Opinz

Mick Boogie & Terry Urban – Viva la Hova

Mick Boogie and Terry Urban’s Viva la Hova is a mostly-brilliant Jay-Z/Coldplay mashup album which, unlike most of the seemingly endless Jay-Z mashup albums out there, matches music to mood superbly and gives a dreamy and ethereal backdrop to his rhymes which works extremely well. More »

OutKast – Stankonia

Andre 3000 and Big Boi’s masterpiece and one of the best and most endlessly entertaining hip-hop albums of all time, Stankonia is a funkadelic tour of a distant world that seems to encompass both the sweltering streets of Hotlanta and the depths of outer space, like the acid-tinged, post-coitus dreams of some pimp supreme.

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The Decemberists – “Valerie Plame”

The first in The Decemberists’ new singles series, “Valerie Plame” is an unrepentantly over the top, banjo and horn-laden ode to the infamously embattled CIA agent (told through the eyes of a lovestruck contact) that ends with a wild, “Hey Jude” rip-off but is (quite slyly and sarcastically) one of the best political songs of the decade.

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Wolf Parade – At Mount Zoomer

Wolf Parade’s sophomore album is a more mature affair than their first effort, expanding on the big and dire sound of their debut while Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner’s superb songwriting only continues to get better – despite their stubborn refusal to write another catchy, “I’ll Believe in Anything”-style hit.

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Coldplay – Prospekt’s March

Featuring 5 new songs from the prolific Viva la Vida sessions (as well as 3 reworkings of songs from Viva), Prospekt’s March is slightly uneven but works as an EP, and contains some gems in “Life In Technicolor II” and “Rainy Day”, the latter of which could easily have been a single from Viva La Vida, and a brilliant new version of “Lost” featuring Jay-Z. More »

The Killers – Day & Age

The Killers have left Sam’s Town (and all it’s embarrassing but undeniably earnest bombast) in the dust in favor of a locale much closer to their own hometown – glitzy Las Vegas – where (besides a few enjoyable moments) the synths are cheesier than ever, the horns sound lame and dated, and the sense of lazy insincerity is palpable.

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