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Author Topic: 2015 New Releases  (Read 27552 times)
Lee Marshall
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« Reply #25 on: January 18, 2015, 07:51:40 AM »

Sitting here typing away as I listen to the 'new' Yusuf [Cat Stevens] album.  Not until the 4th song...You Are My Sunshine...yes the one we all know...does Yusuf even sound remotely like Cat.  So far the album is well done.  Sounds good.  But if you played me any of the first 3 songs, told me that I knew the artist really, Really  WELL...that I owned at least 6 or 7 of his albums and had to GUESS who it is...I never would have got it.  No chance.

It's not that his voice went through the HUGE change that Brian's did...but the whole style of phrasing he employed in the 60s and 70s is almost all gone.  It's as if he hasn't been exercising it much.  It's weak.  True but weak.
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"Add Some...Music...To Your Day.  I do.  It's the only way to fly.  Well...what was I gonna put here?  An apple a day keeps the doctor away?  Hum me a few bars."   Lee Marshall [2014]

Donald  TRUMP!  ...  Is TOAST.  "What a disaster."  "Overrated?"... ... ..."BIG LEAGUE."  "Lots of people are saying it"  "I will tell you that."   Collusion, Money Laundering, Treason.   B'Bye Dirty Donnie!!!  Adios!!!  Bon Voyage!!!  Toodles!!!  Move yourself...SPANKY!!!  Jail awaits.  It's NO "Witch Hunt". There IS Collusion...and worse.  The Russian Mafia!!  Conspiracies!!  Fraud!!  This racist is goin' down...and soon.  Good Riddance.  And take the kids.
the captain
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« Reply #26 on: January 18, 2015, 07:53:10 AM »

I started listening to the Panda Bear album the other day, but time constraints kept me to just a few of the first songs. I'll get back to it. Probably.

(Work is being an asshole. If it didn't pay my bills, I'd punch it in the face. Well, if it didn't pay my bills and if it had a face, I'd punch it in the face.)
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« Reply #27 on: January 19, 2015, 09:54:41 AM »

You can hear another song from Bob's upcoming album on NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2015/01/19/377744951/song-premiere-bob-dylan-stay-with-me. I like it.



Also, Tame Impala is supposed to release a new album this year.
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Ron Burns
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« Reply #28 on: January 19, 2015, 12:15:20 PM »

kljlk
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Summertime Blooz
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« Reply #29 on: March 04, 2015, 08:14:52 AM »

Of Montreal's 'Aureate Gloom' turned out a terrible disappointment after their last excellent album.

Some cool news though:
New Paul Weller album 'Saturns Pattern' on May 11th. The single White Sky is already on You Tube for your consideration. I will always buy a new Weller release, but this song is uninspired Black Keys Distorto-Rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vARCtbWH-cE

Even more exciting, I just discovered that a new Blur album 'The Magic Whip' comes out April 27th.  The album is a full-blown reunion with Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, and producer Stephen Street (their first together in 16 years). The single 'Go Out' is on You Tube now. It's kind of a low-key return, but I like it well enough with Coxon contributing some fine guitar noise to an otherwise simple song. 2015 is shaping up very nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp1ks7PTzng

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« Reply #30 on: March 16, 2015, 02:13:57 PM »



I bought this album recently and finally listened to it. They go for this big, kaleidoscopic, early 80s post-punk thing and I think it's great. If you like that sort of thing, check it out.


