Category: Uncategorized

Despite my best intentions, I found myself ready to forgive John Mayer and love his new album Born and Raised on first listen of “Queen of California”. While Battle Studies was utterly horrifying (and his cover of “I’m On Fire” nearly unforgivable) his latest record finds him stripped down with a country edge a la late era Eric Clapton. It’s a mellower affair, and “Queen of California” is a stand-out track, evident from its upbeat finger-picked beginning, to the nice country slide touches and the beautiful bridge that he throws into a couple verses (see :35 seconds in).  It’s commonplace to call John Mayer a narcissistic asshole, but plenty more rockstars have worn the title. With Born and Raised, Mayer may have finally found a way to channel his inner demons with a Ryan Adamsesque flavor.

Queen of California – John Mayer

You can grab the Double Vinyl for Born & Raised off of Mayer’s official site

The digital album can be found the conventional route on iTunes

LIYL: Eric Clapton, Ryan Adams

One of my favorite songs from last year, “Swim Club” features an acoustic guitar jaunt similar to “Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root (that song in Matilda) with some nice production touches out of left field during the chorus. It’s a song for sunset drives in the summer, feeling the wind blow through your hair and enjoying life in the moment. A fantastic song. “Swim Club” is the second song off of The Cave Singers 2011 LP No Witch, an album that isn’t just limited to acoustic fingerpicking.

Swim Club – The Cave Singers 

Grab the CD/LP from the Jagjaguwar Website here

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Sometimes, making it big really is a crapshoot. Whereas Foster The People had their incredibly famous and catchy “Pumped Up Kicks” wrapped in a melodic little package while the lyrics were somewhat…subversive (written by a down on his luck jingle-writer no less), Philadelphia’s Cheers Elephant writes some of the best melodies this side of indie psych-pop with equally loud personalities, and they’re pretty much unknown. So its even more to their credit that they doubled down and offered their latest LP Like Wind Blows Fire on Bandcamp for a name your own price kind of deal. While poor college folk (like me) might be happy to trade their email information for a chance at some free musical goods, it gives the consumer the option to pay what they feel the band deserves and end up giving more to the band (Bandcamp takes less of a percentage than iTunes) than your regular 9.99 on iTunes deal. For a taste, check out the charming and highly melodic “Peoples”, the album opener, which starts with some toe-tapping call and response before it takes off into the catchy hook stratosphere. I wanna groove indeed.

Peoples- Cheers Elephant 

Check out their website and head on over to Bandcamp to grab Like Wind Blows Fire and be a good sport and buy their other albums too. You’ll be glad you did

LIYL: Foster The People, Free Energy, Bombay Bicycle Club

Today in wish-fulfillment, here’s the third song off of Islands most recent release A Sleep & A Forgetting “Never Go Solo” which pretty much (ironically) sounds like a Beatles reunion.  With Lennonesque lyrics and piano lines and a McCartney styled melody, it’s one of my favorite songs of the year.

Grab the vinyl from their label ANTI-Records and find the digital version on iTunes


Never Go Solo- Islands