Well my friends, we’ve made it to hump day! I had a really great conversation with JD Samson this morning and despite what I tweeted earlier today, I’m actually speaking to LP today and Sea of Bees on Friday. My original interview with LP had to be rescheduled so there’s still time to send any questions you’ve got for her or for Jules from Sea of Bees. Yes my life does not suck today, even with the rain cloud over my head! Take that, life! By the way, for anyone subscribing to my Spotify playlists for New Music Tuesdays, I’ll be updating the one entitled, “AE NMT,” each week so as to not have 10 million playlists in my collection and you can just set it and forget it.
This album is kind of ruining other albums for me today. Jana Hunter’s voice fits my mood perfectly and while I’m scared to think about what the ominous tones within each song actually mean for me, they are certainly doing their job very well. Nootripics doesn’t stray from its dark overtones but bounces around a bit between playfulness in songs like “Brains” and “Stem,” the latter of which is almost like indie-carnie-rock and reminds me a bit of Electrelane, to overwhelming doom in “Propogation” and “Lamb.” Alright, I’m gonna go find a dog to hug, but I’m not going to stop listening so don’t try to make me.
Let’s keep with the semi-weird theme I’ve got going on! Some of you may recognize Soso from one of my Weekly Women to Listen to columns a while back when I was obsessed with her first single, “Who’s Gonna Love Me.” She was like a darker version of my darling Robyn and is also a fellow Swede. Well, I am still obsessed with that song but now I’ve got a whole group of others to play with as well. Overall, this is a really solid release filled with dark synth-pop that is just artsy enough to be unique, danceable and extremely catchy. There are a couple of songs I could do without such as her cover of Cody Chestnutt‘s “My Women My Guitars.” I can’t lie: It’s mostly the lyric about blood swelling to places I don’t want to think about. Overall I’m really enjoying this debut though. Stream the album in its entirety over at Spinner. Soso is also letting fans download her album and enjoy it for free.
This is quite the change of pace from the two albums featured above and, for some reason, I keep getting surprised when I queue up the title track and press play. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I am pretty sure it was more along the dance-pop styles of her contemporaries and not the amicable Shania Twain cross-over pop it ended up being. For those of you needing something to lighten up your mood after taking the other albums for a spin, this should be able to at least help with the pallet cleansing. You can stream the album over at Spinner.
Carrie Underwood – Blown Away (Sony Music Nashville)
Photograph courtesy of Sony Music Nashville
Country is not my jam and there’s something about Carrie Underwood that rubs me the wrong way, but I can’t ignore her talent. As far as pop-country goes, hers is some of the most catchy I’ve ever heard. There’s a lot of cheating and death on this album. Way to keep up with today’s dark theme, Carrie!
In Other News: Rita Wilson (yes, the actress) has an album of cover songs out and it is lovely. Carolina Chocolate Drops perform “No Man’s Mama” on Later with Jools Holland. Singer-songwriter Arro Verse released her single “Love Follows Me” on iTunes and Amazon yesterday. Metric has released their first single from their forthcoming full-length coming out next month. Stream “Youth Without Youth” now.
Don’t forget to grab JD Samson & MEN’s track “Make Him Pay”:
Here’s a pretty sweet mashup from The Jane Doze for your downloading pleasure:
That’s it for this week but don’t forget you can always drop me a note via email, Facebook or Twitter. I need to go get in the middle of this cuddlefest now.