Also, new Kendrick Lamar album comes out next week. I didn't buy his last album, but I'mma try to get this one - seems really good. Here's some songs from that:

"i" - funky, 70s-type thing going on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aShfolR6w8

"The Blacker the Berry" - some serious commentary on racism, and his own hypocrisy in the matter (no, it's not that he's a racist):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AhXSoKa8xw
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Lowbacca
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« Reply #31 on: March 16, 2015, 02:24:03 PM »

Sitting here typing away as I listen to the 'new' Yusuf [Cat Stevens] album.  Not until the 4th song...You Are My Sunshine...yes the one we all know...does Yusuf even sound remotely like Cat.  So far the album is well done.  Sounds good.  [...]
I really liked the new Yusuf LP! Only listened to it once or twice, though. Thanks for the reminder, I'll put it on later tonight.
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Lowbacca
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« Reply #32 on: April 02, 2015, 02:43:29 PM »

WOW.... :

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the captain
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« Reply #33 on: April 02, 2015, 04:04:09 PM »

I've had it on quietly in the background at work this week a few times, but haven't been able to get a feel for it yet based on that: too quiet an album to be on quietly while I'm doing whatever dumb sh*t I'm doing for money. One of these days I need to listen at home, ideally before next week when I get BW and get obsessed with that.
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« Reply #34 on: April 02, 2015, 04:26:34 PM »

I heard a stream of it, it's really pretty but I can't decide if I need more than 3 Stevens albums in my collection. I'm economizing anyway so'll defer the decision till I've got more disposable income.
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« Reply #35 on: April 02, 2015, 04:59:09 PM »

2/3 through the album playing loudly at home, I'll say it's really refreshing. I thought All Delighted People and The Age of Adz were bloated, pretentious, even tedious work. My bias to pop brevity is a part of this, but I've always had a hard time with Sufjan, even in the state-albums. Too much. Trying too hard with too few ideas, dragging them out, oooh now it's on an oboe, whoop-dee-doo. (OK, this is me being a dick.)

Really, though, he's one of those few guys who I think is so gifted but somehow never satisfies me. Not that he has to, or should. I'm just saying, it's frustrating for me to be left mostly cold by someone who I can see could be making stuff I love.

And this time around, I'll say this: it's a lot closer to my preference of what a Sufjan album should be. I may never be a fan of his whisper-singing. But these are good songs, some really great lyrics in spots. And he's showing a lot more confidence by going back to this minimal approach. It's refreshing from a guy who last time around talked about being "beyond songs as a format" or some such thing. Well worth the ten bucks or whatever.
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« Reply #36 on: April 11, 2015, 02:13:26 PM »

Beat the Champ, by the Mountain Goats
Every room held a handful of names over the years: the place peaked at seven people before letting them go one at a time until it was left with two. But when it was the rec room, that room downstairs and to the left, so easily and often converted into a wrestling ring, the squared circle, that's when I liked it best.

The beat-up sofa along the near wall was the middle and top ropes from which our acrobatic tag team moves obliterated the opponent, a snowmobile suit stuffed with clothes, a large teddy bear's head popping out of the collar.

Had we performed such olympian feats thirty years later, evidence to disprove our prowess would be online for anyone's reference. Because we didn't own so much as a VHS camcorder, you'll have to take my word for it.

Our roles varied dramatically; our loyalties were divided. While firmly in AWA territory, by this time the WWF was rising to dominance and Ted Turner brought us the South on standard cable. One match we were the Road Warriors, the next day the Midnight Express … or the Rock and Roll Express. The Powers of Pain. Some pair of the Four Horsemen or a couple of Von Erichs. Personal favorites Superfly Snuka and the Tonga Kid.

What mattered most was diving from those "ropes," graceful and powerful as we saw us, perfectly executing crippling tag-team maneuvers, sometimes literally tearing the head off the poor dummy trying his best to stand in for a British Bulldog, Roddy Piper, or Paul Orndorff.

The stories we enacted, however predictable as they were recycled yet again, well, they were good stories. It wasn't much different from the ones at the church I fled to catch All-Star Wrestling (AWA) or All American Wrestling (WWF). And besides, there was always (in both cases) that small voice asking, "what if it is real?" So I dug in. Just as I can recite basketball players from decades long gone or liner notes from late '80s pop metal cassettes, in those days I was a wrestling encyclopedia. AWA, NWA, WCW, WWF, Mid-South, if it was regularly televised in Minnesota, I absorbed it. I bought magazines. I followed story lines. And I created my own, playing out elaborate tournaments either in the rec room or with GI Joe action figures--not dolls!--in the ring my dad made of plywood and felt, ribbon for ropes.

