Thought I'd start up a new version of this thread. I enjoyed seeing what people had to say in last year's thread.
This year's starting off kinda slow for me, but should really kick into gear with all of the highly anticipated releases of the next six weeks.
My favorite album of the year so far is The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night by The Besnard Lakes. Think of a slower-burning version of My Bloody Valentine with Beach Boys harmonies. A lot of their songs you have to wait through 5-6 minutes of densely layered guitar noise and obscured vocals, but by the end you're usually rewarded with a flourish as righteous as any you'll hear on a rock album these days.
So far Transference by Spoon has a pretty good shot at making my year-end top ten as well. I didn't like it as much as their last couple releases on first listen. Before long I realized it's every bit as strong. I still don't think that the best songs on this disc quite match up to the best songs on the last few - but track for track it's as consistently good an album as they've made since Kill the Moonlight.
Finally, I want to mention The Brutalist Bricks by Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. This is one of my favorite bands ever, and to me Ted Leo's name on the spine of a CD case is a mark of quality. This is a good album, but I don't know if it'll make my top ten. For some reason I feel like when I say that it's good that I'm trying to convince myself of something. Maybe I just haven't heard it in the right context yet, but at the moment I only hear it as the sum of its parts, and not as something greater than that - which is a quality that separates the best music from the rest.
This year's starting off kinda slow for me, but should really kick into gear with all of the highly anticipated releases of the next six weeks.
My favorite album of the year so far is The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night by The Besnard Lakes. Think of a slower-burning version of My Bloody Valentine with Beach Boys harmonies. A lot of their songs you have to wait through 5-6 minutes of densely layered guitar noise and obscured vocals, but by the end you're usually rewarded with a flourish as righteous as any you'll hear on a rock album these days.
So far Transference by Spoon has a pretty good shot at making my year-end top ten as well. I didn't like it as much as their last couple releases on first listen. Before long I realized it's every bit as strong. I still don't think that the best songs on this disc quite match up to the best songs on the last few - but track for track it's as consistently good an album as they've made since Kill the Moonlight.
Finally, I want to mention The Brutalist Bricks by Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. This is one of my favorite bands ever, and to me Ted Leo's name on the spine of a CD case is a mark of quality. This is a good album, but I don't know if it'll make my top ten. For some reason I feel like when I say that it's good that I'm trying to convince myself of something. Maybe I just haven't heard it in the right context yet, but at the moment I only hear it as the sum of its parts, and not as something greater than that - which is a quality that separates the best music from the rest.
