I did an iTunes run recently, and picked up Tom Waits’s three-disc collection Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards, along with a couple of other albums (TV On the Radio and the Decemberists among them). As is my usual practice, I put these records into the “Party Shuffle” on iTunes, so I get a chance to hear most of the songs a few times, and I’ve been listening to them for the past couple of weeks while I work on the computer.
The overall reaction is pretty much “Enh.” I continue to not really get the Decemberists or TV on the Radio– they have a couple of good songs each, but I’m not blown away by either. The biggest problem, though, is that the Waits fraction is just too high. It’s a thirty-song collection, and even after removing the completely unlistenable tracks from the rotation, they keep coming up too often. Particularly the “Bastards” material, which is mostly oddball little spoken-word things– many of them are well-done and amusing, but they don’t stand up to repeated listening well at all.
So, I need more music. And here’s your chance to pick my playlist for me: What should I be listening to right now? I’ll try almost anything once, so there’s no need to limit suggestions by genre or anything– just pimp me some new tunes.
(This would be another excellent place for lurkers to de-lurk, by the way. I already have a reasonable idea of what the regular commenters are likely to suggest, but if you don’t normally comment, I have no clue. So, surprise me.)