1. The Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
A lot of the praise for this album centers on the analog recording method, the return of Grohl's Nirvana-era pals like Vig, Novaselic and Smear, and how crappy their previous few album supposedly were. But really I kind of love how workmanlike the Foo Fighters are and the last couple albums easily could've been this consistent if they weren't both 50% boring acoustic stuff. In any event I'm really enjoying this and like that I can kind of consume this as an album while knowing that almost any of these songs could be a big rock radio hit and several of them inevitably will be -- at the moment love "Arlandria," "A Matter of Time" and "Bridge Burning" the most.

2. DJ Quik - The Book of David
I love how even though this isn't as overtly outside the box as BlaQKout and hearkens back more overtly to Quik's classic '90s sound, it's still every bit a creative statement of individuality with inventive production and almost uncomfortably personal songwriting.

3. Fishboy - Classic Creeps
A few months ago I wrote about how Fishboy's 2007 album Albatross: How We Failed to Save the Lone Star State With The Power Of Rock And Roll was one of my favorite records of the last decade. Their latest lacks the epic scope and charmingly odd conceptual heft, but it has the same nerdy power pop sound and a bit of a concept involving a companion comic book and every song being named after a character whose name stars with the letter A. As you can tell, I don't really understand it all, but it's fun to listen to.

4. Superchunk - The Clambakes Vol. 5: Cup of Clams - Live at Cat's Cradle, October 2003
I'm of the relative minority among Superchunk fans in beliefs like that Here's Where The Strings Come In is far and away their best album and that a lot of their greatest songs are tucked away on later albums and their third rarities compilation, Cup of Sand. So it was like a special gift to me that for Record Store Day they released a remastered Strings that came with a free live album from the same Cup of Sand mini-tour where I saw the band for the 2nd time in 2003. It's really fun to hear rarely played non-album songs like "The Majestic" or "Becoming A Speck."

5. UNKLE - Only The Lonely EP
As with last year's Where Did The Night Fall album, I enjoy listening to new UNKLE material mainly to spot the influence of Baltimore's James Griffit (of Lake Trout and Big In Japan) on the proceedings. This is a nice little 5-song one-off that flows pretty well and includes a scenery-chewing turn by Nick Cave on the opening title track.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 13, 2011 at 12:57 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.