Anticipation '08

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

New U2, R.E.M., and Portishead are slated for 2008. I'm eager to hear the first and third there. U2 has been recording in Morocco with Eno again, so I'm guessing and hoping that the Rick Rubin sessions have been aborted and scrapped. I don't know why I'm holding out hope that U2 still has that one good album left in them, after feeling the same way and getting burned on How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, but I feel like this time, we might get something really interesting, like the experimentalism of Passengers, or maybe a dalliance with the War sound, or somehow maybe both at once. We got two good songs and one good-till-overplayed out of HTDAAB, and three good songs out of the one before that, but I think this might be the swan song. Like I said, you can't ask why, but I still have some glimmer of optimism that they can put out one last wire-to-wire classic, even if they haven't done that since anywhere from 1983 to 1991, depending on how much you enjoyed borderliners like "Elvis Presley and America," "Running to Stand Still," or "Until the End of the World." (I'll give 'em The Unforgettable Fire as a skipless album, because I really dig the impressionistic Eno stuff.)

 

I wish I had it in me to still care about R.E.M.'s new album. I've never been a huge fan of the band, because unlike U2, I feel that R.E.M. is one you had to be there for, to some extent, and I just wasn't. Automatic for the People came out when I was in 1st grade (even though the singles maintained airplay well into 8th), so I really missed out. I can appreciate a handful of their records as being great, but I don't particularly care what Michael Stipe's favorite causes are, nor am I interested in what the new album is going to sound like, or what the hype is going to be, or any of that. Honest question: has there been any clamoring for new R.E.M. by its better fans than I in the last ten years? Have they been relevant for the last ten years? I just can't be bothered to care. Without their drummer, they're sort of in an enfeebled state, and I'd rather just have their catalogue end now, since they didn't have the foresight to stop sooner.

 

Portishead is an interesting case. I didn't have my finger on the pulse of the music world in the mid-'90s, so I wasn't there to experience trip-hop as it happened, but I took a liking to both their albums recently, so I'm curious to hear what their new album will sound like without having any emotional investment in an inactive band of my childhood reforming. That said, I'm not sure what they have left in the tank. I wonder if much like My Bloody Valentine, their niche only really allows for one great album and one very good, because further albums put them in a catch-22 of either recycling their proven material or deviating from what they're supposed to be, with little room to escape. I expect it'll be more like the second album, with a few little nods to electronic music that has happened between '97 and now, and overall it'll be a totally decent downtempo album that I'll like, but others will like much more because of sentimentality.

 

Also speaking of My Bloody Valentine, Kevin Shields says he's getting the band back together, but who believes that guy?

[Gary Floyd 0]

Mu Bloody Valentine is supposed to be getting together for a few festivals (most likely something like Cohella), but that's all I've heard.

 

New Portishead? Sweet.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

U2 was my favorite band up through even my first year of college. I'm convinced they won't ever produce another good song, as the few high points of the last album were really stretching the definition of "good song," much as I may have tried to justify them as good songs then.

 

The new Portishead, however, interests me. I mean, 10 years off is a long freaking time. I wonder if Beth Gibbons even sounds the same. Dummy was probably the first really off-the-radar album I bought for myself, picking it up used in maybe 9th grade based on some 30-second samples of "Biscuit," "Sour Times," and "Mysterons" that I'd heard on a now-surely defunct music review website. It is one of the few albums I got into that young that has done nothing but get better since that early age; I think OK Computer's the only one that comes close. Maybe War too, to finish back on U2.

[King Kamala 0]

U2 was my favorite band up through even my first year of college. I'm convinced they won't ever produce another good song, as the few high points of the last album were really stretching the definition of "good song," much as I may have tried to justify them as good songs then.

 

The last U2 song I really enjoyed was "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me". The Batman Forever soundtrack was one of my two or three favorite CDs back in elementary school. I haven't listened to it in a while- but I'll venture to say it's still way better than the movie at least.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Well, I liked "City of Blinding Lights," even if I did have the feeling that I'd heard it before. "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" is interesting to me in that a song about Bono Senior's death, which a lesser artist would've done as a cliché "raw, personal" acoustic number, is transformed into the huge populist stadium production that we'd expect-slash-demand, where even a line as specific and un-universal as "you're the reason why the opera is in me" matters to us. It's not in the pantheon of Great U2 Songs, no, but it's the best thing on that tired album. (EDIT: since I had drawn some parallels between Radiohead and U2 in the other thread regarding their distance from minimalism, I'd have to say "October" is the only minimalist U2 song, and I like that one, kinda maybe, but not really.)

 

Also, I'm pretty sure "Vertigo" was the 2005 NBA Finals theme, in a third installment of half-assed play-it-safe marketing by ABC's depressingly uninspired NBA coverage.

[snuffbox 0]

I liked most of All That You Cant Leave Behind.

 

I'm looking forward to Portishead & REM. And the Breeders. And, hopefully, Sims.

