6.1.11
Art Brut, I still love you. But I don't know if I'm going to buy this new record of yours...

6.2.11
After looking at a bunch of other potential purchases, all I ended up buying from Amazon's $5 MP3 album megasale last month were two early Dinosaur Jr. albums, Bug and You're Living All Over Me, and Superchunk's most recent, Majesty Shredding. Bug is easily my favorite——I like Living, too, but it's going to take a bit more time, and while the Superchunk is good, it's pretty standard issue Superchunk.

6.3.11
Death Cab for Cutie's Codes and Keys got here yesterday, and contrary to every review I've read so far, this is not the second Postal Service album. In fact, there really aren't that many synths and electronic sounds at all——the guitar is still at the heart of this album's sounds. Yes, the tone is more laconic and less intense than Narrow Stairs, but this is still a pretty solid Death Cab album, and "Underneath The Sycamore" sounds more like something from their first couple of albums than anything they've recorded in years.

This probably won't end up ranking among my favorite records of theirs, even though there are some great tracks, but it will end up a respectable addition to their catalogue.

6.6.11
Finally finished my Robyn Hitchcock project of rating all of his songs. Didn't find a whole lot in there to rate at 4 or more stars that I hadn't already rated, but it was interesting to listen to all the music he's produced in the past 30 years in chronological order. He really hit his peak for me with Globe of Frogs and Queen Elvis, which also happen to be the first two albums of his that I owned, but his more recent work, while not as distinctive, is still pretty consistently good.

6.7.11
In the absence of actual new releases, I'm considering acquiring the earlier releases from three bands who have released some of my favorite records so far this year: Cloud Nothings, Tune-Yards, and the Wave Pictures. I'm not even sure there's anything coming out this entire month that I want to buy, and the new May releases I bought were mostly dissatisfying, so I'm itching for some new stuff.

6.8.11
Apple's iCloud and iTunes Match services could be pretty interesting, but I don't think I'm ready to render a verdict yet given the relative paucity of information about how they'll work in the real world. I can say, however, that depending on how some of the things they're talking about play out when they actually launch the service, I'd seriously consider paying $25 a year for it based on what they've revealed so far, especially given how the iTunes Match service stacks up against the current cloud locker services from Amazon and Google.

6.9.11
"Nobody's Tar, Nobody's Feathers", the fourth track from 50 Foot Wave's upcoming album, is up on their Cash Music site now. I've been enjoying these songs, but I really can't wait to hear the new material Kristin Hersh has been recorded for Throwing Muses.

6.10.11
I think Panda Bear's Tomboy is now officially a lost cause for me. The weird thing is that it doesn't really sound that much different than I expected, but for the first time in a long time, I'd bored with that sound. I don't know if this is a turning point for me with Animal Collective and their related projects or if the full band effort will yield new insights, but I'm surprised that not a single song from this record has grown on me yet.

6.13.11
I received a couple of things in the mail from England recently, the first the phsyical copy of Radiohead's King of Limbs, and the second the first volume of Los Campesinos' self-published zine, Heat Rash.

I was hoping that the King of Limbs physical release would contain some bonus tracks like the In Rainbows physical release did, but I knew long before I received it that it would not based on web reports from people who got theirs before I did. Buying the physical copy did, however, entitle me to two tracks that the band recorded as part of the King of Limbs sessions and released for Record Store Day and didn't sell anywhere else. Which would have been a lot cooler if I liked this album, which I didn't really. If I had liked it, I probably would have opened the sealed package and leafed through all the artwork, etc., but since I'm not that keen on it, I decided to leave it sealed up and in a more collectible state, since that's basically all it means to me at this point.

I ordered Heat Rash mostly because each issue comes with a 7 inch with two songs that are unreleased elsewhere, along with a download code for MP3 versions for folks like me who haven't owned a record player in more than 20 years. The songs are about what you'd expect——decent for b-sides, and certainly not worthy of album status, but the zine itself turned out to be pretty interesting. It contains articles from each band member, including track-by-track notes from frontman Gavin about their most recent album, Romance Is Boring, and a short essay by Neil Gaiman. I'm curious if the band will be able to keep up with four issues a year of this given their recording and touring schedule (the first issue was way late), but I'm excited it's actually out there, and although it might end up being once or twice a year instead of quarterly, I know the issues will come eventually.

6.14.11
I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that the voice on the Tune-Yards' whokill belongs to 1) a woman and 2) in her 20s. But man, I love that record more and more every day.

6.15.11
When I first downloaded Dinosaur Jr.'s Living All Over Me and Bug, Bug was my clear, easy favorite. The material on Living All Over Me was darker, more claustrophobic, and more violent than the kind of angst I was used to from J Mascis' later work, and although I could appreciate the importance of the record in terms of the band's development, it just didn't resonate with me the way Bug did.

