Liars - Plaster Casts Of Everything

brilliant video from the liars' forthcoming album, imaginatively titled, again, liars. the album it self is a welcome change in direction, again, for the liars. not that their last album was bad - it was actually really good but listening to it was sort of like going to the gym for me. getting yourself to go there is a pain in ass but once you are there it's actually pretty good. needlessly to say i never go to the gym. and i hardly listened to the last album - even though it was pretty damn good. at any rate, the new one is more like going out to play soccer.

caribou [melody day]

caribou's new album andorra is due out next month. frankly, the idea of caribou always sounded better than the real thing to me. with andorra caribou finally lives up to its promise. still the album doesn't really represent much of a change, caribou is still treading sort of psychedelic electronic waters (for a lack of better description). at times, it sounds a bit like a modernized version of dungen. it is not a perfect album - it sort of loses its pace half way through - but the first few tracks more than make up for that.

white whale [the admiral]

i think i might have posted something about white whale before but, well, they deserve another post - because ww1 might just be one of those criminally overlooked albums. in terms of what they sound like i guess the decemberists are the obvious reference but for some reason the also make me think of the triffids and the go-betweens. and british sea power. ww1 actually works best as an album and it is one of the few albums that i have had the patience to listen to over the last couple of years. Available over at emusic.com.

A couple more:
temporary maam
fidget and fudge

Von Südenfed [rhinohead]

the album didn't really get great reviews but, hell, this track is great. i know i'll get a lot of crap from a lot of people but mark e. smith hasn't sounded this enjoyable in a long time....

goddamn electric bill [lost in the zoo]

Contemporary Noise Quintet [Goodbye Monster]

i'm not sure why i picked this album up - neither the name of the band nor the name of the album sounds to promising. plus its jazz. and, in my mind, most jazz is either about showing off your technical ability or about providing comfy background music. cnq seems not too concerned with either (not that i doubt their technical skills - i just don't care). this is jazz with attitude. as i don't know anything about jazz that's about the best i can do to describe it. but listening to the album names like max richter, amon tobin, goran bregovic, tom waits (wouldn't a goran-tom album be a great idea?) and even some post-rock bands - the start of goodbye monster is not miles away from do make say think, for example.

gui boratto [xilo]

it took me a little while to get into this album but i'm glad i stuck with it. it really is quite nice - I like to listen to it while I'm working. or while I'm avoiding work playing solitaire. it appears that the song 'beautiful life' has been getting the most attention b/c it is the track on the album with the highest potential to annoy you. and wouldn't it have been a much better song if it had been called 'miserable life'? anyhow, xilo is probably the track that was responsible for me giving the album a chance. something tells me that gui was listening to the joy division and the cure...