Music for Months

Funny; I went to double-check something on Amazon, and suddenly realized that every week for the next month-and-a-half or so, I'll be getting new music to buy that I actually want!

See?:

Tomorrow, August 8th, brings the new Slayer album, Christ Illusion. I listened to some of this on the internet with James Sime the other day, and it sounds a lot like the Slayer of the late 80's, which is no surprise since they've got back their original drummer, Dave Lombardo. Now, personally, I enjoyed the new sound on Diabolus In Musica and God Hates Us All, but I'm also a big fan of the Reign In Blood/South of Heaven/Seasons In The Abyss trilogy, too, so I'll be pretty happy either way.



Then next week, on August 15th, Obie Trice releases his second album, Second Round's On Me. Trice is still my favorite, by far, of Eminem's "finds", not so much for his skills - which are solid, but not exceptional - as for his sense of humor, his personality, his delivery and his songwriting and storytelling. He's got something of an "Everyday Joe" vibe to a lot of his stuff, which may be part of why he's glossed over so often; rap seems to subscribe more than most music genres (these days) to self-promotion and larger-than-life personas. For those who find a lot of that shit tiring and dull, Obie Trice is a great breath of fresh air, and I'm just hoping the lukewarm commercial response to his first album didn't cause him to question himself and his approach too much.



Jason Webley swears that online pre-orders for his new maxi-single with Andru Bemis, How Big Is Tacoma, will ship on or before August 16th. But whether or not that's true, I'll probably be picking it up - his previous collaborative maxi-single thing, Eleven Saints (with Jay Thompson) was great. Add to that Webley's own description of this material as "Simon and Garfunkle meets The Muppet Show," and you've got me pretty well sold.



I probably don't need to bother mentioning it, but the new Outkast album, Idlewild, comes out on August 22nd. It's the soundtrack to the new movie, right? I think Brill got a hold of an advance copy or saw the trailer or something and said it sounded really jazzy. All I care about is that they're working together again; I really enjoyed Stankonia, and Aquemini is among my two or three favorite rap albums ever. But the big double-album where Big Boi and Andre each kinda did their own album and just released 'em together - Speakerboxx/The Love Below - didn't do it for me at all. Big Boi sounds too conventional and conservative without Andre making things crazy all around him, and without Big Boi's grounded delivery and storytelling, Andre lost his fucking mind and drifted off up into the ether. So, seeing them together again has me plenty excited, 'cause they belong as a team, if'n you were to ask me.



After that comes the new Bob Dylan album, Modern Times, on August 29th. Not sure what to expect from this one, but I'm pretty curious. Not even positive that I'll buy it, but I sure have been loving his first six or seven albums.



Audioslave's last album, Out of Exile, sounded too much like something your parents would be okay listening to in the car. In spite of that, three or four songs were deadly good, and the band's first album was fucking righteous. So I'll be excited still to see where they're going on Revelations, their third album, which comes out on September 5th. Word has it there's a song or two from this album featured in the Miami Vice movie, but I don't know if that's enough to make me go see it...



On September 12th it looks like we're getting a new Elton John album, The Captain And The Kid, which title makes the album sound like it might just be a concept album, at which Elton John is generally pretty talented. I've only gotten into his stuff over the last year or so, but I really dug a lot of the stuff on Songs From The West Coast, so I'm likely to check this out.



September 19th, finally, brings a new Will Oldham album, released under the moniker he seems to be sticking with for now, Bonnie "Prince" Billy. The album's called Then The Letting Go (or just Letting Go, depending on your source) and judging by the new single, "Cursed Sleep", it might be a little too busy for me; my favorite Oldham material came on the albums I See A Darkness and Master And Everyone, which were both very quiet, intimate albums, soft-voiced and gentle, and it's my hope that he'll return to some more of that material soon; this being his first proper solo album since Master And Everyone, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.


(FYI, this is the cover art for the "Cursed Sleep" single, not the album. I couldn't find the album art.)

For those interested, Oldham will be on tour as Bonnie "Prince" Billy and will be playing the Great American Music Hall here in San Francisco on October 30th and 31st (Halloween!!!).