{"id":4860,"date":"2010-07-18T08:45:39","date_gmt":"2010-07-18T08:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2010\/07\/18\/recent-pop-music\/"},"modified":"2010-07-18T08:45:39","modified_gmt":"2010-07-18T08:45:39","slug":"recent-pop-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/07\/18\/recent-pop-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Pop Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I bought a bunch of stuff recently, and as is my usual practice, iTunes has been shuffle playing the recent purchases for the last couple of weeks. The albums in question:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Janelle Monae, <cite>the Arch-Android<\/cite>. Not usually my sort of thing, but I saw a bunch of absolutely rapturous reviews calling it groundbreaking, etc, so I gave it a shot. Verdict: Enh. Not my thing. Some decent songs, but I suspect anything with the drum\/bass line from &#8220;Tightrope&#8221; would sound pretty cool.<\/li>\n<li>Gaslight Anthem, <cite>American Slang<\/cite>. A post-punk band from New Jersey with the inevitable Springsteen complex (at least they&#8217;re not aspiring to be Bon Jovi). I originally heard them when I asked Last.fm to play more stuff like the Hold Steady, and that&#8217;s fairly accurate&#8211; they have fewer cryptic references to Catholicism and more conventional song structures, but the core idea is similar. If you liked their last record, you&#8217;ll like this one&#8211; it broadens their range a little bit, but isn&#8217;t any kind of radical departure.<\/li>\n<li>The National, <cite>High Violet<\/cite>. Less mopey than the other record I have from them, but still in the same basic genre. &#8220;Bloodbuzz Ohio&#8221; is getting some radio play, and is reasonably representative.<\/li>\n<li>Band of Horses, <cite>Infinite Arms<\/cite>. Bought this because I heard &#8220;Laredo&#8221; a few times on the radio, and really liked it. Slightly spacey alternative, with dense vocals (lots of harmony and background and jangly guitars.<\/li>\n<li>Josh Ritter, <cite>So Runs the World Away<\/cite>. Slightly off-kilter folk-rock. My favorites are &#8220;Folk Bloodbath,&#8221; and &#8220;Lantern.&#8221; &#8220;Another New World&#8221; tries a little too hard to be epic, but it&#8217;s grown on me a bit.<\/li>\n<li>Kings Go Forth, <cite>The Outsiders Are Back<\/cite>. A soul revival act. Lots of brass, funky bass, occasional Barry White strings. Good stuff if you like this sort of thing. If I didn&#8217;t know better, I&#8217;d think it was an obscure album from 1973, but it&#8217;s a new record.<\/li>\n<li>The Rolling Stones, <cite>Exile on Main St.<\/cite>. I already had this on CD, but this is the new digital conversion, and way higher quality than the mediocre rip I had in iTunes. Was and is one of their very best.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Kind of an odd mix of stuff, but it&#8217;s enough variety to keep from getting too stale. We&#8217;re coming up on the end of the &#8220;recent acquisitions&#8221; time window, though, so I&#8217;m looking to add some new stuff. What should I be checking out and buying?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I bought a bunch of stuff recently, and as is my usual practice, iTunes has been shuffle playing the recent purchases for the last couple of weeks. The albums in question: Janelle Monae, the Arch-Android. Not usually my sort of thing, but I saw a bunch of absolutely rapturous reviews calling it groundbreaking, etc, so&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/07\/18\/recent-pop-music\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Recent Pop Music<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-pop_culture","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}