5.1.15
The last time I wrote about my recent purchases was way back in February, so here's everything I've bought since then: of Montreal's Aureate Gloom, the Church's Further Deeper, Lupe Fiasco's Tetsuo & Youth, Iron & Wine's Archive Series Volume No. 1, Modest Mouse's Strangers to Ourselves, the Go! Team's The Scene Between, Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell, Death Cab for Cutie's Kintsugi, Waxahatchee's Ivy Tripp, Wire's Wire, Built to Spill's Untethered Moon, Passion Pit's Kindred, and Blur's The Magic Whip.

That's quite a lineup of artists, and I've already written about many of these in previous posts, but I have to say that the new Waxahatchee record is probably my favorite of this bunch, and Kendrick Lamar's is my least favorite (and the biggest disappointment after the incredible good kid, m.A.A.d city).

5.4.15
Jens Lekman, "Postcard #18":

The most album-ready track so far, and possibly my favorite of this song-a-week series. There's no doubt that us fans are going to end up with at least one album's worth of pretty fully-formed new songs from this project, and as we get closer to the halfway point, it seems more and more likely that he's actually going to complete a full year's worth of tracks.

5.11.15
Jens Lekman, "Postcard #19":

After last week's more fully-produced effort, this is probably the most spare and stripped-down effort of this series, with just Jens and his acoustic guitar sounding like he's playing into a single microphone that's closer to the guitar than it is to his voice. A classic demo track, but one that I could see developing into an album-worthy song when it's fully fleshed out.

5.12.15
Wire's latest release, a self-titled album (which is somewhat unbelievable given their deep catalog and their habit of periodically reinventing themselves) continues their streak of very solid, very listenable records. But as with many of their recent releases, it is a good record, and not a great record, and this one does not seem to have the benefit of even one killer song.

Don't get me wrong——I become a bigger fan of this band with each passing album, and I wonder what the critical response (including my own) would be if they were a new band releasing these records and a band like Wire had never existed before. But the fact is that Wire does exist, and they have a serious legacy to live up to given that they are now only a couple of years away from celebrating the 40th anniversary of their era-defining debut, Pink Flag.

They don't do any damage to their legacy with albums like Wire, but neither do they build on it in any significant way. But after four decades of being one of the most consistent bands in terms of quality output, and being occasionally radically innovative, maybe that's just too much to ask.

5.13.15
Amazon's $5 MP3 selections. Get them soon——they might switch to a new set in a couple of days.

Must-haves: the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, the Cure's Disintegration, Rage Against the Machine's The Battle of Los Angeles, Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, and Fiona Apple's When the Pawn.

Recommended: Social Distortion's Social Distortion, the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mother's Milk, and Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones.

I might buy: Joy Division's Closer, (which I unexplainably don't have in my digital music collection), and the Radical Dads' Universal Coolers.

Normally I would have also put Kanye West's Graduation in the must-haves category, but apparently this sale only includes the edited version. So, you know, fuck that.

5.14.15
After yet another brand-new, spotless CD that won't rip properly, doesn't come with a digial copy as part of Amazon's Auto-Rip program, and didn't match with iTunes Match (giving me another way to download a clean digital copy of each track), I think I might finally be convincing myself to move away from buying physical CDs to buying exclusively digital from now on.

I know, I know, most people, even those in my age group, moved to this model years ago, and many have now moved on to exclusively using streaming services, but I still want to feel some sense of ownership of the music I like, and I also don't think the current streaming models adequately compensate the artists for their work.

So yes, I'm finally moving into the 21st century, but it's only the early part of that century; maybe in another decade I'll be ready for the world as it exists now.

5.15.15
I've had a few weeks to sit with Death Cab for Cutie's Kintsugi, and while there are some good songs on here (like "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" and opening track "No Room in Frame"), it's probably my least favorite Death Cab album yet——there's just too much that's merely ordinary, and for a band that has made a career of elevating the ordinary into something more than you would expect, this is a disappointment.

