summer awesome series

thanks to city weekly's blog, here's the latest on your tax dollars hard at work...the summer twilight concert series at gallivan center. after years of quality, albeit hippie/folk music, this year's line up has a decidedly legit feel to it.

you be the judge though and tell us what you think.

july 10 - the roots (ever heard of 'em?)
july 17 - andrew bird, josh ritter
july 24 - de la soul
july 31 - keller williams, yonder mountain string band
august 7 - nada surf, tim fite
august 14 - tbd
august 21 - broken social scene
august 28 - neko case, crooked fingers

can I finish? (plus Dan & Kristen Smith from Listener)

So, I guess it's my turn. Dan and Kristen's top five is at the bottom.

2007 saw a lot of albums from a lot of my favorite artists, Band of Horses, Broken Social Scene, Pinback, Jose Gonzales, and tons of others. So when I started this little endeavor I thought it would be pretty easy... not so. Instead of writing a top five I just want to write down a bunch of albums you should go listen to, Pink Nasty for instance, or The Pipettes. Both bands released great first albums, I listened to them non-stop for weeks, but I struggled putting them, ultimately, before the albums that you are about to read.

Another point I would like to make before you read my top five, I was really against numbering them, I'm not OK with it. So, since I was just going to randomly assign the numbers to albums anyway, I decided to take another route. I will be listing them by animal, you can decide for yourself what animal corresponds to what number.

Meercat - Iron & Wine - The Shepherd Dog.
This album is just too good, and coincidentally Chad and I are going to seem Iron & Wine tonight, which I love him for. Sam Beam went to another place on this album, not completely, but it's definitely different than The Creek Drank the Cradle. The Shepherd Dog is much more percussive, and to me, seems like a natural progression from his last release, The Woman King.

Antelope - Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
This is a "first effort" that did actually make my list, and was easily a no brainer. Bon Iver (pronounced eevair) created a masterpiece with For Emma, Forever Ago. I have to give credit to My Old Kentucky Blog for introducing me to this guy, and I'm glad he did. For those of you who know me, you know that I really enjoy a soft, down-tempo album, and this album is one of the best of it's kind.

Dung Beetle - Laura Veirs - Saltbreakers
I'm actually really surprised that this album hasn't gotten more love in the top albums of the year category. I'm not sure if it just didn't get promoted the way it should have, or what, but this album is easily one of the best of 2007. Laura has a special little place in my music heart because I have a great memory of seeing her in Berlin, and I think this is her best release yet.

Polar Bear - Kate Nash - Made of Bricks
I love Kate Nash, literally. Not only do I want to date her (I'd move to London, whatever), but she makes great music. I almost forgot about this album, and luckily Chad reminded me of it a few weeks ago. It's very poppy, very British, and really fun. I usually don't listen to lyrics, but I love hers. This is her first released album, and I think she'll be around for a long time. Favorite songs: Birds, We Get On, Shit Song [Interlude].

Goose - Radiohead - In Rainbows
I struggled a lot with this one. It's a great album. The way they released it is better than anything that's been done in the music industry in a long time. I think I'll be listening to this album for years to come. At the same time, for me, it's on par with all the other 20 albums that I wanted to put on this list. In fact as I write this, I just want to change it to the Kevin Drew/Broken Social Scene album. I don't know. You've already heard all about it, I don't need to write more.

Dan & Kristen Smith from Listener

1. Explosions in the Sky – All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone
2. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
3. El P – I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
4. Radiohead – In Rainbows
5. Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog

Broken Social Scene

Alright Chad you want a blog? You get a blog. I'll have you know however, you don't get the extremely modifiable wooden life-size model of Steve McQueen that I was going to whittle out of the tree in my backyard during these exact 10 minutes that I will now use to write this blog. Your loss.

Last Thursday a couple of friends and I jumped in the car and headed to Boulder, CO for what I expected to be an extremely memorable Broken Social Scene show at the Fox Theater. I can sum up the show by simply saying that it was worth the drive.

Needless to say, they were awesome. I'm not going to waste your time by talking about how awesome they are, or were, etc... If you don't already know, then just trust me they're awesome. Instead, I'm going to give you some reasons why I totally dig them, cause that's totally different (sarcasm, gotta love it).


First and foremost, Justin Peroff, their drummer, is incredible. His drum beats aren't incredibly difficult, and it's not like he's trying to take over the song, but he so clearly does in so many ways. In almost every one I find myself shaking and bobbing my head like no one's business. He drives the songs in so many ways, and in my opinion are essential to the Broken Social Scene "style", if they actually have one.

Second, and this is something that I absolutely love about BSS, they're so open to collaboration. It's almost as if BSS is it's own entity, as if the band will continue on forever, constantly making incredible music and it doesn't matter what musicians you throw in there. If you're not following me, let me explain. For this particular show we had the pleasure to listen to Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning, Justin Peroff, Andrew Kenny (from American Analog Set), and a couple other guys who's names I can't remember play the lovely sounds of BSS. However, the next time around half of those guys probably won't even be there, or they will, but there will be 4 more people on stage helping out. Just run a goog-shot on BSS members and you'll see people from bands like Do Make Say Think, Apostle of Hustle, Feist (Leslie herself), Stars, The Weakerthans, and tons of others. The massive amounts of musical talent that runs through the creative process of this band truly is a beautiful thing, and I don't care how corny that sounds. The nice thing is, whoever is playing on stage, you know the show and music is going to be good, they're like a super band, that can't be stopped.

The Fox Theater is a cool venue, very old-school bricks-esque, but without the the balcony. Kevin Drew was recovering from a cold but still sounded great. They played a lot of old songs, which pleased me a great a deal, and they also played for over two hours, which was very much appreciated as I had just driven 8 hours. The opening band was sort of boring, and I can't even remember their name. They closed the show with a good old-fashioned crowd sing-along.

So yeah, it was awesome.