What music are you listening to?

[Lowerdeck]

Lately I've been listening to a lot of Steely Dan. The other night I went through all seven albums from their 70s run, since I didn't get tickets to see them at Foxwoods.

Also been getting into Ronnie Earl a lot lately. Solid blues/jazz.

Does anyone else have habits where they listen to certain types of music on certain days? I tend to listen to a lot of reggae on Fridays, since my friend had a roots reggae radio show Friday afternoons. Bob Marley, Black Uhuru, Barrington Levy, Burning Spear, Dillinger, etc...

[METALMAN]

Steely Dan are one of my all time favourites. I really wanted to see them at Edinburgh a couple of months ago but I wasn't prepared to pay £50 for it.

[Lobo]

Right now I'm listening to the pioneer japanese hip hop, Zeebra.

I don't understand anything, but it's okay. Someone here is japanese and could translate 2 or 3 songs for me? Would be cool.

[Lowerdeck]

Steely Dan are one of my all time favourites. I really wanted to see them at Edinburgh a couple of months ago but I wasn't prepared to pay £50 for it.

Yeah, it was like $55 for the upper deck, plus fees (which always rack up high.) Considering I spent $115 earlier in the week getting my car fixed, I did not wish to shell the $60-70. Just will wait for the next time around.

[RPS]

Been listening to a lot of Air lately - Moon Safari and Talkie Walkie. Thinking about getting into their other stuff, but have heard hit or miss stories about it. I absolutely love both of their albums, so it probably goes without saying that I'll love their other shit, but still...

[NM!]

"Daylight" by Matt and Kim

[hackerjack]

Wasted, by Jack Knife Fight

[GA!]

The new Creed single is.... decent?!

[Sick N Twisted]

Joan Red's 'Side Effects of You' album, and a mix of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, N.W.A. and Lupe Fiasco. ^_^

[austin 3:16]

"Listen To My Heart" by Ramones.

[Skummy]

Lately I have been listening to...

"Propaganda" by Sparks - who are fast becoming one of my favourite bands. It's a good album, essentially an extension of the same path they were treading with "Kimono My House" - but neither album has aged well, in my opinion. They showcase some of their best ever songwriting, and some absolutely classic songs - "Something For The Girl With Everything" in Propaganda's case being one of their finest, but the sound is a little flat compared to how sumptuously bombastic their arrangements would become on their more recent albums and even "Something For The Girl With Everything" sounds much better to me when they re-recorded it for the "Plagiarism" album with Faith No More. A bloody good album, and certainly one from one of the two golden eras of Sparks - the early '70s, with the last decade being the second golden era - but not quite the rollercoaster ride you can get from an album like "Lil' Beethoven".

Neil Young "Live At Massey Hall '71" was another one I've been listening to a lot lately, and I've been really rather enjoying it. It's from before Neil Young decided he was an electric guitar rock god which, while interesting, detracts from the fact that he is a really rather excellent songwriter. This is an entirely acoustic recording, and the version of "Old Man" is probably the best I've heard, and Young's voice is at it's most heartbreaking throughout. Compared to the hordes of other acoustic singer-songwriters flooding the market around the same time, he was, and remains, streets ahead of the pack.

Also been enjoying a three-CD Lonnie Donegan boxset, which I picked up on a whim. I'm really happy that it's been remastered - I'm not someone who thinks old recordings should be left untouched all the time, and the remaster definitely adds to the music here, as it helps put Donegan, and his take on Skiffle, into a historical context as the logical forerunner to Merseybeat, punk, and any other UK DIY music movement, whilst if the tracks had been left untouched he'd just come off sounding like an olde-worlde anachronism, which would be a crying shame.

Currently listening to the new album by Soulsavers, which is beautiful, as expected, with a fantastic array of guest vocalists (Gibby Haynes, Mark Lanegan, Richard Hawley and Mike Patton? Yes please.), but so far there's been nothing quite as incredible as the previous album's trip-hop gospel "Revival", which blows my mind a little more every time I hear it, which is often. That said, "Can't Catch The Train" sounds like Mark Lanegan singing "Small Change"-era Tom Waits, which is pretty special.

After that I've got the new Wild Beasts album to look forward to...

