By my count, I’ve picked up 34 albums from 2008 so far this year. Today I’ll give you my top ten. Breaking this down into tiers was not easy – I’m not one to be incredibly opinionated about this sort of thing. Ok, I take that back. I’m opinionated, but not in a “let’s hold hands and make a list” sort of way.

Breaking the list down from 34 to 16 was pretty easy. It was getting it down to ten that I had trouble with. Either way, I’m going to make a list and I’m going to split it in half, since forcing myself to actually rank these things in any sort of numeric order would probably make my head explode. Numbered lists are for December when I’ve officially checked out for the year.

Oh, and anything that came out recently is not necessarily fair game as I may not have even picked up the album yet (I’m looking at you, Wolf Parade)

Top Tier of the Midyear!

Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight. This Scottish band plays what I like to call envelopop. They surround you with their complex sound, but are not overpowering like The Twilight Sad could be.

Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs. Thank you, Death Cab, for expanding your boundaries and taking some risks with your newest album. This album is what I hoped Plans would sound like. Now if you could do something about your live shows…

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes. Honestly, I could probably put Fleet Foxes on this list twice – their EP was very good, too. I never thought I’d enjoy folky music with so many references to animals, especially since I really couldn’t stand a similar Rouge Wave. Maybe it’s due to the lack of reference to antelope.

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago. Out of all of the albums on this list, this may get the biggest complaint from most indie rock snobs. Why? Well, they would argue that since he leaked the album on a web page sometime last year, that it’s technically a 2007 album. Read Kevin’s description of the album for an excellent review.

Los Campesinos! – Hold On Now, Youngster. This is my Friday afternoon go-to album, and it leaves me bouncing in my chair. People ask me how I stay so skinny sitting in an office for eight hours a day. Two words (and appending punctuation): Los Campesinos!

Bottom Tier Holdin’ Up The Rear (of the top 10, that is):

Colin Meloy – Colin Meloy Sings Live. I have heard that there are people disappointed with this album. My assumption is that they’re disappointed because he doesn’t play anything off of The Crane Wife. While I agree with this, I also enjoy the songs that he chose to play and the interaction he has with the audience.

Mates of State – Re-arrange Us. This is one of those, “Are you sure about this? You’ve only had the album for a couple of weeks.” picks. While I understand this, the poppiness of this album hits me just right and with rumors that their live show is just as good, I expect to be officially hooked after lollapalooza.

Destroyer – Trouble in Dreams. I’d have to say that I don’t think many people “get” Destroyer. I know I didn’t for a long time. Now, he hits me just right. With his unique delivery that sounds more like talking than singing, you can sometimes focus too much on his voice and not enough on his great music.

Santogold - Santogold. At first, I enjoyed hearing Santogold played as a part of those new Bud commercials, but then I forgot how often they’d be playing. Now, I gotta say, I might be getting sick of it and unfortunately, that may hurt the way I feel about this album.

The Mountain Goats – Heretic Pride. It’s not a top-1o list without The Mountain Goats, a mainstay in the indie world. After three albums focusing his lyrics on himself, John Darnielle has returned to writing songs about other people without skipping a beat.

So there you have it. I held off figuring out what song to post from these albums until this morning so that I could gauge my mood and pick that way.  Even though I was in a bouncy mood, as Erin can attest, I decided to play a second song off of Frightened Rabbit’s album, The Midnight Organ Fight. Check out Good Arms vs. Bad Arms.

I say whip it.
Whip it good.
-Devo

Devo is apparently suing McDonalds over a new action figure called New Wave Nigel. I’d say he’s a cute little guy, if not for the American Idol patch of the front of him. Apparently he’s got a song, too.  The kitch factor in that video is worth the 8 seconds of your life you just wasted. I guarantee it.

When I first read about this story, I thought about the episode of Eureka with the school dance and the DJ who sounded like a combination of Moby and Devo. Raise your hand if you’ve even heard of Eureka. Ok, I’ll stop talking about Devo now.

