Musing

Ben Howard's Every Kingdom Editor's Note: This is the 8th in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned! Chase's departure from "House, M.D." in the final season was tracked with the closing song on this album, "Promise." It gave me chills. "House" brought me several good bands or songs during its eight year run, but I'm not sure it brought me anything better than Ben Howard. I think of Ben as the anti-Matt Nathanson. Matt is more of a chord-driven songwriter, keeping the songs casual, simple affairs. Good campfire music. Ben plays his guitar like a harp, in that his songs are driven by complex melody lines picked out one string at a time. It's not just good sounding music. It's music that makes you sit back and appreciate the level...

Keane's Strangeland Editor's Note: This is the 7th in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned! Keane turned in a weak effort with their last album, which I panned a few years ago. They've since released an EP that was received with scorn by pretty much the entire fan community. Things were looking bad, which was great news for me. I have a theory that artists only make good albums when they're experiencing tough times. The corollary is that they make lousy albums when they are at the height of their popularity/having good tours/etc. Coldplay and The Killers are two fine recent examples. Now Keane joins that list. This album does a sharp U-turn away from the synth-filled excess and sunshiny melodies of the previous two works and journeys back to the pianos and themes of...

Tom McRae's From the Lowlands [ Digital ] Editor's Note: This is the 6th in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned! Tom promised a second half to the HMA-winning The Alphabet of Hurricanes back when he was in the studio for that album, but I'm a jaded consumer of music - I've heard this before. Follow any band in the studio closely enough and you're sure to read something like this at some point: "Hey guys, we have cut 249 songs for this album! Can't wait to share them with you!!!" But oh me of little faith: here is the second half of the AOH cycle. And it's glorious. At first I thought this was just an EP of leftovers, but I posed the question to the man himself on his forum and it was confirmed that this is a full length album. Seeing only 9...

Charlie Winston's Running Still Editor's Note: This is the 5th in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned! After landing 2010's Discovery Artist of the Year Award, I naturally had high hopes for Mr. Winston. And I'm sure he will be happy to know that he did not fail to amaze with Running Still . You're welcome, Charles. "Hello Alone" is a great bridge from the last album, which is good, because "Speak To Me" comes out of left field and - on first listen - made me wonder if he'd decided to completely change his style. It's happened before. Witness "Mischifus," the impossible-to-find-on-disc collection of tunes he wrote for a one man theater production. It's an odd album of sonic knick-knacks that didn't really suggest ...

Sea Wolf's Old World Romance Editor's Note: This is the 4th in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned! Sea Wolf's second full length was something of a surprise. It's far more approachable than Leaves in the River . Although it placed third in my 2009 countdown, it lost something of its luster over time. It started feeling like a sell-out effort, which made me worry about LP3. Apparently I was too quick to judge, because this third album - Old World Romance - starts taking cues from the first album and leaving the sheen and the theatrics of the second album in the past. LitR is another one of those albums I love to pull out on rainy days. OWR is similar, but darker and colder. More of an album for snow than for rain (listen to "Kasper" for example and try t...

Snow Patrol's Fallen Empires Editor's Note: This is the 3rd in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned! A Hundred Million Suns seemed to come and go with barely a ripple in the popular music pool. "Take Back the City" was a modest success on the radio at best, and I don't recall hearing another single off of that album. Although it gave us the gem "Lifeboats" and the three part masterpiece "The Lightning Strike," it seemed that their 15 minutes had passed. So when it came to the new album, Fallen Empires , I wasn't exactly beside myself with anticipation. FE doesn't push any new boundaries for the band, but I think it refines the sound of the last album a little more. It's a little safer that way maybe, which would be my one over-...

Gotye's Making Mirrors Editor's Note: This is the 2nd in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned! For a brief, weird moment earlier this year, I thought Sting had actually done something cool. Luckily my musical reputation was saved when I learned that this Sting sound a like was actually an Australian going by the moniker Gotye. Whew, almost lost all respect for my own musical opinion there... MM is already his third album, but it took the often parodied single "Somebody That I Used To Know" to garner him worldwide attention.  Sidebar: While Kimbra, Gotye's female foil in this tune has a very pleasant voice, her own album that came out this year is definitely not top ten material.  The album is eclectic without being off putting in a way that makes it hard to make ...

Ben Gibbard's Former Lives Editor's Note: This is the 1st in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2012. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned! We kick off the 2012 music season with the hardest-to-choose slot in the countdown. So many good records hit the stores this year that it feels criminal to pare it down to just ten. It took a wild combination of scoring methods (to be detailed in the final awards post) to get the top nine, but the tenth slot saw a 4-way tie that had me listening to the contenders repeatedly for two weeks. Ben came out on top. "Fun" isn't usually a tag that gets you very far in a countdown like this with me. My M.O. follows a melancholy track pretty much top to bottom - autumnal albums that warm the air of a drizzly day like sunlight filtered through those dark, rainy clouds. But th...

Who are you? he asked again. I told you, I don't know. Then she smiled, a surprising flash of amusement that transformed her solemn little face into something astounding. I'm a dreamer, I suppose, or maybe I'm a dream. One of us is dreaming this, aren't we? But that was a jest, he knew. She was no idle wisp of either his fancy or her own--she was strong and practical. He could feel it. And who are you? A prisoner , he told her, and knew it was true. An exile. A victim. Now for the first time he felt something other than kindness from her, a sour taste in her reply. A victim? Who isn't? That isn't who you are, that's just what's happening to you. --Selection from Tad Williams' Shadowplay

Website of the Year - Raspberry Pi Great project, great cause. So beautifully nerdy to watch this happen from the ground up. Book of the Year - Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus There was a whole lot of buzz surrounding Morgenstern's debut novel about this one-of-a-kind circus. I finally got it for my lunchtime reading break on my Kindle and devoured about 7-10% of it every day. It was absolutely worth every penny I paid. I've since ordered it in hardcover as well, since I think it's a book that's going to have staying power. While the plot is certainly better than average, it's the world that the plot is couched in that really makes me want to start reading it all over again. The novel is not intended to be a part of any series, so there's no commitment to anything greater than its own length. This was one of the most attractive things about it from the start, since a lot of my reading time is gobbled up by enormous books, enormous s...

Noel Gallagher's Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds Editor's Note: This is the 9th in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2011. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published next weekend. Stay tuned! Yes, even after my strong defense of Liam and Beady Eye in general, I still have to give the edge to Noel's solo album. He kept it to just the right length by culling his batch of 15+ studio tracks down to the ten that fit together best. The album grabbed me from the first track. He doesn't take any time to do any vocal warm-ups - this is Noel at his most emphatic from the first line of vocals. And what a deliciously dark opener it is! This is one of the reasons that Noel gets the edge. Dark sounds, minor chords, and lots of strings are going to suck me in every time. I'll admit that I was a little trepidatious after hearing the first single, ...