12.1.11
I can't decide how much I like the new Tom Waits, Bad As Me. There's nothing wrong with it at all, and if he had released this album six records ago, it might be one of my favorites. But he's become such an expert at writing Tom Waits songs that it's no longer easy to tell whether new material is really interesting or whether he's in a rut. Being so consistently good at something isn't always a blessing; when your weakest material is at worst a B+, it compresses the grading scale and makes all the A's seem relatively less impressive.

12.2.11
My son has always seemed more interested in music than other babies (he's almost 17 months old now), and so a few nights a week before bedtime I'll let him sit on my lap while I'm at my desk and I'll play him different kinds of music to see what he reacts to. One of his recent favorites: "Freeze Frame" by the J. Geils Band. He heard it in a commercial, so I sought it out on iTunes in our next listening session, and he went completely crazy for it.

He knows when the chorus is coming, and since that's his favorite part, he gets really excited when he hears the transition that precedes every chorus. The problem is that the first time they play this, they sink back into another verse, and he is visibly deflated and a little confused every time that happens. Of course, when it shows up the next time, it makes him even more excited to hear it, so I guess it has its intended effect.

I've been letting him listen to the full track on Spotify, but given how often we listen, I should probably just buy it on iTunes——that way we'd have it for car trips, etc. But for now, Spotify will do.

12.5.11
I've had some time to digest the new Surfer Blood EP, Tarot Classics, and it's a solid release, with not a weak track on it. There's nothing as compelling as tracks like "Floating Vibes" or "Anchorage" from their debut album, but every song comes close to greatness and holds your attention on multiple listens. If their sophomore effort is as consistently good as this EP, I can see it ending up on my best of 2012 list.

12.6.11
Girls just aren't doing it for me. I resisted their first album, Album, but the critical response to the follow up, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, was overwhelming, and I decided to give it a try. And I was decidely underwhelmed. I've listened to it more than I ever wanted to, just to make sure, but it's not growing on me at all——if anything, I get more disappointed the more I hear it.

12.7.11
I don't reckon there's really anything else coming out this year that I'm going to buy. Let's see if I can work on my year end lists before February for once...

12.8.11
St. Vincent's Strange Mercy seems destined to be a contender for my top 10 albums list this year, and I imagine that when I eventually pick up her earlier records (which I definitely will), they will end up on the top 10 lists or mixtapes or whatever I do to look back on those years a decade from now.

I still haven't figured out if the middle part of the record is just okay or if it's actually the best stuff on the album, but the closer, "Year of the Tiger", is definitely a killer. In fact, until I change my mind about the title track, I'm going to say that this song should have been the title track, but it's definitely the most compelling for me.

12.9.11
A friend of mine recently gifted a custom mix of Chameleons tracks to me through iTunes, and I've been absorbing them over the past few days. I definitely know the name of this band, but somehow I never ended up owning or even listening to anything by them, even though I had several people at different points in my life recommend them to me.

So far, I like it pretty well, although it is a bit of a game of spot the influence. There's definitely some early Cure, and what I imagine Peter Murphy's solo stuff should have sounded like immediately on exiting Bauhaus——maybe if he had joined Joy Division after they lost Ian Curtis but before they became New Order (I know those timelines don't work out, this is all theoretical). There are also moments when they sound like Julian Cope's early solo material, which I like quite a bit.

I haven't actually called my friend to see what motivated him to suddenly gift this to me——I don't recall us ever talking about this band, although we talk about music quite a bit and have similar tastes——but I'm glad someone forced this band on me. They are a missing piece of the puzzle to my understanding of early to mid 80s British postpunk.

12.12.11
The Wave Pictures' "I Love You Like a Madman" might be the perfect pop song. Three minutes on the dot, and pure bliss the whole way through. There's almost no point in rock history where this song wouldn't have been a reasonable part of the landscape.

12.13.11
On the fence about the new Black Keys. I've been listening to them for years, and I really liked their last one, Brothers, but I'm not that excited about what I've heard from El Camino so far, plus they've given some really douche-y interviews that have been irritating me (I mean, license your music for cash if you want, but don't expect extra credit because you didn't license it to a couple of things).

I don't know. If I could get it for $5, I would probably get it, but I think I'm going to wait a little longer before ordering the physical media at full price.

12.14.11
Some good stuff on Amazon's monthly selection of 100 $5 MP3 albums. The stuff I wouldn't skip if you don't already own it: the Tune-Yards' whokill, Radiohead's Kid A, Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and the Smiths' The Queen Is Dead. There are a quite a few other decent albums on here as well, including Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News, R.E.M.'s Green, Eleanor Friedberger's Last Summer, Beck's Odelay, and Green Day's Insomniac. And if you're in a holiday kind of mood, there's a collection of 100 Classic Christmas Songs, which is an especially good deal at a nickel apiece.

As for me, I'm considering Wye Oak's Civilian, Youth Lagoon's Year of Hibernation, the War on Drugs' Slave Ambient, and Dum Dum Girls' I Will Be. All of them have gotten pretty decent reviews, and although I've listened to samples, none of them has yet to grip me enough to make me want to pay full price. $5 might be just low enough to get me to bite and give these a serious listen.

12.15.11
New stuff from of Montreal——a four minute YouTube post that has samples of some (all?) of the tracks from their upcoming album Paralytic Stalks:

Some of the stuff on here really excites me, and some makes me a bit anxious, but either way, I'm really looking forward to this record. Now that Kevin Barnes seems to have gotten it out of his head that he can become a major commercial success, I think we're in for a much more interesting ride than False Priest.

12.16.11
Another video today, this time "Born to Lose", the first single from Sleigh Bells' sophomore album, Reign of Terror:

Their 2010 debut, Treats, was one of my favorites that year, and I've been dying to see what they'd do for a follow up. This sure sounds like a good start to me.

12.19.11
I don't get this whole mixtape strategy. Three albums that are showing up on most year-end best-of lists, Frank Ocean's Nostalgia, Ultra. the Weeknd's House of Balloons, and Danny Brown's XXX, are both free downloads, and they're both fully formed records, not tossed off sessions that are appropriate as buzz-building freebies. What am I missing about this business model?

12.20.11
"I Melt With You" is a great, great song whose legacy has been tarnished by its use in advertising. It broke my heart the first time I heard it used in an ad, years and years ago for Burger King, and it breaks my heart now in its most recent appropriation for Hershey's, and it broke my heart every other time I heard it used to sell something between those two. Are we as a culture completely incapable of leaving some things alone, or does everything beautiful have to have a product tie-in now?

12.21.11
So I didn't get my best-of lists for 2011 posted by the end of the year, as usual, but I'm going to get to those before the end of January for once. See you next year.