Wrestling rings, whether on TV filled with professionals or in the rec room filled with brothers and a stuffed snowmobile suit, were a relatively safe place to explore the epic struggles between good and evil, the blurred lines between them, the circumstances that dictate one's place in history. And that kind of exuberance they make possible, I'm not sure you know that kind of exuberance.

I could have told you that the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle knows it: anyone who has witnessed him live--and it feels like some sort of religious witness as he smiles even delivering disturbing lyrics of broken homes--could have told you. But I didn't know he knew it with respect to pro wrestling until he announced his new album, Beat the Champ. While I didn't know, I wasn't surprised. It was easy to imagine Darnielle in my role, only earlier and in the southwest rather than the midwest. A different cast of heroes and heels, but the same stories. Swap out Zeus for Jupiter, Hermes for Mercury.

Where we part company is that I'm the sort of hack who lacks the creativity or empathy to do anything but treat himself as his favorite subject. Darnielle has mined that territory well, too: in "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero" he sings of finding Guerrero as the strong, just role model he lacked in his own young life. But elsewhere Darnielle's protagonists are the wrestlers themselves.

"I personally will stab you in the eye with a foreign object," Darnielle the heel sings over low saxes in "Foreign Object." "Sink my teeth into your scalp, take a nice big bite. Save nothing for the cameras, play the angles all night." The singer has "learned to love this kind of atmosphere," found purpose and even delight in his role--the role of cheater, booed nightly by, well, everyone.

"Heel Turn 2" comes from a former hero turned heel who knows he isn't going to earn your child's love. He celebrates the fact. "Let all the trash rain down from way up in the rafters. I'm walking out of here in one piece, don't care what comes after. Drive the wedge, torch the bridge." It's not so far from the f*** it, burn-it-down mentality of Tallahassee's "No Children." But the drive of the guitar, bass, and drums fade into a solo piano, echo laden, ruminating here and there on the verse's melody. What have I gotten myself into? And how will I get out? "I don't want to die in here."

The album often sounds a lot like the albums the Mountain Goats have been releasing almost every year since joining 4AD more than a decade ago. (So much for the label's output representing "the new albums."). But if the core remains the acoustic rock trio or piano ballad, Beat the Champ takes enough liberties to keep one's attention. It subtly steps out: soft organs behind the Craig Finn-like sing-speak of "Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan;" the baritone wind section driving "Foreign Object;" the jazzy changes from the piano trio of "Fire Editorial;" the double-kick drum of "Werewolf Gimmick;" or the rare background vocals of "Luna."

For its variety, the album lacks an obvious musical centerpiece. "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero" may be the closest thing, but there is no "No Children," no "This Year," not even a "Heretic Pride." (Then again, was there a "No Children" on Tallahassee on the first few listens? [Probably. It is pretty damn catchy…])

No matter. As always, Darnielle's vocabulary and wit are his strengths. Moon in June is again not uttered. What is, is "two hundred dollar take-all purse / half-nelson to suplex, reverse / worried look on face of the ringside nurse," in "Choked Out." But the wrestling theme, it isn't a joke. Darnielle explores the people watching … and the people wrestling. "Southwestern Territory," the beautiful opener that features harmonizing, fluttering clarinets complementing the piano-based instrumentation, is anything but schtick:

"Flew home from Texas last night, slept on the flight. Worked like a dog all day, born to chase cars away. Die on the road someday. I try to remember what life was like long ago, but it's gone, you know? Climb the turnbuckle high. Take two falls out of three. Black out for local TV."

Beat the Champ wasn't written for kids like I was thirty years ago. Wrestling itself was written for me then. Beat the Champ was written for people who made it possible to be a kid like I was thirty years ago. For people I would thank if John Darnielle hadn't done so better than I ever could.