EDIT:

Wild Beasts is nice enough, but not nearly as silly as the last album. They sound like they're trying to turn into Radiohead, and it's bad enough that Radiohead did that. Nothing nearly as good as "Woebegone Wanderers" from the last album.

[METALMAN]

I love Neil Young at Massey Hall. Quite possibly my favourite live album ever and from a period in which pretty much everything he did was excellent. Do you have the release from a couple of years ago or did you get it from the recent archive set? Not that it makes any difference. Just interested. >_>

[Skummy]

Recent archive set, I'm assuming, I only picked it up at the weekend. I'm making the most of a bad situation (HMV's new releases being lacklustre at best lately) by stocking up on stuff like Neil Young, who I didn't own nearly enough of because it'd always been a bit of a daunting task to just dive right in there.

[METALMAN]

I dived right in there with Neil Young. Unfortunately that consisted of me picking up his most recent album - which at the time was "Are You Passionate" which I believe is regarded as his worst album ever (which is quite something given some of his releases in the 80s). I generally agreed with the critical opinion and I think it stopped me from taking any interest in him for a couple of years.

It took my dad showing me "After the Gold Rush" to convert me and now he's one of my favourite artists ever. So a happy ending I suppose. After The Gold Rush is still probably my favourite album by him though - which tends to be the case with lots of other people. I also really like Harvest Moon, Tonight's The Night among others, while I find Chrome Dreams II to be by far his best and most consistent release of the last ten years, although I understand quite a lot of people prefer Living With War, which is decent and all but never really did it for me.

I didn't really this year's release a great deal though. It wasn't particularly bad. Just average and unexciting more than anything. I really enjoy "When Worlds Collide" - the first track - though. Just his standard hard rock riffy affair I suppose. But it has something the other nine tracks seem to lack.

[Skummy]

I bought "Sleeps With Angels" many many moons ago on the strength of the "Godfather Of Grunge" thing he had going in the '90s, and was aware of "Heart Of Gold" and "Rockin' In The Free World", and that was about it. My Mum had "Harvest" and probably a couple of others on vinyl, but I never really knew where to begin, and there was so much other music out there to buy that I never really let myself get too carried away with buying his stuff. When I worked in a record shop, though, the guy who owned the place always insisted that "On The Beach" was one of the best albums ever made, and I made a mental note of that....and then did nothing with it for three years before I actually bought the album, and I listened to that incessantly - something about his voice just clicked with me, like I suddenly "got" him in a way I never had before, and now I usually have some money set aside for buying CDs on a Monday, and if I can't find any new stuff that takes my fancy I'll have a gander at some Neil Young stuff, as well as a couple of other artists I'm trying to stock up my collections of, and compilation albums.

[METALMAN]

Harvest is another I've always liked. Heart of Gold has been my open mic tune of choice for ages now. >_> On the Beach quite possibly wouldn't make my personal top ten Neil Young albums but it still an album that I can really enjoy. For the most part I rate everything he did with Buffalo Springfield, CSNY and his own 70s solo work really highly. Unfortunately he released an almost equal number of poor albums in the 80s but to his credit he was trying something different which is nice and all. Just a pity it didn't work.

My dad has more or less his full discography up until 1990 or so. By which point he was spending his record money on me I'd expect. My dad's always really been into that kind of 70s California folk scene - CSNY and friends basically. Wish I'd gone to him for advice on Neil Young first rather than going to the shop and getting a rubbish album of ten minute jams.

Do you have After The Gold Rush? It's the obvious one but I love it. If I were to list my top 20 albums ever it would be a definite for the list. Deja Vu by CSNY is another good one - although the cover of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" alone makes that album great IMO.

I feel that Live At Massey Hall '71 is Neil Young at his peak. I love every song on it - more than the studio versions in most cases.

[RPS]

Been listening to the Format nonstop. Best music to listen to you when your life goes to absolute shit!

[Baddar]

Needtobreathe - The Outsiders

wub, indeed.

[Captain Kirk]

Got in a Shrek 2 mood, Nick Cave - People Ain't No Good and Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah.

Can you get better for a pissed out your mind and tired person.

[GRIFT]

I forced the kitchen at work to listen to Danzig all night. There was surprisingly little protest.