Mew's "No More Stories Are Told Today, I'm Sorry They Washed Away; No More Stories, The World Is Grey; I'm Tired, Let's Wash Away"

Ok, Mew's second full length release, the insanely long album titled "No More Stories..." might catch your eye only due to the long album title. Title aside, this album is an amazing prog rock masterpiece by the Danish four piece which is at times rocking and at times mellow and appeasing. Prog rock is the forgotten rock genre which you never hear about "resurging". That's not necessarily a bad thing, as albums like these can still be released and get noticed.

The album might sound a bit chaotic and unorganized at first listen, but after several listens you see the complexly woven mesh that underlays this amazing release. Be sure to give it several listens, you won't be disappointed.

Health's "Get Color" - Dance Punk Hipness

Health is an interesting group creating an interesting sound. Health has managed to fuse digital elements with heavy rock/noise riffs and pounding drums to create a unique dance punk sound. "Get Color" is a noisy, distorted, loud, somewhat abrasive album that still manages to be catchy and totally danceable. It'll fit right in with your experimental indie rock playlist of The Boredoms, The Liars and Deerhoof.

The album will be released on September 8th on Secretly Canadian Records. I recommend it.

Jonsi & Alex's "Rice Boy Sleeps" - Very Pretty and Very Boring

Jonsi and Alex is the side project of Jonsi Birgisson of the fantastic Sigur Ros. Jonsi and Alex's vision is to release a minimal acoustic album of ambient music devoid of the characteristic vocals and rock bombast of a standard Sigur Ros album.

Make no mistake, this album is well crafted. Lush orchestration and sparsely intermixed choral arrangements are throughout this album. The album is very very pretty. Unfortunately, the album is also very very boring. Maybe i'm spoiled from the stellar Sigur Ros releases, but never throughout the course of this album do you feel yourself moved. The album strives to enthrall, but only succeeds in putting the listener to sleep.

And consider the towel thrown in.

After a humiliating, depressing 4 for 13 stretch against sub-.500 teams, i'm officially throwing in the towel on the Brewer's 2009 season. No pictures, no ranting, no season in review. Nothing. This season was a big big let down.

That's all. Packer talk to assume in three weeks.

Japandroids' "Post-Nothing" - Awesome!

Japandroids are two guys. One guitar, one drum set, two sets of vocals. Sounds small right? There is absolutely nothing "minimal" about these guys or this album. Loud, raucous, heavily distorted rock music that sounds like it's coming from a five piece band is what this is.

What really sells this album is that these two don't care that they are releasing what is seemingly self-indulgent guitar rock with a healthy dose of early-90's distortion. They just know you're going to turn up your stereos as loud as you can and just flat out rock out to the songs here. No one song sticks out over any other; but the album will leave you feeling very sated. Rock on!

The album was released on Poly-Vinyl Records on August 4, 2009. Pick it up.

Yacht's "See Mystery Lights" - Fantastic Futuristic Pop

Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic experimental Über-pop. Yacht takes an eclectic mix of electronic effects (digitized beats, spacey synths, vocoder effects, lasers) and makes it all sound fresh and different. It's bouncy, futuristic, poppy jam music, but it's also damn good. Not my normal style, but highly recommended nonetheless.

Blitzen Trapper's "Black River Killer" - Unnecessarily overproduced countrified rock

This is really unfortunate. Blitzen Trapper has a nice head of steam going for them, and are likely getting ready to "break through" as a big band. Their countrified pop rock is somewhat formulaic, but i'm not going to lie and tell you its bad. I'm generally a fan of the more folksie rock that is being released nowadays, but this album is just too poppy and overproduced for what its trying to be. A more genre friendly approach would have seen the group stick to the more minimally produced style they showcased with "Furr". "Black River Killer" (which is technically a long seven song EP, not a full length CD) is a disappointment (with the exception of the title track, which fittingly enough was on the first album), but that likely doesn't matter, as I think this album might be meant "for the masses", not the indie geek.

