A few totally random musings.

I wish Amy Millan wasn't so boring on her own. Love the girl's voice but, egads, is she bland without Stars to back her up. I thought Honey From the Tombs was pleasant enough - I never listen to it but at least I actually remember what a majority of the songs sound like - but this new album is so unmemorable I can't recall a single melody, seriously. The only song that had any sort of impact on me whatsoever was the Death Cab cover but a. she's been performing it live for years and b. I love that song in pretty much any form. And the worst part isn't even that she's so boring I hate it; it's that she's that middle-of-the-road kind of boring where I can't even muster up enough passion about it to actually hate it. It's very frustrating. New Stars album in 2010, yes? Please.

So I listened to this Pete Yorn/Scarlett Johansson collaboration that just came out (or is coming out? I don't even know anymore what's a leak and what isn't) because I'd seen a few people saying good things about it but really, I just wanted to actually hear what her singing voice sounds like since I never have. As it turns out, she sounds like a third-rate Zooey Deschanel. Seriously. It's almost eerie how it sounds like she's trying to imitate her. And, even though Zooey is a million times better, I might actually dig that if she actually made some interesting music to go along with it. But, yeah, this record is also bland - I fell asleep in the middle of it so it must be.

Sometimes albums have such beautiful covers that I feel like I should love the music because of that. And even if it's something that really doesn't fit my taste at all, I get majorly upset if this ends up not being the case. I thought of this because there's this one album cover that ever since I saw it a couple months ago I have not been able to get out of my head. It's this one:



It's Ayrton Senna by Delorean and I think it's fucking gorgeous. But apparently they make some kind of dance-y, heavily electronic music which I'm not usually into. But I'm going to listen to it anyway because I can no longer resist the cover's pull. And if I don't like it, I guess I'll just have to admire their amazing visual aesthetic.

Another one that comes to mind is Saturdays = Youth by M83.



I love that album cover so much and I'm not sure why - I think just because it's so vintage-y looking. But when I listened to it, I wasn't all that into it. However, I never really gave it that much of a chance, now that I think about it so I think I might give it another one of these days. I have too much other new music to get through right now though. Seriously. I have like ten albums still all zipped up because I refuse to open any more until I've evaluated the ones I already have. But I keep downloading them anyway! It's becoming a bit of a problem.

Wow.

I was super bored so I spent like the last two hours tagging like a maniac on Last.fm. The results are quite amusing.



I underlined my very favorites. Most of them are just songs tagged with a line I like from them. I was very, very bored. They're probably pretty cryptic unless you know the songs. I think my very favorite right now is "the definition of the word flawless seriously look it up its in the dictionary". I was trying to find a way to describe how fucking perfect Joanna Newsom's "Only Skin" is and that was what I ended up with. Go look at my profile if you want to understand any others. (But all of them don't show in the tag cloud! You can only see some in list view... boo.)

P.S. So my latest musical love affair is with this band, Grammatics. I posted about them here last week. I got their album today (actually bought it before hearing the whole thing first! go me!) and am loving it. But what I really wanted to mention is that apparently their lead singer is 25 or 26. I really can't believe this. He looks like a fucking twelve-year-old. I thought he was like 21 tops. So weird.

They're just one in a long line of music that's been kicking my ass lately. Seriously, I've discovered so much amazing stuff this year. JENIFEREVER. MEW. DEAS VAIL. Okay, it seemed like more. Probably because I love them all so much and I've also rediscovered a few artists I only sort of liked before like THE DECEMBERISTS. Right now, I'm really digging the new album by Lightning Dust. It's so gorgeous. I'm kind of obsessed with "The Times" and "Never Seen" - the end of that song is crazy awesome. Okay, I will shut up now.