Simon and Garfunkel's "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" is the greatest album of the 60s

That is all.

The Age of Adz

Radiohead is one of my favorite bands. They're pretty much the best. Their sound is the most willfully self-indulgent brand of electro-folk rock, but they skirt insufferable somehow (other artists that do this: Broken Bells, Gnarls Barkley, Gorillaz.)

Sufjan Stevens is just about there. Not quite. I think some of his lyrics are shallow, and this is a genre that picks stale lyrics out and displays them for the world to see. The essential test of whether your electronic rock song is awful is how ridiculous your lyrics would sound if you weren't crooning them into a microphone while a synthesizer seizures behind you. Stevens gets it about 95% right in last year's The Age of Adz EP.

  I don't get it either.

The first obvious thing about the album: he likes long songs. Seven of the albums eleven tracks lumber on for more than five minutes. The big finale, nearly an album to itself, with uncountable change-ups, crescendos and denouments, lasts nearly a half hour.

I've heard comparisons to Kid A, Radiohead's signature 90s avant-garde electronic album. It's not that good. Sometimes Stevens' sound drifts away from serene and otherworldly and dangerously close to mundane and washed out, especially during some of the longer tracks. His lyrics are hit-and-miss. Sometimes it sounds like he's covering up some of the repetitive and simple writing with effects, which is annoying.

With that said, "The Age of Adz" does have one thing in common with "Kid A." There are moments of transcendent beauty in this record. When I first heard Vesuvius, the ice-breaker to the digital spiral of the last third of the album, I fell in love. It's a gorgeous sound. The rough spots in this album could be attributed to Stevens' putting out an equally sized EP, "All Delighted People," not three months separate from this.

Unfortunately, mounting evidence suggests Sufjan Stevens might be a hipster jerk, but he's a bold hipster jerk, and his album is worth listening to.

This post is making you sleeeeeeeepy

I've been having some trouble sleeping lately, so I sorted my iTunes library by beats-per-minute and made out a quick playlist to listen to to help me fall asleep. I don't listen to much slow music (the article I read recommended slow jazz, but all of my jazz is frantic,) so I did the best I could with what I had. I haven't really tried anything like this before, so we'll see how it goes.

Here's the list, version 1.0, sorted by artist.

The Beatles: Something, Golden Slumbers, Dear Prudence, I'm only sleeping, Blackbird
Brad Mehldau Trio: Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover
Christopher Tin: Rassemblons-Nous
Curtis Mayfield: The Other Side of Town
Daft Punk: Verdis Quo
Deltron: 3030
Depeche Mode: Halo, Waiting for the Night
Duke Ellington and John Coltrane: In a Sentimental Mood
Gorillaz: Hong Kong, Slow Country, White Flag
Jamiroquai: World That He Wants, Everyday
Kanye West: Champion
Laura Veirs: July Flame
Moby: Guitar Flute & String
Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Old Man
Pink Floyd: Breathe
Radiohead: Kid A, In Limbo, Karma Police
Simon & Garfunkel: Scarborough Fair / Canticle, 7 O'Clock News / Silent Night
Sufjan Stevens: Futile Devices, I Walked, Enchanting Ghost
Tears for Fears: Everybody Wants to Rule the World
TV On the Radio: Stork & Owl, Love Dog

Favorate albulm of 2010?

It's gotta be Plastic Beach by the Gorillaz. This albulm strikes a special chord with me on many levels. I was walking along the shores of Vancouver lake listening to it when I discovered a washed up piece of dock in a secluded cove off the beaten trail. It is for this reason that Plastic Beach resonates so well with me, because over the course of one week in spring break, and a lot of time at this dock, I wrote an entire book. The dock has since floated away, and I can't find myself to be able to listen to the albulm again, or go back go Vancouver lake. The memories of that week are just too special to associate the albulm with something else.

A refreshing change of pace from the doldrums of modern rap

Listen, I love Kanye West. a lot. I'm wearing an electric blue concert T, two pairs of shutter shades, and staring at my over-sized "Graduation" poster on the wall while I type this. It's hard, but it's worth it for Yeezy.

But the world only needs one Kanye West. Even that might be stretching it. His imitators range from obnoxious to naueseating for me. 'Ye is a great musician, but flow and lyrics aren't his strong suit, and the last few years of the peak of his success have been poisonous to the fundamentals of young rappers coming up in the game.

That's why it's so refreshing to hear an album that takes from the sound of today's rap without being owned by it. I'm talking about the best rap album of 2010, Big Boi's "Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty."

That'll do, Big. That'll do.

This album is JUICY. Big Boi's flow is like a roller coaster, and he toasts each verse, rolling from syllable to syllable and slamming his push lines down like a drill. This album incorporates all kinds of styles (possibly reflecting its long development cycle,) but it has a universal quality that I haven't heard from a new rap album in a couple years. It's bouncy, it pushes back, it invites repeated listens, and rewards the patient listener with complex lyrical structures and meaningful rhymes (most of which aren't completely serious.)

It's a lighthearted summer jam project, perfect for relieving your winter blues. In a world where most rappers can't seem to find enough ideas to fill an album, the tracks on here are almost too full of ideas for their own good. Competing styles, themes and musical flourishes fly over each other, breaking up songs and making them more interesting. Big Boi's style reminds me a lot of Cee-lo Green, which makes sense, since they were both affiliated with the Goodie Mob back in the day.

There's a lot more to say about Sir Lucious Left Foot, but to put a point on it, this album is just plain fresh. If you missed it last year, it's time to jump on the train.