This is another good week for new music.  I’m most excited about the new Spoon album, but I’m also going to get the Eels album and the Surfer Blood album as well.  The new EP from Cold War Kids finally sees physical release as well, but if you don’t care about holding the music in your hands, you probably have had it since December.

Either way, we hope that there’s something out there that you’ll enjoy, even if you don’t agree with us.  And, if you’ve got an extra $330 laying around, we recommend the Miles Davis Columbia collection.  A couple of tracks are after the list, in case you forgot what Cold War Kids sound like or something.  Have a great week everyone.

2010 Grammy Nominees
Alice Soundtrack
Aziz Ansari – Intimate Moments For a Sensual Evening
Cold War Kids – Behave Yourself [EP]
Crazy Heart Soundtrack
Eels – End Times
Gretchen Wilson – Greatest Hits
Lindstrom & Christabelle – Real Life Is No Cool
Miles Davis – The Complete Columbia Album Collection
Motion City Soundtrack – My Dinosaur Life
RJD2 – The Colossus
South Memphis String Band – Home Sweet Home
Spoon – Transference
Surfer Blood – Astro Coast
The Hotrats – Turn Ons
The Len Price 3 – Pictures

Cold War Kids – Audience (mp3) from Behave Yourself EP

Spoon – Got Nuffin (mp3) from Transference

Today’s installment of my 1000 Minutes project – in addition to netting me marriage proposals via e-mail – is brought to you by the letter ‘C.’

35. Cold War Kids – Hair Down (mp3) from Robbers & Cowards (3:41) [Time Remaining: 800:38]

I can only imagine that, when this exercise has run it’s course, I’ll have relatively few songs on it which can’t be attributed some kind of memory to explain why it’s on my list. “Hair Down” is one of those relative few. I’ve loved this song on my headphones, in my car, whenever it finds me – but never because of an explicit recollection on my part.

Love – especially of the young variety – is a difficult emotion to explain. It’s often fleeting, more often misdirected, generally unreciprocated, and frequently an ultimately unpleasant experience. “Hair Down” is a melancholy remembrance of time spent with a past love – someone who brightened you in a very specific and memorable way. It’s regretful, wistful about the experience – a gentle reminder of the simplicity of how we all used to love when we were first learning how. And besides that, the song is downright fucking incredible.

36. Counting Crows – Round Here (Live) (mp3) from Across a Wire: Live in New York City (10:00) [Time Remaining: 790:38]

I’ve always been a fan of the way Adam Duritz sings his songs. He has an uncanny ability to communicate – at least to me – his feelings through his vocal inflection. In this particular version of “Round Here,” he sounds alternately overwhelmed, inconsolably weary and angry as hell.

I’d wax poetic about the song – how much it meant to me when I was 15 and looking desperately to balance myself out – to walk the line between the way I was being raised and the need to figure out what I personally thought. But really, everyone has that particular song; this one was just mine. And it’s still as heart-wrenching today as it was 15 years ago.

There’s a part of this version – a little more than halfway through, after he quiets the crowd down – where there’s some piano, and he starts singing again, where it really feels like he’s just telling me the story. I love that.