Foetus - Hide

J.G. Thirlwell does everything in his power to defy self-imposed genre constrictions with his latest release, Hide, following somewhat in the footsteps of the preceding albums Love and Flow. Only two or three tracks ring true of his industrial origins, the rest sprouting from orchestral landscapes and electronic ballads, thriving on feelings of mourning and abandonment speckled with almost outrageous extravagance. Perhaps Foetus' most cohesive record in years, Hide's fifty-minute runtime is a sonic breeze.

Ride the wild winds of destruction.


STANDOUT TRACKS:

Cosmetics
Oilfields
The Ballad of Sisyphus T. Jones
You're Trying to Break Me

Dangerdoom - The Mouse and the Mask

Yeah, it's not Christmas but fuck that. This album is sick. Dangermouse is a great producer, as evidenced by some of his earlier work as a producer of remixes and with certain artists. Doom is a great rapper and in fact, he's my favorite. This album is just incredibly awesome. It's produced by Adult Swim, and a handful of the songs relate to the Adult Swim show line. Want to hear Doom rap about Space Ghost and ATHF? This is your album. I don't even watch those shows and it's still awesome.

PEEP THIS STEEZ

The Murder City Devils- Christmas songs

Oh? Still nobody posting anything? Christmas still on the way? I'll just leave these here.





The Murder City Devils is one of my favorite bands ever. The first song is about Santa Claus and how he gets drunk all year waiting for Christmas. The second song is a cover of a Hanoi Rocks song. I like these songs and i like them extra more when i play them around Christmas time.
Lead singer Spencer Moody looks like young Santa.
Isn't he the cutest?

N'SYNC- Home for Christmas/Holiday lull

This album has a lot of things going for it.
Foremost, THE GAYEST ALBUM ART OF ALL TIME. As a secondary, it's chock full of disposable, catchy Christmas-pop originals and covers that are sure to put you in a good mood.
Merry Christmas Happy Holidays is THE BEST christmas-pop song ever written (right next to Mariah Carey's obnoxiously fun "all I want for xmas is you".

The whole cd is meaningless christmas shit. what more do you want for the holidays?
It's fun.


ALSO
December is chock full of shit. Finals, Christmas, New Years, Hannukah, Registration for new classes etc. etc. so we've had a small holiday lull. Come 2011 we're back in full swing.

I'm dedicated.

Low - Christmas

I was supposed to see this band last tuesday, but some shitty shit happened and i ended up missing it. It was a major bummer, they're one of my favorite bands and they were going to be playing Christmas songs along with their original stuff. I wanted to wait until after the show to post this so i could have more to talk about, but hey there's always next year. This is a really beautiful and really haunting Christmas album. Their cover of 'Blue Christmas' somehow makes the song even more lonely sounding. If you're having a lonely Christmas, i think this one is for you. It's not depressing lonely though, it's like simple lonely, Charlie Brown lonely. And again, really beautiful. 'Just Like Christmas' isn't really lonely though, it's actually a pretty fun song. The original stuff on here is really great too, 'Long Way Around the Sea' might be my favorite. I think only a band of true believers can be so inspired by the holiday to make songs of their own.

Christmas is a weird holiday for me. I've never even touched a bible but i still really enjoy this time of year. It might just be nostalgia but i still really enjoy waking up in the morning and opening presents and handing them out and drinking hot chocolate. On top of this i just plain love winter. It just makes me feel good in ways i don't really understand. Christmas songs are a part of this good feeling.

The members of Low are Mormon so the covered songs on here actually mean something to them i assume, and they've probably heard them their whole lives. I've heard them my whole life as well, but i most likely associate them with different things than they do. Maybe some of the things overlap.


"If you were born today
We'd kill you by age eight"

I wish it snowed here.

Pokemon Christmas Bash!

Ahh the Holidays.
Stockings hung by the chimney with care, Mother's bending to their child's ever want and whim, rampant consumerism... the most WONDERFUL time of the year.
However, be you a cynic of saint, there is one thing that you absolutely cannot deny about the holidays; amazing opportunities to make money through absolutely soulless covers of generic Christmas music.

