Present Joys

Inspired by Valerie, here’s my year in music. As you can see, the Mountain Goats have completely dominated my chart. They deserve all the plays they got. In other news: my annual chart features two great bands I’d never listened to before 2011: the New Pornographers and Lambchop! in addition, I grew to love some bands even more in 2011: Superchunk! the Hold Steady! Ted Leo! Bonnie Prince Billy! And all the rest are good too, but have maintained an expected position in my top 20. Especially the Mountain Goats.

Remember when Noah and the Whale used to play fey banjo-glockenspiel music? It seems like ages and ages ago. With every release they seem to sound different, but it’s always pretty good music. Their new record, Last Night on Earth, out March 7, looks like it’ll be no exception.

johnvanderslice:

New White Wilderness Album Trailer from Yours Truly!

It’s clearly very orchestrated and carefully put together, but the new John Vanderslice album has a really cool sense of spontaneity to it. It’s definitely a grower.

I’m attempting to add “release date” information into my iTunes library. That is, instead of just notating a “release year”, to also include month and day. It’s a big undertaking, and it’s surprisingly difficult to find release dates for a lot of albums before, say, 2005. I remembered this thread at the Mountain Goats forums where all the members put their heads together to make a list of release dates. They feed my OCD: just another reason why I love the tMG community.

Grace Jones - Little Drummer Boy (via TheBoyCub)

Oh my gosh, I remember this so vividly from my childhood. I’ve gotta find the rest of this Christmas special.