Musing

Website of the Year - Pat's Fantasy Hotlist Pat stirs up a lot of, well, let's say "emotions" amongst those who read his blog. But even if I don't agree with every review he writes or particularly care about Cirque du Soleil, I like his reviewing/interviewing method because he addresses each of the most important qualities that readers look for in books. I'm also happy to hear that he'll be continuing to write his reviews, even if he'll be cutting back to focus more on the world of flesh and blood. Book of the Year - Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Towers of Midnight It might be more accurate to create a category called "Author of the Year" and give it to Brandon Sanderson without any reservations at all, because The Way of Kings was almost as awesome. But ToM was the book that most of us have been waiting for for almost a decade. If you thought prophecies were being fulfilled before ToM, then ToM itself will leave you breath...

Mumford & Sons' "Sigh No More" Editor's Note: This is the 9th in a weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2010. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published shortly after the first of the year. Stay tuned! Taking my indie leanings into consideration, you might have expected this one. Although I haven't read through many other 2010 round-ups, I imagine that Sigh No More ranks pretty highly in most of them. It's a little pop, it's a lot of indie, it's several parts folk, and it's a dash of country - basically it hits a lot of sweet spots for a lot of different people. And it does each of those themes so well! I tried doing some homework while listening to this album for the first time and I attribute my horrible grades that week to the goosebumps that kept distracting me from my numbers. "I Gave You All" stopped me cold; I put the pe...

Maroon 5's Hands All Over Editor's Note: This is the 8th in a weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2010. New reviews go up every weekend through the end of the year. I'm pretty sure this album could make the ugliest duckling feel sexy. And if sex could take one of those damned Facebook surveys, it would probably find out that, if it was an album, it would be Hands All Over by Maroon 5. There are only two songs here that I ever think about skipping. The synth strings on "Don't Know Nothing" are too synth. "Just A Feeling" has an overly-repetitive chorus that just doesn't do anything for me. I bought the deluxe edition with "Last Chance" and "No Curtain Call" - these songs more than make up for those other weak tracks. The acoustic tracks are an interesting, early-M5 take on the first two singles. On the whole, this album is more closely related to Songs About Jane than It Won't Be Soon Befor...

Junip's Fields Editor's Note: This is the 7th in a weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2010. New reviews go up every weekend through the end of the year. Read anything about Junip and there's one fact that's always brought up - this album took about a decade to make. That's a long wait from their only other release in that time, the Black Refuge EP (barring the EP that immediately preceded this album). People like me have been salivating over that EP and waiting for any kind of news that these guys were actually trying to put anything else out. A ten year wait comes with naturally unrealistically high expectations, but the album is still amazing. Look at it this way - of all of the tracks on the album, I think their first single was the closest thing to unremarkable (and that song, "Always," was released to pretty positive reviews). I purchased the 3-disc edition, which bundled those first two EPs and two unreleased tracks wit...

David Ford's Let The Hard Times Roll Editor's Note: This is the 6th in a weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2010. New reviews go up every weekend through the end of the year. Ah, the top five. That secretive brotherhood of albums that shares "inherent awesomeness" as a tag if nothing else. Now it starts getting difficult to pick the albums apart; not impossible - there are no ties, and my decisions haven't changed since I first wrote out the list in October. So, why LTHTR? On his third full length effort, Ford struck a perfect balance between the gritty lyrics of his debut album with the instrumental prowess that marked his second. There's a track for every emotion here, yet they all still manage to swim together in the same school. "Surfin' Guantanamo Bay" is as righteously indignant as "State of the Union," but a listener would have a hard time guessing that both songs were written by the same man withou...

Arcade Fire's The Suburbs Editor's Note: This is the 5th in a weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2010. New reviews go up every weekend through the end of the year. Many reviews of this album sound disappointed. Many reviews of this album make comparisons to their first, best-of-its-decade album. Many reviews remark that there are a number of great tracks on this album with other tracks between those that are merely good. This is one of those reviews. Oddly, most of those same reviews adore "Empty Room." I am baffled as strongly by those reactions as I agree with the others. I'll go one step further and admit that if it was up to me, "Month of May" and "Suburban War" would have been left off of the album entirely and used as b-sides. That creates problems in thematic flow, but at least the album wouldn't feel like it drags after you hit 12 tracks or so. Arcade Fire aimed to show us the drudgery of suburban lif...

