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.