2008 Year End Reviews Part II

Lots of new music in 2008. Some more quick thoughts:

Mouth of the Architect: Quietly

After one listen I was hooked on this album. The sheer force of it, the weight of the distortion and waves of sound broken with occasional dynamic interludes, the repetition of the final line "...sweeter than honey and lies....." That's the first listen impact of the record. Repeated listening exposed the disc's inherent flaws: it's all sheer force with occasional (and almost forced) dynamic interludes. Waves of sound turned out to be one level of heavy all the way through with few exceptions, and those exceptions aren't great. The "Mad as Hell" bit from the movie The Network showed up on records by at least two other bands this year, and sampling isn't a substitution for creativity or a message, anyway. And that line about honey and lies? Not so sweet once I realized that that is the only note and the only inflection the vocalist hits throughout the entire disc. Every damn sound that comes out of his mouth is at that level of gutteral scream, at that same exact frequency, at that same exact volume. Seriously. This should not pass in music, yet the kids eat it up. The best part of the album is this little bit of guest vocal work done by Julie Christmas from Made out of Babies and Battle of Mice. I did not realize who this was until later, until after I had heard the Ruiner.

Made Out of Babies - The Ruiner
This year I got Quietly, The Ruiner, and a Jesu/Battle of Mice Split 12" EP. At first, I didn't connect the dots that these works all feature the vocal stylings of Julie Christmas. I'm sort of thick sometimes. This girl is excellent, and that means a lot coming from me. Up until I heard The Ruiner the only female singer I could stand was Kim Deal. Julie Christmas has some killer pipes and a killer range. She can get mean, she can get scared, she can whimper or whisper or scream and you'll believe she means every second of it. Of all the places I've heard her voice, this is where she seems most at home (I hear other albums by Made Out of Babies don't showcase her range as well as this one - I'll have to find out). The band behind her matches her insanity with that loud but natural grungy metal sound - easy comparisons have been made to Melvins, only more frantic. It all bulids to a frenetic insanity that crosses anger with fear and paranoia, and the whole damn thing is quite emotional, and believeably so.

Melvins - Nude With Boots
Speaking of the Melvins, this release was one of my most anticipated of the year. (a) Senile Animal is easily in my top ten albums of this decade, so naturally I was looking forward to a followup with the same lineup. It's good, it's just not as good. It's the same, only not quite the same. Where Animal was cohesive, Boots feels a bit disjointed, as though the band took all the compontents of their previous record and seperated them across different tracks. There's the fast-rocking, crazy time signature song, the tough-guy group harmony song, the spaced out reverby song (sounds a lot like Earth), the weird ambient track that isn't much of a song at all, a couple of crazy drum breakdown moments, but not as many as on Animal. The whole thing starts off fast and rockin and then loses steam, loses momentum until after it's finished, after those last two looooooong, spacy tracks, you'll find yourself surprised that it's already over.
As I side note, I was lucky enough to see most of this record and parts of Animal performed live recently. Very good. Melvins are an amazingly talented band, and they really seem to have regained focus with this latest lineup with Big Biz. Very awesome.

2008 Year End Reviews Part I

Lots of new music in 2008. Some quick thoughts:

Secret Machines - Secret Machines
You know that point in Pink Floyd's discography where they go from psych-rock to adult contemporary? Somewhere between The Final Cut and Momentary Lapse of Reason? That's what the Secret Machines are doing at this point in their career. It's not all bad - the memorable hooks are still there, the short track list of long songs, the thumping rhythm that pulses under noisy guitar and keyboard tomfoolery and well delivered vocals. But the negatives are starting to show - the band now meanders instead of delivers, the keys are used to prop up the soundscape instead of glistening through it, and at one point there's this whole saxaphone thing.... Anyway, it's good, quite good even, but not up to full the band's full potential as shown on previous records.