But now, a month later, I don't know if I'm in a more receptive place or if I've heard something that I missed the first time around, but Living All Over Me is taking its place as one of the strongest entries in the Dinosaur Jr. catalog. I mean, they're both good albums, and an absolute bargain at $5 each through an Amazon special, but on repeated listens I've found some dark humor in Living All Over Me that wasn't immediately apparent, and it's given the record a bit more depth and charm for me.

6.16.11
I just finished reading No Certainty Attached: Steve Kilbey and The Church, a biography of Church frontman Steve Kilbey that also includes significant behind-the-scenes insight into the history of the band. I heard about this from other fans when I attended a Church concert earlier this year, and although at the time I wasn't that interested in tracking the book down, after that show I revisited all of my Church records and got much more interested in the band (it was one of the best live performances I've ever seen, and it was completely unexpected coming from a band whose music I hadn't purchased in more than a decade despite regular releases).

It was written by a man named Robert Dean Lurie, a musician, longtime Church fan, and, I gather, a graduate of a writing program. This is his first and so far only published work, and it shows: the writing isn't always as strong as it could be, and it never really soars. And while I appreciate the unique perspective that a fan of the band brings to their story, his personal narrative intrudes far too often, and makes him a larger part of the story than he deserves to be.

So I can't say that I'd recommend this book to anyone but a Church fan; as a rock and roll biography, it doesn't transcend the source material the way that, say, Our Band Could Be Your Life does (that book is still a compelling read whether or not you are familiar with the music of the bands being chronicled; Lurie's book is not). But it certainly satisfied my urge to know more about the band after their astonishing live performance. Next step: buying some of the band's post-millenial material. I've come very close to pulling the trigger on two or three albums, but haven't convinced myself completely yet that it's going to be worth the time and money.

6.17.11
Robyn Hitchcock albums have, somewhat miraculously, simply appeared in the last few years with little to no fanfare to herald their arrival; I tend to find out about them after seeing a review somewhere. I thought maybe I have moved beyond these surprise attacks when I subscribed to the email list of his current American record company, Yep Roc, but apparently not: last just yesterday I discovered that Hitchcock released a new album in May called Tromsø, Kaptein.

The reason I hadn't heard about it from Yep Roc was because it wasn't released by Yep Roc; instead, the album was released by a small Norwegian label, in keeping with the album's Norwegian theme, and it is only available outside Norway by ordering directly from Robyn's site. Luckily, ordering the CD version gets you a link to download the entire album while you wait for your physical copy, a trick I think Hitchcock learned from Yep Roc, and one that someone like me, who has both an antiquated taste for physical media and a 21st century desire for immediate gratification, appreciates enormously.

It's easy at first to think of this record as a companion piece to his album Goodnight Oslo, another record that explicitly references Norway. He's done this sort of thing before——A Star for Bram clearly came out of the same sessions as Jewels for Sophia, and Olé! Tarantula is the forbearer of Sex, Food, Death, and ... Tarantulas! (both sets of albums also share very similar artwork)——and although it's been a couple of years and a non-related major release (Propeller Time) since Goodnight Oslo, a longtime fan would be forgiven for assuming that these releases were linked. There's even a Norwegian language version of "Goodnight Oslo" that closes out the record.

But that turns out to be a red herring; this is a genuinely new album (despite two covers of songs from earlier in his career), recorded in Norway and explicitly about that country, and although I've only listened to it a couple of times, I think this could turn out to be his best record in years. I recently went back and listened to/rated every song in my collection from Robyn Hitchcock (17 hours worth of material), and although recent releases are definitely not on par with this strongest late 80s work, I was surprised at the consistency of the songwriting and the beauty of the production work. Those two elements are definitely present here, but there's a laconic jauntiness that pervades the entire album and gives it a bent towards the off-kilter pop on which he built his reputation.

6.20.11
It's an odd group of records I'd recommend purchasing from Amazon's monthly 100 MP3 albums for $5 special: Kanye West's Graduation, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (it's the 40th anniversary stereo edition, so not for purists, but if you're a purist then you already own this in some other format), Titus Andronicus' The Monitor, the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head, and Beck's Mellow Gold.

Radiohead's The Bends isn't a bad buy at $5, and if you've been holding off on buying the new Death Cab for Cutie, it's also available for $5 until the end of the month. But other than those, there aren't too many midlevel albums on the list, and there's nothing new that I'm planning to pick up myself. Kind of an average month, but that's to be expected the month after one of their massive 1500 album blowouts like we had in May.

6.21.11
I couldn't convince my wife to take our son to his first concert at Merriweather Post Pavillion to see the Decemberists, one of her favorite bands, earlier this month, and we're going to be out of town when Animal Collective plays in July. But the National are coming in August with Yo La Tengo, and I'm hoping I can talk her into that one.

It will still probably run later than she'd like, though. I really wish they had more shows like the one we saw a few years ago with Belle & Sebastian, Broken Social Scene, and Ted Leo——I remember this show starting in the early afternoon on a Saturday and wrapping up before it got dark, which would be a perfect timeframe for a child. I know that this is where he will see his first rock music peformance, because of the lawn seating that is also perfect for kids (they can move around a bit, and you're far enough from the stage that the noise levels aren't a concern), but I just don't know for sure when that will happen.

