I still buy CDs pretty regularly, because I have a CD player in my car that isn’t fancy like the aftermarket one we put in @fairiemom’s car with the USB port and external auxilliary jack and multicolored LEDs and all that
other fun stuff you get with those things. I still need to feed it a disc to get it to make pretty sounds that aren’t the radio, and although it claims to play home-burned MP3 discs, it occasionally gets fussy about things like bitrates and file sizes. So, for reliably rocking the commute, it’s safest to stick with bog-standard red book audio.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve actually been on a bit of a tear…I think the stack is in double digits since the beginning of September. I blame this mostly on being weak-willed in the face of the Wal-Mart five
dollar bin, my discovery several months ago of indie community radio station WNRN‘s Richmond repeater frequency, leading to my discovery of all sorts of new bands I’ve not encountered before, spurring a BUY ALL OF THE MUSIC THINGS impulse, and, of course, the release of some great new records from friends and acquaintances hitting the internets and spewing out through the lasers of my optical drives onto CD-Rs.

So, the point of all this is that I want to talk about some of these things called albums, before the format dies a grisly, undignified death:

♦7800° Fahrenheit – Bon Jovi: Yes, I’ve owned this one for decades on cassette, but my only cassette player is a second-hand JVC double-deck unit I picked up at Goodwill last summer, which is nice, but doesn’t plug into my car. I saw this one sitting on top of the bin at Walmart one Monday morning during my regular “pick up the toiletries I forgot to pack” stopover portion of one of my business trips. It seems that 7:50am is the time when my will is weakest (some of you may want to make note of that), so I bought this as well. Unlike some of these “revisit my youth” experiments, this record continues to hold up. It’s still a developmental record for a young band; the first full project of the “classic” line-up, still trying to find their sound. The only track from this one to make the greatest hits collections is “In and Out of Love”, which isn’t a bad hard rock tune with swirly keyboards under it, but for my money, the best tunes in the collection are “Only Lonely” and “Price of Love”, which both come with great hooks and a pleasant Aldo Nova vibe. Special credit goes to “Silent Night”, which probably counts as one of the first solid examples of the hair metal power ballad, a genre which launched a million unrequited radio dedications and inconvenient tumescence at middle school dances, but as far as I know, it’s the only one with that such a great locking-tremelo driven guitar lick all over it.

♦Laser Zombie Robot Love – John Anealio: John, as regular readers of this site surely know, is a talented musician working within the filk milieu whose work (and twitter banter) I enjoy quite a lot. This collection is his second LP length collection, and contains 11 great tunes (and 9 remixes) running the gamut of geekdom, sci-fi, literature, technology, and Batman. The “hit” here is probably the popular “George R.R. Martin is Not Your Bitch” referring to the classic Neil Gaiman blog rant about the Song of Ice and Fire author’s writing schedule, which predates Paul and Storm’s excellent “Write Like The Wind” by several months. My standout favorite on this disc is the Rick Springfield-esque “Steampunk Girl”, though cases for greatness can be made for nearly every track, particularly “Pr0nbot” (takes a universal twitter experience and turns it into art), “NaNoWriMo” (which captures the pressures of some of our Novembers *very* well) and “Batman Smells (A Rebuttal)”, which most of you can probably find context for. I’ve enjoyed it greatly so far, and I think you probably will too – you should go and buy it.

♦Babel – Mumford and Sons: You might recall that last year’s Sigh No More from this band was one of my musical highlights of the year (I mentioned it a bit on this blog, but if you caught me in person last summer at all, I almost surely subjected you to my fanboy ravings about how good I thought it was). This disc, the follow-up effort, hit the streets last week, and since I picked it up on Friday, it’s been on heavy rotation in my personal soundtrack. If you liked the last one, you’ll like this one too; it’s got a very similar vibe; all close harmonies and wall-of-sound acoustic instruments with liberal use of banjo and drony electric guitars filling out the back end. the lead single, “I Will Wait” has been rattling around in my head thanks to heavy play on my indie radio station of choice, though at this point, the whole package is kind of running together for me – It’s all good, though the rest of the tunes aren’t differentiating themselves for me, except for the bonus cover of Paul Simon’s “The Boxer” (I got the deluxe edition), which has a proven track record of irresistability. The overall verdict on this one is that it’s uniformly excellent, but not quite the “I’ve never heard anything like this before” kick in the pants that the first record was. I’m sure this one will
grow on me in the months to come.