[Henry Spencer 0]

Bauhaus are breaking up (again), but are releasing one final studio album before they do. I don't hold high hopes for it, but I'll listen anyways. Bauhaus and I go pretty far back.

 

Besides that, I'm looking the most forward to the new Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, album, Dig Lazarus Dig!!!, which should come out in March. Also, 2008 is supposed to see new released by Morrissey, the Silver Jews, the Magnetic Fields, and Antony & the Johnsons, all of which I shall be picking up.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Yeah, new Magnetic Fields on January 10, I believe, but I'm not even through 69 Love Songs yet. Working on it AS WE SPEAK, though. Not having heard any other Magnetic Fields except this, which is so all over the place, what should I expect from the new stuff?

 

You know I love Morrissey in a nonsexual way, but I don't know what he really has left to accomplish, other than defending his Really Long Song Title turf from the encroaching likes of Fall Out Boy.

 

If the Arcade Fire can put together a third album this year to atone for last January's stinker, that'd be appreciated, but if that song called "I'm So Bored with the U.S.A." is on there (haven't heard it yet, but that title gives me the willies), then pass. (EDIT: Apparently, it's just a live intro for "Intervention." That quells some fears, except for the fear that somewhere, Win Butler is actually strumming a guitar and singing "I'm so bored with the U.S.A.")

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Well, I liked "City of Blinding Lights," even if I did have the feeling that I'd heard it before. "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own"

Those are the two!

 

[Kinetic 0]

That wouldn't be the Clash "I'm So Bored with the USA," would it?

[cbacon 0]

wolf parade

sufjan

cat power x2

postal service

death cab

final fantasy

lupe

 

weezer apparently have a new album in the works :/

 

and maybe that child rebel soldier super group

[Brett Favre 0]

Eminem is supposed to drop an album soon. Looking forward to seeing if Encore was just a hiccup.

[King Kamala 0]

Ben Folds has a new one coming out in '08. It has to be better than Songs for Silverman. At least I hope so.

[cbacon 0]

also:

 

destroyer

swan lake

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Looking forward to the new Destroyer; that Black Mountain that comes out next month is already floating around the internet and is very, very good.

 

As for the Magnetic Fields...i blew, and I was indifferent or outright disliked the stuff Merritt did either under his own name or the Future Bible Heroes or the Gothic Archies, so that leaves me not caring about anything new from him since 69 Love Songs, which came out eight years ago. My hopes are not high for the new album.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

That wouldn't be the Clash "I'm So Bored with the USA," would it?

I don't know. He just says "I'm so bored with the USA" over the opening chords of Intervention a few times before going into the actual song. False alarm.

 

Those are the two!

Don't give me any credit. They couldn't possibly be anything else.

 

Thom Yorke told the NME that there's going to be an LP8 somewhere down the line. Unless we have another Kid Amnesiac deal where there was enough stuff recorded to get a follow-up out in around six months, and since they'll spend a lot of 2008 touring, I highly doubt this makes it on any Best of 2008 lists, but hey, there's that 1% chance.

[Henry Spencer 0]

As for the Magnetic Fields...i blew, and I was indifferent or outright disliked the stuff Merritt did either under his own name or the Future Bible Heroes or the Gothic Archies, so that leaves me not caring about anything new from him since 69 Love Songs, which came out eight years ago. My hopes are not high for the new album.

 

i is a great album, ignore this.

[Murmuring Beast 0]

REM are shit. And that coming from an REM fan.

[BigPoppaKev 0]

Anyone excited at all about the new Metallica?

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Hey, a third band that hasn't been relevant since the early '90s.

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

Morrissey's new album will be a more successful but not as fantastic Your Arsenal, looking at the way things are going. That's fine by me.

[Red Baron 0]

Anyone excited at all about the new Metallica?

I am considering they are working with Rick Rubin.

[Garth 0]

The new albums from;Hot Chip, Eagles of Death Metal and The Raconteurs will all definitely be picked up and given a listen.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Looking for big music from these little musicians. Well, no, that's a lie, they're like a learning-disabled class playing The Arcade Fire for a talent show, but

1) How about that girl on the keyboards?

2) Five bucks says they still make a new album better than Metallica's

[JJ Johnson 0]

Slayer's next (and, according to Tom Araya, last) album could make it out by the end of 2008. I fear Slayer's not going to end well, but I guess dread is a form of anticipation.

 

I also listened to "My Pal, the Tortoise" after being amused by that hall of records line, and enjoyed it, so I anticipate that I'll enjoy more whatever the fuck that was, but I guess that's not really in the spirit of the thread.

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

Unfortunately, I fear that The Thinking Fellers Union Local #282 has long since disbanded. "The Piston and the Shaft" is an even better song from that album, by the way.

[k thx 0]

There's a road sign for Portishead at the end of my road. I'd go there, but I can't be arsed.

 

I'm looking forward to DOOM finally putting another album out. Destroyer and Cage too.