I have been listening to a lot of new music lately and I thought I would share it with you.

Summer

At the beginning of summer I rewarded myself with Mezmerize by System of a Down, their fourth album, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It both kept their traditional soft instrumental mixed with hard rock feel as well as continuing their Armenian influence. Stupid Fact: I listened to this a lot when I began playing Guild Wars where I played a Mesmer, so now it reminds me of the game.

Edit: I actually bought this last spring, but I have been listening to a lot of other Cake this fall as well, so I am leaving it.

At some point I bought the latest Cake album, Pressure Chief. This is a great album with many spectacular songs and no bad ones. Some of my favorites include: Wheels, No Phone, Take It All Away, Dime, Carbon Monoxide, wait… that is all of them so far. Forget it. They are all great.

For the car ride back to Indiana I bought Summer in Abandon by Pinback and the self titled album by Straylight Run. Both of these are less well known and fairly soft and acoustic. I became well acquainted with the Pinback album on the drive out, but have discovered more of the Straylight Run album since then.

Fall Quarter

While I did not purchase any new albums, and listened to my summer albums, I was able to listen to a lot of new music due to the large music library my roommates have.

Radiohead is brilliant. My roommates own all six of their albums and many times I have simply instructed Winamp to play them all. Not all music is conducive to coding but Radiohead is and it has served me well. If you can only listen to a few of their songs make sure to listen to: Creep, Karma Police, Life in a Glasshouse, The Bends, Stree Spirit (Fade Out), Myxomatosis (which by the way is: A highly infectious, usually fatal disease of rabbits that is caused by a pox virus and is characterized by many skin tumors similar to myxomas.), as well as many others I cannot remember the name to. Always listening to music six albums at a time can make remembering specific songs troublesome.

Moby is also brilliant and should be mentioned even though I have not listened to him much. His songs vary so much in style it is hard to queue up all of his songs we have.

Fiona Apple is the one artist of which I acquired a new album over the quarter. Tidal is the first albums of hers that I now own and it will not be the last. She is unlike any other music I have.

Fall Quarter Break

It was not until this point that I learned that SOAD was releasing a new album, Hypnotize. I quickly remedied this error in intelligence and ran out to buy it. I was intruiged by their stance that Hypnotize was really Part II of the Mezmerize / Hypnotize double album. Not only is the band saying that they are linked musically, but the two cd cases/sleeves link together and their art matches. This is rather clever I think. I have heard that Hypnotize is better than Mezmerize and I look forward to listening to it more.

My other purchase over break is Plans by Death Cab for Cutie. My Death Cabjourney began when I bought Give Up by Postal Service a side project of the leader singer of Death Cab. Although i did not begin listening to Death Cab for over a year after that, their music quickly grew on me and I now consider them one of my favorites. Plans is the band’s first album with a big-time label and I have heard that it is more polished than their earlier albums, which can be good and bad. I hope it is good. I look forward to listening to this album over the next quarter also.

That concludes my summary of my recent listening catalog.

Note: I linked to Wikipedia and not the band’s website because I think Wikipedia does an excellent job introducing bands, as well as giving a link to their website. Enjoy.