Mildly Pleased

I feel like I should be pretty excited about The National’s new album, considering these guys are one of my favorite bands of the last decade or so, but I can’t really say that I am.  It probably has to do with the fact that I’ve been distracted by a bunch of really good albums that’ve come out recently, as well as the fact that The National aren’t the most appropriate band for listening to in the summer, especially compared to the summer jam-packed album Daft Punk are also releasing tomorrow.  There’s also the fact that The National have made a career out of crafting albums that take a while to grow on you, so it’s probably safe to say that the brilliance of Trouble Will Find Me might not hit me until a few weeks after my first listen.  But maybe this retrospecticus will get me excited, as it should make it apparent that The National are very very good at making albums I like.

We conclude our journey back into the depths of David Bowie’s musical career with his work that brought him the most popularity and commercial success and his increasing difficulty staying both relevant and artistically interesting.

David Bowie was a thing now. With Ziggy Stardust he had created a new kind of theatrical, character-based music that would pave the way for Chris Gaines, Sasha Fierce and Hannah Montana. But by the mid-1970s, the Spiders from Mars had started to go away, and Bowie himself retired Ziggy and moved to the United States. The times, they were a-changing, but, of course, David Bowie wrote the song on changes.

Starting today and continuing for the next few weeks, I’ll be looking back at the entire recorded catalog of one of my favorite recording artists, David Bowie. Why? Well, because his new album comes out tomorrow and I hear it’s quite good. This project is going to take a while, so let’s get started. First up, the early years: from pop to psychedelic folk to glam rock.

The Hives are bonafide rockers. You just don’t see that many bands today that carry the same kind of swagger and showmanship that The Hives do. The Hives are a fun band because they have fun. While other bands brood over making work that’s artistically the meaningful, The Hives live to entertain and appear to enjoy every minute of it. So in honor of the band’s fifth album let’s revisit the music of; Nicholaus Arson, Vigilante Carlstroem, Dr. Matt Destruction, Chris Dangerous, and Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist.

You may not have noticed, but The Walkmen have very quietly become one of the more consistently great bands of the last decade or so.  And it’s because of this consistency that I’ve been pretty excited about the release of their latest album, Heaven.  So now let’s take a look back at the career so far of these downtrodden indie rockers.  Also, I’ll just preface this by saying that pretty much every Walkmen album took at least a little while to grow on me.  I guess they’re just that kind of band.

It’s an exciting time to be a Black Keys fan as this Akron, Ohio duo is as hot as ever. Coming off their most successful and arguably best album The Black Keys have hit the mainstream, but it didn’t happen overnight. Dan Auerbach (guitar/vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums) have together made seven albums under the Keys moniker and it has been a long way to the top. The group’s new album El Camino produced by Danger Mouse looks to be another album much in the vein of the catchy blues-rock explosion Brothers but we’ll just have to wait and see. Until then I figured I’d revisit all the Key’s past albums. Now I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little boring listening to so much bare bones blues/rock but it was an experience nonetheless.