Top 100

I am emailed top 100 charts from indie music retailers around the country every week. (It's a work thing) and while I know most of the names on the chart it is fair to say that I have only actually listened to a mere 25% of the artists among these lists. I don't follow very much top 40 / mainstream rap / or country but there is so much music being released each week that it is nearly impossible to check out everything, no less the records I might be the least bit curious to hear.

Recently my company gave me a year subscription to both Napster as well as Rhapsody and I now have the opportunity to listen to all these records I would never actually bother to buy but am happy to finally give them a listen. The hope here was that I would find at least a few gems among the hot, happening and chart topping popular.

Here are the records I have recently listened to:


Coldplay - Viva la Vida

My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges

Fleet Foxes - S/T

Al Green - Lay it Down

Aimee Mann - Smilers

Motley Crue - Saints of Los Angeles

N.E.R.D. - Seeing Sounds

Alkaline Trio - Agony & Irony

Black Keys - Attack and Release

Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer

Raconteurs - Consolor of the Lonely

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean

Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple

Jamie Lidell - Jim

R.E.M. - Accelerate

Sigur Ros - Med Sud I Eyrum

Earlimart - Hymn and Her

Foals - Antidotes

Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

And here are the number of records I will ever listen to again / was able to sit through in one sitting / would be willing to purchase:

One - Sigur Ros...for the opening two tracks alone; Gobbledigook / Inni mer syngur vitleysingur.

Maybe I am having a bad month or my ears are being particularly picky. I won't say I hated everything because that isn't the case but if honesty is the game here, I wouldn't go back to one of these records on my own. I truly don't appreciate My Morning Jacket at all. I can't understand their popularity and they push all the wrong buttons for me. If I was on a first date with the record I would have excused myself for a trip to the bathroom and booked out the kitchen for good instead.


The records I thought were better than the rest : Wolf Parade, R.E.M., Black Keys