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« Reply #37 on: April 11, 2015, 03:12:18 PM »

The Dylan album has been floating my boat since its release. Beautifully sung and sensitive arrangements. Briefly replaced in my listening schedule byRon Sexsmith's Carousel now both have made way for NPP. Bob and Brian in the same year coming up with the goods, heaven! All I need is a quality new album by Townshend or The Who and the holy triumvirate will have delivered. Check out Bob's version of Lucky Old Sun. Outstanding.
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« Reply #38 on: April 18, 2015, 07:58:00 AM »

Wrote about Earl Sweatshirt's new album:
http://s3.excoboard.com/therecordroom/29211/1325401

And about Courtney Barnett's new album:
http://s3.excoboard.com/therecordroom/29211/1325693
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« Reply #39 on: April 19, 2015, 01:56:31 PM »

Here's something I've really been diggin' lately but that I bet none of you has ever heard of. 'Harmony' - a new album by local Danish artist Vinnie Who.



It's his third album. The two former ones were very different and in a kind of glitzy & decadent Disco-vein and not bad either. (here's his breakthrough hit in these parts, 'Remedy': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faPJa5vmFCM)

But for this third album the sound has been changed completely. Out goes disco, in goes a very mellow, winsome and sometimes quasi-psychadelic collection of sounds harking back to the earlier part of the 70s. I hear a bit of Space Oddity-era Bowie, some George Harrison with a profound use of slide guitar, the occasional touch of Fleetwood Mac etc.

It's all very cozy and warm-sounding; some tunes are better than others but overall I was indeed very pleasantly surprised. Recently, there was a thread at the Hoffman board about music that's perfect to fall asleep to in the sense that it's comforting and wellserved as a rite of passage between being awake and dreaming, - if I wasn't a longtime lurker there I would no doubt throw this album in with all the other recommendations in the thread.

I love the sound he's achieved on all songs. There are even a few tracks that remind me a bit of the overlooked 'Blue Marble' album by Gary Usher's Sagittarius. (probably purely unintentional!)

Here are a few samples off 'Harmony'

Seven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yTyp9A0Mkg

Only Dreaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3YT3BLC4eY

Definately a grower! Highly recommended.
 
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« Reply #40 on: May 14, 2015, 09:44:25 PM »

Here's something I've really been diggin' lately but that I bet none of you has ever heard of. 'Harmony' - a new album by local Danish artist Vinnie Who.



It's his third album. The two former ones were very different and in a kind of glitzy & decadent Disco-vein and not bad either. (here's his breakthrough hit in these parts, 'Remedy': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faPJa5vmFCM)

But for this third album the sound has been changed completely. Out goes disco, in goes a very mellow, winsome and sometimes quasi-psychadelic collection of sounds harking back to the earlier part of the 70s. I hear a bit of Space Oddity-era Bowie, some George Harrison with a profound use of slide guitar, the occasional touch of Fleetwood Mac etc.

It's all very cozy and warm-sounding; some tunes are better than others but overall I was indeed very pleasantly surprised. Recently, there was a thread at the Hoffman board about music that's perfect to fall asleep to in the sense that it's comforting and wellserved as a rite of passage between being awake and dreaming, - if I wasn't a longtime lurker there I would no doubt throw this album in with all the other recommendations in the thread.

I love the sound he's achieved on all songs. There are even a few tracks that remind me a bit of the overlooked 'Blue Marble' album by Gary Usher's Sagittarius. (probably purely unintentional!)

Here are a few samples off 'Harmony'

Seven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yTyp9A0Mkg

Only Dreaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3YT3BLC4eY

Definately a grower! Highly recommended.
 

Thanks for the tip. I love this guy. I've listened to all three of his albums and he just keeps getting better and better. I look forward to whatever he does in the future.


Also been listening to the new Blur album The Magic Whip which is excellent. There's a couple clunkers, but Lonesome Street is primo 90's style Blur and Go Out, There Are Too Many Of Us, Ghost Ship, I Thought I Was A Spaceman, and I Broadcast are all worthy additions to their canon.
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« Reply #41 on: May 15, 2015, 06:28:12 AM »

I don't think I've seen them mentioned here, but the UK band The Darkness have a new album out in early June (their 4th album). 