The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath
I don't know why I was excited for this album to arrive. I hadn't cared about The Mars Volta since I listened to Frances the Mute years ago in the car and got too confused to drive. This record makes that record seem almost structured. Every song on Bedlam is caked in layers and layers of noise. Constant guitar noise, like a blender. It's sheer chaos. And the pace...the damn thing keeps getting faster and faster. Serious ADD music, with something like melody buried in there somewhere, though you'll have to listen through quite a few times before you'll be able to hum along. All in all, pretty good.

The Presidents of the United States of America - These are the Good Times People
A guilty pleasure of mine has always been the Presidents (that's not 100% true; I don't feel guilty at all, but I feel like I should). These guys have a way with silliness while always coming across as honest and heartfelt at the same time. This record is again more of the same and again more of an expansion on or progression from previous work. Tops their last two albums easily.

V is for Remixes

It was on a whim that, late last year some time, I downloaded V is for Vagina by Puscifer. Puscifer is some sort of project by Maynard James Keenan. He grows wine in Arizona. He is also the vocalist for a rock group called Tool, of whom I guess I consider myself a fan, and also A Perfect Circle, of whom I don't. Maynard has this trademark wavery, tenor, nasalish yelp that he usually belts out on most everything he's ever done.

Now consider the stupid cover art. I wasn't expecting much when that whim hit me and I unzipped those files.

Imagine my suprise when I first listened to this album. Maynard's voice is the single element that holds it all together. His voice is deep, too deep, manipulated deep. His voice hits all the lowest notes and does that scratchy M Gira deep voice guy thing.

The music itself is not amazing. Mellow and throbbing. Thumping drum machines and ambient sounds bouncing around in atmospheric reverb. Piles of vocal harmonies. It's really not the sort of music I usually seek out, which is probably why it caught me off my guard and I actually fell for it. I guess the closest comparison would be to compare Puscifer to a really deep, less inspired and quirky, and much more sleazy Beck. All in all, it's not amazing, and that's just what stupid Tool fans expect from everything this man excretes, so there are probably a lot of pissed of pasty guys in faded black T-Shirts out there. If I can say one thing in defence of Puscifer, it's that it's sleazy to the point of absurdity and just plain fun, which is really refreshing coming from a guy who has been involved only in projects that take themselves way, way too seriously.

Then, this year, came the remix album. I though hey, this music is perfect for remixing. It's electronic. It already sounds remixed. A remix album seemed like a perfect fit. I didn't hesitate. I bought this one the day it came out. I thought that this one, unlike all those other remix albums out there, would actually be good.

It's quite a letdown. Why is it that (rock) artists allow their albums to be remixed when the ONLY THING remixing does to music is sap all the energy? Sometimes it feels like the thing one thing modern rock music is good for is energy. This is especially true for the sorts of bands that release remix albums in the first place. All I'm saying is that when you sap the energy from a Rob Zombie album (or NIN, or RevCo, or Ministry, and so on, and so on) all you get is a bunch of lame slow atmospheric techno songs.

The biggest problem with V is for Viagra is that the original material from V is for Vagina didn't have much energy in the first place, and the product of remixing the album ends up having even less energy, less immediacy, than the original material. It's almost all ambience. Even the one thing that carries Puscifer, Maynard's heavily processed vocals, get washed to the back of the mix, to the edges of arrangements as mere placeholders so the listener might have some indication of which original track each remixed one is supposed to represent in the first place. Even the funness of the original album, even the absurdity, is somehow washed away in favor of bland, moody remixing.

And that's just it. The tracks are gutted to the point that they'd be completely unrecognizeable if it weren't for tiny little indicators. A female backing vocal from a Vagina track comes to the forefront of a Viagra track just long enough to remind you that you're still listening to a Puscifer song. Another track, and after what feels like six minutes of ambient noise, Maynard's voice comes in, a tiny sample of what was the foundation of the source material. End result? Remixing adds nothing to these tracks. The remixers could have left out the little bit of original material and ideas from Puscifer and released something with a different name. But then nobody would have listened to it. I guess that sort of begs the question of how many people were listening to it in the first place. Me, at least.

But seriously, listen to V is for Vagina. Lots of fun on that one.

