A is for Albums

I've put this off for a while, but for good reason. I recently got a new hard drive to hold all of my music, which is great and solves a problem I was getting close to facing of running out of room to support all of the music I'm always getting (I'm constantly getting more, it's sad in many ways). Long story short I got a new one, but the price that had to pay was listening time. This required me to transfer all of my music from my old hard drive onto this new gigantic one, followed by deleting all of my music out of iTunes and then reimporting it. All of those albums take a while to load and figuring out the gapless playback rates, whatever the hell that means, so that basically took a lot of time out of listening. But I'm back and have listened to some stuff since, so that will follow.

I'm going to try and keep my descriptions only as long as they need, I've noticed from blogs that I've read that if something is too long I usually don't read it anyways, so I'll try to keep it a little short and sweeter from now on.

Nobody has given me any real feedback on it yet, so I'm basically just winging it still.

ABBA - Arrival
ABBA - Ring Ring

More pretty fun Sweedish 70s pop. They're harmless and fun, and I would argue that Arrival is the best they're probably going to get. Has most of their hits on it and is the most fun, but lack anything to really make an album whole, just a lot of random fun songs.

Acid House Kings - Monaco GP

Another surprising fun one. Acid House Kings are the best thing I've discovered from doing this that I probably would continue to have looked over otherwise.

Aerosmith - Aerosmith
Aerosmith - Done With Mirrors

I once read a good analogy about Aerosmith, I forget what it was comparing it to, but it was along the lines of like of comparing some band and then saying "as Aerosmith is to The Rolling Stones." And it couldn't be more true. Aerosmith wants to be this hard rock band so bad but they're really tame and actually really safe if anything, especially nowadays. This is some of their older stuff. I don't remember a single song from Done With Mirrors, and the self-titled album had a horrible song called "Walking The Dog" on it, just garbage. Aerosmith have a greatest hits that is probably okay at best, but they just don't really know what to do. Joe Perry is talented enough, Steven Tyler can't decide what voice he wants to use, it's just all really odd.

Aesop Rock - Bazooka Tooth

He's got mad skillz, I just don't like his voice that much. The production is really lo-fi too and he doesn't really have any hooks, which I hate to say I'm old-fashioned, but I like my rap to have a good hook.

Aimee Mann -Bachelor No. 2 or, The Last Remains of the Dodo

I know why I have Aimee Mann. I love Magnolia. Most of the songs on here are from that. She's fun, has a cool voice and a good sound. I think it's catchy and good enough, doesn't really do much but acts as a good background music to have if you're sad about a relationship.

Air - Everybody Hertz

Don't Be Light is one of the best songs of it's type ever. That being said, I don't need 18 remixes of it, let alone boring ones at that. The other songs on here I don't even remember.

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

In honor of seeing Spoon at the Fillmore last night I'll write a little about this gem of an album. What fun it is to listen to Spoon reinvent themselves from album to album. Each one is a new experience, a new toy they're playing with that is utilized so well into their already very original indie-alt-country-rock-esque sound. This one stands out as one of their finest based on the fact that the songs are about a little bit more than before, none of the songs are lulls in the album at all but some are just a little dormant. But the slow songs add a nice moody counterpiece to the rest of the album, like "The Ghost of You Lingers." But every song is a real winner here, like "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb," "The Underdog," "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case," "Black Like Me." There is nothing wrong with the album at all, and their sound continues to expand. Can't go wrong with Spoon ever as far as I'm concerned.

Estelle - Shine

Estelle is a British Rapper/R&B Singer. I'd go more with R&B, but she does have some more funky songs on here. It's a fun little debut album that isn't as solid as, say, John Legend's stuff (I say that only because he helped produce the album), but you can see nothing but potential with the girl. "American Boy" is the little Summer Hit of the Year, and her voice brings a fresh twist to the typical female R&B Singer of these days that simply either belts out everything or whispers in a husky voice the words that mean nothing, whereas Estelle actually has songs that play with these conventions and are more fun.