Pictures and tunes

Indulged my cabin fever earlier by escaping to Bristol centre.

As well as having the traditional munchie + coffee, I managed to pick up yet more music ... And sadly the tradition is now for coffee seeing as hot chocolate is another of those "LOVETHATWANTTHAT" addictions that upsets my stomach (like pizza can do).

Aside - Don't you hate it when people put silent gaps of 6 minutes or so in their album tracks ? It's typically on the last track of the album. It means you either listen to silence for those minutes or you skip ahead to actual music. If you can. Car stereos don't often give you the option to skip ahead. Kings of Leon is the latest.

Conditions were pretty mixed out there today. It was a better day than yesterday, which was continual heavy rain. Today was just occasional heavy rain :

That's from the car park of the local Tesco. I'd parked and was just thinking : "shall I wait for it to stop or just run like hell ?" And a couple of ground cogs later, it had gotten far heavier. I ran and got soaked in the short distance it took to get to cover. Twas back to bright sunshine by the time I'd raided the store.

Music ! What's arrived lately ?

Tranvision Vamp's (don't laugh!) Velveteen is the first, had my eye on this one for a while since hearing Baby I Don't Care from a collection of 100 driving songs. Just listened to the title track Velveteen so far and that one's pretty good. Had the chance to pick up the album today in a 3 for £10 offer. Looking forward to some carefree 80s girlie vocal tunes here.

Next up is Youth & Young Manhood by Kings Of Leon (which drew the "y u put silent tracks in ?" comment) and the last one for today is Premiers Symptome by Air. The Kings of Leon album is speculative and I'll probably end up getting all their stuff at some point because they're not bad. They're in no way special but at least their stuff sounds a bit different. I refuse to listen to anything by Travis because all their stuff sounds the same and Coldplay are almost of that ilk.

Air is completely different, it's soft dance music with a French flavour. I'll probably acquire all of Air's cds when they become available cheaply enough. I haven't heard anything from them that approaches the stunning All I Need for quality but it's still a refreshing change.

More picture !

I missed that when it visited Bristol, it's gone now. Ok, I saw it long enough to take the snap of it (just before being accosted by a junkie looking for money) but the homing instinct was kicking in (it was just before the Easter break when I badly needed some downtime) so I disappeared off home. Or maybe I just wanted the excuse to treat someone else to it. I missed an opportunity to be honest ...

Reading that March 30th post again and it's a bit sad how the "There's more empty shop fronts now than there used to be" is even more true today than it was in March. There's tough times out there.

It'll be a bit of time before I can tell what those new albums are like. To give each track a fair crack, I weave them in to the iTunes DJ shuffle one by one. It means each track gets a chance to impress, I find that the experience of listening to an album straight through depends heavily on the artist. Some groups are awesome at making albums : Kate Bush, Arctic Monkeys, Dire Straits in particular are very good at interweaving their songs. But it does mean that each track melds into the next. Hence separating them out to find the favourites.

There's another selection of albums I Want at the moment :

Garbage - Not Our Kind Of People
Edie Brickell - Edie Brickell (2011)
Katie Melua - Secret Symphony
Ting Tings - Songs From Nowhereville

Whereas I'd go straight out and buy something like Norah Jones' latest album when it's released (and it's a good one - hearing that voice is as good as Happy Pills for me), those 4 are either too expensive or they're not quite in the same league as a Norah Jones, Alisha's Attic, Lene Marlin or Tori Amos. Actually Tori Amos is one where I need to get more of her albums.

Oh - almost didn't mention the Alanis Morrissette album picked up from BK - definitely enjoyed that one : Thank U :-).

Last thought - why when there's an effigy burning do you always get a CMOT Dibbler appearing ?

Good night, hope you're having sun shiney days where you are !