My favorites jumped around a lot this year but the two at the top– despite one’s “newness”– are easily ahead of the rest. 2011 wasn’t the best year ever for music, but it produced a small number of records that I really like. *1. Foo Fighters, Wasting Light I called this my record of the year halfway through 2011. “If there is a better second half of the year release I’ll console myself with that hypothetically brain-punchingly excellent album.” Bands get sharper […]
Author Archive
We Saw It!: The Foo Fighters In Newark, NJ: 11/14/11
When is the last time you’ve seen a veteran band successfully drive a concert with their new album? Enter Foo Fighters. The band — and specifically Dave Grohl — find themselves in an impressive place. They are both commercially viable and and a finely tuned machine. Some bands try to mix the new stuff in, leading to buzz kill bathroom breaks. Others will announce they opening with some new stuff, basically to get it over with. The Foos ripped through […]
Spin Cycle: Justin Bieber’s “Under the Mistletoe”
Ho Ho Ho! It’s Justin Bieber!! And we’ve got a review of his new holiday album.
Spin Cycle: “Rave On Buddy Holly”
Rave On Buddy Holly is a behemoth and overwhelming success of a tribute album. If this was the accompanying soundtrack to a major biopic, it would be a best seller already. Almost every song is a raging success—holy shit Cee-Lo, did you just invent another crazy [good] style of singing?? And the cuts that don’t completely hit the mark are still damn good—Patti Smith’s “Words of Love” is a solid song but lacks the energy most every other track possesses, […]
Hear Here: Dice Raw’s “1995”
Dice Raw’s 2011 got off to a rocky start when his car was totaled back in January . Since then, he’s recovered, finished up his first solo album in over 10 years and been all over Twitter . Strangely, he hasn’t gotten the digital Questlove bump. Though, that will likely be changing soon. Born Karl Jenkins, the Philly based rapper and close associate of The Roots spent muchof the last ten years gathering Grammy nods most recently for How I Got Over with TheRoots. Curiously, the new album, […]
Spin Cycle: Eddie Vedder’s “Ukulele Songs”
Every once in awhile artists need a change and go off and do something completely different. Bruce Springsteen put out a record of Scotch-Irish sounding Pete Seeger songs. The Black Keys teamed up with a bunch of hip hop artists to produce the oddly cool Blakroc . Some of these are more successful than others and some are just weird (anyone remember when Tom Waits and Kool Keith were on a record together?). Luckily, Eddie Vedder’s latest obsession is the ukulele. Vedder’s new solo album titled, appropriately enough, Ukulele Songs is his […]