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One good thing about V is for Viagra is the addition of a remix of the track "Cuntry Boner." The song totally isn't worth the time or effort it takes to find a copy of the single on which it is included, of the same name. I mean, it's not even worth going to YouTube and typing in "Cuntry Boner." That said, the song is funny (I didn't say clever, just funny), and wouldn't have fit on V is for Vagina, but somehow works well at the end of this new collection.

Digital ... Physical Copy ... Vinyl ... CDs

I spent this evening surrounded in a pile of CDs - taking old favorites out of old cracked cases covered in sticker goo and dust with broken hinges and putting them into slightly less cracked cases with slightly less sticker goo. I do this every couple of years; I sort out oddball stuff that I will never listen to again, even stuff that I've never made it all the way through, stuff that I could never make a profit selling on Amazon, spool up the discs or put them in a CD book somewhere, and recycle their cases to generally upgrade the condition of my overall collection. Goodbye Life in the Fat Lane, goodbye Mailorder is Still Fun, goodbye needless second copy of The Known Universe - why the hell do I own these things? There are, I dunno, a little over five hundred cases on my bookshelf, and I sometimes feel the need to cull the weak. And recycle their jewel cases. How futile.

Because then I go ahead and blow more money on CDs. I've worried about it before. I've had an increasing fascination with new releases in the last few years. I remember wanting STP's No. 4 months before somebody else got it for me. I didn't find out about Tripping Daisy's final release until months after it was out. I coveted Pinkerton for years, I think, before I was given a copy. Where has that patience gone? If only I'd wait until after I know I want something, or at least until after I know I like it, I'd save myself a lot of painful effort. And money. And shelf space. And embarassment when people refer to my big bookshelf of CDs as a "plethora." And shock when people learn that I'm still interested in physical copies at all.

Will something change? I got an iPod. It was given to me, in fact. A co-worker decided to treat herself to one of those new iPods, with more hard drive space than my desktop computer. The kind of iPod that you can use to store and watch the entirety of Seinfeld. So she didn't need her old iPod any more, and gave it to me. It has 4 gigs of space, I think. iTunes is incompatible with my computer - I run Windows XP x64 - why the hell do I run this OS? I've found a little program called vPod which manages and syncs the iPod without all the other garbage that iTunes does, and that's just fine.

So now, for the first time since I got a personal CD player (I was late to the CD game, too) I am semi-up to date. I mean, the thing can store about thirty hours' worth of music and it's battery lasts about six hours and takes ten hours to fully charge. The two-tone screen has less pixels than my original GameBoy. I dropped it on the corner of a wooden crate and the glass over the screen is cracked in an embarassing sort of way that hasn't disabled the thing enough that I feel the need to get it repaired. The color is that pukey lime green and you expect it to have a smiling cartoon flower or bee or butterfly on the back of it. What I'm trying to say is that I hide it in my pocket when I have it with me out in public.

A step towards digital media means a step into the future for me, but I'm not sure if I'm ready. On one hand, as physical CD sales dwindle, CD packaging costs are going down and down. Now it's not uncommon for a brand new release to come out in a little cardboard envelope with no booklet and minimal artwork. That's fine, I guess. Less to be attached to. On the other hand, a lot of the music that I'm starting to like is so damn obscure that it takes less time to buy a long out-of-print CD on Amazon and have it shipped to me than it does to find some online source. Second of all, some bands have been releasing really enticing vinyl packages lately. Plus I just got some new speakers and got the turntable working easier and sounding better than ever. We went record shopping last Saturday, and I find myself wanting, wanting, wanting. It's not sick if you're collecting instead of hoarding.

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble about all this. I love music. I want to support bands. I want to be exposed to as much new music as I possibly can, and discover all my undiscovered favorites. I'm embarassed that I have hundreds of old, favorite CDs that I can never listen to. I'm embarassed that I have hundreds of other CDs that I have never even given a fair shake. Yet I am a materialist, and want a collection to proudly display, if only to myself. And here I go, looking for old vinyl copies of old records, and new vinyl copies of new records. Anway, as for that copy of A Bigger Bang that I stuck in a box today and will absolutely never listen to again, I only have it in the first place because it came packed free on a bottle of vodka.

