Pretty good blog.

As we near the middle of the year, I'm starting to revisit some of my favorite music from earlier in the year. First up on the ol' iPod is Build & Burn, the sophomore album from the Loved Ones, which was released this past February on Fat Wreck Chords. The other night, I took to my drumset and cued up this record to play along with, and let me just tell you, what may sound like simple punk beats are actually quite complex stickwork from Mike Sneeringer (dude just completely owns the hi-hat and bass drum on some of these jams). It takes skill to make a backbeat sound this easy.

I hadn't spun this record in some time, mainly because I spent pretty much the first two months of this year listening to it nonstop and it sort of burned me out. But re-approaching it with fresh ears makes me appreciate the down home rock 'n' roll goodness of tracks like "The Bridge," "The Inquirer" and "Louisiana" even more, and it also gets me supremely stoked for their show in Cleveland next month with the Hold Steady (aka the greatest band in the history of the world, at least for a few minutes until I change my mind back to Minus The Bear or Against Me!). There's still a few songs on this disc I'm not wholly stoked on, but the good ones are so good that it makes up for any shortcomings. Check out TLO's new music video for "The Bridge" -- anything with mustache humor gets an automatic thumbs up from me:

The Bridge


As for new music, I'm currently contemplating a move to Canada as the new albums from Winnipeg's the Paperbacks and Montreal's Malcolm Bauld are both brilliant. The Paperbacks' alt-country An Illusion Against Death was produced by the Weakerthans' John K. Samson, so you know it's gotta be good; Malcolm Bauld's debut solo offering, Covered In Dust, is a killer slab of singer-songwriter traditional folk-punk. If you like Bauld's voice but want more grit in your tunes, check out his old punk band the Frenetics -- their album Grey Veins To The Parking Lot is one of my favorite records of the past five years and is sorely underappreciated.

Enough about what I'm listening to; what's currently setting your last.fm charts ablaze? I wanna know, so leave me a comment!

We've got a big blog on our hands.

Keeping in the spirit of the previous blog, I got to hear some more new music today, in the form of tracks from the upcoming albums from the Academy Is... and Gym Class Heroes. Our buddy Glenn at Atlantic Records flew in to visit us and spin us some tunes, and spin did he ever: We got to hear four brand new TAI songs and about 10 tracks potentially on The Quilt, GCH's new one out this September. My thoughts:

-The four TAI songs we got to check out were unmixed and unmastered, so it's hard to properly judge what they're going to eventually sound like, but all had guitars cranked to 11, especially the potential single (which, based on the chorus, I'm guessing will be called "I'm Not Loving You" or "I'm Not In Love With You" or something along those lines) and the second song we got to listen to, which was a majorly fast-paced number with Billy Beckett's lyrics revolving around the days of the week. Could this guy:



Be the next this guy?



I suppose only time will tell.

-As for the GCH tunes, we heard cameos ranging from Busta Rhymes to Daryl Hall (the latter of whom guests on a really, really emotional track with some heavy lyrics from Travie), but that's not the biggest surprise: Disashi gets in front of the mic, and let me tell you, that boy can sing. One song we heard (featuring sung vocals from both Sash and Trav) could've just as easily been an outtake from Head Automatica's Popaganda -- it was just straight-up, head-bopping power-pop.

Don't worry, GCH fans: There was plenty of hip-hop on the disc, with all sorts of crazy instrumentation, too (I heard a horn section on more than one track, and they sounded immense.) I'm not sure what out of what we heard will actually make the cut for the record, but I'm definitely stoked to hear the finished product, whenever it's ready.

So yeah, that's how I spent my Friday afternoon; it certainly could've been in worse ways. I just wish there were more hours in the day, though; I got a full version of the new Norma Jean and the new Underoath is en route to me, but I've been rocking the new Girl Talk album nonstop for the past 48 hours that I don't know how I'm going to work anything else into rotation. Oh, the struggles of my life...