LxListening: The Music of Jenny Lewis

24 May

jenny lewis

I’ve found myself listening to a lot of the works of Jenny Lewis lately, after digging into Rilo Kiley’s rarities collection Rkives recently.  Lewis has proved to be one of the more undervalued talents since RK broke onto the scene in 2003, releasing new material with RK and on a solo basis at a tick of at least every couple years.  Besides Rilo Kiley, Lewis has released a solo record, a record with The Watson Twins, a record with Jonathon Rice, and was an integral role in The Postal Service.  That is a pretty impressive first ten years of a career.  So without further ado, here are five choice Jenny Lewis tracks to brighten your Friday.
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Top Ten Thursday: Daft Punk’s Best Tracks

22 May

Daft Punk, RAM, random access memories

If you follow us at all, you have probably figured by now that this list was inevitable. Our month-long love fest for Daft Punk is now wrapping up, so here we are. We determined this list by all randomly creating our own lists and then normalizing those three lists into one master. We have done this before, and most of the time our lists are drastically different from one another. Not the case for this one. It was a pretty clear cut top ten aside from each of our own misses. One surprising note (or maybe not so surprising depending on how you look at it) is that Discovery was the clear cut album favorite, pulling away with five victories and one miss. Now onto the list:

 

10. “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”

Infectious is a word that I could use for each and every song description on this list. So I decided I’d just go ahead and blow it on the first one. One thing that makes this song so great is the way it sporadically breathes. It never totally lets loose instrumentally or lyrically. It’s like the vocals and the instruments go back and forth, battling for their own ground. The victory goes to the robots, for crafting such an infectious and fun dance tune that won’t wear you out.
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Daft Punk Review Royale: Random Access Memories

22 May

Daft Punk
Random Access Memories

daft punk, random access memories, album, cover, art

Austin’s Take

Random Access Memories is one of those records where it is hard to separate the immense hype and expectations from the eventual finished product.  What we ended up with is an album with perfectly executed promotion without the deep satisfaction that we expected.  The album reminds me most of a microbrewery releasing a trendy new beer with slick packaging, and finding the flavors don’t mesh into the clean finish you would hope for.  In the same way, Daft Punk combines disco-era sounds with their electronic home base and even what I would call plain old adult contemporary to create a most confusing brew.

Daft Punk , cheers, beer, brew

Mmmmmm, Daft beer!

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Tune Test Tuesday: Album Covers

21 May

album cover quiz

A few Thursdays back we posted our top ten favorite album covers. As this was a fun list to do, I thought it would also be fun to incorporate a quiz to go along with it. Albeit a little late, I give you our first album cover quiz. As per usual, we know it’s easy to find answers to these questions with the interwebs already at the tips of your finger tips, but in the words of the infamous Ron Dubach (if you don’t know who that is I am sorry … for you, not for the reference) “Cheaters stink like skunks!” Onto the quiz:
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Kanye West “New Slaves” Building Premiere Review

20 May

Kanye West "New Slaves" Building Premiere Review

For those who didn’t hear, this past weekend was a big one for Mr. Kardashian aka Kanye West. The divisive rapper announced the release of his sixth album Yeezus June 18th, played two new songs on Saturday Night Live, and most interestingly, debuted his first single “New Slaves” Friday night on buildings across the globe, everywhere from Berlin to Miami to Sydney, totaling 66 different screenings.

My wife and I just so happened to be downtown with a friend when we saw the buzz start to circulate online about the video premieres, and we looked online and found there was one coming in an hour that was only a mile from us. We had nothing better going on, so we headed on down to Six Points in Wicker Park to see what all the hub bub was about. Over the half hour leading up to the event, probably over 500 people circulated on 6 street corners, which is pretty insane in itself. It’s a testament to the power of Twitter (where Kanye announced the screenings) and to people’s yearnings for an experience.
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