Awkward Press

Hey there champies! I’ve been outta commission for awhile, throwing glamorous parties in New York and staging protests outside of my local public school to stop Obama from indoctrinating our school children into his Communist trans-gender agenda, but now I’m back to talk about the latest additions to my iTunes. Let’s get down to it, boppers!

1) The Antlers: Hospice
Date added: 9/4/2009

HOLY G*DDAMN MOTHERF*CKING APE-FIST*NG PEE CLOWN, this is a great record! Okay, so full disclosure: I never really got swept up in the whole Arcade Fire phenomenon. I really want to love Funeral as much as everyone else does, but there’s something about it that feels disingenuous to me. Maybe not disingenuous … that might not be the right word. It just has all the trappings of being an emotionally sweeping epic, but something about it seems cold … the same feeling I get from Beck and TV on the Radio. For whatever reason, it just doesn’t make me feel that buzz in my tingly parts the way I think it should.

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In only the second week of New Muesday, I already have to change my mission. I only got 3 new records this week, and only one of them is actually new(ish). As you’ll recall, I initially claimed that I would be reviewing the 5 latest albums in my iTunes. I didn’t realize when I made that claim that 5 albums a week is a lot of new albums to get. In the interest of not going broke, the new mission is to write about whatever I’ve picked up since last week, with maybe some others thrown in when I have nothing new to offer. Let me just run this by the blogging rules committee, and I’ll let you kno … yes! The blogging rules committee said yes. (Full disclosure: I am the president of the blogging rules committee.)

For this week, I have lots of paying work to do, so I think I’m going to keep this short and sweet with the 3 records I’ve picked up since last time. Are we ready? Here we go!

1) School of Seven Bells: Alpinisms
Date added: 8/21/2009

Hmm. I have listened to this record 3 times now, and it still hasn’t settled in. I guess I would say it’s a little like Postal Service crossed with Dirty Projectors. Which sounds like it might be good, because Postal Service could use some of Dirty Projectors artiness, and Dirty Projectors could use some of Postal Service’s simple poppiness, right? Probably, although for whatever reason, it doesn’t quite mesh in the way a fan of both of those groups would like it to.

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New albums come out on Tuesday. I don’t know if you kids knew this, what with your digital thievery and what not. I don’t think there’s an official day for leaks.

Tuesday used to be a big day for me. I used to wait in line to buy new albums the night they were released. I remember waiting in line for the midnight release of Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral album at Wherehouse Records in Ann Arbor. I was pretty pumped for that record, apparently. And when I got it, I ran screaming back to my dorm room as if on fire and made my roommate listen to it on repeat for the rest of the night while I poured Goldschlager shots down his throat. I don’t know if that last part happened. But that’s definitely what I would do if The Downward Spiral was released today.

Well, it’s Tuesday, and it’s Awkward Press, and I have new music, and that means one thing: it’s New Muesday! In which I take a good, critical listen to the 5 latest records that have found their way into my iTunes. (By good, critical listen, I mean I will have it on in the background while I do other things.) They may be new records, they may be old records, but one thing is for certain: they will not be records. They will be digital globs of ones and zeroes that produce pleasing tones. Are we ready? Let’s do this bitch!

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