BUT NOT FUCKING POKEMON.
Let me tell you, what we have here is a solid hour of Pokemon themed Holiday tunes, with such classics as Professor Oaks grateful ballad (and possibly phallic) "I'm Giving Santa Pikachu This Christmas" and the Holiday classic "Must be Santa Claus" (in which the only lyric they change is from "reindeer" to "Stantler")
Goddamn I actually really like this CD. It gets me in a holiday spirit unlike any other kind of Christmas music.

My friend Joey once told me that "Sincerity is the New Irony" and this is becoming truer and truer as I get older. I've gone beyond enjoying this in an ironic sense (and it is completely fucking ridiculous), and I've come full circle to a state of mind where i actually GENUINELY enjoy it.
Maybe it's the mix of nostalgia and childhood innocence I still retain.
Idunno

as always
checkitout

Kvelertak - Self-titled (2010)

Let's get one thing out of the way here: this band fucked your girlfriend. Don't have a girlfriend? Well, don't get too comfortable, because they're probably in line for your mother.

Yes, this sextuplet of sweaty, shirtless, Norwegian dudes has prepared for you eleven tracks of sweaty, shirtless, Norwegian badassery. Arguably (except not really) the best metal album of 2010, Kvelertak is equal parts Andrew WK, Emperor, and Black Flag. From the gang-vocal shout and insta-headbang riff that opens the album to the uplifting acoustic passage that closes it, this is not an album to be passed up. Call it blackened party metal, call it fucking awesome, whatever you call it, just fucking listen to it.


HIGHLIGHT TRACKS:
Ulvetid
Offernatt
Utrydd dei svake

Hit it and pass it

Decoration Day - Drive-By Truckers

Between Patterson Hood's Skynyrd songs and Mike Cooley's Stones songs, Drive-By Truckers has always been the ideal for Southern and country rock ever since 2001's Southern Rock Opera turned heads toward the band. But it wasn't until Decoration Day they took on their famed triple guitar attack and their less spoken-off triple songwriter attack. Jason Isbell only hangs around for this album and the next, but his contributions number among the album's best: A song based on the words of advice his father gave him before he left home ("Have fun but stay clear of the needle/Come home on your sister's birthday/Don't tell 'em you're bigger than Jesus/Don't give it away") and a titanic tale about a song questioning the intergenerational feud of which the protagonist questions the purpose. Isbell's songs would threaten to take over most any other album, but Cooley's "Marry Me" ("Your momma says I beat anything she's ever seen") and others stand up to it, and Hood runs the show as usual. He begins the album with two stunners ("The Deeper In" chronicles the story of one of the only jailed consensual incestuous couples in America, and "Sink Hole," a a fantasy about murdering the banker that took the land that's been in the family for generations that highlights the triple guitar attack that the band is capable of) and gives us three songs about the mental process of divorce. To show us the dirty South, Drive-By Truckers plays hard, dirty, and big. I can think of a few better modern songwriters in music. Craig Finn, Win Butler, Tunde Adebimpe, sure. You can't find me any trio better at storytelling, though.

Decoration Day in V0 MP3

The College Dropout - Kanye West

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is my favorite album of the year, and it cemented Kanye West as my favorite hip hop artist, but before it leaked, I went on a huge Kanye kick and listened to each of his albums a whole fucking bunch. I love Late Registration and know it like the back of my hand, but over the past few months I've come to realize that The College Dropout is nearly its equal. It doesn't quite have Late Registration's scale, but it jumps from place to place seamlessly, having a bunch of fun along the way. Throughout it, we get a hands-in-the-air anthem, a religious outcry that would later be set to scenes of the Persian Gulf War, an ideal workout song, a slow dancefloor jam (if you think Nicki Minaj outshone West on "Monster," Twista's verse on "Slow Jamz" definitely has that same effect), a solemn lament on a family gone wrong, and a long, rambling origin story. That's a lot of ground to cover, but West does it all with what seems like effortless perfection and, unlike on the new one and not as apparent on Late Registration, a smile on his face.

