i have a bunch of CDs sitting here in a stack on my desk. i keep buying them, even though the pile doesn't really shrink. and this isn't even all of my unlistened but bought CDs.
. just the ones on my desk.
today was something of a banner day -- i opened and listened to 3 new CDs.
.. granted, one was an EP and one was a single.
still, that's impressive. i hate the idea of looking at trying new CDs as "headway" into solving a problem, so i don't, and i don't artifically move on forward past CDs i'm not ready to abandon..
. but still. figured it might be fun to take a look at what's on deck.
sean lennon / friendly fire
sean lennon has a new CD.
i loved his last one. loved it. so i'm a bit weirded out that suddenly he has a new one after all these (eight?
) years. so much so i that i don't know how i feel about listening to it. it's gone past that ancitipatory thing into like, what?
what am i supposed to do? a new CD? two years is a normal gap.
three is doable. five is primadonnaish but passible. eight?
the killers / sam's town
the killers' last CD wasn't a guilty pleasure. it was just a pleasure. it's nice to be outside of the hype loop because then i don't have to hate things i would otherwise like as well as not have to like things i would otherwise hate.
but i am low on the anticipation scale here too, for whatever reason. maybe this one is, perversely given its physical proximity to the sean lennon CD in my pile, too soon.
jane's addiction / nothing's shocking
nothing's shocking?
i feel like i never gave this the listen it deserved back in the 90s. i got into jane's addiction from MTV airplay of been caught stealing (what? i was in 8th grade in 1990.
) but i've always had a really soft spot for ted, just admit it (since natural born killers, anyway) and jane says and mountain song were always on 120 minutes. it's a good idea to catch up with this CD, but i haven't found time to squeeze it in. i did a run-through of ritual de lo habitual for a few days a few weeks ago and i had a lot of fun with that.
prince / sign o' the times
several years ago brad pushed purple rain on me. as a child of the '80s, i'd always loved prince's singles, but i realized that (one bum track aside) it's a great CD, when i finally got around to listening to it. so i decided that some day i would begin to embark on a journey into prince's work.
i think buying sign o' the times may have been too ambitious -- double album! -- but, all the same, i look forward to listening.
guillemots / from the cliffs
i ended up listening to through the window pane a shitload of times -- guillemots are now my and that doesn't even count all of the listening i did in the car.
that's my hit CD of 2006 so far. so i picked up this EP (which predates the album) in france but i haven't listened a lot. it has a weaker version of one of the album tracks and an identical version of another, which have been a turn off.
i should just uncheck those in iTunes and get on with it.
maaya sakamoto / shonen alice, yuunagi loop
i have been very into maaya sakamoto ever since she recorded the opening theme to escaflowne, though when i was gloomy and cool i felt a bit of a retard for liking this airy and sometimes unsubstantive j-pop stuff. she got more substantive as she aged, though, and her 2001 album lucy was a favorite of mine.
oh, yeah, the music was all done by yoko kanno, btw. somehow i missed shonen alice coming out (probably because i stopped paying attention to AOD, where she has a lot of fans) and then yuunagi loop arrived. suddenly she had two unlistened albums out.
so i bought them both -- amazon had put the more recent (kanno-free!) one on 50% clearance. youch.
i haven't listened yet.
scott walker / the drift
Q spent the last year or so hyping up scott walker only to give this CD two stars when it finally arrived. i've read a lot of evocative descriptions of it being bizarre and almost horrifying.
i'm deeply curious. but i haven't listened. it sounds like a commitment.
rufus wainwright / poses
i've been fairly effusive for my praise for mr. wainwright on this blog already. i know i did a big post about want two, and i believe i said i was enjoying want one but wasn't convinced.
i became convinced later. two fantastic albums, so in a "lull" i worked backwards and bought this. and then didn't listen to it.
david bowie / station to station
i'm slowly and intermittently working through bowie's catalog. recently i did low (super) and lodger (didn't stick.) this is next.
shiro sagisu / his and her circumstances act 2.0
i already know i love this since i've had mp3s since like 1999. took geneon a year or more to put out 2.
0 after 1.0. there's also a 3.
0. i dunno if i really will listen to it actively so much, but it's good to have archived if i get in the mood. maybe if i re-watch karekano.
..
yuki kajiura / le portrait de petit cossette OST
an unexpectedly fun poe-esque goth-loli OAV begets a nice kajiura soundtrack.
i thought it would be good to work to (i worked to the noir soundtrack a ton, back at gamespy) but i have so far not listened to it.
grandaddy / just like the fambly cat
the sophtware slump was fantastic. i kept listening and listening.
one of those CDs that i thought i was "done with" but suddenly would be wrapped up in again for like a month. random. sumday was alright.
it seemed to lack something but on the face of it i can't say what. i listened to this once..
. maybe not even all the way..
. just couldn't get interested. but i'm not going to assume it's problematic.
even if the band did announce their breakup before this even came out...
m83 / dead cities, red seas lost ghosts
i've never even heard a single bit of m83, just read some positive reviews. it's been languishing here since last christmas, when i stuck it into my wishlist (last year i just asked my mom to buy an amazon wishlist because i didn't want anything big.) i didn't stop liking electronic music but it seemed to really fall crashingly out of vogue after the late 90s.
doves / some cities
same story here: christmas, never listened to. i liked their prior CD, the last broadcast, a great deal..
. though i listened to it kind of recently and it seemed sort of cheesy for some reason. Q went gaga for this when it came out, and -- like i said -- i liked the last a lot, in fact i listened to it incessantly for awhile, but i have never felt much interest in cracking it open all the same.
well that was rather self-indulgent, true, but it's over.