I've been a fan since they started in 2003.  I was lucky enough to attend just their 2nd ever US show in 2003 in Baltimore.  The radio station I used to work for was the first station in the US to play The Darkness in late 2003, fews before I Believe in a Thing Called Love became a hit. 
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« Reply #42 on: May 22, 2015, 04:33:27 AM »

Anyone here digging the new Faith No More album? As with most of their stuff it took some time to grow on me, but now I think it's just as good as anything else they've done. I'd probably rank it just below King for a Day and Angel Dust, and above Album of the Year and The Real Thing. Great album. So glad they're back.
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« Reply #43 on: June 29, 2015, 11:39:36 AM »

I have been having a swell time in 2015. New albums by Björk, Sufjan Stevens, Bob Dylan, Ryley Walker, Panda Bear, Django Django, Brian Wilson, a collaboration between Franz Ferdinand & Sparks, Sleater-Kinney, new album with Chance the Rapper, Viet Cong, and Willis Earl Beal. Plus, my two favorites so far To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar and Sometimes I Sit and Think, and I Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett. Then, there's going to be a new album by Frank Ocean sometime next month.

This is a good year.
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« Reply #44 on: June 29, 2015, 04:28:34 PM »

I've enjoyed Modest Mouse's newest and Springtime Carnivore's debut albums, as well as the little bits of the upcoming Tame Impala album.
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« Reply #45 on: June 30, 2015, 05:59:48 AM »

I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I'm really looking forward to Iron Maiden's first new album in five years, and their first double album, to be released Sept 4. 

Also, my favorite band of the 2000s, Ghost, is releasing their third full length on Aug 23rd. 
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the captain
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« Reply #46 on: June 30, 2015, 03:09:18 PM »

I have been having a swell time in 2015. New albums by Björk, Sufjan Stevens, Bob Dylan, Ryley Walker, Panda Bear, Django Django, Brian Wilson, a collaboration between Franz Ferdinand & Sparks, Sleater-Kinney, new album with Chance the Rapper, Viet Cong, and Willis Earl Beal. Plus, my two favorites so far To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar and Sometimes I Sit and Think, and I Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett. Then, there's going to be a new album by Frank Ocean sometime next month.

This is a good year.

I'm right there with you. Haven't been writing much about new music lately because I'm lazy and nobody much seems to like new music, but the good stuff does keep coming. I agree with you on Barnett, especially, but also Bjork, Wilson, and to a lesser extent, Stevens, Dylan and Lamar. I really love that Barnett album. Some you didn't name that I like a lot are Asaf Avidan, Mountain Goats, increasingly Earl Sweatshirt, Kacey Musgraves, Mark Ronson, Your Old Droog, and the Staves.

There's a new Vince Staples album out today that I'm looking forward to hearing, too.
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« Reply #47 on: July 17, 2015, 05:50:24 AM »

Wilco, Star Wars
"Dad rock" was a term I first heard applied to Wilco sometime in the late '00s, and it struck me as funny considering how I came to know them--like many people, with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, with its stick-it-to-the-label backstory and surprisingly knob-twiddling approach from what I vaguely knew as an alt-country band. But I had to admit as I considered Sky Blue Sky in 2007, dad rock was fair.

Wilco (previously always roster-shuffling) settled on a lineup and settled into what sounded like adulthood. Dad rock. These past few albums have been really solid. Professional, which sounds a little bit like an insult but isn't meant as one. But, you know, we get older. Maybe seven minutes of feedback is neither fun nor funny anymore, and rather than waking up drunk and pissing away a concert, we ought to, you know, try. The results have been a showcase for frontman Jeff Tweedy's always solid and sometimes inspired songwriting, at turns confessional and funny.

Did someone say funny?

