Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials

What's this? Two New Music Tuesday entries?!?! Hooray music! About a year ago now, I was just some dummy off the street who had no idea who Florence + The Machine was. And you say, "But B Side, the first album came out in July of 2009!" And I say - I know dear reader. I really dropped the ball on this band. But once I listened to them, I was hooked. My loyal readers will recall I went to a show to see her perform this summer, and she was outstanding. Even as much as I loved her before, the show gave me a whole new respect of what she's capable of doing. The backstory for this record was Florence Welch was approached to do this "American pop music" record out in Los Angeles. At first, she was ecstatic, as she's a self described "sucker" for American pop. But when she read through the initial plan for the album, she couldn't do it. She couldn't just give up on all the principles that made 'Lungs' so amazing and true to her style. So back to London she went, working in the studio. This album was set out to be a better version of 'Lungs' with a "more dark, more heavy, bigger drum sounds, bigger bass, but with more of a whole sound". Pretty big shoes to fill. Listening to this for the first time this morning - wow. I'm honestly shocked. It feels so much like 'Lungs' but the songs have this quality, this depth that is almost like 'Lungs' on steroids. I refuse to say this album is "better" or even "worse" because it's too early for me to judge. But I can say this, her vocals and the heavy, dark drums - wow. It's just simply a style that I personally can't ever get sick of. I adore this. And no, it's not the most manly of albums out there, but so what? It's flat out great music. I'm going to have an initial hard time picking out my three tracks, but maybe I'll revisit this one in a few weeks. It's good enough that I'm gonna run out to buy it. So at the very least, you should check this one out.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Only If For a Night
2. Shake It Out
3. What the Water Gave Me
4. Never Let Me Go
5. Breaking Down
6. Lover To Lover
7. No Light, No Light
8. Seven Devils
9. Heartlines
10. Spectrum
11. All This and Heaven Too
12. Leave My Body
13. Remain Nameless
14. Strangeness and Charm
15. Bedroom Hymns
16. What the Water Gave Me (Demo)

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. Seven Devils
2. Never Let Me Go
3. What The Water Gave Me

FINAL RATING:
4 out of 5 stars

Megadeth - TH1RT3EN

New Music Tuesday is in full effect today with a little Halloween style album that dropped today. Megadeth is one of my favorite metal bands of all time, and they put out the 'Thirteen' release today. For the future discussion of the album, I'm not going to spell it out with the clever numbers for letters scheme, because it takes too long and it kind of loses its fun. Anyhow, my first thought this morning was the film 'Thirteen Ghosts' could have played into this somehow, or that the movie will be upset that it sucked, and that this album wasn't out to promote the movie back in 2001 or whatever it was. Perhaps what's more obvious than that convoluted nonsense is that it very well might be their thirteenth album. Guess which one is the case? I'll let you decide. This album has been talked about for a couple years now. I recall reading about Mustaine talking new music in early 2010. This album is supposed to be amazing. I mean, every artist says their next album is going to be phenomenal, but they were hyping this one up pretty good. I think the plan was to somehow go back to the old school Megadeth 'Countdown to Extinction' feel, but also make that modern. I'm not sure this feels a whole lot different from the older Megadeth records, but hey - that's a good thing. There are some crazy stories about odd events that happened during production, and how it could relate to the old unlucky '13', but I don't really care enough to talk about it. I think this album rocks pretty gosh darn hard. It's 13 tracks of pure metal in the way that only Dave Mustaine can spit it. It's hard to imagine a metal fan not falling in love with this, and it's not like Megadeth is dropping albums every year to feed the fans fix. So for me, this one is a home run. If I'm in the mood for metal these next few months, this one is going straight in the player.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Sudden Death
2. Public Enemy No. 1
3. Whose Life (Is It Anyways?)
4. We the People
5. Guns, Drugs & Money
6. Never Dead
7. New World Order
8. Fast Lane
9. Black Swan
10. Wrecker
11. Millennium of the Blind
12. Deadly Nightshade
13. 13

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. Sudden Death
2. 13
3. Public Enemy No. 1

