Listening to the new Death Cab album. Its different. More "bouncy" and up-beat and dancy, this is pretty significant for a band that never turned up the tempo or distortion for the first 3/4s of their career. A lot of the early word is fans hating this transition, and the album has been getting some bad reviews, and altho this is no "Transatlanticism", I think the evolution is almost needed to avoid becoming stale and redundant.
One of my favorite Canadian artists, Matthew Good, released his newest album Lights of the Endangered Species this week. Its yet another album of great hard tinged acoustic rock. This album utilizes a lot more piano than previous albums. Really great, even if it is only 9 songs. I am having difficulty finding some tracks from it on YouTube so I will just post one of my favorite tracks from him, Weapon.
So, Sublime are back with a new lead singer/guitarist, and going by the name "Sublime With Rome", the new guy of course being Rome.
I like the new song, and unlike some annoying purists, I don't mind the boys continuing or "keeping" the Sublime name (its technically under a new name anyways). They got a new album coming out in July, I will be checking for it. I always thought that Sublime were a good band that had the potential to be a great band, but never had the time to truly develop and capture that potential. Let's see what this concoction can do.
Anyways, I'm listening to the new Bon Iver album on stream right now (can't download anything on the computer I'm on). I'm really enjoying the instrumental vibes of this album, but I'm not feeling the singing much. On some songs it sounds more subtle, but a lot of the time the voice is too out there and just doesn't work for me. The lyricism and music vibes are great, but I dunno if I can get pass the voice. We will see how this goes.
New song from the new band "The Horrible Crowes". This is a side project for The Gaslight Anthem's lead singer Brian Fallon. Of course, Gaslight Anthem are probably my 2nd favorite "new" band (my definition of "new" band is any band to debut in the last 10 years lol, Gaslight already have 3 albums). The side-project was described as being a "radical" departure for Fallon, but this sounds mostly like Gaslight. The song is dope as hell as well.
*I'm fully aware that no one cares about this lol, but I don't care that y'all don't care, I'm still posting and promoting it.
So here is my second rundown of Rock albums that came out this year.
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds: Fucking class. Takes the more low-key sounds of Oasis and expands on them with influences of jazz, indie rock, and organs and mixtures of horns and such. Far from the stadium rock sounds of Oasis' bigger hits but still rooted in the song writing and arrangement that made Oasis so beloved. A great album, one fo the best of the year.
blink-182 - Neighbourhoods: This one caught me by surprise. Blink was a big staple of my teenage years but I haven't listened to them much since (also they haven't put out an album in 8 years). But the album progresses with the more mature sounds of their last self-titled album, but also bringing in influence from the bigger more stadium rock sounds of A&A and the experimentation of +44, not to mention that they gave Travis a lot more freedom to just wild out on the drums. Really catchy songs with great evolved punk pop based instrumentation, probably the best I could have hoped for from these guys.
Girls - Father, Sun, Holy Ghost: Another great surprise. Checked this out after hearing the phenomenal "Vomit". Really sweat indie pop. Just great melodies and lush instrumentation. But they switch it up a lot too, and can rock it on songs like "Die". The album is a little all over the place, but I really liked that about it, one of the best of the year.
Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto: Another surprise, since early reviews were thrashing this. But in my opinion, its their best album since A Rush of Blood To The Head. The giys decided to try something different, and decided to venture in to dance rock and dream pop. I can see why purists hated this, but I thought they worked the genres just fine and created something fresh for the band. Very catchy, very well performed. Great album.
The Horrible Crowes - Elsie: Gaslight Anthem's frontman's side-project. A more traditional rock version of Gaslight Anthem. Less punk, more Bruce. But still wonderfully done and maybe a little more digestible than Gaslight's albums. Just a well done rock album with fantastic vocals.
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