It’s a testament to how good this year has been for new releases that John Mayer’s Born and Raised can climb to only number four on this list.
Since his great 2006 record Continuum, Mayer has made headlines for everything but his music. He gave two disastrous magazine interviews, had ugly break-ups with Jennifer Aniston and Taylor Swift (with the latter excoriating him in song on her most recent album) and developed granulomas on his vocal chords that prevented him from singing.
Picking up where I left off last week, I’m counting down the best new albums I’ve purchased this year. This week I’ll feature the top five, and it’s an impressive bunch.
This group includes albums by two of my very favorite artists, the best work yet by a great indie band, a wonderful comeback album by a struggling pop star and — today — a rousing work by a rock-and-roll legend.
A tiny portion of my music collection — maybe half of one percent, tops — belongs to my wife.
She and I both enjoy a lot of the other music I own, but those are all albums I purchased. I can probably count on one hand the physical CDs she has purchased herself.
One of those is Dream Another Dream by Nuclear Valdez, the title track of which is today’s random selection.
I’d like to be a bigger Elton John fan. Silly thing to say, I know, because there’s certainly nothing holding me back from further exploring his catalog — nothing but the lack of time and the presence of hundreds of other artists vying for it.
John is one of those artists, like Prince, who has released so many albums that I can’t fathom being the kind of fan who owns everything he’s done. Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello are similarly prolific, but I started following them long ago and added many of their albums as they were released. With John I’d be starting almost from scratch.
It’s been seven years since Garbage’s last album — 2005’s Bleed Like Me — and for most of that time it was unclear whether the band would ever record together again. So the announcement of this year’s Not Your Kind of People was a pleasant surprise.
The sound of this album is similar to that of the band’s self-titled debut — hard-edged grunge with a splash of techno. On subsequent albums, Garbage dabbled in genre flourishes such as 50s pop and punk, but they’ve always been most comfortable in this mode.