On a side note, apparently Sub Pop Records now releases all their CDs in the gatefold "LP-style" slipcases. Quite frankly, I like it. In my opinion this style actually helps to showcase album art better, which is a good thing.

Finally!

The shit finally hit the fan today, as Doug Melvin, the Brewer's ballsy GM finally made the moves we've been waiting for.

Pitching Coach Bill Castro - Fired! Replaced by Nashville Sounds Pitching Coach Chris Bosio

3B/Util Bill Hall - Designated for assignment. Essentially the Brewers have 10 days to trade him, for a team to claim him off waivers, or for him to accept a minor league assignment. The Brewers will eat $12 Million in salary, but considering his absymal batting average and dramatic decline the past three seasons, it's a well justified move. Hopefully we can trade him. I wish Billy Hall well. Maybe he takes a minor league deal and regains his stroke.

SS JJ Hardy - Demoted to AAA Nashville. This might be a drastic move, and I feel this will only last a few weeks, but Hardy has been struggling and if indeed we are out of this thing, we might as well get SS Alcides Escobar as many at bats as possible. Jason Bourgeous is also being called up, and he has been tearing up AAA this season. It'll be interesting to see if these two, along with 3B Mat Gamel, grow in the next month.

As of today Brewers are 6.5 games out of both the NL Central lead and the Wild Card lead. The next 21 games are against sub-.500 teams, followed by 6 games and 7 games against the Cardinals and Cubs. We're not completely out of it, but if they don't turn it around immediately, we're done.

Damn this Brewer team.

Pissed Jeans - King Of Jeans Review

So below I posted the image of the cover art of Pissed Jeans' new release King Of Jeans, mainly to highlight the fact that the cover art is awful.

I did get around to reviewing the record and I must say that it is pretty damn rocking. Hard, brash punk rock with the pounding rhythms and fuzz soaked riffs. Ignore the cover art and check out the album, as its probably the best punk rock album released this year.

Fruit Bats' "The Ruminant Band" - A nice retro listen!

Just got done reviewing The Fruit Bats' new album The Ruminant Band (Sub Pop Records). A well crafted album of alt-country rock. A very 70's-esque vibe to it with a mix of dark lyrics amidst a cheery background. The high-pitched, twangy vocals compliment the album well. I'm giving it a 7 out of 10.

Think Fleetwood Mac or acoustic Shins. Try it.

Pissed Jeans - King Of Jeans, Worst Album Art of the Year!

Ugh. Talk about awful album art.

I'll review the CD and be back with a review within the week, but this easily gets my nod for worst album art of the year.

The Nocturne

We've started a blog for WSND-FM's Nocturne program. Setlists, DJ reviews, rants and raves and so on. A link is posted to the right on this page. Check out the blog!

Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest - Most frustrating album of the year??

I still can't figure this album out. Make no mistake, some of the tracks on this album are flat out the best songs released this year. Particularly stellar are 'Two Weeks', the best pop song you'll hear this year, 'Cheerleader', 'Foreground', and the haunting 'Ready, Able'.

The problem is at least three or four of the tracks on this album are really not good at all. This has been my problem with Grizzly Bear in the past. Both Yellow House and Horn Of Plenty had some absolutely amazing tracks amongst garbage.

This album is going to make a lot of year end top albums lists. Hell, it might even make it into my year end top ten; but it will be due to the strength of a few songs, not the entire album.

The Flaming Lips at Pitchfork Music Festival 2009

Talk about amazing. The always fantastic Flaming Lips put on an amazing set at PFork 2009 at Union Park in wonderful Chicago, IL this past week. Other highlights included The Jesus Lizard, Ponytail, The National, DOOM, Grizzly Bear, Japandroids, M83 and Michael Columbia.

I had the pleasure of interviewing the members of Ponytail and Kickball Katy of the Vivian Girls. I will post the audio of these shortly. As for now, here are pics of the Flaming Lips. More pics are posted on my Facebook page.

I will being posting CD reviews and useless rants no one will read starting again this week.

