Andrew's Wanderings » music

The Winter of…

andrew — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:23:52 +0000

My favorite album of 2008 was The Midnight Organ Fight. On reason for mentioning that is that the MP3 download is currently available for $5 at Amazon. Indeed, that’s where the link will take you to. I’ll also link to a 2008 post about the album.

Another reason for mentioning Frightened Rabbit is that they have a new album out. The Winter of Mixed Drinks came out earlier this month, when it was still winter.

I don’t think that The Winter of Mixed Drinks will be my favorite of 2010: it’s not my favorite of the winter that just finished. But I like it, particularly this track.

Not Miserable, by Frightened Rabbit

Listening to Pre-Release Albums at NPR

andrew — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:21:04 +0000

I’m currently listening to Broken Bells, the collaboration between Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley, among other projects) and James Mercer (The Shins). It’s yet to be released, but NPR has the good habit of streaming good albums pre-release. If you click on that link, you’ll be able to see what’s currently available for streaming.

You’ll also be able to see what has recently gone off-stream there due to being released. At the time of this typing, that includes albums by Joanna Newsom, Local Natives, Shearwater,…

When I first heard of the Mouse/Mercer musical marriage, I thought they seemed an odd couple. Hearing the music itself, they sound like a perfect pair. You can hear it at the BB website.

Me, I’m back to NPR to listen to the forthcoming Frightened Rabbit album.

Chilling at Home

andrew — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:14:07 +0000

Max and I are in the house, building towers for marbles to run down.

We’re also listening to music: the new Beach House album, Teen Dream. We’re using the goodness of NPR, which usually has a couple of forthcoming albums available for streaming.

We’re also using our gizmo that wirelessly connects a PC with the stereo. And the open-plan-ness of our house that makes the upstairs landing part of the living room for listening purposes.

Travel: Category and Lyrical Theme

andrew — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 02:56:17 +0000

I think of this WanderNote blog as having two main categories: one for local wanderings, and one for travel further afield. I don’t expect to be doing a lot of travelling this month, so here are some travel-related songs to kick off the Travel category.

That’s something of a pretext to plug my album of the year for 2009, Dark Was The Night (Red Hot Compilation). The widget is from the album’s web site.

Talking of blog categories, I’ve realized that Local was a pretty silly category name, since it doesn’t specify a locality. I’ve renamed the category to DC: we live near DC, and much of our local wandering will be in the city. The third category, WanderNote, is for content related to the WanderNote service or to the admin of this blog.