6.22.11
I've never much cared for Lady Gaga——I lived through the 80s, so I saw version 1.0, Madonna, and although Gaga elevates what Madonna was doing then and is much more in control of every aspect of her image, she also comes off as a lot more distant and sterile than Madonna, who showed a genuine willingness to bare everything as an artist (even literally), and to take chances with her popularity that really were risky given the times.

But I might be softening a bit on Gaga now——I mean, I don't ever expect that I'll like her music (I similarly never cared for Madonna's), but I might be able to like her as a person and as a public figure. For the first time, I'm seeing elements of her stage persona feel very real and genuine, especially in regards to her relationship with her fans. And while her latest single, "Born This Way", which also serves as the title track for her new album, might be her most blatant ripoff of Madonna's sound ever (I hear strong elements of both "Vogue" and "Express Yourself"), tell me you can watch this girl's solo piano rendition of the track without understanding why she appeals to so many people. If that had any effect on you at all, poke around YouTube a bit more to find footage of Lady Gaga talking to the girl, Maria Aragon, on a radio show, and then another video of Maria performing the song with Lady Gaga at one of Gaga's concerts.

I just can't see many pop stars at Gaga's level inviting a kid onstage to perform one of their signature songs with them; as someone who is quickly becoming a 21st century icon whose public profile is rivaled only by someone like Kanye West (a songwriting genius whose work I can get behind), Lady Gaga's devotion to her fan base seems sincere, and the story of how she took this girl from a YouTube video to an arena stage is just one example of her real desire to connect with the fans who support her.

Discovering this little story didn't really make me like Gaga's music more (although I sure do like Maria Aragon's version of "Born This Way"), but I like her a lot better as a person now. I know it's entirely possible that I'm just a sucker who's falling for another carefully crafted PR stunt from Gaga, but I don't think so. To the extent that someone as protective of her true self as Gaga seems to be can be real when dealing with the public, this felt very real to me.

6.23.11
I convinced a friend of mine to give Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea a listen, and while he's not completely sold on it yet (I took a little while to warm up to it as well, and there are still a couple of tracks that I don't much care for), I think he'll come around eventually. Because, you know, it's one of the best albums of all time ever. If he does end up loving it as much as I hope he will, I think I deserve a little karmic credit for bringing it into his life——it's one of those records that, when you finally get what it's about, changes you forever.

6.24.11
Someone talk me out of buying Wu Lyf's Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, quick. Nothing new has come out in a while and I'm more susceptible to purchases that maybe I wouldn't make otherwise. The samples I've heard so far sound a little like early Modest Mouse, and that's pretty hard for me to resist, but I have a feeling this comparison won't hold up favorably over the course of a whole album.

6.27.11
New Wilco track, "I Might", is up on Stereogum. Not really sure of what to think of this one, but after a couple of mediocre albums where they tried to stay very confined within the Wilco sound, it at least sounds like they're taking a few chances. It's still hard for me to think the album that this single comes from is going to approach the heyday of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or A Ghost Is Born (which I like more and more every year), but it's different, and at this point, at least different has a chance of being more interesting.

6.28.11
A couple of days ago we started brushing our son's teeth using a baby toothbrush, which is a little rubber thing that fits over your fingertip that has soft bristles on the end. We don't really let him watch tv yet, so to get him to tolerate this activity, we've been sitting him in front of my computer and playing him of Montreal's contribution to the Yo Gabba Gabba soundtrack, "Brush Brush Brush", on YouTube (I would embed it, but for some reason embedding has been disabled on this clip). And yes, it's a song about brushing your teeth, and it's pretty catchy. Throw in the wacky Yo Gabba Gabba animation, and we're hoping that this video will make him look forward to us rooting around in his mouth every night.

6.29.11
I'll give it to Jay-Z that he was once the "Best Rapper Alive", but it would be hard for him to make that claim today. Listening to his verse on Kanye West's "Monster", not only is it ovbiously the weakest, it almost derails the song before Nicki Minaj comes in to rescue it and blow everyone else out of the water.

Since Kanye just made what might be simultaneously the most interesting hip hop record in history and the best record so far this century, it's not a bad idea for Jay-Z to team with him for the upcoming Watch the Throne. But I will be curious to see whether this will restore some of his past luster or be a final crowning achievement to a storied career.

6.30.11
I'm seeing an old friend this weekend who I used to make real mixtapes for, and at her request I'm making her a few new ones for her on CD. I'm still tinkering with them, but I fussing over them for much longer probably isn't going to make them a lot better——whatever skill I once had for making mixtapes with an overarching narrative theme is compelely gone now. I've given up on going for that kind of cohesion and instead I'm just trying to put together a bunch of songs that I really like in an order that makes them listenable as a group.