The real test for the future of the band will come on their next release——founding member Chris Walla, who played guitar and did much of the production work over the band's career, announced that he was leaving the band during the recording of the album, although he stayed to finish the recording process. It remains to be seen just how his absence will affect the band, especially during the recording process, where he always played a big role.

Frontman and main songwriter Ben Gibbard has proven that he doesn't necessarily need Walla to make good albums, but it's possible that he does need some sort of strong collaborator, as his only true solo album was all but unlistenable for me. It seems like the band intends to move forward as a trio and not attempt to replace Walla (although I'm sure they'll bring along another guitarist or two for touring), but I'm wondering if adding a new fourth member could be exactly what they need to kickstart Gibbard's creative juices and help steer the band across this new uncharted sea.

5.18.15
Jens Lekman, "Postcard #20":

Even more stripped down and naked than last week's, with just Jens' plaintive voice hovering on the edge of a whisper. Also his most confessional and intimate of this series so far. Not really something you're going to put on repeat listens as a song, but another welcome glimpse into the meditative part of Jens' mind.

5.19.15
I'm hlying out for a conference tomorrow, so no posts for a while. I usually listen to music when I'm on the plane, and my two favorite serendipitous moments both happend while flying into or out of Chicago (a city I love but which I haven't been to in years).

The first was as I was flying into Chicago at night, and as we approached, Liz Phair's "Stratford-On-Guy", which opens with the line "I was flying into Chicago at night". It was so beautiful.

The second was on an entirely different trip as I was flying out of the city, and Sufjan Stevens' "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" came on. Some might think it might have been slightly more apropos to have "Chicago" from the same album show up at that time, but to me, "Come On" is actually a better representation of the Chicago I love (the city is mentioned by name).

Anyway. I'm flying to Dalls this time, I think there are approximately zero songs in my nearly 25,000 song library about that city, so no chance of another serendipitous shuffle play on this trip.

5.26.15
Jens Lekman, "Postcard #21":

The third track in a row that is very spare and minimalist in the longstanding tradition of demo recordings. A nice little song fragment that could be the germ of a song, or at least the germ of a bridge for another song.

5.27.15
Tim Kasher's the Good Life (which used to be his electronic side project to his main band, Cursive, but which has become kind of its own thing without a specific genre attached) announced a new album, Everybody's Coming Down, and shared a track from that record called "Everybody":

Kasher hasn't released anything under the Good Life label since 2007, so I'm curious to see if there's a reason he chose to revive the brand, especially since two of his three most recent releases have been under his own name instead of either the Cursive or Good Life banners (in the 2000s, he would release an average of an album a year, and would alternate between the two bands).

My hope was that this would be a return to some of the quirky electronica of the Good Life's first two records, Novena on a Nocturn and especially Black Out, two of my favorite records from Kasher's catalog. But this single doesn't point in that direction, and in fact it doesn't sound like any Good Life album that has come before it.

Unfortunately, what it most sounds like is a bad Weezer immitator from the mid-90s. I've learned from experience that that, for better or worse, the lead singles from Kasher's records don't necessarily tell you a lot about the rest of the album, so I'm holding out some hope that this will be a stylistic variation that won't define the rest of the record.

There's nothing wrong with the song itself, and if Weezer had never existed, I probably wouldn't mind it so much. But at this point, we've all had quite enough of Weezer, haven't we?

5.28.15
New Amazon $5 MP3 selections:

Must-haves: Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Late Registration, and The College Dropout, the Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and V.U., and U2's The Unforgettable Fire.

Recommended: Gorillaz' Plastic Beach, Radiohead's The Bends, Tom Waits' Rain Dogs, U2's Achtung Baby, Passion Pit's Gossamer, Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Joe Jackson's Look Sharp!, PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, INXS' Kick, Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedos, and Soundgarden's Louder Then Love.

I might buy: Courtney Barnett's Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit.

5.29.15
While we continue to wait for Chance the Rapper to follow up his giveaway debut Acid Rap with his first official commercial release, he's decided to give us another free album, Surf, from his side project with Donnie Trumpet called the Social Experiment. Go here to grab it as a free download from iTunes.