For those of you in the Rochester area, the St. John’s Block Party will be here on July 12th, combining the recognizable bands of Soul Asylum and The Bodeans. Added to that are the lesser known bands of Cloud Cult and The Alarmists. After that, I don’t recognize anybody else. I’ve been told it’s a good time, but just like when Wilco came to town, I will once again be out of town. Nobody steal anything from my house.

EMusic has recently delved into becoming it’s own label – well more like it’s own digital distributor for bands that have no label. The albums quality (both musically and production-wise) have been ok to bad until their newest find, Deastro. The EMusic reviewer touts the album as impressive because it “synthesiz[es] Death Cab for Cutie, M83, LCD Soundsystem and other future-rock practitioners into a glitzy world overflowing with regret.” They also like that he’s 22.

I personally don’t hear much of the above bands, and while it’s impressive that he’s only 22, he makes some choices sonically that sound like he’s 22. That being said, the album is impressive because it’s a 22 year old creating an album in his parents’ basement without any label help. Check out The Shaded Forests.

Did you know I made this beat with my mouth and a bell,
Just a F-Y-I I’m F-L-Y,
And for those who can’t spell,
I’m a pretty swell guy.
- The Cool Kids

Note to self: don’t trust a wireless keyboard if it was purchased 8 years ago when the technology was still relatively new, it randomly pops up the system calculator, and for some reason decides to hit the back button on your web browser, erasing today’s post in one fell swoop.

Thanks to everybody who liked Erin’s fakebook post on Monday. I’m sure she appreciates everybody who really doesn’t know her as a young blonde who likes stuffed animals and being pretty. She does a good job on the being pretty, but the stuffed animals thing I totally made up.

A lot of albums have  come out this year and have not been available on eMusic. I guess that’s to be expected, but it seemed like there were more albums that I could pick up there last year than there are this year. My belt tightens and my music budget goes up, I guess.

Originally, I had intended on playing a song from the new Wolf Parade album, but seeing as they promised no singles off of it, I couldn’t find a proper song. Nah, I’m lying. I haven’t gotten around to buying the album yet. Instead, you’re getting a song off of the new Cool Kids album, Bake Sale.

This is the type of album that I like to sit back, put on my cheap black-rimmed sunglass and cruise around Silver Lake with the sub woofers in my trunk blaring. I hope that there’s at least one person out there who believes that story. Check out What Up Man.

I’ll tell you once more,
Before I get off the floor,
Don’t bring me down.
- Electric Light Orchestra (ELO)

Hey there my internet buddies! My interweb stuffed animal brigade! It’s me, Erin, and it’s my birthday today! Like last year, Nick asked me to write a post and I said, “Umm… blogs are for nerds and people who don’t want to look pretty.”Also, I don’t really like half of the music he puts up here anyway. So Nick is writing it for me. Hooray!

This last weekend, Nick tricked me into going to this thing called Rock the Garden. At first, I was like, “Why would you want to put rocks in a garden, it might hurt the pretty tomato plants?” but then he explained that it was something something Walker Art Center blah blah blah sculpture garden. I don’t know, I wasn’t really listening, but I did know that I like sculptures and gardens, so I said sure. If it makes Nick happy, I’ll go look at pretty things for a day.

Here’s where it got weird, though. When we showed up, there was this huge line, and I thought, “There must be a really cool sculpture of something like Hello Kitty or a big stuffed animal in there.” But it turned out that there was just a big stage and a lot of noisy rock bands. I was so confused.

The first guy was this guy or band called Bon Iver. At first, I thought Nick said it was MacGyver. Boy was my face red when I realized that it was some dude named Justin on stage and not Richard Dean Anderson. Kevin kept shouting, “I know that guy, he scratches his balls!” and I would giggle because he said balls in public.

Nick wanted to let you know that he found a entire list of problems solved by MacGyver.

After that, I got to go sit on a hill away from all the noisy music and enjoy being in the sun. Nick brought me a corn dog and tried to show me two people painting on stage. I thought that was more interesting than the music, but Nick said he still liked the music.

