What I'm Listening To September 3 - 9, 2010

1. Film School - Fission (Hi-Speed Soul)

2. Radars To the Sky - Supra / Infra (self release)

3. Autolux - Transit Transit (TBD Records)

4. Eastern Conference Champions - Sante Fe EP (self release)

5. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (Merge Records)

6. Jorma Kaukonen - Quah (Grunt Records/RCA)

7. Eels - Tomorrow Morning (E Works)

8. Darker My Love - Alive As You Are (Dangerbird Records)

9. Seven Saturdays - The Snowflakes That Hit Us Became Our Stars (self release)

10. Pavement - Quarantine the Past (Matador Records)

Lots of changes this week as Film School took the number one slot. I just couldn't stop playing Fission and feel confident it's one of the best releases of the year. I got to review it over at Radio Free Silver Lake last week. The Radars To the Sky CD, Supra / Infra, has steadily worked its way into my brain. It really is a beautifully produced album and features great variety in the songwriting, and some of the politically charged lyrics are starting to come through to me. (Sometime it takes me a little while to catch on to all the nuances of an album... sometimes 40 years.)

The solid new album by Autolux, still has a grip on me, while I got myself a copy of the Eastern Conference Champions EP, Santa Fe, at their Spaceland residency, which nicely presents some of their fine points, but I think the band has matured a bit since recording that. They've honed their music into a forwardly propulsive shark-like creation.

Arcade Fire finally dropped down to fifth place, though I'm not done with it yet. Jorma Kaukonen's Quah is tough to put away, sounds brand new, and is extremely impressive for a 36 year old album. Love that Eels album, especially like the way he sounds like The Muppets' Animal on "Baby Loves Me".

The Darker My Love album, Alive As You Are is still remarkable and I'm glad they are on the line up of the upcoming Eagle Rock Festival in October. I saw Seven Saturdays play Bootleg with Helen Stellar a couple of weeks ago and their restful and gloriously cinematic compositions are faithfully reproduced on this fine EP, The Snowflakes That Hit Us Became Our Stars. Pavement are coming up and they seem like their own entire course in Rock Music Theory as they cover so much ground and their influence on today's bands is so enormous. The more I hear, the more I like.

whrabbit