The 2009 Albums Thread

Emeralds - What Happened is "out."


I've really been into this band's work since Allegory of Allergies but this album is easily their best work.

azaghal1981 wrote:
This new William Elliott Whitmore album is all sorts of excellent.

share please.

Hmm…

"According to his manager, the as-yet-untitled debut album from the nimble Washington, DC rapper Wale will include beats from a whole lot of familiar names in the  rap-producer roundtable: Cool & Dre, Ryan Leslie, Green Lantern, Sean C and LV. Best Kept Secret, the go-go inflected DC producers whose beats animated much of Wale's celebrated Mixtape About Nothing, are also on board, as is Mark Ronson, who signed Wale to his Interscope imprint Allido, and West Coast experimental dance music team Glitch Mob.

But there's an unexpected name on that list, too: TV on the Radio sound-sculptor David Sitek. Sitek's done a ton of production work outside his own band, manning the boards for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Scarlett Johansson, and Foals, among others, but Wale is the first rapper he's worked with.

Wale and Sitek have completed two tracks together. Antibalas alums Stuart Bogie and Todd Simon play horns on the tracks, while Breakestra's Dave Chegwidden plays congos. Rock star poet Saul Williams may handle the hook on one, and TVOTR frontman Tunde Adebimpe may sing on the other. Tre, frontman for the go-go band UCB (also doing some work with Sitek, according to Weisman) helped with melodies and horn arrangements."


Also, the first few tracks of Marissa Nadler's new one are good.

The pitiful decline of a once-great band

Terrible bands make terrible records all the time, which is fine. No point wasting energy on whatever Nickelback's up to these days?those dudes can't help themselves, and are free to suck as much as they'd like. But it's been a long time since a band as good as Franz Ferdinand made a record as appalling as Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. Truly, the four dapper Scotsmen that constitute this group should be ashamed of their tuneless, thoughtless, meaningless new offering, which distorts the proud legacy of a band that once mattered.
What makes the album so bad? Is it the leering vocals? The uninspired melodies? The horrific production, which cranks the sound until it's literally painful to the ears? Yes, but that's not all. One mustn't forget the lyrics, which seem to lack both heart and brain. And how about the eight-minute "Lucid Dreams?" Before this album, it was inconceivable that a band this tight would release such a protracted wank. Now, anything's possible.

The album seems even worse compared with Franz's self-titled 2004 debut, an instant classic that kicked rock 'n' roll back onto the dance floor, where it belongs. The sophomore album that followed in 2005 was rougher, but it left hope that more good work was forthcoming. Maybe one day.

Franz took more than three years to make Franz?a laughably long time for such meager results. The layoff suggests that Franz is either too confused or too lazy to move forward. They're still not a bad band. They're just a pitiful caricature of the sly, swaggering gang they once were. We know they're capable of more. We know we could have it so much better.

Who wrote that?
I like the record. It's not a classic like the first one was, but it's sticking to my car stereo a lot longer than the second one did.

Sorry for my failure to quote.

The review was from Paste Magazine.

I know I probably made fun of FF early on, but I actually ended up liking their first two albums. Probably not as much as some people, but I could appreciate it for what it was. Not so the new one. Granted, I only listened to it once, but don't feel the desire to go back to it again.

That new N.A.S.A. album with all those guests just leaked.

any good?

from the SFA's listserv:

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM

Digital release 16th March on the band's own website - www.superfurry.com, physical release 13th April on Rough Trade Records, 21st April for U.S. release.

Super Furry Animals are currently hard at work on their 9th studio album in Cardiff..  Since 2007's 'Hey Venus' the band have been keeping busy with their various side projects including Daf and Guto's acclaimed work as part of The Peth with Rhys Ifans, Cian's forthcoming Acid Casuals release and Som Bom techno nights in London and of course Gruff's Mercury nominated work with Neon Neon.

Currently with a tracklisting but without a title the band promise; "Musically it's based around riffs and grooves we've been playing around with over the last few years. We have enough now for a whole album so even though it's still very melodic we thought we could
leave off the acoustic ballads for the time being."

"It's recognisable as a melodic SFA record, but is very focused musically as a cohesive album. And no country rock as Daf has developed a pedal steel phobia. Which has confined the great Nashvillian instrument along with the Saxophone to the banned instrument directive of the SFA board. there's only one slow number which isn't slow at all."

Longtime cohorts Pete Fowler  will combine with legendary Japanese artist Tanaami for the album artwork, which is sure to result in a feast for the eyes.

The album is due for digital release on the 16th March via the bands own website (www.superfurry.com), the physical following on the 13th of April on Rough Trade Records.

Super Furry Animals have some more tricks up their sleeve which we will be announcing a little closer to the release date - watch this space for more information!

Working Title Tracklisting

  1.'The very best of Neil Diamond'
  2. White socks/Flip Flops.
  3. Inaugural Trams.
  4. Sounds Familiar.
  5. Cardiff in the sun.
  6. Where do you wanna go?
  7. LLiwiau LLachar.
  8. Mountain.
  9. Moped eyes.
  10. Inconvenience.
  11. Crazy Naked Girls.
  12. Earth.
  13. Prick.

sweetcell wrote:
any good?

The 4-5 tracks I heard were enjoyable enough.

Hey, a special new band!



Kinda stumbled on this randomly, but my new favorite band of the day is Cymbals Eat Guitars and this is their debut. Hard to describe but kind of sounds like if Pavement were 15 year olds that were into the Buzzcocks instead of the Fall. Whatever, it's rambunctuous and it rocks.

Wow wow wow. I've been listening to the new Fever Ray record all morning, and THAT is living up to the hype.

It's SOOOOOOOOOOO good.

I'm Not Done, Triangle Walks, Seven, and Dry and Dusty are ALL highlights, in addition to the single "If I Had a Heart". SO good.

Can't recommend this enough.

I grabbed that and put it on as background music a few nights ago. Need to give it a better listen.

I also like that Fever Ray album, but… the two times I've listened to it, I've felt this nagging urge to just put on Silent Shout.

Speaking of which, I did not understand the Knife one bit when I first became aware of them (i.e. when P-Fork put them at the top of their year-end list a couple years ago). But now I think they're really great and I love that album.

This new Bird and the Bee album is fun.

Indie is the new mainstream…mind you these albums probably actually sold maybe 10 copies each.

Taylor Swift's eighth week atop the Billboard 200 almost seems like a given, but the debut of Andrew Bird's Noble Beast at number 12, Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion at 13 and Bon Iver's Blood Bank EP at 16 make this week's charts interesting. [Variety.com]

Gui Boratto - Take My Breath away


Two tracks in and it's pretty good so far. First was a nice melodic synth-oriented piece while the 2nd is a minimal house piece built around a basic three-chord riff.

Junior Boys' new one is circulating.



Still as awesomely gay as ever!

New Black Dice track


Sounds uncharacteristically happy.

The new Fleeting Joys album review I've read sounds promising. Thanks for the tip from a while ago, Jaguar!