After Cloud Cult, or whatever they’re called were done playing, Nick made me go down and watch some band called The New Pornographers while he jumped up and down and screamed until he lost his voice. He can be silly sometimes. For their last song, they played some song I had never heard of, but Nick really enjoyed. Nick said it was an almost perfect rendition of ELO’s Don’t Bring Me Down. I was just confused why this guy kept telling his friend, Bruce, not to bring him down. Oh well.

We went back up on the hill for Andrew Bird, but then it started to rain and they had to delay things because of lightning, so we decided to go home where I got to see my cute kitty, Toeders! He wasn’t happy that we had left him home all day. Silly kitty.

I couldn’t think of a song to play, so Nick is playing a song that he was playing Saturday morning that I liked. It’s by Mates of State and is called Re-Arrange Us. Toodles!

In an attempt to keep up with all of the stuff I find that gets stale before I find time to post it, I’m going to start throwing up random posts without songs or lyrics.

Posts without songs or lyrics. What a novel concept.

You’ll still get your three meals a week, but now you’ll get an additional snack every once in a while. Think of these posts as your single serving pringles cup you used to have for an occasional afternoon snack until the snack machine fun police increased the price to $1.00. But don’t worry… these are good for you snacks. Like fruit. Right, cookie monster?

The AV Club has a list of their best tracks of 2008 so far. I say, “Hey, wait until July 1st to put something like this out… that’s the exact middle of the year. That’s when I’m putting out my best of 2008 so far post.” Ok, so I’m jumping the gun and putting it out on the 30th.

For bands that I haven’t mentioned on the web site lately, check out Eef Barzeley (formerly of Clem Snide), The Cool Kids (whose album I picked up yesterday and will be playing sometime next week), and Mates of State.

Listening too long,
To one song,
Sing me Spanish techno.
- The New Pornographers

I had a note in my work calendar to start looking for a new album from The Notwist on July 1st. Apparently it came out on Tuesday. Speaking of stuff available on Tuesday, the Hold Steady’s new album, Stay Positive is available from iTunes if you like your music sticky with DRM. On to today’s post!

Rock the Garden is finally here! Let the music play, the Summit flow, and Chipotle – well, you can just be your glorious self, Chiptole. The current schedule is this:

• 4:00 – Doors Open
• 4:30 – Bon Iver
• 5:45 – Cloud Cult
• 7:00 – The New Pornographers
• 8:30 – Andrew Bird

In honor of this event, I am playing a song from each of the artists. Three I’ve played before, and the fourth is an Andrew Bird track from an 89.3 live CD.

Bon Iver – Skinny Love

Cloud Cult – Everybody Here is a Cloud

New Pornographers – Mass Romantic

Andrew Bird – A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left (Live at The Current)

He said, “Do unto yourself,
As you do unto your neighbor.
It’s not an eye for an eye,
It’s a favor for a favor.”
- Cloud Cult

On a day that I expected to be talking about the Rock the Garden schedule, I’m instead talking about lollapalooza. Why? The lollapalooza schedule was released. This is always an exciting time. I can now plan out what bands I’m going to see when.

It can also be disappointing when two bands that I want to see are playing opposite of each other. This year, those two bands are Broken Social Scene and Battles. I’ve wanted to see Broken Social Scene since I realized that I missed them in 2006 and Battles was high on my list of bands to see this year.

For those of you saying, “Why doesn’t he just split time between both?” Well, the stages are at opposite ends of Grant Park. That’s at least a half mile. I could run that in 4 minutes or so, but I’ll be wearing sandals and there’s too much gravel next to the fountain. My feet would hate me too much by the time I made it to the other stage. I guess I’m just going to have to check out Broken Social Scene without thinking too much about Battles.

Below is my possible schedule for lollapalooza. Obviously, things change and I probably won’t see everybody in this list. Why is early Friday so empty? Well, because I can rarely make it downtown until at least 1 pm, so I’ve just factored in for that this year.

