sound of the suburbs

First up sorry for the lack of activity these last two weeks but what with work illness and my family time has been rather short of late, I promise that I will make an effort. A couple of links for you to start with, Brad over at Bradley's Almanac does not only have excellent taste in music but has the chance to live in a major US city where plenty of good gigs are up for the taking, now Brad being a music lover gets to attend a fair number of these and has the habit of recording them and then posting them on his blog. Well he's done it again and I'd suggest you get your finger out and over there asap while the files are still up as there is an excellent concert from Cat Power's recent gig in Boston.

Regular readers will have noticed that their are certain recurrent themes here one of which is the Rough Trade record label. Now I as with many other boggers regularly use AMG as a research resource, and it was while on one of these visits the other day that I came across a 3 part article revisiting 40 of Rough Trades first 100 singles, the articles are well written and informative and go to illustrate the wide and eclectic range of music that the label made public. You can find part 1 here , part 2 here and part 3 here.

Now I don't know about you but my financial resources have their limits and my bank manager does not consider record buying to be a sound basis for a loan and so there are many artists that I would like to check out with my own two ears, or maybe that I have listened to but to briefly or not in the right mood and so have maybe wrongly classified the artist. This is where digital download services come in handy in particular emusic, I have been a member since July 2006 and can remember the days of unlimited downloads. Now the point is that their subscription service $15 for 65 songs an month with the possibility of buying 'booster packs' has proven to be an excellent and economic way of catching up and discovering new artists, don't forget that if after downloading 1 or 2 songs you find that it is not for you, well you've only spent 2 of your credits as opposed to forking out for the whole album. Recent discoveries for me include Flaming Lips, yes I know sometimes I'm a bit slow on the uptake. Let me explain: when they started to get good press in the UK I went out of my way to listen to them, don't ask me what, and it left me cold, add to this the fact that were touring with quadrophinic sound systems or whatever, I've only got two ears and that's difficult enough, now this stunk of the worst excesses of prog rock as in Pink Floyd, so for me it was no thanks. And now thanks to my subscription I've recently downloaded one of their early albums 'Here It Is' and what do you know I've really got in to it particularly 'Jesus Shootin Heroin' I just love the lyrics, makes me think so much of early Nick Cave. Another band that I've read a lot about but actually heard little is Mission To Burma, one of those rare bands that split before real recognition and come back latter making valid contribution to the musical landscape. They have a new album out 'The Obliterati', not for those of you who don't like noise but for me it was certainly a revelation current fave is '2wice'. Now to round up this little summary of delights to be found on emusic the honour goes to Danko Jones a Canadian power trio currently touring their latest LP 'Sleep Is The Enemy'. My interest in this band is thanks to my old friend Fifi, who told me about an amazing concert they gave in Montpellier a month or so ago, and I must say that upon listening to this I certainly am sorry that I missed them. 'She's Drugs' typifies what is good about this band testerone fueled rock around the three minute mark, no arty solos and with a chorus other bands would kill for.

To close of today's post something I found on one of those cover mounted CD's, a track from the new Sonic Youth album 'Rather Ripped', now if I'm to be honest with you I'd rather given up on the band but from this track 'Incinerate' I would dare to suggest that this is a return to form of their hey day as in 'Daydream Nation', definitely one to check out.