For My Listening Pleasure

My wife bought me some CDs for my birthday, and I am loving them. The current rotation:

1. The Shins, Oh, Inverted World — Fresh, melodic hooks. Clean guitar tones, walls of cascading arpeggios. Reminiscent of early REM or Byrds.
2. Neko Case, Live from Austin, TX — The vocal harmonies are disgusting. Nobody should be able to sing that well live, but I’m glad she and Kelly Hogan do. I hopped on the Neko Case bandwagon relatively late (thank you, New Pornographers), but I won’t be leaving anytime soon.
3. The Beatles, Love — I saw the show in Vegas and it completely blew my mind. The sound quality is amazing, and the songs sound new again. I heard people say that and I thought they were full of crap; then I experienced it and now I’m one of those people.
4. Rush, Snakes and Arrows — I can’t talk about Rush with anything remotely resembling objectivity, so take this for what it’s worth. As a guitarist, I find this album to be delicious in the extreme. Alex Lifeson’s playing and tone are monstrous, and the group’s compositional skills just keep improving. I prefer Geddy Lee’s current register to his ’70s wailing, and his addition of tight vocal harmonies over the past couple decades has added further depth to their work. But I gush. Read a real review to get a better idea.

Next up: Neko Case, Blacklisted; The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow. I’ll start listening to those as soon as I get sick of what’s on now. Don’t hold your breath…

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