Some of the more recent music I’ve run across:
The Shins, Wincing The Night Away – I’d only briefly heard a couple of their songs before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. The melodies are catchy enough, but the rather dense lyrics tickled my curiosity, and I had to check them out, even though I don’t usually pay too much attention to them. There’s an odd, surreal poetry to them that I don’t see a lot of in the rest of my collection, but I like it.
Front Line Assembly, Artificial Soldier – They got a lot of flak over the last couple albums for letting their side-project Delerium’s style slip into FLA too much, but this album returns them to an earlier, harder sound. I like Delerium too, but this is closer to what attracted me to FLA in the first place, so I still approve. The lyrics are still the same old apocalyptic doom-n-gloom, but it just wouldn’t be the same without them. :)
Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped – A good followup to Sonic Nurse, in much the same vein, even if they seem to have mostly dropped the extended multi-minute noise solos. And you can listen to it for free! (Flip4Mac support might be needed for Mac users.)
Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere – I saw this one on a lot of people’s best-of-the-year lists so I took a chance on it, but I’m fairly lukewarm on it overall. I like a couple of the tracks, like ‘Crazy’, but I guess this style (rap-hop?), still just isn’t for me.
I got the chance to see FLA and Conjure One last year.. FLA was good, but Conjure One was better :) it had a LOT to do with the sexy singer Rhys Fulber has with him for the show; also, Rhys seemed like a cool guy, as opposed to the asshole that Bill Lyb really is. that’s according the the club crew from DC, anyway.
Yay! Was it because I sent you the song from the Shins? :D
Partly that, partly word-of-mouth, partly sample clips, etc., though it was from you that I first heard of them.
Sean: Heh, the closest I’ve gotten to hearing them live is the Live Wired set, alas.