So Kyle and I were both at the Pitchfork Music Festival this past weekend but we both experienced completely different festivals. I experienced Saturday in the day of a normal everyday schumck that likes to sweat it out with all of the hipsters, hippies and hard core musical fanatics. I believe a new scent of "collective human odor" was created on Saturday...look out Old Spice, I think we have the new overpowering item for the marketplace.

All in all, I was very happy with the performances. I saw Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, part of Dizzee Rascall and !!! and Animal Collective.

Fleet Foxes were the first band of the day for me when I got to the fest at approximately 2:45. They started off their set with a very mellow, acapella tune that made the entire festival hush to a silence. It was a crazy, surreal moment to have a festival that quiet for a performer. That just went on to show you how good these guys are and how they bring folks along for a musical journey with their rich harmonies and melodies. I was quite impressed. The only flaw I found was that their set was not very organized and they had long pauses between songs which kind of annoyed my short attention span.

Next was Dizzee Rascal. He was the only rapper of the day and he is British. Oh yeah and he has GREAT abs..like washboard abs. This guy must do about 300 situps a day. He also liked to call the audience MotherF----- a LOT. I lost track after we got done with the first song and we had already hit 20 (I'm that big of a nerd that I was counting). Yeah, but he does have the #1 hit song in the UK right now. Congrats to him for that.

NOTE: The Fleet Foxes lead singer is a Vegan who enjoys Vegan Ice Cream. As I got done with Dizzee, Nate and I went looking for some food and came across a Vegan Ice Cream booth. The employees went on to shout with glee, "Hey look everybody the FLEET FOXES like VEGAN ICE CREAM!" Yeah, that was a big shocker.

Vampire Weekend were the reason why I went to the festival. They were AMAZING. Super tight 45 minute set of straight pop/rock songs. My favorite song was a B-side I had never heard but it had a nice little trippy "apple" drum machine beat to it. It made me bounce with glee. Yep, I was full of glee.

!!! were crazy and very charasmatic but not my cup of tea. The lead singer was very...interesting. He liked to shake it. But every song kind of sounded exactly the same to me so I stayed for about 15 minutes and then went to check out flatstock posters.

The headliners of the night, Animal Collective, is what my buddy Nate the Greek came to see. He loves their sound of experimental samples and loops. It is definitely an acquired taste...kind of like asparagus or beer...something you typically don't like the first 20 times you listen to it. I have to say their live show was AMAZING. They had synchronized lights and just TONS of energy. I was not really a fan but I have to say that I am now. No words can really describe their show. The people behind me were high on something other than life and they kept oooooing and ahhhhing because the spectacle was just crazy. I couldn't imagine seeing them on anything...it would probably be sensory overload. The bass was so loud that my body vibrated with the music. Someone said to us when we were leaving that it was a "spiritual experience that made you question your own existence." I wouldn't go that far but it was definitely some nice icing on the cake of a great day.

So Kyle has posted his favorite songs of 2008 so far and he dropped me a line earlier last week asking for my take on the music that has been released so far this year. I haven't listened to as much new stuff as I know Kyle has (because he is bigger, faster and stronger than me) but I can give you my take on what I HAVE heard.

Even though I'm slightly biased (as they are my 2nd favorite band) and my wife always asks me how I can listen to a band that sings in a language that I don't understand, the best release of 2008 has been hands down Sigur Ros' MED SUD I EYRUM VID SPILUM ENDALAUST. Kyle picked a song off of it as one of his favorites of 2008 (GOBBLEDIGOOK...a song with absolutely no time signature which makes it an adventure to hear) and from start to finish it is one of their finest works. It is almost unfair for a band to be so much further above the bar than the rest of music currently. Radiohead gets all of the credit but Sigur Ros really has done a lot more trailblazing recently. I can not recommend this album enough.

I have also enjoyed a number of my old favorites releasing stuff this year. Nada Surf put out a solid album with some very quality songs (I really like SEE THESE BONES). REM has one of their best albums since UP with ACCELERATE (If you like their harder stuff a la MONSTER or OUT OF TIME, this would be right up your alley). I agree with Kyle that DEATH CAB FOR CUTIES new stuff is good (I WILL POSSESS YOUR HEART is easily one of their catchier songs).

You can add all of the featured discs that I have reviewed on MusicBath to this list (ADELE, COLDPLAY, COUNTING CROWS, FLEET FOXES). Some disappointments (at least for me) this year were Jason Mraz and Weezer. They had some good songs on them (PORK AND BEANS is endlessly hooky..if that makes any sense) but as a whole, they were disappointments to me.

The one cd this year that I need someone to explain to me is SHE & HIM. This cd consistently keeps getting positive reviews from the indie community and critics alike but I just can't seem to find what they hearing. If someone can let me know, I would appreciate it.

Thanks for reading and here is to hoping that the rest of the year continues to put some great tunes.

It is a good thing I'm not a headline writer because I would probably be fired after day one...or maybe not hired in the first place. Eh, I write for the joy of it anyhow.

So I experience my first real summer show this past Friday at the uber ritzy Ravinia Festival. Even though I never feel like I fit in there (my first encounter consisted of my sister, brother in law and I going and eating our PB&J's and drinking coke while everyone else around us drank $100 bottles of wine) I have always respected what the festival represents. Plus the acoustics in the pavillion are second to none, which is rare for an outdoor venue. I was able to experience one of the best shows of 2007 there last year (Nickel Creek and Fiona Apple) and this year was no different with Leslie Feist's performance.

Feist has received all sorts of critical success following her second release THE REMINDER in 2007 and it was well-deserved. I had also heard a lot from other people and radio station DJ's that she put on a great concert. They were right.

I have to say that the opening act of Juana Molina was slightly underwhelming. I am not sure if was just lack of stage presence or the fact that not a single soul seemed to want to pay any attention to her. That will probably be the case a lot of the time at Ravinia as it seems that a lot of people are there more for the atmosphere vs. the actual artist in residence.

Feist did not disappoint though. She came out in a white cowboy hat and a coat with tassels galore (that almost paints the picture that tassels are a great fashion statement but I have to admit that it is probably harder to pull off than most would think). Her stage presence was quite charasmatic and I was gripped by her from song one. Her band consisted of multiple instrumentalists that obviously were talented. Each played multiple instruments throughout the show (from bells to trumpet to piano and guitar). Additionally, she had a crew of two women with an overhead projector that created interesting shadows and designs behind the stage during the concert. It kind of reminded me of what is sometimes done at prog-rock/ambient type of shows with digital images/videos that blend with the development and ebb and flow of the music. Some might have considered the shadow idea slightly pretentious. But I think it was done too innocently to be called that.

Feist played pretty much every tune off of THE REMINDER (minus my personal favorite of PAST IN PRESENT but you can't have it all) and through some of her first album favorites from LET IT DIE. It was a very long set of tunes (almost exactly 2 hours) that went by very quickly, which is a sign of a tightly done set.

Leslie Feist is definitely an entertainer and a great songwriter and both were displayed exuberantly on Friday night.

Well, 2008 is half over. How did THAT happen? We've already had some great albums and great songs released this year. The A.V. Club released their list of the best songs so far, and I've hardly heard any of them - although a ton of them are on my list! Alternately, a lot of my favorite songs of the year are absent from their list. Without further ado, here are my favorite songs of the year to this point, after the break.

Continue reading "1/2 of 2008"

There has been a recent uptick in the motown sound since the broad appeal of Amy Winehouse has brought it back to the forefront in music. Due to this fact, there have been more and more artists being signed that have a distinctive sound that can trace its root back to the "heyday" of motown. The most recent artist that I can think of that is getting a lot of buzz is Duffy. Another British import that I think has an edge on Duffy is Adele.

Adele's LP debut 19 was available to me for free on a streaming site a few weeks ago and I listened to it daily for about a week. I had initially written her off as I had read a few reviews stating that she is basically just a rehash of the "Winehouse sound" and she really didn't have the stand out pipes or production to warrant checking out. However, after a few listens, I found a lot more soul in her voice than I had expected. She doesn't have the raspiness to her voice that Winehouse has but she presents a warmer sound that wraps itself around you on her slow songs (DAYDREAMER, FIRST LOVE) and is not drowned out on her more uptempo songs (BEST FOR LAST).

You get a pretty good bang for your buck with Adele as 19, as a whole, is not a bad album. There are some weaker songs on it but for the most part, 9 of the 12 songs are worthy of IPOD space. I would recommend checking her out and you may be pleasantly surprised as well.

Stand outs: Tired, Cold Shoulder, Hometown Glory, Bob Dylan cover of Make You Feel My Love

http://www.myspace.com/adelelondon