If It's Too Loud...

Another busy week, so let's play two! Album of the Week : Artist : Phoebe Bridgers Album : Stranger in the Alps Quick Description : Debut album from a buzzy singer-songwriter. Why You Should Listen : You will love her. No question. Overall Thoughts : I’ll be honest: I only added this to my playlist rotation for this week because the title of the album made me laugh out loud. Ken had the same reaction to it when I told him to listen to it, and if a good album title gets this into a few more hands, all the better, because this is a GREAT folk album. Easily the best release of the week, Phoebe Bridgers successfully balances an often-sparse instrumentation effort with some really melodic stuff and interesting… well, everything. It’s a hard space to innovate in, and Bridgers is making a definite effort in modernizing a genre that is very rooted in its past. She’s a little profane, a little fun, and ridiculously talented... Recommendation : ...so make this a priority listen...

With Jeff out of town, he asked for me to fill in for him. This week we have new releases from '80s, 90's, and '00s acts as well as brand new bands with their first releases. Let's get started! Dilated Peoples - Directors of Photography With their first release in 7 years, Dilated People's are back with a return to form from 2000's Expansion Team. If you like old school 90s conscious hip hop, this is definitely for you. The only problem might be the album's length. For the first 12 or so songs, it is a fantastic album and would get my vote for hip hop album of the year so far. But, at 18 songs and over an hour, it gets pretty repetitive and feels dull towards the end. A little diversity and expansion would have helped the 2nd half of this one immensely. The Gaslight Anthem - Get Hurt I know I'm going to sound like a crotchety old man here, but I've just never gotten the whole Gaslight Anthem thing and lumped them into the whole neo-pop pu...