Out of all of the successes on The College Dropout, though, "All Falls Down" is the most impressive. Featuring Syleena Johnson singing Lauryn Hill's "Mystery of Iniquity" hook (man, this song would be so much lamer if he actually got that sample cleared) and a killer bassline, "All Falls Down," more than any other song here, tackles the album's titular premise of dropping out of college. As a sophomore, this is the kind of shit I have to worry about all the time: "She has no idea what she's doing in college/That major that she majored in don't make no money/But she won't drop out, her parents will look at her funny." Right after, he playfully fucks a rhyme: "Now tell me that ain't insec-urr/The concept of school seems so sec-urr/Sophomore three yurrs/Ain't picked a car-urr/She like, 'fuck it,' I'll just stay down hurr and do hair." He's so perfectly comfortable with the fact that he bullshitted that stanza that you don't even think about it that way. Finally, he drops the bomb that every "douchebag" accuser needs to hear: "We all self-conscious, I'm just the first to admit it."

The College Dropout in 320 kbps MP3

Girl Talk - Night Ripper

If there were ever an ultimate album to get down and funky to, Girl Talk's 2006 electronic glitch-dance mindfuck Night Ripper would most definitely be a contender. Not only is the music divine and convoluted, but I dare you to listen to this masterpiece without bobbing your head or tapping your feet. Couldn't do it? Didn't fucking think so. This album is where the proverbial shit hits the fan.

This album's notoriety among alternative dance fans stems from the fact that nearly the entire album was fabricated using only samples and clips of other songs, while still retaining originality. Listening to this gem sends you into a nostalgic mental wasteland, sampling tracks by Pavement, Oasis, Nirvana, Public Enemy, Busta Rhymes, LCD Soundsystem, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and each sample used blends with the other samples in a way not thought possible until this album was created.

The entire album is one straight mix, a hair short of 42 minutes long, and split into individual tracks based on transition of tone and sound. Girl Talk made this album available for release on a "pay-what-you-want" basis, but I'll take out the middle man. Check it out. You can thank me later.

Marquee Moon - Television

Every now and then, one of the albums that I love will elude explanation. As one of my favorites ever, this is particularly frustrating with Television's 1977 debut Marquee Moon. Not that I don't love Tom Verlaine's Byrnesque yelp and smart ass ("I get your point/You're so sharp!"), Richard Lloyd's virtuoso technique, the dual guitar plus bass interplay between Verlaine, Lloyd, and Fred Smith, or the technically proficient but perfectly fitting thuds coming from Billy Ficca's drum set. It's just that while an album with the sum of those parts would be phenomenal, this tops that. The riffs are dizzying, the melodies are magnificent, and for once I actually adore extended soloing, because wow, it just sort of feels right. The dazzling riff and the matter-of-fact "I fell right into the arms of Venus de Milo" make "Venus" my favorite song, but I can imagine any one of these eight songs hitting as hard with anyone else. It's musicianship at its finest with a nice punk kick. But I still feel like that doesn't do it justice. Whelp, I tried.

Marquee Moon in V2

Patton Oswalt - 222

Holy Christ. If only every comedy album was this honest.
This is as close to a live show as you are going to get, this album has it all. The riffing, the fuck ups, the hecklers, the audience interaction; THIS is stand-up comedy.

222 is actually the unedited version of his first comedy album "Feeling kinda Patton" and trust me, a LOT was edited.
As the night continues, Patton becomes more and more drunk and the laughs keep on coming. In this epic 2 and a quarter HOUR SET Patton exhausts literally ALL his material, to the point that fans simply begin shouting out requests for old bits that Patton had actually forgotten about.

It's ironic that now the "alternative" comics are the mainstream and the Jay Leno "traditional" comics are, not a dying breed but not as prominent. I'm sure this is largely in part with their connections with the Williams Street guys, "new comedy" film makers such as Judd Apatow, and in no small part, the recorded comedy album route.

Patton never sold out, he just hit it big. This album will tell you why.

checkthisshit