Star Wars is dad rock in the funny sense. This is the dad who mows the lawn wearing a Hawaiian shirt, athletic shorts, black socks, and sandals. This is the dad who tells jokes to your friends. Who you ask to drop you off at school a couple blocks away but takes you right to the front door (and yells one last bit of humiliation out the window as you leave).

This is dad rock that just doesn't give a sh*t. Much of the polish of recent albums is absent; these songs sound like they were recorded with very little fuss and in short order.

"EKG," the opener, is a dissonant minute and sixteen seconds you cannot dance to. One sees where this album is coming from…

Which isn't to say the album is noisy, or "experimental" (which in pop music more or less is a synonym of "noisy," a dull repetition of long-since tired cliches). It's just a little off-kilter, not taking itself too seriously. Thus "Random Name Generator," a cool-riff based tune with both fuzz guitar and lead vocal in octaves (a Tweedy trademark found elsewhere here as well, such as in "Pickled Ginger") and just the right amount of phaser. You need just the right amount of phaser.

I change my name every once in a while
a miracle every once in a while
I create; I am a flame
a flame creator, a random name generator


Got that?

On first listen, "A Joke Explained" brought to mind Dylan's Basement Tapes, loping along loosely. "More…" most certainly does not share that vibe, but it is another almost shambolic tune, feeling it might fall head over heels (or worse, heels over head). "Where Do I Begin" treats an electric guitar as acoustic, the primary backing as it strums accompaniment to Tweedy's exploration of "us" and "me." It closes blurring the line with a backward drum part and harmony-lead guitars.

"Cold Slope," "King of You," and "Taste the Ceiling," to name a few, stand out as particularly strong songs that pull it all together, the right balance of good lyrics, strong melodies, interesting arrangements (made more interesting by the mix of hard-panned guitars, highlighting their interplay), and clever little production quirks.

There's a tick-tock of percussion beneath the soft-synth chords and relaxed vocal of the closer, "Magnetized." "Everyone wastes my time," Tweedy sings as it ticks away. These verses call to mind "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," from YHF where near-nonsense lyrics seem chosen as much for sound as meaning. Here he sings:

Orchestrate the shell, pink refrigerator drone
Carrying the shadows almost bone.
Everyone wastes my time.


But the song expands into a gorgeous, fuller arrangement that calls to mind the Beatles (an under appreciated influence on Tweedy all along). Its imagery becomes focused as the music expands: "I sleep underneath a picture that I keep of you next to me. I realize we're magnetized." It's a majestic conclusion to this surprisingly good Wilco album. These old dads have got something left after all.
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« Reply #48 on: July 18, 2015, 08:45:02 PM »

The new Bird and the Bee album Recreational Love is just a perfect Pop album. At just  10 three minutes-or-so songs,The phrase "all-killer no-filler" comes to mind. They pick up right where they left off 5 years ago with their album of Hall & Oates covers and hit the ground running. The rock edge of earlier outings is gone, and all that remains is pleasuring ear-candy. If you prize sweet hooky melodies, this is the one. It's so hard to sound this easy- it's really an accomplishment. In a year with plenty of good stuff coming out, this might just be my favorite so far(yeah, it's better than NPP).
Listen to the whole album  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Fi--AULbc
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Please visit 'The American(a) Trip Slideshow' where you can watch the videos and listen to fan mixes of all the Smile songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doOws3284PQ&list=PLptIp1kEl6BWNpXyJ_mb20W4ZqJ14-Hgg
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« Reply #49 on: July 19, 2015, 01:01:39 PM »

The new Bird and the Bee album Recreational Love ...

I bought that the other day, as well--the day after Wilco dropped (at which time I also got the new Tame Impala). I haven't really given it a good listen yet, but I do like Inara George in general. From what I've heard so far, I like it. Not my favorite of the year, but I'm sure I'll like it.
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Demon-Fighting Genius; Patronizing Twaddler; Argumentative, Sanctimonious Prick; Sensationalist Dullard; and Douche who (occasionally to rarely) puts songs here.

No interest in your assorted grudges and nonsense.
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