Tuesday thread for the chronologically challenged? Whatever works, right? That does give me time to include 3 spins of the Le Tigre album.

Le Tigre-This Island. Le Tigre makes a synthpop album? Yeah, it's true. Pretty much gone is the punk leaving the synths and a disc full of danceable pop songs. That's not gonna fly too high around here is it? I like it quite a bit despite the rawness that evaporated from the last discs I bought from them. This disc is certainly the most consitent I've heard from them but it's not without a massive clunker. Their cover of "I'm So Excited" is tough for me to listen to more than once. Fun is going to be the most commonly used adjective for this effort, and it will be correct. Of course it also includes the songs with a political (anti war song that even works Lawrence, Ks into the lyrics) and feminist (read "dyke") slant. The common thread being that all of these songs are, well, fun.

Fiery Furnaces-Blueberry Boat. Late to the party, but just enough to be fashionably late this time. This is one of those that once you start playing everyone within earshot turns and says , "WTF?". It's going to be tough to maintain the stand that you listen to cool music when they know you were playing, and liking, this. These guys are pretty much the kings and queens of the couplet aren't they? At first it seemed that most of these lines followed the same meter. Would that be iambic pentameter? At any rate it takes some time to get into and once I was acclimated to the sing song nature of the rhymes I started enjoying it more. I'm playing it right now and it's the most enjoyable listen yet. This definetly takes some time to get into.

I Am The World Trade Center-The Cover Up. Again pretty much a straight ahead synthpop album and it's unabashedly 80's in nature with no apolgies as evidenced by the lack of any attempt to bring the tracks up to date. If you like this kind of thing there is nothing at all to find fault with. Of course I do like this kind of thing and regard it as one of the most solid synthpop albums I've heard this year. Great listen.

Regards,
jc