Loudness War - Track Comparisons

Loudness comparison of rips of Metallica's "My Apocalypse" from Death Magnetic (2008), Cave In's "The World is in Your Way" from Perfect Pitch Black (2005), Smashing Pumpkins' "Cherub Rock" from Siamese Dream (1993), and The Who's "Baba O'Riley" from Who's Next, though I have no idea where this particular rip came from.

The point of this is to display the effects of the "loudness war." I'll talk about it more if I ever do a review of the new Metallica album. Maybe. It's a common criticism of today's production that everything has to be as loud as possible all the time, and it flattens the listening experience. You me the judge. I think the image above illustrates the difference in dynamic range pretty well.

Like a Bomb

Mondo Generator - Dead Planet
Suburban Noize; 2007
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I don't know if Nick Oliveri's newest Mondo Generator release really counts as new - 13 of the 17 songs on Dead Planet were released on September 11, 2006 on the import-only Dead Planet: Sonicslowmotiontrails. The songs were re-ordered, the album title shortened, and the album proper lengthened with four or so additional songs. Still, I was surprised to see a new Mondo Generator release at Best Buy so soon after the newest Queens of the Stone Age album, so I picked it up.

This is by far the most cohesive, complete Mondo Generator album so far. It is also the least experimental, and the least raw, and the least spontaneous, the least risky, and so on. And I know that we all can't keep up the QotSA comparisons forever, but it is worth noting that this is the first significant release by Mondo Generator without any imput from Stone Age Queen Josh Homme. For the first time, Mondo Generator is acting as a primary band instead of a side project, and sounding more like an actual band than a collection of musicians throwing sounds into the mix.

Over the first seven tracks or so, Dead Planet is loud and punky and overly processed, complete with quick power chords and scratchy slides - they sound a little like Recipe for Hate era Bad Religion. Even Oliveri's throaty vocals seem sort of limited and condensed. I mean, Cocaine Rodeo was raw, and Drug Problem was weird, and in comparison Dead Planet falls too easily into the rock formula, both in song writing and in production.

I read somewhere that (most of) this album was recorded at Dave Grohl's studio. I wonder what kind of time table they were on, because unlike most of the Foo Fighters's material, this sounds thin and really formulaic. They just didn't take the time to get interesting tone, which has really been key to the great QotSA-related albums out there. It's not that the tone on R or Drug Problem or Peace, Love, Death Metal was great; it's that the tone on those albums was unique.

It takes until track eight for things to slow down and fall into the more trippy and familiar off-kilter rhythmic sound that I was expecting. For a run of a few songs the album gets much, much better. The best tracks are those that avoid the hard rock/punk formula: The three hit combo of Like a Bomb, So High, and Sonicslowmotiontrails would fit very well on a Queens album. This is followed by Sleep the Lie Away, a nice but trippy acoustic tune which even has a muted trumpet part and a spacey bridge which really reminds me of material from classic albums R and Drug Problem. The rest of the album is hit and miss. There She Goes Again could have been recorded by Rancid. The last to songs are pretty good, not great; they just don't gel.

Bizarre personal and personnel problems aside, Nick Oliveri is a good musician. His energy has left a hole in QotSA which hasn't been filled despite the relative popularity of the band. Still, energy alone won't carry a whole album. With Dead Planet, Mondo Generator has put out a really good EP with seven or so extra songs of generic filler, and then made the mistake of putting it at the beginning of the album. WTF?

A Few New Releases

Here are some recent releases and my quick thoughts:

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

I think I like Spoon more stripped down - that was always their charm. This release shows them expanding and experimenting more, which is nice, but not Spoon in their element. I suppose variety is a good thing.

Grinderman - Grinderman

Fantastic. This record is stripped and raw. At times it's sweaty and dirty and bluesy. Of course, the vocals take the focus, and are delivered with a sure-footed cockiness that only a veteran could pull off. Very inspiring.

