National Anthem.” The car coasted around a mountain pass during “In Limbo,” a drugged funhouse mirror. It’s an album, man, and each song is a stream into one frigid reservoir.

Knives Don’t Have Your Back – Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton

Haines sets out on a desolate adventure from Metric, the electric-rock group, with nothing but a husky contralto and jazz in the liner notes. “The first three songs all begin with the same note,” a friend pointed out, and he’s right; this is a mood record. The music of a late winter night should be concentrated, sparse and factual. Haines’ path is sad and beautiful.

Others:

• The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground
• 23 – Blonde Redhead
• The Moon and Antarctica – Modest Mouse
• Sanguine – Julianna Barwick
• Turn On the Bright Lights – Interpol
• Songs of Leonard Cohen – Leonard Cohen
• Demon Dayz – Gorillaz

Gorillaz – Dare (DFA Remix) (removed 2/13/09)

I hope your ears are the gateway to your soul. Ω