#1
Thieves Like Us - Play Music (Shelflife)

This was one of those albums that I was excited about before I even heard it. I knew I would be falling in love with this one from the review alone. And the love only got stronger as time went on. I couldn't get enough of this one! It may not seem like much at first, but it truly is fantastic. I still don't know too much about this band. All I know is that they are from Sweden and they like New Order. The album is that sort of dark and new wave style but it doesn't really fall into one genre alone. Favorite songs on the album are "Fass," "Miss You," and "Drugs in My Body." The label Shelflife has put out good albums before, but nothing as good as this. I had really big hopes for this band this year to catch on in America but I don't think they ever really got that big here, which is the fate of many bands that I have fallen in love with before. They might just be a bit too weird or dark and slow. The album does not hit you over the head at first but it does get under your skin and the songs are catchy in their own special way. I highly recommend it. They do remind me a bit of the album by The Teenagers that I fell in love with last year, just without the silliness. A fantastic little album.

I have been anxiously awaiting the return of A Place to Bury Strangers since I first heard their first album a couple of years ago. I deeply fell in love with that self titled album and it still remains one of my favorites. I picked it as my favorite album of 2007 and I firmly stand by that decision. So of course, I could not wait to hear this new album. I sometimes go see a movie and am already thinking about buying the DVD before the movie is already over. That is just how my mind works, and this is how I feel about A Place to Bury Strangers. I was thinking about getting the new album years before it was even out. And it turns out, I do love the new album just as much as I expected to. It is currently in competition for that number one spot on my top albums of 2009. It is really hard to follow an amazing debut album -- so many artists fail at this. But it is often not even their fault. You will never ever be able to capture that feeling you had when you first fell in love with an album or new band. It just can't happen, so the follow up album often ends up never sounding as good as the first. But I think these second albums are sometimes just as good -- try to imagine if you had never heard that first album and were introduced to the band for the first time with their second album. You then get super obsessed with that second album. Then you go back and listen to that first album as if it was their second. I bet you might find that "first" album not as good as the "second" album, which was your first. This experiment would not work for every band, but it has been the case with certain bands for me. Regardless of any of this, I do love this second album by A Place To Bury Strangers. This is their first album for Mute Records, and it is called Exploding Head. There are a couple of fantastic songs on this album and everything else is also pretty great. I am in love with "In Your Heart," "Keep Slipping Away," and "Exploding Head," but really, the whole album is fantastic.

If the gentlemen of London’s The Big Pink and New York’s A Place To Bury Strangers are to have their way this fall – you will have a serious case of tinnitus by Winter Solstice via their dark-veined noise-pop. Both bands love the volume loud, worship at the alters of 80’s Gloom-Pop and early-‘90’s Shoegaze, and both have new releases out in the next month. While both bands paint with Kevin Shields’s and Daniel Ash’s brush-strokes each band shades their canvas quite differently and uniquely.

The Big Pink signed to cult-label 4AD this year. The team-up couldn’t have been a better fit as the duo’s tunes could slide in nicely in a playlist alongside tracks from the label’s 80’s and 90’s roster of ethereal and gothic-leaning releases. They also share with their predecessors a keen eye and love for packaging their music -– a dying art form for sure --adding dimensions to the music and an additional keyhole into the universe the band has created within their sound. The band’s pre-4AD releases of dead-sexy lo-fi electro vs. feedback bliss-outs were accompanied by homoerotic and ethereal sleeve artwork by Dennis Cooper (The duo also borrowed the title for their song “Frisk” from Cooper). The band’s newly polished, less-amorphous and refined sound (courtesy of major league mixing-czar Rich Costey) featured on their debut LP, A Brief History of Love, is issued with a murky, blurred and slightly unsettling cover photo of a bare-chested woman - insinuating and helping inject a similarly subversive sexual tone of their indie releases into the hazy pools of stoned reverb and romantic wistful grooves of the new album.

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It is really hard to think about anything but the election this week. It is really all I have thought about for many months now. I have become obsessed with watching CNN every night. I sometimes feel like I know John King and Anderson Cooper better than I actually do. I have spent a lot of time with them. I am just glad it is all over now. The people of the United States actually impressed me this year and elected a president that I actually respect. I still remember how I felt in 1992 when I was able to help elect Bill Clinton in my first election. I have not felt this good about an election since then. Unfortunately we still have to wait a couple of months for Barack Obama to take over. I can't really imagine the last 8 years without music to help me get through it. Just try to imagine your life without the escape that music offers you. I would not have made it. Think of all the great music that came out during the Reagan and first George Bush administrations. The music that came out between 1980 and 1992 was some of the best music ever created. It still remains my favorite period for music. I am really happy about Obama but this might mean we are facing a bad period for music. Just think about all the bad music that came out during Bill Clinton's eight years in office. These were the years of Blind Melon and Crash Test Dummies, Spice Girls and Aqua. I will need to do some more research, but I am almost positive that having a Republican as president helps to create some fantastic music, while having a democrat as president makes musicians lazy and helps to create some horrible singles and albums.

A Place To Bury Strangers-
A Place To Bury Strangers
(Killer Pimp)









Studio-
West Coast
(Information)









Justice-
Cross
(Vice)









Explosions in the Sky-
All Of a Sudden I Miss Everybody
(Temporary Residence)








Jens Lekman-
Night Falls Over Kortedala
(Secretly Canadian)

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