Andy Gapin

For the past couple months, there really haven’t been a lot of new albums that have grabbed me. It’s true that I check out about twenty new records every week, so you’d think that there’d be at least a handful each month that stick with me. That hasn’t really been the case. There have been a ton of decent records that I’m like “hey, this isn’t half bad,” but I find that I’ve just been listening to the same few albums from last year and before over and over. So while there have been a few that I’ve been more into like the new Loved Ones, I’m feeling kind of blah about music right now.

But this new record by Ex-Boyfriends has been stuck in my head all week. The first time that I heard it I wasn’t terribly impressed, but it’s grown on me a lot. I think I spent a lot of time listening to it because they reminded me of something that I couldn’t put my finger on. They remind me a lot of high school, in a good way, but I knew that there was a recent band that they sounded a lot like. After a couple days, I put my finger on New Brunswick’s Scream Hello. Anyway, this record is fun and catchy despite sounding super familiar.

There’s still hope though! I still need to hear the entire new record by the Drive-By Truckers and give the new Magnetic Fields album some more attention. There’s also new stuff coming out by the Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, Make Believe, and Joan of Arc–yes, two Kinsella records–soon so that should help.

I really wanted to like the new Chris Walla album, but I just can’t get super into it. I don’t even like Death Cab, but I played “The Score” on my radio show and was really into it, but when I went back to listen to the rest of the album thinking that it might not be boring, I was disappointed to find that it was indeed boring…as is the new Say Hi (formerly Say Hi To Your Mom).

Some other stuff that I still want to spend some time with are the new ones by Willie Nelson, The Shackeltons, Rafter, Bob Mould, Jason Collett, and Fjord Rowboat. So we’ll see!