Battles - Mirrored

Good, heavily rhythmic. The vocals were sort of a turn-off at first. I mean, I can handle silly vocals, as long as there are somewhat normal vocals to grab onto as well. This release further pushes the live/remixed motif of certain areas of indie as of late.

Tim Armstrong - A Poet's Life

I didn't expect to get this. It's exactly like if you took all the punk and rock out of Rancid and left only the reggae. I mean, it's okay, but even more formulaic than the punk.

Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist

Sells itself like SP's Year Zero. Also supposed to live up to demi-reunion status. It's not classic Pumpkins, but it still is very good. The loud bits hit the nail on the head, the softer stuff is good but not as good as it used to be.

Dungen - Tio Bitar

A secret worth looking into. This record is a portal back to older (late 60's) psychedelic rock. Only, unlike 60's psych, there is very little attempt at pop sensibility, for a very strange, very wild and crazy, very listenable album. Will be searching for more.

I'm Not Scared

Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape

(10th Anniversary Reissue)

RCA/Roswell/Legacy; 2007

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Despite their last three albums, the Foo Fighters are my favorite band. And even if they weren't, this album - The Colour and the Shape - would still be my favorite. Not only did it hit me at that tender early musical development phase, but it's just so damned good. At any moment, I can hum the first note of "Doll" with perfect pitch. I remember when I mistakenly bought it off a classmate for ten bucks, confusing it with a different album. I remember laying awake at night with this in my headphones. This is still the album to which I measure up everything else. It has wonderful melodies, interesting song structures and more interesting transitions from song to song (true album construction), perfect use of dynamics (huge dynamic variety while maintaining continuity and avoiding cliche loud/soft/loud), and just about perfect layering of controlled noises that build to waves of sound, then recede to sensitive soft bits.

After this album, I waited two years to be rewarded with disappointment. Then a couple more years, and even bigger disappointment. Repeat. Each following album they released seemed more lazy (yet somehow more pretentiously ambitious) than the last. I started acting on the belief that what made this album great, truly great, was not exclusively the Foo Fighter material, but also the hand of the producer. With each lazy, mostly self-produced album, I got more and more frustrated and wished that they would get back together with Gil Norton (who also did great stuff with the Pixies and Counting Crows).

It's worth mentioning that the one thing that has helped me maintain any shred of faith in this, my favorite band, has been seeing them live. In a live setting they always manage to take a limp studio recording and really make it into what it was meant to be, be it hard rocking or acoustically. Maybe they're still good musicians who just don't have the self-recording skills? I mean, that one Grohl-produced Verbena album wasn't all that great, either.

Then I heard two news bits simultaneously: 1) The Foo Fighters would be releasing a remastered TCATS including B-sides and the long-lost title track, and 2) they were back in the studio with TCATS producer GIL NORTON. I just about shit myself.

As for the new package: the digipack reissue is surprisingly modest, which is the only real reason I bring it up at all. Unlike other reissues in my collection (Hellbilly Deluxe, Blind Faith), this stays mostly true to the original design, including a slightly different set of band photos and an interesting and honest if not completely heartfelt note from none other than... Nate Mendel, the only remaining member of the group from the TCATS lineup who isn't Dave Grohl. In the note, Mendel notes that TCATS is pretty much the Foo Fighters measuring stick, and admits the necesity of a producer who will really push a band (Just about shitting myself again). Also, you know those square pieces of paper that advertise cell phone ring tones or other crap like that? The one that fell out of this particular digipack sleeve boldly announces, in all the same sized, classic TCATS font:

NEW STUDIO ALBUM
FALL 2007
PRODUCED BY GIL NORTON

I seem to be the exact audience they're shooting for.

As for the new remaster of the disc: it's pretty good. I didn't realize before that my original disc is actually sort of muddy. This new take is surprisingly clear without changing the weight or emphasis of the original production. I was afraid that cleaning up the old tapes might actually thin out the heavier guitar parts, but it's not much of a problem.

