Lots of new faces this week! I love getting a stack of new music and just diving in. In thick music months, I usually listen to a playlist of all the tracks from that month and rate them as I go through them at work or on the bus via iPhone, and then sync ratings back to the computer to sift thru with smart playlists every week. I then take all the 4-5 star rated tracks and whittled them down to this list. 3 stars remain in consideration or have some promise, and ratings of 1 or 2 stars are largely ignored.  I hope you enjoy!

How do you listen to music? More methodical or less? If you do listen to a high volume (at high volume), what tricks do you use to get more efficient? And as always, please flip me some artists you are digging this week. Thanks all! Have a good humpday.

Handsome Furs - All We Want, Baby, is Everything - Face Control

Side project of Wolf Parade frontman. A great album so far… heavy on synths and more personally driven lyrics.

The Low Frequency in Stereo - Turnpike - Futuro

Nice groove to this instrumental track. I hope their album can keep the energy.

Man/Miracle - Pushing and Shoving - Selected + Collected An eMusic Selects Compilation

Messy, effed-up, and under-produced. It’s perfect.

Say Hi - Elouise - Oohs & Aahs

Interesting delay/echo on the vocals that make the delivery seem confused and sing-songy. Clever seemingly simple bassline that complicates as the other instruments enter over the first few bars. This album is getting lodged in my head.

Spoon - My First Time Volume 3 - My First Time Volume 3 Single

Somewhere between Gimme Fiction and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon started experimenting with staccato, almost reggae/ska-like riffs. This might be the missing link, my roommate and I just keep resurrecting this track to listen to on our daily journey to work… an old favorite and a b-side worthy of the a-side.

Elvis Perkins in Dearland - Shampoo - Elvis Perkins in Dearland

This might be one of my picks for best albums of the year (along with Horse Feathers and Blind Pilot). Elvis Perkins did not suck me in immediately with his previous album Ash Wednesday, but I am starting to think I need to revisit. This album with Perkins’ new band (awkwardly named Elvis Perkins in Dearland; I know I thought it was a live album too) is infectious, somber, happy, catchy; it’s an album flawless in execution but with enough imperfect texture in it to make it interesting and rewarding over several listens. Pick it up!

The Answering Machines - Oklahoma - Oklahoma

I have been looking for bands that exhibit the qualities of The Strokes for some time, this is one of the better ones. Good energy, albeit with less riff-tastic guitar snippets and a different voice. These are good things tho, I don’t want copy cats.

Here We Go Magic - Only Pieces - Here We Go Magic

Paul Simon-esque drumming and vocals with some nice celtic guitar late in the track.

Band of Horses - St. Augustine - Everything All the Time

Just very, very pretty.

Day for Night - Badlands - Day For Night

I trend towards male vocalists as I usually want to learn to sing and play their songs, but every once in a while I get pulled in by a siren’s song. Very dynamic voice with a nice, driving, ascending chromatic riff.

The Decemberists - The Bagman’s Gambit - Picaresque

A sprawling epic that sounds like the lost Alfred Hitchcock spy/suspense film. Really watch the words in this one, it’s done so well and sounds so pretty that it almost doesn’t matter. Quiet/loud/quiet dynamics deliver the story of a young American bureaucratic woman’s affair with a spy who seduces her for information throughout the verse-chorus-verse-chorus, but then the song descends into cacophonous noise as her spy disappears in diplomatic red tape. Will she get her man? Oh Colin Meloy, your stories never end well. But damn they are tasty.

I am gonna go watch North by Northwest.

Fink - Pretty Little Thing - Biscuits for Breakfast

Smoldering acoustic funk/soul with dead-on delivery.