Lots of highly-anticipated albums this week, though, none that I’m too entirely excited about; with the likes of Hot Chip, Yeasayer leading the pack of new releases. I’ve listened to both albums, and while I like the singles from the two, the albums as a whole don’t really work for me. In regards to Hot Chip, the group seems to forgo any kind of dance tracks this time around in favor of focusing on songwriting. The results are a bit hit or miss, but the title track is definitely great. Yeasayer’s Odd Blood wasn’t what I was expecting at all, as at times they seem to be doing their best Vampire Weekend impersonation throughout most of the record. Their contribution to the Dark Was the Night compilation was stellar, and had me on the bandwagon. Now, I’m not so sure where I stand now.

Other notable releases this week include Panthu du Prince’s Black Noise, Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies, The Watson Twins’ Talking to You, Talking to Me, and the always reliable Massive Attack with Heligoland (with great guests to boot, including Hope Sandoval, Martina Topley-Bird, Guy Garvey of Elbow, Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio, Adrian Utley of Portishead and Damon Albarn).

What are you excited about this week? Feel free to recommend anything I may have missed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of music videos popping up lately — too many to keep up with as a matter of fact. Conveniently, most of these come courtesy of Pitchfork, among other places. I guess you could call this a lazy attempt at a blog post, but it’s better than nothing.

The videos can be viewed after the cut, and include new stuff from Jonsi, St. Vincent, Spoon, Toro Y Moi and Massive Attack.

Read the rest of this entry »