Margot & the Nuclear So-and-So's Buzzard The acoustic, back-porch recordings released to YouTube while the band was finishing the record got a lot of people excited, and I was definitely one of them. I was thrilled that they were finally out of the messy situation with Sony/Epic and able to release the album with an honest track listing. But the turnover of band members has taken that defining Margot quality away and left a talented but hardly-remarkable ensemble. It's ironic: in one of the videos mentioned above, they play a slow and haunting version of Will You Love Me Forever? , which ends with Edwards remarking "If I'd have recorded that one like that, it would probably make me some money, maybe." Sadly, he's right. The album version is layered with really average guitar lines and played much faster, which takes away from the yearning tonal quality that the song should have. Again, like the last albums, I'm being really picky. As a whole, th...

Jakob Dylan's Women and Country It's interesting to see the junior Dylan come full circle in his choice of musical expressions. The last time we heard something with the sort of bluesy Americana that the senior Dylan is known for was the first time we heard something from The Wallflowers (their criminally overlooked, self-titled debut album). It's certainly a big step away from his first solo album, which was sparse, but considerably lighter in both tone and subject. Biggest pro? I'm a sucker for the brass on this album, particularly "Lend a Hand" and "Standing Eight Count." It reminds me a bit of AB's Bowl of Fire. Biggest con? If the brass is awesome, the bass is awful. I think it was mixed far too high, which forces his vocals too far back. With a low raspy voice like his, you have to be very careful not to lose him in the mix. This was the single biggest factor that brought the album down as far as it is. Album highlight: The opening...

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Beat the Devil's Tattoo Don't get me wrong - I like 'em long. When I sit down to listen to an album, I want it to monopolize my attention for about 50 minutes at a time. Less than that and I feel cheated, although there's certainly some adjustments to be made for the quality of the material. Longer than that...well, you'd better bring everything you've got and pay even more attention to the flow of the songs than I do. Unfortunately, this album falls into this latter category. Some people say Be Here Now needed a far heavier hand when it came to keeping the songs in check, but I disagree. Only "Magic Pie" comes close to needing an edit, and it's hardly the longest song on the album. BRMC's newest album starts to sound oddly repetitive by the fifth or sixth track and it's hard to say if it's due to track length (half are 5 minutes or longer, ending with a 10 minute grinder that could have been 3 mi...

Linkin Park's A Thousand Suns It's easy to listen to this album all the way through without realizing that it has finished. This is both good and bad - good, because the flow of the songs is pretty smooth; bad, because it's hard to think back on the last 45 minutes and pick out your favorite tracks. Like Rob Thomas's cradlesong last year, I've already decided that this would be a much better album if I re-tracked it myself. "Overindulgence in the political spectrum" and "too many short, instrumental tracks" seems to have taken the focus away from writing songs that truly stand out for more than strong words. Album highlight: There's a breakdown in "Iridescent" that did manage to give me chills the first time I heard it. Do you feel cold and lost in desperation? You build up hope, but failure's all you've known. Remember all the sadness and frustration And let it go. Let it go.

Maybe there was too much hype leading into this album. Maybe the preponderance of positive reviews for certain tracks heightened expectations unrealistically. Maybe it is just a little too happy. Whatever the reason, I can't help but get up out of The Chair with a head-scratching feeling disappointment. Sides A/B are upbeat. Very upbeat from the same band that brought Funeral to the world in aural orgasm of chamber pop. And very upbeat from the same band that created an epic out of cynicism and panic with Neon Bible . Sides C/D travel back into that dark realm, but in settings with more sparse instrumentation than they've used in the past. On one hand, it's nice to hear some of the songs given a chance to breathe. On the other, isn't Arcade Fire defined by walls of orchestral bombast? A few more listens will help. I'm sure it will find a niche mood where I'm both craving AF and looking for something that's only occasionally depressing. *Note: It...

