An album that cane out pretty early in the year, Keep Your Eyes Ahead, by The Helio Sequence was a bit of a surprise. The first track, Lately, sets the stage for a well thought out and produced album. While the alubm does capture a Beatles vibe on some tracks, this album doesn’t hesistate to expand out from the basic indie rock sound.
A great example of this was Back To This. It starts with a fairly subdued beat with a little distortion on the chorus. About halfway though the song, it evolves into something a little more intense and grown up. The real star of the album is Lately, which is a bit of a bummer since it is the first track. However it is well worth checking out due to the heartbreak in the lyrics combined with a fantastic sound.
Posted in Music | Tags: bestof2008
Before I start this year’s top ten, I figured it would be a good time to revisit last year’s list. I did a top 15, but upon both further review and checking out some albums I wasn’t aware of at the time, I think I could narrow it down to a top 10. While I won’t go back and update my original posts, here is what my 2007 top ten would look like if I had to do it again:
- Andorra - Caribou
- Funeral - Arcade Fire
- Boxer - The National
- The Stage Names - Okkervil River
- Wincing the Night Away - The Shins
- In Rainbows - Radiohead
- The Shepard’s Dog - Iron & Wine
- In Our Bedroom After the War - Stars
- Watina - Andy Palacio & The Garifuna Collective
- Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer - Of Montreal
On the plus side, I have also learned a bit from both my 2007 and this year’s experience, so I don’t think my 2008 revisit will be as drastic as the 2007 one was.
Posted in Music | Tags: 2007
White Winter Hymnal got more recognition for the Fleet Foxes, but their best song is Mykonos off their Sun Giant EP. The lyrics about a friendship broken are sang to perfection. As with most Fleet Foxes songs, the vocals stand above the instruments, but here they are pretty darn close meaning you will get enjoyment everytime you listen. The song still moves me everytime I hear it, all 30+ times over the year.
Posted in Music | Tags: bestof2008
There are two ways to make really high resoution photos. The first is to have a camera with a bazillion MP. The other is to take a whole bunch of pictures from the same spot and stitch them together into a panorama or really big picture. If you want to go the second route, I recommend Hugin, a free, open source application that makes it easy to do. In the last two months, Hugin had another update to 0.7 which added a number of new features. In the area of panoramas, you could pay for a lot worse programs than this free one.
Posted in Pick of the Week | Tags: hugin, photography
From the start of the distortion, you know that you are in for something different. Then the airy vocals kick in and you know it is going to be fantastic. Does the song make sense? Not really, but it is just too fantastic of a beat, vocals and instruments that it almost makes the top of my list.
Posted in Music | Tags: bestof2008
