1. Casual Curious - Casual Curious
I kinda randomly went to a show last month and these guys, a duo from North Carolina, totally blew me away. One incredible drummer and one guy singing and working a big bank of synths and samples, huge awesomely gnarled sound and instantly memorable hooks, totally the kind of thing I’m always a sucker for. They were giving away copies of their debut full-length, at the merch table, and have really become my most exciting new musical discovery of the year so far. The record is only 29 minutes long and doesn’t sound quite as good as their live show but it is still pretty awesome, kind of a contemporary Americanized take on brooding anglo '80s synth pop in the same way as what I loved about the Kenna albums, but with a little more rock dynamics and lo-fi dirt under the fingernails. I believe there’s going to be an official retail release of this sometime soon, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to publish a proper review somewhere when it does happen, but for now since it's kinda sorta been out there since July unofficially, it's my favorite album of that month, in the meantime check them out.

2. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty
I’ve never been the biggest Outkast/Dungeon Fam fan, I respect what they did for Southern rap and had some great moments but over the past decade have been responsible for more corny shit and diminishing returns and overrated pop moves than great rap. But Big Boi’s always been reliable to deliver good shit, and even if I wish this was a little more like “Kryptonite” type stuff, I respect that he’s really stuck to the crazy old Organized Noize-type sound and has mixed it in with more contemporary sounds in a way that holds together cohesively.

3. Fat Joe - The Darkside
Fat Joe has always been pretty dependable about turning out some hard-ass east coast bangers, even when his rep was mainly about being really into sellout R&B hooks and shit. So it’s kind of funny that, now that even radio isn’t really messing with his attempted crossover moves, he’s playing up that he’s returning to REAL STREET RAP even though the album has probably the same amount of R. Kelly and Trey Songz type features as any of his other albums. But again, Joe’s a really consistent and underrated artist and this is probably one of his better albums, not up there with Loyalty and Me Myself & I but definitely better than J.O.S.E. or the last couple underwhelming albums.

4. The High Confessions - Turning Lead Into Gold With The High Confessions
As a Sonic Youth obsessive and as a drummer I’ve always been a huge fan of Steve Shelley and have followed his various projects outside of SY (hell, I probably have the world’s most complete collection of Two Dollar Guitar records). So it was exciting for me to hear this year that he was forming his first new band in a long, long time, even though it was apparently a metal band featuring other people from band’s I’ve never heard. And indeed, it is kind of out of my usual comfort zone as a listener, and to an extent, I don’t really ‘get’ this stuff and it’s a bit dark and drab for my taste. At the same time, though, it’s cool to hear Steve do something so different from Sonic Youth, and it’s cool how every track but one is over 9 minutes long and there are some crazy drones and weird unexpected things going on in the longer tracks.

5. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse - Dark Night Of The Soul
When I wrote a post here about Mark Linkous following his suicide in March, I talked about how I deeply loved Sparklehorse’s early albums, but slowly lost interest as he started working more with guest stars and outside producers, and ended up not even hearing this album when it leaked last year due to “my general aversion to both Danger Mouse and all-star collaboration projects.” But since this finally got a proper retail release this year, it seemed like a good time to give it a chance and see what I missed. And while it is nice, and it’s great to hear anything Linkous did now that he’s gone, it’s not something I’ll be coming back to as much as Good Morning Spider anytime soon. I realize that to a lot of people there’s not a world of difference between Sparklehorse and bands like the Flaming Lips or Grandaddy, but the main difference to me is that I fucking hate the voices of those bands’ singers, and so guys like that kinda ruin the album for me. So I appreciate that the album was released as a 2CD including instrumentals of every song, but the music isn’t so great in and of itself that I enjoy those a whole lot, I’d much prefer a version of the album with all Linkous vocals.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23, 2010 at 3:21 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.