EPs

Some 2010 EPs you might want to give a try:

The War On Drugs - Future Weather EP
Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People
Lord Huron - Mighty
Jonni Greth - My God! My God!

EPs are great too!

13 Albums from 2010

I won't pretend to make a tops of 2010 list, but here are some albums from 2010 you should at least give a listen (in reverse alphabetical order):

Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
Siskiyou - Siskiyou
Peter Wolf Crier - Inter-Be
Paleo - View of the Sky
Meursault - All Creatures Will Make Merry
Matt Pond PA - The Dark Leaves
Lower Dens - Twin Hand Movement
The Kissaway Trail - Sleep Mountain
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Josh Ritter - So Runs The World Away
Joe Pug - Messenger
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Anais Mitchell - Hadestown

The album still rules!

Doug Burr

I Must Belong Somewhere

Rokstarrs

Who needs TV?

Lord Huron

Thanks Captain Obvious for Lord Huron.

Sharing

Acts 4:32 "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had."

Can you imagine living like that? Everything you have being everyone else's too? Where does "building your little fortune/nest egg/kingdom" fit into that? It doesn't.

Well, we can dream...

I get nervous

Moody, dark atmosphere. Pulsing rhythm. Yeah!

Gus Black

This video is terrible, but the song is awesome. Turn off your monitor and listen...

Paleo

Loving this right now. Don't have the full album but the 1st 4 songs are hoppin! Link to a review: www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/paleo-view-sky.

8th anniversary

8 songs for 8 years mix I made for Brandy:
1. Matt pond pa - specks
2. Galapaghost - all I need
3. Josh Ritter - good man
4. Black keys - everlasting light
5. Birdmonster- my love for you
6. Justin Vernon - nothing better than a journey to you
7. Josh Ritter - long shadows
8. Coldplay - green eyes

Good Songwriter Alert

Meet Birdmonster

Califone

Another record with a lovely, comforting texture to it. Plus, home to my favorite song ever - the Psychic TV cover, "the Orchids."

Chappo

What? It's an apple ad? Who cares? It's rockin'! EP's pretty decent too.

The Burbs

Can't get enough of this right now. Strong songs. There are some ones that are easy to get to, but many of their songs have to creep up on me.

I'm starting to listen to full albums again. What does that say about my mental health?

Peter Wolf Crier

Couldn't get this album outta my ears for about a week straight.

Sufy-Suf

Sufjan - Age of Adz. Always pushing things forward.

The War On Drugs - Future Weather

Kurt Vile's Band. Deserves a listen. Dude can create a catchy riff.

Bon Iver So Much Soul

Maybe my fave album ever. It's a mood, not just some songs. It has texture through and through.

Wow crazy I can now post to the blog by texting from my phone. I feel like I should be living in space.

These Days

To be honest, I've never heard the original of this song (it's apparently by Jackson Browne), but I'm not sure I need to. This cover, by The Tallest Man On Earth, is hard to get out of my head:

A Change of Scenery

Wow. It's been a really long time since I actually wrote anything here. A lot has happened since I last posted regularly. I won't chronicle it all here. I'm not even sure what that would look like. I figured I would, though, let you know some of the stuff I've been thinking about, besides some of the rockin' music I've been listening to.

It occurs to me quite often that it is possible to feel as if you are in chains in any situation. Like, it doesn't really depend on your circumstances. You can feel super-anxious and guilty even though you've never wanted for anything and even though you haven't even done anything really bad. I believe that the implication here is that you can also feel free in some very dire circumstances. That is the reason The Shawshank Redemption is my favorite movie of all time - because Andy (the main character) was all about being free even though he was in prison. I also heard that Nelson Mandela, when he was in prison for fighting Apartheid in South Africa, said the most free he felt was when he was incarcerated.

I guess that means our job is not to try to change the scenery around us, but rather to change our hearts, the way we look at things, what is going on inside of us instead of outside.

Jonni Greth - I Found Jihad

If you haven't heard Jonni Greth yet, you should definitely check him out. This song is called "I Found Jihad," which is, I think, about how Jihad is not the only holy war going on. I don't know, check it out.



As a side note, Jonni looks a lot like "Heed" from So I Married An Axe Murder (the kid in my blog header).

Josh Ritter - Temptation of Adam

Another great songwriter here. This is one of the best-written tracks I've heard in a long time. I don't usually like love songs, but this one involves the Apocalypse and a giant bomb:

Noah and the Whale - Blue Skies

Here's a song I've been pretty hooked on lately. Even my kids like it. Of course, I enjoy it as much for the production and atmosphere as for the words and tune. It's so deep and spacey. :) The vid's kind of hard to watch just cause it's so jerky, but I guess that's what you get when you shoot and skate at once.

Paradox

I think I'm going to write a series of blog posts on paradox. I say "I think" because I could very well write one of these things and not even think about the idea for another 7 months. We'll see. Right now, I'm feeling rather verbose, so I'll give the first one a go...

I heard a good teacher say the other day that Jesus was the great paradoxical thinker. "Of course," I thought as he went on: "He who is last will be first." "Lose your life and you'll find it." There are others of these sorts of teachings of course. It seems so obvious, but basically Jesus wants us to do the opposite of everything we think, or comes naturally to us:

"Love your enemies."
"Don't worry about being clothed or fed."
"Hate your father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters."
"Let go of your finances."
"Give up your life. Once you let go, you'll get it."
"Put yourself last. The last will be first."
"Do not seek retribution. Forgive."

This seems very obvious, of course, to all of us who have heard a letter of Jesus' teaching, but do you know how hard these things are to do? You could attempt them your whole life and still feel like you're getting started. I mean, who really does this stuff?

These Days, I'm Not So Sure

This guy - Joe Pug - is a great songwriter. This song - "Not So Sure" - is about becoming more unsure the older you get. You know, like "the more you know, the more you realize you don't know..."

A Beautiful Song

This is a good song.

Sovereignty III

My beliefs in God's sovereignty come down to this: God knows and I don't. It's kind of hard to admit sometimes because our lives are built on pursuing more and more knowledge and power and it is important for us to be smarter than other people and act like we are in control. The truth is that we are very small and there are a lot of things we think and we are going find out they are just total rubbish.

Have you read the book of Job? Job and his friends spend copious amounts of discourse speculating about how God works. They talk like they know about why what happened happened. The truth is they don't know and God, very focused on Job and his "spiritual formation," teaches Job something very important. He sort of takes Job on a tour of the cosmos in order to expand Job's perspective - his worldview, if you will. When Job gets done, I'm sure he realizes that he had no idea what he was talking about and God, who has everything under his control, has a pretty good idea what he's talking about.

The moral: don't presume to understand you know what is happening. Trust me, you don't have the whole story. There is only One who has that. That's why he is God and we are us.