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The Most Anticipated Album of 2010

Can’t tell you how excit­ed I am to hear Kanye’s new album. “Run­away” just blows me away. I’ve loved every­thing he’s done so far, so why should My Beau­ti­ful Dark Twist­ed Fan­ta­sy be any different?

Feel like he real­ly turned a cor­ner with 808s & Heart­break, which I felt was unfair­ly maligned in some cir­cles as being too misog­y­nis­tic. I thought it was a painful, hurt­ful, fright­en­ing breakup album. Loved it. So did Mau­ra and Whiney. I feel like his next album is our sweet reward. Can­not wait.

In Praise of Titus Andronicus

I’ve lis­tened to this about 1,000 times. Don’t know if it’s the go-for-the-throat vocals, the clever Spring­steen ref, or the Dinosaur Jr. gui­tars, but I’ve been com­plete­ly cap­ti­vat­ed by a band I wrote off after their debut. ‘The Mon­i­tor’ blows away any­thing I remem­ber from ‘The Air­ing of Griev­ances,’ which isn’t say­ing much, since I remem­ber about zero from the lat­ter. I may need to revis­it that one.

For­give me for being turned off by a lack­lus­ter per­for­mance at John­ny Bren­da’s once. There was a stretch where every hyped indie act I saw proved dis­ap­point­ing on any lev­el. Pret­ty sure they opened for the Ponys. I’m still recov­er­ing from that experience.

Suf­fice it to say that I have a very sen­si­tive BS detec­tor when it comes to bands that fall into that cat­e­go­ry of new truth in indie rock, but Titus Andron­i­cus have defied all expec­ta­tions. Sol­id. I mean, who even releas­es a sopho­more album any­one pays atten­tion to any­more? Con­grats, dudes.

What Happened to Super Furry Animals?

I tuned out after Phan­tom Pow­er. I know peo­ple loved “Inau­gur­al Trams,” but I could­n’t get on board. (See what I did there?)

I lis­tened to their albums so much and SO LOUDLY dur­ing grad school that I’d thought I’d go deaf try­ing to fig­ure out what was hap­pen­ing in the back­ground on “Rings Around the World.” Then, sud­den­ly, like the New Pornog­ra­phers, every­thing end­ed up being more or less mid-tem­po. They’ve writ­ten some love­ly bal­lads over the years, but I just did­n’t expect them to ditch the fuzz pop altogether.

Can a case be made for Love Kraft and Dark Days/Light Years? Am I miss­ing out?

In Praise of Marble Sheep

Just two days left as the music edi­tor at comcast.net. I feel like I’m redis­cov­er­ing some old favorites that have been gath­er­ing dust on my CD shelf. (Yes, I still have one. Saw too many peo­ple mourn the loss of all of their music when dur­ing the great exter­nal dri­ve crash of ’03-’05.)

Mar­ble Sheep are super great. Haven’t lis­tened to them in far too long. Can’t wait to dive back into all the weird stuff I was lis­ten­ing to when I was a free­lance crit­ic writ­ing about unheard music.

My Introduction to Vic Chesnutt

First heard Vic Ches­nut­t’s “Pan­ic Pure” on the b‑side of R.E.M.‘s mediocre ver­sion of “Sponge,” which sounds indis­tin­guish­able from any of the hard rock­ers on New Adven­tures in Hi-Fi. Her­sh’s ver­sion of “Pan­ic Pure” absolute­ly bewitched me. Here Hersh sings with Vic Chesnutt.

Been think­ing about Ches­nutt quite a bit late­ly. Part of it is that these songs meant so much to me my fresh­man year of col­lege and I feel guilty for not hav­ing explored his music fur­ther. Now that he’s gone I’m look­ing him up on YouTube and find­ing all these great clips that exem­pli­fy what a great pres­ence he had.

Lis­ten to R.E.M.‘s take on “Sponge” below.