Tunes

No major events happened yesterday and there was no divine revelation of what to talk about today, so I'm just going to go through some of the music I've been listening to.

Better Than Ezra has a new album out and it's probably the best they've put out in 7 or 8 years. It's called "Paper Empire".

I'm not crazy about the new Green Day album. I know that American Idiot was a "punk opera" and all that, but that doesn't mean that every album you put out from now on has to be one too. What happened to just writing 10 or 12 good, fun punk songs and being done with it. I guess I'm saying that the new CD looks like they're trying to repeat American Idiot and instead of looking brilliant, it feels desperate this time around.

I finally got the Robert Plant/Allison Krauss album. It's been out for a year or two now and I don't know how long I've been meaning to get it for, but it's been too long. Just about every song is good and a lot of them are great. All very subtle and it's interesting to hear Plant sing so softly instead of using his trademark wail from the Led Zeppelin days.

Finally, there's two new "super" groups that have albums out and both are pretty good. The first is "Tinted Windows" (group and album name). The band is Jame Iha from the Pumpkins (what caught my interest to start with), one of the Hanson brothers, the singer/songwriter from Fountains of Wayne and the drummer from Cheap Trick. I would look up all the names, but I'm running up against time. Anyway, they've got a very suggary-pop kind of thing going on. It's hard to describe, but it a lot like Fountains of Wayne, only with more candy coating. It's infectious and most of the songs are pretty good.

The other band is called "Chickenfoot" (also the name of the album). Joe Satriani, Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony (Van Halen's ex-bass player) and Chad Smith (drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers). With two former members of Van Halen, a rock drummer and a guitar player that usually does instrumental rock albums, you should be able to imagine that it's a pretty rock record. Most of the songs are over five minutes long and it's mostly because of the guitar solos. It's really an awesome record with a lot of just stright up guitar rock that you really don't hear much of anymore. Great album.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul