Pretty Goes with Pretty: Fall Music Preview: It'd Be Okay if I Were Deaf

The other day when I said there was a bunch of great new music to look forward to this fall, I must have been smoking crack. I was looking over the fall music preview in this month’s issue of Rolling Stone, and god but does everything look ho-hum at best. Granted, Rolling Stone is the most mainstream music mag in the world (for instance, I now know that every single person that was ever on American Idol has an album coming out in the next few months); surely, therefore, it passed over some upcoming gems—can someone please let me know what RS missed? Because I don’t think I can handle the rest of this year if this is all I have to look forward to.

The only album I’m truly excited about (aside from the Pernice Brothers) is TV On the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain. It was supposed to come out back in the spring, and they got a shit-ton of premature press before announcing that it would be pushed back. I’ve had time to be excited, ambivalent, stoked, bored, and ramped up all over again over the course of all the magazine articles and pushed-back release dates. By September 12th, I think I’ll still be on an upswing. I can’t wait—I think I’m the only person left in America who hasn’t heard a single track from the album. I’ve been willfully keeping my ears pure so I can experience the whole thing from beginning to end, fresh. In other words, my expectations are way too high and I’ll probably be disappointed. Uh-oh, here comes the downturn…

Aside from that, there are a few albums I’m curious about, if not lining up outside of Amoeba first thing in the morning on their release dates.

The Album Leaf has a new album, Into the Blue Again (Sept. 12) I enjoyed In a Safe Place, though it was, as the title implies, rather safe. Not to damn with faint praise, but I enjoy the Album Leaf as background music (which in fact I need a lot of). This will eventually make its way to an Amoeba purchase, but if a year went by before I bought it, I wouldn't notice.

Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, will release his first album of pop music since converting to Islam and changing his name more than twenty-five years ago. I love my two Cat Stevens greatest hits albums—there is no better thing to listen to in the morning, or on a Sunday, or any time you ever just want to feel good. However, every proper album I’ve heard by Stevens has had numerous missteps, and I’m doubly suspect of anything new, which will be the first to reflect his fundamentalist faith—and worse, his age.

Speaking of dormant songwriters, Sean Lennon will be releasing his second album, Friendly Fire (Sept. 26) a follow up to his 1998 debut. That album got tossed aside by a lot of people due to Sean not being John (but hey, at least he wasn’t Julian!). However I still have it on my iTunes and it’s a nice little album, if a little ““90s” in spots. If he can be taken on his own terms I think people would see he’s got some substance.

Meanwhile, a few more high-profile acts have some albums coming out, but for the life of me I just can’t get excited.

Beck’s new single, “Nausea,” is probably his worst single since one thing or another from Midnight Vultures. It sounds like he’s returned to territory he’s already mined, and it’s just not interesting to me. Advance press I’ve read for The Information (Oct. 3) seems to claim that the whole new album is a throwback to his earlier styles, so any curiosity I might have had has been quashed.

The Decemberists are preparing their major label debut, The Crane Wife (Oct. 3). They may be the first band ever where I thought the idea of major label suits telling them to tone it down and make a hit might be the thing that could ever happen to them. But instead I keep reading about 20-minute song cycles, ancient Japanese folklore, yadda yadda yadda. I hereby nominate Colin Meloy for the Most Squandered Potential award. I wish he’d just go write a book and get all this epic dandyism out of his system.

Modest Mouse is also returning this season (Dec. 19, to be exact), and even the random addition of Johnny Marr as a new full-time member can’t make me listen to Isaac Brock bark, yelp, and whimper more trailerpark aphorisms.

Finally, Yo La Tengo's I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (Sept. 12). I got no beef with YLT, but the weird thing about them is that they made the perfect album, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, and it sated my appetite for the rest of my years. I’m so satisfied by that album that I just don’t want to hear anything else. That’s a little ludicrous, but that’s the way it is.

That’s all I’m aware of for this season. Please tell me if there’s anything else I should be excited about! I have no faith in any of these bands to really lift 2006 out of the musical doldrums, and the spring crop, which certainly looked promising, totally failed to meet expectations. My year-end top ten list is, so far, a top two. And that’s sad.

Comments

top two list eh? I don't have a top two list yet. I have a "one or two albums I basically like, but really aren't great enough to deserve placement on a 'Top' anything list" list.

however, I too anxiously await Cookie Mountain as the one track I've heard (I didn't save myself as you have) seems great. If impatient, you can get it on allofmp3.com already (as well as amazon I think).

Posted by: Jeremy | September 05, 2006 at 04:23 PM