I get gross

I've written about AC Newman before, and with good reason. He's one of the best pop-rock songwriters alive. If you can listen to the song "Drink To Me Then, Babe" without feeling something you are probably something subhuman. Like, Buffy would stake you. This guy understands the melodies that wind around the human consciousness and knows when to squeeze. In the best way possible, of course. Only he could write a song that would sound so much at place in a Wes Anderson movie and on your Saturday lounging, be it day or night.

He's one of the few people who can produce solo records that I like despite the fact that he has no one to fact check him, in a sense. This is bad for a lot of people. Who says "no" to Paul McCartney, anyway? He was a Beatle. It's also probably why pretty much every solo song he did sucks so hard they could create a black hole vacuum. Newman's still in the state where he's in complete control of his musical faculties and it will sound perfect on basically every fire escape on which you've ever sat.

AC Newman reminds me of those horizon gazing Sundays after those coke snorting Saturdays. It's arre that I listen to him and don't think I should be rocking a cigarette. Maybe it's the fact that I've been watching so much Buffy lately and stuff about high school sends me for the hills and the nostalgic music, and Newman is primed for nostalgia. I bet if my parents had heard this 30 years ago they would have made out to it. That thought is terrifyinfg until I remembered that their first date was to see Rocky Horror Picture Show and my mom still decided to fuck my dad despite that and here I am, so maybe not everything that came out of that shitty movie was terrible. Um, what was I talking about? Here are some mp3s. Go buy AC Newman's new album Get Guilty.

Prophets: http://www.mediafire.com/?yznmwmz1jgm

Changeling: http://www.mediafire.com/?glmjrki4nh3

All My Days (And All My Days Off): http://www.mediafire.com/?mjilymmhxya

I forget the area code

A lot of good albums have come out in the short amount of time that is 2009 so far. No one has penned a line that makes me sing along harder than "when you're young/when you're dumb/when you're drunk as hell and in love/when you're sad, when you're no one/pretending something more than you are/(but you're not)." Fake Problems were always a pretty good band, even if they started as kids who held Crime As Forgiven By Against Me! as gospel (which I wish more kids would).

The thing I liked about this band above all else is that no matter which of their releases I was listening to, I always felt like I was listening to exactly what they had intended to release. Fake Problems do not at all reek of compromise, which makes the horns and the chorus on their new album It's Great To Be Alive sound all that much better and sincere. Chris Farren still sounds like he's spilling out his blog in time, and the band still sounds like they are keeping up with each emotion step for step. The fact that they are as young as they are is pretty much lost in the wash of strummed power rock music and a drummer who knows what the fucking score is.

Fake Problems are the feeling you get when you buy your first legal drink and you get carded. It's rad.

Dream Team: http://www.mediafire.com/?uxvvz4entq3

Diamond Rings: http://www.mediafire.com/?ntejtmdmgim

Heart BPM: http://www.mediafire.com/?1nkknzaklmi

Oh god this is terrible - or - TIMBERWOLVES!

I'm bringing this ugly bitch back to life and I'm starting it off with a groaningly-bad song. Because this is a brand new leak and the company involved will probably be zealously searching using obvious keywords, let's just say it's the new song from the band Dreen Gay, and it's the title track from their upcoming schlockfest 21st Century Breakdancing. WINK.

It's not Hawthorne Heights level awful, but it's like seeing an ex-girlfriend who got fat from having kids with some asshole who's now in jail for making meth in the garage. It's sad. Dreen Gay apparently think they're the Who and/or U2 now, and must make IMPORTANT songs about SERIOUS topics because they're ADULTS now. This is the band that once sang about being too bored to masturbate. They also used to be one of the best summer rock bands ever to exist. I guess arena tours and major label budgets do awful things to artistic ambition sometimes.

Anyway, expect this to be hailed as "punk album of the year!" by rock writers who don't really know what punk is. (Hint - they think it's still entirely by and for the fashionable boho hipsters of big cities. This is why shit bands like Be Your Own Pet get labeled as "punk" when in fact they are just "assholes.")

Anyway, enjoy the song, I guess. Or don't. I didn't. And doesn't that artwork make you want to punch whoever did it in the dick?

http://www.mediafire.com/?gj4fwljmytd