As for the "new" songs: all six were released in some form or another, mostly as B-sides on obscure foreign singles, including four decent covers and two Foo Fighter originals. I already had "Baker Street" and "Dear Lover" on the My Hero import single, as do most fans, I'd expect. The real gem is the title track "The Colour and the Shape," which was only released on one part of the very limited, two-part Monkeywrench single. I mistakenly paid way too much for the wrong one, and had been dying to hear this song (searching P2P software for an elusive title track is entirely fruitless). It's pretty good; it's quite loud, and was probably a first-take recording as it lacks the polish, restraint, and complexity that the rest of the album tracks have. While I'm glad to now have the track in my collection, I'm glad it was cut from the album proper. If nothing else, I'm glad to have these six extra songs collected in one place.

As for the upcoming album: as usual, I'm excited. That's par for the course on the release of a new Foo Fighter album. But after three lazy albums, I should be pretty burnt out. I suppose what I'm really excited about is the possibility of chemistry between a band that I love and the producer that gave them their golden moment. After all, like I pointed out above, I seem to be the exact audience they're shooting for.

VR and BR

I was working in Omaha just about three years ago. One day, it was a Tuesday, I went on down to Homer's Music in the Old Market to pick two brand-new, hot-off-the-press releases that I was, in fact, very excited about: newly formed supergroup Velvet Revolver's Libertad and long-standing superpunkgroup Bad Religion's The Empire Strikes First. I was totally stoked, and didn't let the hipster record store worker guy's comments about commercialism faze my excitement. After some contemplative listening, I eventually reached a sort of self-imposed ambivalence, deciding that while I wasn't completely taken by either effort, I wouldn't allow myself to be completely let down.

Now, it's three years later. I know that I can't be the only person who noticed the coincidence of both bands releasing their next albums within a week of each other - first Libertad and then New Maps of Hell. I'm not suggesting conspiracy or anything, but I think maybe rock stars shouldn't be so obvious when releasing obligatory albums, be the obligation financial, contractual, or simply "for the kids" (duly noted that Bad Religion is one year behind their clockwork biennial album-release schedule). Also, neither band shows much variety in regards to album cover color schemes, though to VR's credit, this graphic doesn't do the oh-so-shiny foil-punched cover justice. At any rate, I forced myself to get excited.

So I've given these two new albums another fair shake, and I still sort of don't care. I mean, I know that I like both of these bands, right? Both Bad Religion and Stone Temple Pilots were musical heroes for me spanning high school and college phases (I haven't ever cared about GnR, and yes, VR has taken a step closer to STP with this most recent release, but not enough of one for me to really fall in love). Both VR and BR remain true to what they are (read: stick to their formulas). Velvet Revolver takes the catchy and not too poppy melodies of Scott Weiland and mashes them up against fist-pumpingly stupid 80's arena rock guitar mush. Bad Religion is a "word band" with the anti-everything message smushed into loads of factory-produced guitar wall and trademark vocal harmonies.

These are gross simplifications, of course. But really, neither of these bands are doing anything new at all. VR has taken all of the rock star out of rock star and replaced it with all the easy-cheese of Bon Jovi for just about the same effect. Weiland is supposed to be wild and is not, and Slash is supposed to be an icon, and is not. At least it's catchy. BR has stuck so faithfully to their formula that I wonder why they're even recording new songs any more. I mean, everything has sounded so much the same (melodies, not production) in the song-writing department that I wonder if they're simply pro-toolsing old riffs together. In fact, I think I heard these exact guitar-slides on The Process of Belief.

I have something nice to say: Libertad isn't as all-out loud as Contraband was, and that's sort of refreshing. This is a sign, along with better song structures and an overall more intimate experience, that Velvet Revolver is a real band now, and not just Scott Weiland singing over GnR instrumentals in order to pump out product to a still rock-hungry consuming public (maybe that Homer's hipster is shining through in me as well). Yes, they have gelled into something more fully resembling a band, but it's a much less cool band than one might have expected. It is, in fact, catchy, and is occasionally decent (I'm ignoring the fact that the last song - Gravedancer, reminds me a lot of Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls).

