Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

Thanks so much for all the on and offline happys. Usually when birthdays are involved i pull out that Cage The Elephant album, but i've had a lovely Saturday of running errands and playing guitar and just generally piddling around (my favorite pasttime), so for this 44th one i think we'll let x equal x and pull out an even better and more surprising happy birthday album, Laurie Anderson's Big Science. You were born. And so you're free. So happy birthday. Just watch out for those impending nuclear bombs and shopping malls.  Technically this isn't an album so much as studio recordings of selections from her 8ish hour performance piece United States, but i think it works. You jump out of a plane, get lost, fall in and out of love, and have to listen to dudes say dumb things like "isn't it just like a woman." She's not wrong, you gotta put in mountains and staircases or else the characters won't have anything to fall off of. You also have to have a

Happy birthday to me (it's next Saturday, actually), let's open my present early and check out the sophomore album by Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues. I'm told it's not Blues, but Psychedelic Baroque Hipster Folk. The gatefold is the lyric sheet, so i'm game. Oh yeah, this is fantastic. Probably the most noticeable aspect of the album is how '60s CSN/Paul Simony it is, but a close second is that these aren't pop songs and it feels less like being performed at, more like you're sitting at the campfire with the band and aren't quite sure if you're supposed to pick up some instrument and join in. Maybe bang a couple sticks together or ooh and ah as best you can during the free jam at the end. These aren't verse/chorus/bridge/chorus kind of things, more stream of consciousness, sing about what you're feeling at the moment type things. I like it a lot, but it does have an "oh, ok, i guess that song's over now" aspect that takes s

You're all gonna hate me, but i have to. I heard Anti-Hero today, and it's a really intriguing song.  It makes me want to hear the rest of Midnights, which for good or bad is exactly what a single is supposed to do.  People love to hate Taylor Swift, but i don't understand why. You know me, i don't like football, i have no problem with her crossover from Country to Synth Pop, and... no, that intro/chorus voice manipulation on Midnight Rain is too terrible not to mention... i'm all about the concept, which in this case is obviously the thoughts that keep Taylor Swift up past midnight with self-doubt and insecurity (and i don't even need to check wikipedia or random interviews to verify). A couple things, this album is dark, she says "shit" and "fuck" and "dickhead" to keep a lot of these songs off commercial radio, and there it is again on Labyrinth. Artificially lowering her vocals by an octave sounds terrible. I don't like Ice