Musing

This list is more about posterity than about writing convincing arguments imploring you to try these albums. I'm already later than I'd planned and time isn't getting any freer, so it's time to spit it out and get on with everything else! Remember when I said that last year? When I evidently (somehow) had even more time to write than I have today? Ah, the good old days. So! Same rules apply. Remember when I said that last year, referencing the year before? Same rules apply again. This year started off amazingly, with four albums in a row coming out within a month or so of each other - Painting of a Panic Attack, Are You Serious, Petals, and Jet Plane & Oxbow (though JP&O technically came out in January, it wasn't until I ordered Frightened Rabbit's album that I saw that this new Shearwater album had finally dropped). Jet Plane & Oxbow A Moon Shaped Pool Painting of a Panic Attack Courting the Squall 25 Are You Serious The ...

Radiohead's The King of Limbs Editor's Note: This is the 8th in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2011. New reviews go up every weekend through the end of the year. As I indicated in a post just after my first critical listen to this album, I was a little surprised at the direction taken with this album. The Radiohead Pendulum of Weirdness seemed to be swinging back towards something like "Amnesiac." In a way I was right, just not the way I expected. First of all, the disappointment from the short length of the album still hasn't worn off. Anything shorter than 10 tracks is still an EP to me. Several companion tracks have been released since the album hit the streets - "Supercollider" and "The Butcher" were emailed to all of the folks who pre-ordered the album through the band's site. "Staircase" and "The Daily Mail" were just released about a week ago as a one-off double A-s...

Well. That was not "In Rainbows: Part II". Yorke sings in much the same way that he did for IR, but it's over an electric mix that sounds like Amnesiac on steroids. Sounds like a blinding endorsement, but that first 15-20 minutes of frenetic toe-tapping starts to wear a little thin about halfway through "Little By Little." The back half is definitely slower. Maybe that was the intention - an uptempo first half and a more relaxed second half. Instant favorite? "Codex" is gorgeous. It has rightfully been called "Pyramid Song V2.0." It's too soon to talk about TKOL's rank amongst other Radiohead albums, but of their 8 albums, it's currently somewhere in the middle. The physical release might correct a couple of rough spots in the MP3's, and holding the so-called Newspaper Album might add some of the magic that strangely seems to be missing now.