FINAL RATING:
3.75 out of 5 stars

Coldplay - Mylo Xyoto

We're back! I was out the last couple of days last week, so I didn't get to posting. And I dropped the ball on New Music Tuesday - so here is the first and probably last "Sorta New Music Monday"! Woohoo! Anyways, Coldplay dropped this album last Tuesday. Apparently this album is in the genre of industrial rock. I don't really see Coldplay as that type of band, so this may prove interesting. Lead singer Chris Martin stated this about the lyrics and writing on the album, "It's about love, addiction, OCD, escape and working for someone you don't like." The album itself is actually a concept record, in which Mylo and Xyoto are two protagonists. They live in this oppressive, urban environment, that I've heard referred to as a dystopia. One day the two meet each other and fall in love, and the story kind of goes all sappy from there. I know they've made comments in the past how they wanted to make an album more acoustic and passionate than the more recent records, but I'm not sure if this accomplished those goals. It's kind of been an up and down road for Coldplay. While I think they feel proud and comfortable with the way this album turned out, the critics are very mixed. Many of them seemingly leading to the negative end. And I guess while I get the theme, I'm not sure they did a great job at portraying the whole sequence in album form. I would expect the first few tracks to be fairly somber and darker, then the album to lighten up to the point where the love and happiness theme is cemented toward the end. And instead, you get this overall up and down record that seems to not be flowing very well. I prefer my Coldplay old school, slow songs that make you think and want to cry. This doesn't have any of those. I guess I'm leaning toward very average at best as well. It just doesn't scream Coldplay and that's just sad.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Mylo Xyloto
2. Hurts Like Heaven
3. Paradise
4. Charlie Brown
5. Us Against the World
6. M.M.I.X.
7. Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall
8. Major Minus
9. U.F.O.
10. Princess of China
11. Up in Flames
12. Hopeful Transmission, A
13. Don't Let It Break Your Heart
14. Up with the Birds

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. Paradise
2. UFO
3. Princess of China

FINAL RATING:
2.25 out of 5 stars

Aerosmith - Get A Grip

My indifference on Aerosmith has been documented on the B Side before. It's really nothing new. But this album came out in the height of my music listening start. In April of 1993, I was certainly a young, impressionable listener. And I do recall my parents buying this cd very shortly after it came out. The album is 7x platinum in the states, so obviously a few other people rushed out and picked it up as well. This ended up being the last album dropped by the band on Geffen, as they moved to Columbia after this release. This album has a couple of crazy cameos in it, which I'm guessing most people didn't have any clue were on here. Don Henley sings backup vocals on 'Amazing' and Lenny Kravitz offers backup on 'Line Up'. Those aren't some small time names there. And for a band that had already seemingly reached legendary status - that's pretty cool. While this is tied for their best selling album in the states, it's the best selling album worldwide - over 20 million copies. So gosh, even my homer-ish opinions have to be wrong on this one. I mean, that's literally a metric ton worth of albums. And it's not like you only heard a song or two off this either. Even if you didn't own the record, there were SEVEN singles dropped from it. That's exactly half the album. Crazy. I guess my question to people who love this, is why? I mean, there is no question it sounds good. No question that you can put it on, drift away for an hour and find your toes tapping. Maybe even singing along with a track or two. But does it have any substance? I don't hear any. It's like bubblegum pop music meets rock n' roll. Lyrical content is zero, production values are none, arrangements are sloppy at best - it's merely a "get me over" fastball when you're already down 3-0 in the count. Aerosmith knew they were leaving Geffen. I don't think they even put a ton into this album. It just so happens to turn out, not trying lead to a ton of poppy guitar anthems that people loved to listen to in the car. Hey, that's never a bad thing.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Intro
2. Eat the Rich
3. Get a Grip
4. Fever
5. Livin' on the Edge
6. Flesh
7. Walk on Down
8. Shut Up and Dance
9. Cryin'
10. Gotta Love It
11. Crazy
12. Line Up
13. Amazing
14. Boogie Man

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. Crazy
2. Cryin'
3. Amazing

FINAL RATING:
3 out of 5 stars

M83 - Hurry Up We're Dreaming

I know it's not Tuesday - but I'm going to do a dance album anyway. I just feel in that sort of mood this morning. So we touch on M83 - which is an act by a French musician Anthony Gonzalez. It's name is derived from the spiral galaxy, Messier 83. The band has been around since 2001 - the same year he dropped the debut album. The album however, didn't release outside of Europe until 2005. The album simply didn't take off, and it wasn't until the 2nd studio release in 2003 that a label took notice, and released the original worldwide. Gonzalez employs an array of other people to help him with the music. He has a composer and then some folks that play instruments at live events and recordings. The feel of the music is very transcendent. I think there is a term called "shoegazing" that M83 uses. What is that exactly? I'll try to paraphrase it. Shoegazing is typically the artistry of using heavy distortions, riffs that keep reverberating and using sounds that sort of create this wall of sound. While they use guitar to keep the distortion, it's not the main focus of the sound. Everything is supposed to sort of blend together and create this very subdued, dreaming effect. Does it work? You be the judge. This album is supposed to be all about dreams. The sort of dreams you have as a kid, a teenager and then an adult. Tough subject to concur. But the goal would be to have this album feel like the dream state, and summarize the change in patterns throughout life. I don't know much about the other drops, but most people hail this as the best M83 has done yet. Even Gonzalez himself called this "epic". I'm kind of up in the air. I really like the sound and I like the feel - but reading through the intention, I don't feel it. This doesn't invoke emotion like the artist intended for me. That's always a bummer. But the music is still really solid. If you like Passion Pit, you'll like this too.

