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...