Time for another six pack

When I write these columns, you may notice that I always include a little box called "What I'm Listening To." I'm a music fiend and am always on the lookout for the next big thing. I include this box to maybe turn some people on to the music I love, an advertisement, if you will.

A number of great albums have come out since the last time I did one of these, so I think it's time once again that we crack open another six pack and savor the musical goodness.

'Dear Science' – TV on the Radio
What do you get when you cross Prince, Radiohead and a little bit of The Ramones? This highly talented band out of Brooklyn. Their previous album, 2006's "Return to Cookie Mountain" was for me the best album to come out that year, with the soaring rock track "Wolf Like Me" one of the top songs of this decade. Two years later, this band has done it again.

I'm not ready to anoint them with the title of "album of the year," but when time comes to look back on 2008 albums, this will be right in the mix. Here they seamlessly blend loops and drum machines found on the best albums from the '80s with some vaguely punk guitar riffs.

Nigerian-born lead singer Tunde Adebimpe has one of the most beautiful falsettos in rock music these days. He seems like a naturale extension of Thom Yorke's famous pipes. He, along with singer/guitarist Kyp Malone, form one of the most beautiful vocal duos there is today.

From the opening "Halfway Home," which comes in with Ramones-like chanting of "Ba ba ba," to the closer, the brass-filled "Lover's Day," this album exudes their creativity. These guys have stolen the torch from Radiohead as music's most innovative band, and are doing their best to protect that mantle.

'Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust' – Sigur Ros
Just looking at the album title and the band name, it's easy to see that these guys ain't from around here. Rather, they hail from chilly Iceland, and are the best musical import from that country since, well, Bjork (that's really the only other one I could think of). Translated to English, the title reads as "With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly." You may notice that I compare a lot of bands to Radiohead, and it's with good reason. Their emergence in the '90s spawned this movement of art rock so prevalent today.

While not nearly as into the electronica of that British band, Sigur Ros makes up for it in their atmospheric compositions, featuring ghostly vocals and minimalist musical arrangements. But here, they show that they can write an excellent, short pop song. The opener "Gobbledigook" (which is what the lyrics will sound like to most anyone since they're in Icelandic) is heavy on the guitar and lacks much of the texture found on most other releases.

In fact, the album cover itself showcases that this album is at once more playful and different than albums past. It features the band stripped naked running freely across the land as if they don't have a care in the world.

Still, they haven't abandoned that philosophy entirely, with the nine-minute plus "Festival." Singer Jonsi Birigisson's vocals are vaguely reminiscent of whale song in the way he slurs them together, and combined with the music, I can always picture a humpback whale meandering through a peaceful oceanscape.

You won't understand anything he's saying on the album, but regardless, it is some of the most beautiful and peaceful music you'll ever hear. This album begs for headphones, so put them on and enjoy.

'Way to Normal' – Ben Folds
The most famous piano man since Elton and Billy were in their prime, this North Carolina native has been cracking jokes and playing the keys to huge audiences since the '90s. Folds has two sides to his music, the reflective piano ballad kind of stuff that causes him to focus on adolescent memories and the upbringing of his own children, but he also has a much funnier side. Go to a Folds concert and try not to laugh as he tells hilarious anecdotes and always gets the audience involved.

This album, unlike his previous effort, "Songs for Silverman," focuses on the latter. Starting things off is a slight nod to Elton John with "Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head)," a tale of how he hit his head on stage in Japan but played on, then had to get X-rays afterward.

Still, he knows when to tune it down, such as with "You Don't Know Me," featuring Regina Spektor on guest vocals. This song is told as a couple reflecting internally that their other half is ignorant about their true self. Surely a take on Folds' failed relationships in the past.

'Self-Titled EP' – One Day as a Lion
Rage Against the Machine's bombastic frontman, Zach de la Rocha, is finally recording again, eight years after leaving the politically charged rap-rock group. They're back now playing the occasional show, but haven't come out with an album since the 2000 covers disc, "Renegades."

This time, he's paired up solely with former Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore. This short EP shows that De la Rocha still can write some of the best protest music there is. Interestingly enough, his causes were nearly always far off the national radar, such as the Zapatista movement in Mexico or the treatment of Chicano workers in the Southwestern United States. Rage fans were more into the music than the message, which distressed the singer.

This time, it's him, some keyboards (interesting, because Rage famously eschewed any keys or synth on their albums) and a drummer.

From the first line of the first song and single, "Wild International," the man of Chicano descent proclaims that "in war that truth be the first casualty." He's here to set the record straight. For Rage fans wanting to hear something close to the real thing, this is it – forget Audioslave.

'Live at Shea Stadium' – The Clash
Once dubbed the only band that matters, these punk Godfathers were it in the '80s. The group recently released this live disc, culled from a performance from 1982 opening for The Who at the (former) home of the Mets.

Here the band is at their very best. The set list is a virtual greatest hits of Clash tracks, from "London Calling" to "Clampdown" to, of course, "Rock the Casbah," which was blowing up the radiowaves at the time. This might go down as one of the loudest concert tours of all time, with these two British masters squaring off one after the other.

The announcer introducing the band to the crowd says that it's not a night for a baseball or football game, but "a little bit of what's going on in London at the moment." Frontman Joe Strummer then welcomes all to the "Casbah Club," and they immediately kick it into high gear with "London Calling." Crank up the volume and just rock out.

'Live in Gdansk' – David Gilmour
Pink Floyd's former singer and guitarist traipsed the globe through 2006 and 2007 playing his full "On an Island" album and a collection of Floyd classics. This two-disc set (available with none, one or two DVDs) captures the concert played at a shipyard in this northern Polish burgh.

Accompanied by the Polish Baltic Philharmonic, the band (which contains the late Richard Wright, better known as Floyd's keyboardist) immediately starts out with a brief collection of songs from "Dark Side of the Moon," then instantly kicks into playing the entirety of that new Gilmour album. Disc two is all Floyd all the time, highlighted by a 25-minute plus rendition of "Echoes," the most ethereal of Floyd tracks.

With Wright's passing a few weeks ago, this might be our last shot to hear anything closely resembling Pink Floyd again.
- www.gwinnettherald.com

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