TRACK LISTING:
DISC ONE
1. Intro
2. Midnight City
3. Reunion
4. Where the Boats Go
5. Wait
6. Raconte-Moi Une Histoire
7. Train to Pluton
8. Claudia Lewis
9. This Bright Flash
10. When Will You Come Home?
11. Soon, My Friend
DISC TWO
12. My Tears Are Becoming a Sea
13. New Map
14. OK Pal
15. Another Wave From You
16. Splendor
17. Year One, One UFO
18. Fountains
19. Steve McQueen
20. Echoes of Mine
21. Klaus I Love You
22. Outro

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. Midnight City
2. Fountains
3. This Bright Flash

FINAL RATING:
3.25 out of 5 stars

Feist - The Reminder

Going back and listening to my Top 100 of the 2000's recently, I was reminded about 'The Reminder' upon hearing '1234' off of this record. Leslie Feist was born in 1976 in Nova Scotia. She was born into a family of the arts. I know some people say that figuratively - meaning they're part of any sort of culture. But this is literal, her parents were artists. Dad dabbled in abstracts and mom was in ceramics. Her parents divorced soon after she was born, and mom and brother moved away. Since her father was American, she has dual citizenship to this day. She started singing for a band called Placebo in 1991, but had to take some time off of music when she suffered some vocal cord damage. She didn't take to doing solo stuff until 1999. She dropped a couple studio albums before this one, and none of them saw any major publicity or success. Even with as big as '1234' became, this album is only listed as gold in the USA. Now, digging into this today - she's got a tremendous vocal. It's a little unique, in a way I cannot really describe. There are times when her voice is almost a little opera and times when it sounds so polished, yet rough. Not sure if that makes any sense - but her uniqueness isn't easy to describe to a reader. I'd encourage you to simply listen. What I forgot about and love, is James Blake covered the song 'The Limit To Your Love' and it's a really good track here too. Blake basically just redid the beats a little, but kept some of the lyrics. I do like his version better, but this one is nice in the ballad direction. This album as a whole has a really nice summer afternoon feel to it. I know it's getting colder out there, but I think this will transport you to a nice summer day drinking lemonade on the porch overlooking the lake, and just relaxing.

TRACK LISTING:
1. So Sorry
2. I Feel It All
3. My Moon My Man
4. Park, The
5. Water, The
6. Sea Lion Woman
7. Past in Present
8. Limit to Your Love, The
9. 1234
10. Brandy Alexander
11. Intuition
12. Honey Honey
13. How My Heart Behaves

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. 1234
2. The Limit To Your Love
3. The Water

FINAL RATING:
3.5 out of 5 stars

Gaelic Storm - What's The Rumpus?

Every so often someone drops something in the Suggestion Box - but doesn't leave their name attached to it. Which is fine, but I don't have any idea who to thank or who to give credit for if I love something. So here we go, with an anonymous suggestion for some good ol' Irish music. Gaelic Storm here is a band that formed in 1996 in Santa Monica, California. I know, slightly disappointing that they're not from Ireland directly - but it's okay. These guys got their big break in 1997 by being quasi-extras in a movie. Now, you must be asking, if they were just background extras in a film, it must have been a pretty big film if their careers took off. And I'd answer to you, yes - you are correct. The name of the film was this low budget flick called 'Titanic'. These guys are crazy dedicated to their craft. They do over 125 shows every year around the world. Those are crazy numbers. You know how many Jay-Z did last year? One. Yeah. This particular record came out in June of 2008. It made a small splash on the billboard charts, but nothing to write home about. I'm guessing these are the types of guys that if you see a show, you're so impressed you buy a cd or two. If you haven't seen them live, you either have not heard of them, or you wouldn't rush out to spend cash. Now, I will say - I do enjoy a good Irish/Scottish band every now and again. And what's cool about these guys, is this album has the signature Irish type drinking jams on it, but it also blends styles a bit and have a couple tracks that could pass as regular Top 40 style jams. Don't you worry though, there are plenty of bagpipin' good times over the 14 tracks. I'm not walking away blown out of my seat or anything, but I'm leaving happy - and that's what counts.

TRACK LISTING:
1. What's the Rumpus?
2. Lover's Wreck
3. Darcy's Donkey
4. Mechanical Bull, The
5. Human to a God
6. Slim Jim and the Seven Eleven Girl
7. Don't Let the Truth Get in the Way (Of a Good Story)
8. Samurai Set, The
9. Beidh Aonach Am rach
10. Death Ride to Durango
11. Faithful Land
12. If Good Times Were Dollars
13. Floating the Flambeau
14. Night I Punched Russell Crowe, The

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. The Night I Punched Russell Crowe
2. What's The Rumpus?
3. Darcy's Donkey

FINAL RATING:
3 out of 5 stars