The one difference that separates New Maps of Hell from the previous six or seven Bad Religion albums (and I really do like most of those six or seven) is the production. Despite the fact that pretty much everything they've recorded has been melodically and structurally the same for a decade and a half, the layering of sound is different on each release. Stranger Than Fiction and The Grey Race come off as hard-rocking alternative, The New America (an unfortunate title they really should have saved for post 9/11 releases) sounds thin and wimpy (it sounds like shit, frankly), The Process of Belief sounds huge and reverby and a little washy. Though boring overall, Empire is HUGE and RAW, due to loud-assed guitars and fantastic drumming (new drummer added). I thought maybe they learned something from Empire, and I was wrong. The New Maps production is terrible - the vocals are way, way, way too soft behind the guitars, and there is absolutely nothing interesting in the guitars. Power chord/Gibson through Marshall never sounded so boring. Seriously. When I turn up the speakers in order to hear Graffin's somewhat literate and thought-provoking words - I'm overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the fat and lazy guitar.

I know that if I really give either of these albums extensive time I'll likely fall in love with them, just like I did with that one CD from NoFX. They each have their hooks. It took a while to get into STP's No. 4, and my deep love for The Grey Race didn't happen upon first listen (except for those super-awesome transitions towards the end - Spirit Shine/Streets of America and Victory/Drunk Sincerity/Come Join Us - that part is totally awesome). Benefit of the doubt given, and I can see the possibility of coming to like this stuff. But that would draw time away from other music that I chose to care much more about. Self-imposed ambivalence again. I will come back.

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WARNING: Under no circumstances should you watch the video that comes as a "bonus" to Libertad. It sucks and is pointless, and actually triggered my gag reflex more than once.

I have a problem.

I'm a CD addict. I can't help it. I buy every new release - even if I'm only interested in a tertiary sense - the day it comes out. I was going to buy Chris Cornell's new album, even though I had downloaded and listened to it and knew it simply wasn't very good. I still wanted it. Luckily, Best Buy didn't have a copy, so I bought other stuff instead. Other stuff I had listened to and decided that I didn't like (Satellite Party, in fact).

I buy CDs because they're on sale. I buy them because I like their album art. I buy them because I've heard the bands mentioned in reviews of other albums. I buy them because they influenced bands I like. I buy them because they influenced bands I don't like, which I don't really understand. Sometimes I buy CDs because I know I don't like them and I want to challenge myself to like them. I buy CDs because whatever store I'm at doesn't have something by an artist that I acutally want, so I get something else. I buy them because people I know say they like them. Sometimes I buy them because people I don't know say they like them. I buy so much new music that I don't always have time to listen to all of it and it gets pushed off the list for years at a time. I buy music because bands thank other bands in the liner notes of their albums. One time I bought a CD because Dave Grohl was wearing their T-Shirt in a photo in the Foo Fighters album art (Wool's Box Set is a really, really good 90's rock album).

I rarely buy music because I hear songs on the radio. In fact, I don't like hearing songs on the radio.

Sometimes this formula really works well for me. I've purchased a lot of music that I've totally fallen in love with on a whim or a guess and almost no experience with the band: Lusk, Neutral Milk Hotel, Eels, Hum, Brainiac, Sebadoh, The Arcade Fire. Others haven't turned out to be love: stuff as big as Husker Du, Wilco, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and as obscure as The New Pornographers, Blinker the Star, Enon, Oceansize have failed to capture my interests.

What does this leave me with? A lot of CDs that I feel ambivalent about, only adding to my overall sense of musical taste ambivalence. Also, a few albums that I have come to totally love.

Maybe I should download. Maybe I should better educate myself first. But then I'd miss out on this whole process of discovery that I'm totally addicted to.

Also, it's making me poor.

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Today's needless purchases:

The Photo Atlas - No, Not Me, Never

Okay, not great. Sort of attempting Indie while aping on it at the same time.

Pig Destroyer - Terrifyer

Incredible. Intense, moody. Sometimes overwhelming.

Pilot Speed - Into the West

Good if not totally original. Spacy and sing-songy. Maybe better than what they're imitating.