♦Aftermath of the Lowdown – Richie Sambora: I wasn’t aware this record even existed until John Anealio (see above) raved about it on twitter, and despite my serious disappointment with Sambora’s
last solo record in ’98 and most of Bon Jovi’s output since about the same time, I took a chance on it, and was quite a bit more than pleasantly surprised. It’s an excellent record – assuming it gets the proper exposure in the right places, it could be one of those releases that re-defines a career. Lyrically, Sambora draws quite a bit on his life experiences over the last decade and change; let’s just say he’s had a couple of low points; most of the tunes here deal with his recovery and emergence in a simple and direct way, avoiding a lot of the schmaltz and cliche he’s tended toward in the past. The real revelation here, though, is the music. No one expected a
seemingly indulgent solo record from an 80s guitar dinosaur to sound so current. There are touches of modern and indie rock all over this – the lead single “Every Road Leads Home To You” has a definite Coldplay vibe, though with a hell of a lot more edge to it. I’ve been saying for years that somewhere along the line, Bon Jovi forgot how to rock – I am duly chastened. I hereby amend my statement to say that Sambora’s just been saving up all the rock for this record. Tracks like “Burn the Candle Down” and “Nowadays” pack a serious punch, all distorted guitars and frentic rhythms. Even the down-tempo tunes like “I’ll Always Walk Beside You” have this sort of slow-burn quality – they start out mild and mellow, but build up to something bigger and more powerful by the end of things. The first 9 tracks of this record are pretty much the best work of Sambora’s career; I hope it gets the exposure it ought to – in the meantime, I’m going keep listening to it and pretend that Undiscovered Soul never happened.

♦Secret Rituals– The Grates: I don’t really know much about this Australian power pop duo, though I heard “Turn Me On” played on WNRN the other week and it stuck with me; The record was only five bucks and change on Amazon MP3, so I snagged it, and have been enjoying the heck out of it. I described it to someone a couple of days ago as something like “Liz Phair singing for the White Stripes”, but that’s not totally accurate – after listening a bit more, I’m getting much more of a Raveonettes vibe, only with a bit less lo-fi and a bit more electronics playing in the background, with maybe a touch of the Breeders with some of the agression filed off. I’m seriously digging the pop sensibility the group displays on tunes like “Crying All Night”, which has a great sort of retro 80s new wave thing going on, but still sounds completely immediate. The whole thing is full of great little arrangements – the sweet little melody on the opening verse of “Welcome to the Middle”, suddenly punctuated with the jarring trebly electric guitar jolts on the the upbeats going into the bridge. If you like power pop, this is a disc you should be tracking down immediately.

♦Another Creepy Christmas – Jonah Knight: This disc is currently out for manufacturing, though since I threw in on the kickstarter, I got the download early. Jonah’s theory here was to take the normally cheery and saccharine elements of typical Christmas music and turn them on their heads; if you look at the holiday just right, there are a lot things that are rather sinister just below the surface. That’s the area Jonah spends most of this record exploring. For example, remove two words from the chorus of “Santa Claus is Coming To Town“, and one is no longer so sure they want him coming around after all. Make a few adjustments to “We Three Kings”, and you’re suddenly talking about Lovecraftian horrors rather than the King of Kings. It’s not all horror and dread, though: Mikey Mason’s guest turn on the duet “What Christmas Means to Me” plays up the humor as counterpoint; as do some of the tunes which address Christmas traditions from other countries, including Iceland’s “Yuletide Lads” and Central Europe’s Krampus. Overall though, expect an engaging combination of Jonah’s eerie wit, impressive musicianship, and atmospheric delivery for an entertaining holiday listening experience. Keep an eye on Jonah’s site for updates about when you can purchase this one!