Saturday, February 19, 2011

paper cup

Today I bought my ticket for Bonnaroo X 2011.

A friend of mine from school and I decided that in order to help motivate us to study for our qualifying exams we should go to Bonnaroo. The festival is about a week after the exams, so hopefully we both will pass and then go celebrate!

Looks like a pretty good lineup.

Now just keep your fingers crossed that I pass.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

sigh no more

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with Mumford & Sons.

Their debut record, Sigh No More, has gotten mixed reviews. Pitchfork only gave it a 2.1, other online music websites have given lukewarm reviews, but I do have a lot of other friends with respectable taste who like it. So, I bought it.

At first listen it's pleasant. The songs are mostly upbeat, catchy and full of pretty solid harmonies. Some of the first songs have interesting crescendos and they're emotionally charged. They are talented instrumentalists as well...I really dig the banjo parts. So I thought maybe I liked them.

Then I kept listening. And I thought for a second that iTunes was on repeat. But it wasn't...the songs just sound the same. Those lovely harmonies that first peaked my interest grew tired and kind of sad, the crescendos and the raw emotional became predictable.

This leaves me at a crossroads since I do like some of the songs. I really like their style too; they're cute. And honestly, Marcus Mumford great alliterative name. Enjoy this video...they are great performers.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Comfy in Nautica

This week has been a historic one for mid-MO. We got 18" of snow in less than 24 hours and nearly an inch of ice as well. MU will have been closed for three days by the end of this week...which I'm told might be a record.

Unfortunately my type of work is not conducive to snow days, even more so since I live about 0.13mi from campus. I did take one snow day yesterday, but I'm back in lab today. In order to make it more exciting, I bought some new tunes to pass the time, of course!

First up, I decided to buy Panda Bear's Person Pitch. I'm not sure why I hadn't bought it before since I love Animal Collective (Panda Bear is Noah Lennox, founding member of AC). I've only listened to it a couple of times, so I really don't have much to say except that I like it. It's exactly you would expect to get from Lennox (it gets weird to keep writing 'Panda Bear').

I also bought The Walkmen's Lisbon. Honestly my motivation for this is a little skewed. I have some other stuff by them and I've always thought it was ok, but never gave it too much credit. Well, I found out yesterday that both The Walkmen and The New Pornographers are coming to The Blue Note in April. I love TNP and thought it would be cool to see them with The Walkmen and after a little searching I realized they had released a new album in '10. I checked it out and I really like it. It's a solid album. I've only listened to this a few times too, so again, I can't really expand on it now.

Stay tuned to see if I make it to the show (fingers-crossed)!