The Death of Enthusiasm

The Animal Years and The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter--both Josh Ritter

These two have been on pretty heavy rotation lately. Josh Ritter is from Moscow, Idaho and sounds like a young Dylan (if Dylan was a better singer, and had a more finely tuned pop sensibility). He has a song called "Girl in the War" that is the most elegant and touching protest song I've heard.



Oneida Road--The Kamikaze Hearts

The Kamikaze Hearts are probably considered "alt country" or "country-folk," or whatever people call music that is vaguely country but not in a commercial-radio country type way. They use a mandolin (badly) and one of the lead singers kind of sounds like Peter Breinholt (elfy..), yet, I really dig this album. It deals with your standard boilerplate romance issues, but the dirty, lived-in feel of of the rhythm section, and the way they loft 3 part harmonies casually in every song makes this album a real grower.



The Beatles (The White Album)--The Beatles

I know, why not something more obvious, like "The Wall" or Led Zeppelin IV? Aside for a brief period when I was twelve, I never really got that into The Beatles (my Dad always played a lot of The Who and the Rolling Stones growing up, so I didn't get that exposed to them, except for their hits) but I have been reading Bob Spitz's massive 850 page Beatles biography, and I have been trying to listen to how they must have sounded when they were making music, and not the repackaged, remixed, and covered version that we've forcibly inhaled for the past 50 years. So, what can you say about the Beatles? According to the biography, John Lennon was a complete dick, which makes sense, because usually the best ones are.



In The Future--Black Mountain

Black Mountain plays a brand of proto-stoner metal that sounds like early Black Sabbath with a chick singer. Really, sometimes you just want to bang your head to something heavy once and a while, and this fits the bill perfectly. It has a few boring moments when it bottoms out, but the highs outweigh the lows.



In the Vines--Castanets

Listening to castanets is like a slow trip down a muddy river. Melancholy folk with creepy, reverb drenched vocals, and a low smattering of electronic noises, it's just off-putting enough to keep your attention instead of lulling you to sleep.

Labels: music