When I say that I intend to be really quick, it means I just want you to answer my question and let me get back to work. It doesn't mean I don't like you. It doesn't mean that I don't care about what you did this weekend. But honestly, my memory is shit. I'll probably forget the answer to the question I asked before I get back to my cubicle. So give it to me hard and fast: yes or no; do it or don't; black, white, or "what the fuck?" - in short - 1) Answer the question, and 2) Shut your piehole. Don't pretend you don't see this line. Yes, that's right, the line you just sauntered past on your way to the just-opened self-service checkout lane at the grocery store. There's 12 people waiting in one line right between the two sets of checkout register and you don't think someone's waiting for the register you just pounced on? Your baby is not so cute that I want to let you check out ahead of me. [To top it all off, the woman ...

An email circulating in Great Britain describes the sudden arrival of warm weather, something like our first glimpse of 80* a couple of weeks ago. This is one of those few forwards where I know or care what the writer is talking about. Crude language/subject matter warning. Reader discretion is advised. Ah, Tit Monday. It’s not that far off now, That glorious day when, heading into work on the bus, or walking to theTube, or sitting on the train, you find yourself suddenly chirpier than you have been in months. You find yourself smiling at strangers again. There is a mild involuntary tumescence in your trousers that comes and goes throughout the morning with the comforting regularity of a heartbeat. And then you get a text around lunchtime from a mate which says: “At last, Tit Monday!” And you instantly understand why you are so happy. For Tit Monday is that special day in the year when, for the first time, the temperature rises above that magical point which causes girls getting dres...

Album Review: The Alphabet of Hurricanes This fan review of AoH nailed something that I've had a hard time finding the words to explain. In the process, he loses the words to explain it himself. Thirdly: the songs. Usually, when I do this reviewy thing, I walk myself through the songs, but for now I'm not going to do that yet. Which is a very, very good thing. I like two types of music: music that I can't sit still to and music that makes you hold your breath, waiting for and at the same time dreading the end, because of its sheer beauty. Music has to move me, preferably beyond myself, if at all possible to that transcendent plane where you accidentally bump into spectres of words that don't exist or ideas you never had because you couldn't get a hold of them. TAoH strikes a great balance between tracks that are immediately and obviously great and tracks that are growers. This is probably the defining mark of any album that withstands the test of time - it has l...

On Various Matters - Design refresh still pending. Probably looking at a summer roll-out at this point. - Our sidewalk lamps were stolen at some point last night or this afternoon. I'm not sure how best to deal with this, so I'm stuck in a pissed-off funk. - Tom McRae's new album is amazing, and a review that I started and forgot to finish weeks ago will be posted soon. - I've also finally finished The Gathering Storm . WOW. Sanderson is making a serious run to be one of my favorite authors of all time.

On Moral and Religious Upbringing Is it any wonder that there can be no peace in a world where everything is done to guarantee that the youth of every nation grow up absolutely without moral and religious discipline, and without the shadow of an interior life, or of that spirituality and charity and faith which alone can safeguard the treasures and agreements made by governments? And Catholics, thousands of Catholics everywhere, have the consummate audacity to weep and complain because God does not hear their prayers for peace, when they have neglected not only His will, but the ordinary dictates of natural reason and prudence, and let their children grow up according to the standards of a civilization of hyenas. -Thomas Merton, "The Seven Story Mountain" Though it seems harsh on Catholics, this is the only background from which Merton could speak with personal authority. It is safe to say that this statement can be far more broadly applied.

Programming Note Haloscan is going belly-up this month, so I've enabled the native Blogger commenting protocol. This means all of the original commentary that sprinkled the articles is now gone. Not entirely into the ether - I have an enormous XML download that includes all of them. However, the task of reentering them is more trouble than it's worth. Such is the life of free services. In the meantime, enjoy some Bell X1!

The 2009 Ho Media Awards Website of the Year - xkcd Because romance, sarcasm, math, and language have always made the best bedfellows. Book of the Year - Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Angel's Game Nobody writes a novel with the right mix of noir, mystery, fantasy, and macabre deaths like Zafon. TAG is no exception. This book contains the single worst death I have ever had the privilege (?) of reading. It made me laugh and it broke my heart; made me hope and despair; made me pray and curse; and most powerfully, it stuck with me for every minute that I spent between those times when I could sit down with it again. In a preemptive honorable mention, I'm pretty sure that Brandon Sanderson is going to finish out the Wheel of Time saga very admirably, but I haven't gotten to The Gathering Storm yet. My reread is only halfway through Lord of Chaos right now. I started it back in September! Sanderson is worth another mention for his own original works as well. The Mistborn ...