In Which More New Music Is Judged Until It Can Be Judged No Longer

We Owe These Albums To Our Lord and Savior

by Alex Carnevale

Ever since our last dip into the eternal pool of new music we realized we missed all the really important albums. This morning on my way to work I was in a cab and the cabbie, a 45-year old dude with a drinking problem that was fully on display, turned up "Touch My Body."

The other most important album is Dolly Parton's new jam, "Jesus & Gravity." That betch looks like two easter eggs smashed against each other. The message of Jesus & Gravity is clear: I owe everything to my Lord and savior plastic surgery.

Dolly said yo name, Isaac!

For Isaac Newton and Dolly Parton's botox, here is some new music for you to enjoy with your loved ones.

Moby on his new album:

Last Night is basically a love letter to dance music in New York City. What I love about the New York approach to dance music is the eclecticism and the open minded-ness on the part of the musicians, the DJ's, and the people in the bars and clubs. In making Last Night, I essentially tried to take a long 8 hour night out in New York City and condense it into a 65 minute long album.

Let me paraphrase that for you.

People seem to like Justice and Hot Chip, and yet I was doing better stuff when they were still talking in fake French/English accents. So here you go, I now expect to be played between Daft Punk and Digitalism at whatever club you young people are going to these days. This is the Moby you wanted. I'm going to go eat a veggie burrito, l8r.

Oh, Moby. Your weird dance-gospel albums were so spectacular. Sure people really didn't get them and the songs are now only heard in episodes of The L Word, but that doesn't change the fact they were brilliant. 18 is the most underrated album of the millennium.

With that said Last Night does have its moments and here are a few:

"I Love To Move In Here" - Moby (mp3)

"Ooh Yeah" - Moby (mp3)

pitchfork hated it, what a shock

I asked Will to write the analysis of the new Sun Kil Moon album, April.

"The Light" - Sun Kil Moon (mp3)

"Harper Road" - Sun Kil Moon (mp3)

Will:

I've always liked how Kozelek's albums had a variety of soft and loud songs. This one is 1.2 hours of pretty uniform slow down and outness. Extremely listenable, but I miss the ecstacies. Maybe I need more time with it, to be able to discern the subtle delights of mid-adulthood.

Also, I hurt.

Thanks for the that, Will. Indeed, April is v. depressing, but then again, so is everything that doesn't involve sex or baseball. Listening to this album is kind of like sitting on the toilet for an evening, but you're constantly taking the biggest and best deuce of your entire life. In other words, I loved it.

Buy April here

village voice review

"Shine" - Laura Marling (mp3)

"Ghosts" - Laura Marling (mp3)

Laura Marling's debut full album is probably the greatest thing ever, from the carefully constructed tracks to the album cover that looks like the hawk that attacked Alexa Rodriguez. "Ghosts" is incantatory and wonderful, as are all her live versions of the same. The end bit where it speeds up is transcendent and I hope someone is doing a dance remix or I will have to bring back my DJ Obama alternate identity.

It is scary that Marling was born in 1990. She was actually not permitted to perform at one of her gigs and had to play in the street. I know, I'm full of fun facts today.

Buy Alas I Cannot Swim here.

We already wrote about a few tracks from the new Spiritualized album. Ever since I saw Jason Pierce perform a lot of it at the Apollo, I have been salivating for Songs in A&E and finally it is here. I will buy 80 copies and make a pillow out of them to sleep on.

"Baby I'm Just A Fool" - Spiritualized (mp3)

"Death Take Your Fiddle" - Spiritualized (mp3)

"Sitting on Fire" - Spiritualized (mp3)

I preferred the live version of "Sitting on Fire", but hell, I already have that version and the aural cacophony is amazing, plus the best part about using the word 'cacophony' is that it already has the word phony in it.

Jason guided me through my childhood, and whether he actually has a sense of humor or not, the world has been waiting for a hot track titled "Death Take Your Fiddle", and now we finally have it.

"Fairytale" - Sara Bareilles (mp3)

I saw the video for her hit single "Love Songs" accidentally on MTV2. It's catchy but the album is kinda all over the place.

As a sidenote, will MTV just keep creating channels that are devoted to music videos and then slowly turn them over to more boring reruns of original programming? The only channel on my cable system that will continually play music videos is Vh1 country, and I have other reasons for not watching that, such as the possibility that Idol survivor Kristy Lee Cook will pop up any day now. God Bless the You Ess of Eh.

Bareilles is deceptively unhot, she kind of looks like Regina Spektor with a touch of down's. This would be no problem but Regina already looks like Fiona Apple with a touch of down's and Fiona Apple is of course Tori Amos with a touch of down's, and I believe you can trace this bloodline back somewhere to Billie Holiday or something.

If you have trouble hating her, just read her Twitter. It's the only thing that could bring the Salem Witch Trials back.

The new Fleet Foxes full length doesn't hit for a little while now. I think it's no longer called Ragged Wood and is now self-titled. This band from the Northwest put out their Sun Giant EP earlier this year.

Pitchfork reviews the EP

These are from the new album, and they are sensational.

"He Doesn't Know Why" - Fleet Foxes (mp3)

"White Winter Hymnal" - Fleet Foxes (mp3)

fleet foxes on hype machine, the god of all aggregators

Currently touring with Blitzen Trapper, the Foxes are sensational and will be 2008's it band most likely. We are very much OK with that.

"Shine " - Estelle (mp3)

We discussed Estelle's first single off of Shine here. We liked the song a lot despite the fact that it was produced by will.i.was. I have no idea why Missy isn't producing this girl. She has heaps of talent. Is Shine the best demonstration of that? Probably not, but I feel like her eventual sex tape with Kanye is going to be more important than her music anyway. "Don't like his baggy jeans/but I'mma like what's underneath them" indeed.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

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