The new UNKLE is spectacularly terrible. Ordinarily I would have some witty commentary to add, but this really isn't worth writing about. It's just really bad.

I don't know if Lavelle's demons finally got the better of him, or if this is just one of those things where a bunch of people who get along as friends get together (what could go wrong?) only to find half way through that as musicians they kind of suck….

In more positive news, the new Spoon album is really really great. I sort of kind of liked their previous stuff, but this time…

Summed up in 3 letters – wtf??

I'm all for branching out, trying new things, going beyond your style and genre… often the results can be spectacular, as with Prefuse 73's collaboration under Savath and Savalas. But this sad little pile of poo RJD2 has put out is pretty hurting. It's not just "mediocre" or "not so good"…. it's really, really bad. I seriously tried to listen to this twice, both times finding myself fast forwarding because I just felt too embarrassed for the guy to listen to it. The falsetto is bad enough, but everything else about…

A whole bunch of new stuff has gone up in the last few days on a certain pink, curly-tailed torrent site whose name shall not be mentioned…

Here's how it goes:

Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City
Total garbage. This is really awful on all kinds of levels. Don't hold your breath for this one kids.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Some Loud Thunder
The previous album did nothing for me, and neither does this one.

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
This is surprisingly good. Nice growth and progression from the debut album.

I know you've all been waiting with baited breath, so get your tuxedos and publicists out cuz here we go:

Best Albums (it's a tie)
The Knife - Silent Shout
Shearwater - Palo Santo
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not – yes it was a good album fuckers
and honorable mentions…
Burial - Burial
Thom Yorke - The Eraser

Best Album That No One Listened To
Benoît Pioulard - Précis

Best Single
In The Morning

Album That Didn't Make Best Album Because it had 3 or 4 Ridiculously Good Singles But The Rest Was…

Put on some headphones and put up the volume:

http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/atc/atc_teenbuzz.mp3

The catch: if you're over 30, you probably won't hear it.

I'm almost 27 and I still can, although I have to put up the volume pretty loud. Surprisingly, those years of speaker humping haven't yet taken their toll.

……

My Chemical Romance
PANIC! at the Disco
Metallica
Nirvana
Beyoncé
Blink-182

I'm shameless.

So Pitchfork finally decided to review Benoît Pioulard's Précis. The reviewer takes on the standard Pitchfork tone – patronizing aloofness – and goes on to complain about how there is too much "drowning" and "crooning", all so february 2006.

Why does reading these reviews make me think these pitchfork dudes jack off to Microsoft Word? "Oh god.. yes… my use of 'compositionally solid' and 'playfully complex' is like so hot."

It's a good album motherfuckers. Get over yourselves.

In other news, the My My album is really good. It's like what Daft Punk would have sounded like in…

This track (So Sleep (A)) is hot shit. Too bad no one will ever hear it. For inexplicable reasons it was released as a B-Side on the In The Morning EP, rather than as a feature track on the full album.

Anyway I'm hoping this is a hint that So This is Goodbye wasn't just a fluke (because lets face it, Last Exit was kind of crap), and that there's more goodness to come.

What's the (A) in the name by the way? A hint that really, it should have been an A side?

Junior Boys

That's right. Today I sent Benoît Pioulard US$12 via paypal for his album Précis, which I downloaded a few days ago. It's really good, and from the sounds of it the guy is pretty broke. This makes me feel good about myself, the way giving up a seat on the subway to an old lady does (which incidentally I also did today).

Okay this isn't the "first" cd I ever bought. I ordered two Wintersleep albums from their label last year. And when I was 16 I bought a Prodigy album. I also may or may not have purchased…

… is surprisingly good. Kind of mellow. Sparsely electronic, in a Pat Metheny way maybe.

Yay for OINK.

(The Shins)

On a completely unrelated note, I've had The Books new mini album/project/something sitting on my drive for a little while, not having listened to it until now. It's almost like a sampler of their previous stuff, but with more amazingess. "A Long Villanous Sequence" is pretty much what I'd imagine a run-in with an evil homeless smurf to sound like, with the smurf possibly having just huffed glue. This is followed by a 2 minute track of a…

It's like really shitty bling bling southern rap with really fucking on point production. Then there's a bunch of weird shit that doesn't really belong. I dunno what to think.

I guess it's a bit of a show off thing for DJ Shadow. Here's a guy (somewhat) out of his element, putting the hip hop establishment to shame. Is that what the title's about? "The Outsider"? I dunno… the album's alright, but he's kind of wasting his talents. Maybe he's hoping madonna or something will notice.

More good recent downloads:

Ratatat - Classics. It's great. I dunno why I…