Medium Happiness

A few days ago my brother, some of his friends, and I were discussing the dearth of really good albums out there right now. 2005-2007 were packed with awesome debuts, sophomore, and follow-up records, but now it looks like the music business is going through a revaluation similar to what has been happening with our economy. This is probably a good thing. Wouldn’t it be nice if the really shitty, purely hype-driven bands got out of the game like insolvent banks. That’s not going to happen, who am I kidding. But, I do think there is a new and welcomed premium for bands that actually make good music.

If you want to check out a band with a rock solid balance sheet, listen to Grizzly Bear’s new record Veckatimest (pronounced Ve-kah-tuh-mist but I’ve been calling it Veck-tah-miest). Aside from the song Dory (which is inexcusably bad) the album is seamlessly great. Unless some uncharted album comes out of nowhere, I’d say this is/will be considered the jam of Summer ‘09. Here is the video for Two Weeks, a song that is pop perfection. The video, which is awesome, was directed by Patrick Daughters who directed one of my favorite music videos of all time, Evil, by Interpol.