Hey, it's 2011!

I'm Back!

I promise my month long hiatus wasn't due to laziness (not entirely at least).  This whole "future" business has slowly been creeping up on me and I enrolled myself in an LSAT class to get ready to go to law school, err whatever.  Thanks to Jeremy for snapping me back into a music groove.  To give you an idea of how little time I have to do things, I've reviewed one CD this year for 1190 and by this time last semester I'm pretty sure I had reviewed about five.  No bueno.  Just because that has been the case with 1190 though doesn't mean I haven't been picking up some new music on my own.  On the contrary (forgetting how much music I get when I go on a downloading binge) I have downloaded too much music.  Now, some of you may be saying that isn't possible, you can never have too much music.  It's possible when you download something and NEVER listen to it; I hate doing that.  I'm making my way through as much music as I can that I've snagged, but it's tough keeping up some times especially when a couple albums in particular ensnare me for days on end.  Over the past couple of weeks I have picked up Aloe Blacc, Iron & Wine, Cage the Elephant, Professor Green, The Decemberists, J. Cole, The Dears (1190), Cake, Yuck, and Zonoscope.  I've listened to maybe about three or four of those albums out of the ten in total.  Well, time to get on my horse and get to work!

First, I need to talk about the two albums that I haven't been able to stop listening to in the past week or so, the first being Aloe Blacc's Good Things.  Recently I've become infatuated with Conan O'Brien and a week and a half ago he exhibited Aloe Blacc, a tall, lanky, well dressed man with a silky voice.  While on the show I wasn't terribly impressed by Blacc's performance, I really liked his sound and style.  He definitely has a heavy jazz and blues background in his music and it shows throughout the entire album.  Some of the songs fall into a similar theme as a lot of the others, but others stand out in bright red bow ties among the mob of monotonous music.  Blacc's single "I Need a Dollar" may be the best song on the album, with an upbeat melody, but somber song content involving sorrow, alcoholism, unemployment, and, of course, the blues.  Blacc manages to juxtapose upbeat melodies with counter intuitive lyrics in several of his songs, "Loving You is Killing Me" being another standout favorite.  "Miss Fortune" (possibly my favorite track) has a decidedly darker tone than the rest of the album and the guitar scratching in the background is almost hypnotic.  While most of the album isn't terribly impressive or ground breaking, something about Blacc's voice keeps drawing me in; it's not the best, but it just sounds right.  Check him out here.

The other album that sucked me in is Professor Green's Alive Till I'm Dead.  I get bi-daily newsletters from this college info site that sends me updates about cool websites, events, stores, and the like.  A little while ago they told me about a website called We Are Hunted (possibly a Pandora challenger?).  The website essentially takes name drops of various artists from all over the web and tallies which ones are the most frequent.  You can look at the most popular songs, the most popular artists, and divide it up by genre along with several other options.  One night I was strolling around the Hip-Hop section and found Professor Green, a young, fiery UK rapper.  The rapper's subject matter at times is very reminiscent of Eminem and even his flow mimics Eminem's at times.  However, Green's album is aimed at more of a party crowd with the first three songs of the album having more dance oriented beats and more light hearted subject matter.  The rest of the album is much more rough and dark.  "Jungle" in particular has dark subject matter mixed with a heavily synthesized almost dubstep like beat.  "Monster" is maybe where listeners will hear Slim Shady the most, Green starting out by saying "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde/ Saw a chick walk in with a big behind/ Now I'm stalking my victim out/ Unrecognizable 'cause I'm in disguise," although noticeably more tame.  While it's clear that Green has a little polishing up to do, he definitely has a strong start with his first LP (he's reached #2 on the UK charts).  I would definitely check him out if you're looking for someone fun and a little different to listen to.  Check him out here.

Alright, I got my feet moving and that post didn't take too long.  Maybe I'll get a more formal review for something up here in a bit, but until then I'll try to keep updating you with the stuff I'm listening to and hopefully after posting this I can pull myself away from Blacc and Green.  See you soon and thanks for reading!