NV

Wow.

It has been a long damn time since i've posted a blog thought here, but I consider myself refreshed and ready to post. My thoughts on the great Pitchfork Music Festival, including artist reviews and pictures to follow in the next few days.

Random Thoughts

1. I'm apparently too lazy to blog with any degree of regularity. At least my laptop is back at full functionality, so maybe i'll blog more.

2. Baseball season is upon us. Get ready for Brewers talk.

3. Animal Collective, Antony and the Johnsons, Swan Lake and Mastodon. Earyl candidates for album of the year.

That's all for now.

Bacon!

Ever wanted to view your web pages with bacon imprinted on it unnecessarily?

Just affix the following URL in front of the URL of the webpage you are browsing and a piece of bacon shows up on top of the webpage. This ranks up there as the most useless internet thing I have ever found, yet it is so damn useless that i've been playing with it for hours.

http://bacolicio.us/

For instance, care to view this blog with bacon? Use this link:

http://bacolicio.us/http://fandomandboredom.blogspot.com

Fun right?

R.I.P. Dewey Martin

Former drummer for the seminal rock band Buffalo Springfield, Dewey Martin, passed away on Thursday. As a HUGE Buffalo Springfield fan, this is definitely a sad loss. R.I.P.

The Crying Light

I know it's only January, but I think it's safe to say the Antony and the Johnson's The Crying Light (released Janaury 20th) is more than likely going to be the album of the year for me and many others. At minimum it will be in the top five on EVERYONE's top ten end year list.

Absolutely stellar album, stretching Antony's Nina Simone-esque voice to a max. An exploration of nature's relationship between birth and death. Somehow this album is darker than his previous release. Not musically darker, just lyrically.

Great listen, highly recommended. Also recommended - Animal Collective's Merriwether Post Pavilion!

The Ben Sheets saga.

I've always been a supporter of Ben Sheets, injuries and all. I was hoping that this free agency would show that his injuries were hurting his prospects and he would sign a smaller, incentive laden contract with the Brewers, as we'd gladly have him back.

This might not happen, as Sheets' has reportedly told Brewers' brass that he is moving in a different direction.

??

I tried to opine my thoughts about this, but the folks over at www.brewcrewball.com did I much better job than I could possibly do. Here is their take:

"Brian Anderson reports that Ben Sheets "has informed the Brewers that he is going in a different direction."

I always thought that phrase was interesting, especially in this case. I can see how an organization might truthfully use the phrase "going in a different direction" as a result of a chance in team philosophy. An NFL team might switch from a 4-3 defense to a 3-4 defense, requiring more from an outside linebacker than your current OLB can offer, talentwise. Or a team in any sport might decide that this is a "rebuilding year" and trade some established veterans for younger and less proven talent.

I'd be curious to see if Ben Sheets actually said he wants to go in a "different direction," because that phrasing really doesn't make any sense when you're a person instead of an organization. What direction are the Brewers going in that Ben wants to veer from? Requiring that pitcher use their hands to pitch, and not their bare feet? Catapulting pitches across the plate using your hat? Before this season, you could say that the direction Ben wanted to go to was "winning baseball," but that doesn't apply anymore after the 2008 season.

Admittedly, this may merely be some inexact writing on BA's part --- it wasn't offered as an exact quote by Sheets or anything. Just the same, it's the first time I saw a report of Sheets not wanting to return to Milwaukee, and I'd be curious as to why."

"Requiring that pitcher use their hands to pitch, and not their bare feet?" That's good stuff.

Hells Bells baby!

While I realize his career is waning, I will gladly welcome Trevor Hoffman to the Brewers bullpen. He will be fantastic as an older mentor to guys like Carlos Villanueva and some of the other prospects we have.

Brewers fans can't be too optimistic. Hoffman will bring an ERA slightly over 3.5 and will lose a few games, no question. But he'll collect 30-35 saves and will provide stability to the role for hopefully two years. Great signing.

Two months to Spring Training!