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Music of the Week

This week in music – January 4th – 11th 2011

I had an interesting week in music this last week.

I started the week taking advantage of Amazon’s $5.00 MP3 albums and picked up two celebrated releases from Minneapolis bands:

  • Gayngs – Relayted: This new Minneapolis 23 member  supergroup, featuring members of Bon Iver, Solid Gold and rapper P.O.S, creates a unique sound that is guaranteed to mellow you out.  Perfect msuic to play in the background while cooking or reading, Gayngs will relax and soothe you.
  • Trampled by Turtles – Palomino: I’ve said it a few times before, but especially after Mumford and Sons exploded on the scene, is that indie rock needs more banjos and fiddles.  Trampled by Turtles (along with Carolina Chocolate Drop) definitely filled that quota in 2010.  Filled with catchy alt-country hooks, Palomino will get your foot tapping and, with songs averaging right around 3 minutes, you’ll be pressing play to listen to it again before you know it.

I hit up Discland on Saturday.  It’s been close to 6 months since I’ve been there and their used vinyl selection keeps on growing.  My main goal was to pick up some used Van Halen (which is a story for another time) and the trip was successful.

I was able to pick up Van Halen II, Women and Children First and Diver Down, completing my collection of David Lee Roth era Van Halen.  They also had a surprising amount of pop – usually all I find is 70s and 80s rock when visiting used record stores and, while I’m not a huge Madonna fan, I found myself buying Madonna’s True Blue and Like a Prayer albums.  Both albums take me back to my childhood and I gave them a spin on Sunday and they’re both great pop albums.  Lastly, I went back to my hair band roots, and picked up White Lion’s Pride as the last used album.  Discland also had a rare copy of Alejandro Escovedo’s 2001 re-issue, A Man Under the Influence.  One of 1000 vinyl copies pressed, I snatched that up.  His 2008 album, Real Animals, was one of my favorite albums of the year, and 2010’s Street Songs of Love was a solid release, though it didn’t crack my top 10.

  • Polyvinyl emailed me that my Deerhoof vs. Evil pre-order shipped on Friday and the MP3s were available for download.  I’ve given that a couple listens and I’ll put a review up once the vinyl comes.
  • Social Distortion’s Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes comes out next Tuesday, January 18th, and I pre-ordered one of 1000 yellow vinyl copies.  They have yellow or red available.  I would have preferred the red, but yellow was limited to 1000 and red was limited to 2500.  I’m a sucker for “rare” and limited editions.  The long time punk rockers are also running a contest on their website – the more people who stream their new album, the lower the price will be in the Amazon MP3 store.  I’ll definitely be giving that a listen tomorrow.  I also plan to review the album once it arrives.

I closed out the week today with another Minneapolis band, Tapes ‘N Tapes, new release, Outside.  My friend and former co-worker Steve reviews the album here, and I would agree with him.  It’s a solid B.  Outside is available for only $3.99 at Amazon for a few more hours.

Vinyl (R)Evolution Music of the Week: June 29th

It’s hard to top the purchases I made last week, which included a used copy of Prince’s Purple Rain and the new albums by The Black Keys and Broken Bells, but this week saw a couple of good albums released.

I received of Montreal’s 12″ single The Past is a Grotesque Animal, which may be the most beautiful album I’ve ever purchased. (More on it here). This was the only vinyl purchase of the week and I bought two digital albums.

On the local front, Cloud Cult released Light Chasers on their own Earthology Records and is their eighth studio album. From the email release:

…this latest full-length draws most of it’s inspiration from the joy (and worries) of rebirth – Craig (singer/songwriter) and Connie (live painter) welcomed a healthy baby boy into their lives this past fall – after a long grieving process of the loss of their first son Kaiden. Light Chasers is a concept album that interweaves stories focused on the exploration of the mysteries of the universe, life and death. It’s a 56 minute journey with no audio breaks that explores love and loss and searches for the light at the end of the tunnel. It also lends itself beautifully into Cloud Cult’s vision that albums should be seen as a whole versus the modern trend of focusing on singles.

I love the fact they focus on the whole album experience – and it shows on this album. It’s just as good as their prior two releases and is a bit more mellow. The songs seamlessly flow together (make sure you can play it back using gapless playback!) and the track titles are perfectly named. I’ll always remember Cloud Cult as it was the first MP3 album I ever bought using Amazon’s MP3 service when it first launched. If you get a chance to see them live, don’t miss it – they combine their music with a visual artist on stage and it’s a concert experience you’ve never seen before. The album is available everywhere September 14th or you can buy it digitally now directly from Cloud Cult here.

My favorite album I bought, though, is Alejandro Escovedo’s latest, Street Songs of Love. One genre of music you’ll never find me reviewing on this blog is country music – but I love what they call “alt-country” with artists such as Ryan Adams, The Jayhawks, Wilco, Drive By Truckers, and yes, Alejandro Escovedo.

You may know him better through his progeny – his son Pete plays with Carlos Santana and his daughter is Sheila E, but Alejandro Escovedo has had a long music career that started with punk rock and is still going strong.

It was his last album, 2008’s Real Animals, that introduced me to him, and if you like that album, you will love this album. Street Songs of Love is slightly more uptempo than Real Animals and starts with a bang with the first track, Anchor. Other songs of note are Down in the Bowery, with Hunter, the lead singer from Mott the Hoople; Fall Apart With You is a wonderful ballad that will stay with you for days; Bruce Springsteen guests on Faith; and the album ends with a perfect denouement, the instrumental Fort Worth Blue.

I was ecstatic when Amazon lowered the MP3 price from $10.49 to $7.99 on Wednesday and it’s been worth every penny. You can listen to the whole album as a stream on Spinner.