At some point, these things are just going to be wholly unrelated to the music. I wonder if I'll have the good sense to stop? Who knows? MUSIC
Freeway & Jake One, "Money"
As we talked about last time, Freeway's always had good taste in producers. For The Stimulus Package (great name!), he teamed up with Seattle's Jake One, and the result was my favorite album of his.
Why yes, I am kind of a Seattle homer, why do you ask?
matt pond PA, "It Becomes Night"
I wonder if the preference for strings increases as you get older? Do I like songs with strings more now because I've heard so many songs with just guitars? Am I going soft? Am I fallaciously attempting to generalize from my own narrow experiences? NUH-UH, YOU'RE THE SOLIPSIST!
Band Of Horses, "Lamb On the Lam (In the City)"
But it is an interesting question, isn't it? How does our perception of music change as we get older? For books, it's pretty clear that my tastes have moved from genre fiction towards non-fiction as I turn into an old fart, and while I look back fondly on lots of books I read when I was younger, I don't go back and re-read them or anything. But music? Heck yeah, I'm still listening to some of the same stuff from when I was a teenager. I just played It Takes a Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back two days ago and enjoyed the heck out of it. Those preferences seem pretty set in stone. But is the new music I listen to vastly different from what I used to listen to? It's hard to say. I'd like to think my tastes continue to broaden, but I dunno. And am I an exception?
I didn't do any research or reading on the topic or anything, mind you. I'm apparently not THAT curious.
Unsteady, "Ibarra"
OK, enough with that, I want to talk about Unsteady. Unheralded third-wave ska band out of San Diego, they were around for only a couple of albums, with a third album that supposedly was completed but never released. The second of those albums, Double or Nothing, is one of my favorite albums. This track is a great example - this is more of a jazz song than it is a ska track, but it's just great fun to listen to, the trumpet solo in particular. If only they had had a chance to put out more music.
Blue Scholars, "Wounded Eyes"
SEATTLE! This comes from the excellent The Long March EP, which at 35 minutes, is really pretty close to a full album. The Blue Scholars are Geologic on the mic and Sabzi on the boards, and got their start by putting out their debut album themselves. It got a local following pretty quickly, and when the Stranger listed it as one of the best albums of that year, that's when I picked up on it. The attraction for me is mostly Sabzi's beats, which are jazzy and light in all the best ways.