Listening to a new Toad the Wet Sprocket album is like having a friend over for dinner whom you haven’t seen in 20 years.
It’s hard for me to be objective when assessing these guys because the albums they put out in the early to mid 90s made up the soundtrack of my 20s — notably, the first years I spent with my future wife.
Eight months ago I horrified my most loyal readers when I spent three weeks on a song-by-song exploration of Arcade Fire’s Grammy-winning 2010 album The Suburbs.
I wanted to better understand what made the band such critical darlings, and I actually did emerge from that experiment with a much deeper appreciation of the craft that went into that album.
There is no denying the pop mastery of Katy Perry’s 2010 album, Teenage Dream. It produced five #1 singles (the first album to do so since Michael Jackson’s Bad) and another that reached #3.
It also raised expectations for her next release to impossibly high levels — commercially if not artistically.
Based on early sales, that album — Prism — is another hit. Whether it will prove to have the legs of its predecessor (or the number one hits) remains to be seen.
I don’t remember where I first heard about The Head and the Heart, but in typical fashion, once I did I immediately started hearing about them everywhere else.
This Seattle-based band is usually compared to the string of indie-folk groups that have dominated the musical landscape in recent years — the Mumford & Sons, Fleet Foxes and Avett Brothers of the world. Not bad company to be in, for sure.
The Random iTunes Fairy has served up another track from Adele’s debut album, 19, apparently still derisive (or appreciative) of my dismissal of it a few weeks back.
This track is better than the last one I featured, though still fall short of the material on 21. The production is fuller and Adele, as always, is in fine voice. But the tune itself falls a little short.