Today’s song does not come from a lollapalooza band. Instead, it comes from a band I just discovered called We Shot The Moon. So far, every description of the band involves describing Hearts strategy, so I won’t go there. We Shot The Moon are a fun power-pop band whose over-positive message will probably get annoying in the future. Then again, I’m not exactly their target audience (anymore). There was once a time where I would have eaten this up with a spoon in each hand. Check out Sway Your Head.

Just gimme a second to empty my face,
Before I hit the road again to go and win this paper chase.
I’ve been watching you man,
I’m proud of you man,
You’re growing up to be the best man that you possibly can.
-Atmosphere

Happy Father’s Day, people! The Minneapolis Star Tribune had a nice article about Hip Hop dads yesterday. The article was a little low on substance, but it’s nice to see a positive article about artists caring for their children, especially the typically stereotyped rappers and hip hop artists.

Sidebar – it’s particularly disappointing to see that one of the people posting comments has decided to take a positive article and stereotypically blame all of hip hop for whatever jerk may or may not be driving down his street blaring bass.

The article brings up the interesting subject of being a musician and raising a family. Unless you’re willing to go all Partridge Family, you’re probably going to be spending time away from your family for long stretches of time. I’m surprised that there aren’t more songs about it.

Mentioned in the article is a song called Little Man by Atmosphere. This song has three verses – the first verse is him talking to his son, the second verse is him talking to his father, and finally the third verse is him talking to himself.

I still haven’t gotten around to picking up his new album about life giving you lemons and turning those lemons into gold. I’ll have to work on that.

If you haven’t guessed it, today’s song is the above Little Man. Enjoy!

We ain’t fakin’ it,
Whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.
- Jerry Lee Lewis

I’m writing this on Friday morning while watching the today show where Kenny Chesney is playing. Matt Lauer agreed with Ann Curry that Kenny is pretty cute. Thanks for the morning laugh, Matt.

It’s been a summer of streaming. First, Sigur Rós’s new album, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust, is being streamed on here. I haven’t been able to get the stream to stop buffering, so I haven’t been able to check out the album yet. It comes out on June 24th.

I heard about the second streaming album on the radio last night. The Current’s Mark Wheat talked about the “digi-drop” of the new Hold Steady album, Stay Positive, which is currently playing on their MySpace page. I’ll be checking that out a lot between now and when it comes out on July 14th.

Today’s song comes from a band from Reading, England called Pete and the Pirates. Check out Ill Love.

Tell me anything you want,
Any other lie will do,
Call me back to,
Back to you.
- Fleet Foxes

So the wife and I caught the season finale of House last weekend. Quite the tear jerker for her. During part of the episode, they played José González’s version of Massive Attack’s teardrop. I was quite amused. Not because they played a song by José González, but because they played the José González version of the House theme song.

You would think that he remade the song just so it could be played at some point during the show. You’d probably be wrong, but I’m not here to judge. I am here to ask the question, was it weird that I was not amused that I recognized the song, but that I knew it was a remake of the song used for the show’s theme song? I say no.

Sidebar – they also played some Bon Iver. Rock the Garden is only a week and a half away!

Next topic – happy birthday, Electric Fetus! If I had known where you were located when I was a senior in high school, I might have been able to meet Sunny Day Real Estate. Instead, I nervously gawked behind a Golden Tee playing Jeremy Enigk at the show. I still wear the shirt from that show, with its almost completely faded signature.

Final topic! Wow, I sound like a college professor. Well, maybe a junior college professor.

I love the new Fleet Foxes self-titled album! It’s combination of folk rock and great harmonies make it sound straight out of the 60’s. Clocking in just short of 40 minutes, this album starts out the same way that the Sun Giant EP did – with a short folk a ca pella that leads into a reflective guitar. This time, though, they turn it up a notch. Check out Ragged Wood, a shin-dig of a song that represent the rest of the album well.